The Need for Ideological Diversity in American Cultural Institutions
1. Political identity is increasingly important to Americans.
2. Concomitantly, Americans increasingly disdain people “on the other side.” For example, only 50% of Republicans and 41% of Democrats were sure it would not upset them if their child married someone of the other political party. One can reasonably assume that this statistic would be worse if one asked “progressives” about “conservatives” and vice versa.
3. In a healthy liberal democracy, intermediary institutions serve as buffers between the public and the state, and give the public institutions and individuals to identify with and trust beyond partisan politics.
4. In the electoral realm, our two warring political tribes are roughly split, both in terms of strong partisans and their ability to win over less partisan voters.
5. In the cultural realm, however, major mainstream institutions are dominated by the broad left, with the more-radical left increasingly gaining ground within the left. Such institutions include the legacy media (or “MSM”) such as the New York Times and NPR; the arts; Hollywood; the organized bar and many other professional associations; universities; the K-12 educational establishment, to include most elite private schools; corporate bureaucracies, particularly at growing tech companies; and even professional sports, once a bastion of implicit conservatism, has increasingly gone woke.
6. One can debate the causes of this dominance, whether it’s a result of differing career preferences among conservatives and liberals, geographic concentrations of each group, discrimination by the establishment, gaps in intelligence and education between liberals and conservat
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