Defund or defend the police? When it comes to fruitful conversations about cops, race, and crime, there are several possible obstacles. One is how participants frame the various issues. While most of us are using English, it seems like we’re actually speaking separate languages.
Economist Arnold Kling explores this disconnect in his book, The Three Languages of Politics. It’s one of the most helpful books I’ve read for explaining why we often talk without communicating, argue without understanding, and feel smug whenever snubbed by the other side.
Kling notes that progressives, conservatives, and libertarians tend to frame issues differently, seeing them along different axes: progressives tend to look at issues along the oppressor-oppressed axis; conservatives tend to look at issues along the civilization-barbarism axis; and libertarians tend to look at issues along the liberty-coercion axis.
This may not be the precise language we would individually use to describe our positions, but you can see these themes at work as we and others formulate what terms we do use. The three languages are presuppositional, pre-rational categories we fall back upon to see and discuss the world. We use them to orient ourselves and respond to others.
| Political Position | Axis |
|---|---|
| Progressive | Oppressor-Oppressed |
| Conservative | Civilization-Barbarism |
| Libertarian | Liberty-Coercion |
Bearing Kling’s model in mind, it’s easy to see how conversations about policing and police reform—with all of their inherent and associated issues of power and societal order—would be ripe for mutual misunderstanding. When the various factions square off in debate, we’re not always discussing the same thing.
So, for instance, when two riot cops in Buffalo, New York, knock an elderly man to the ground, busting his head on the concrete, progressives immediately see the oppressors using their power to harm the oppressed; conservatives see two embattled peacekeepers trying to keep barbarians at bay; and libertarians see the coercive arm of the state, depriving an old man of his civil liberties.
Kling’s three-axes model works to explain conflicting attitudes and positions taken on any number of current policing stories and issues. Typically, progressives side with suspects and excuse actions taken against the police; conservatives side with the police and excuse actions taken against suspects; and libertarians side with whatever established civil liberty seems infringed, which often pits them against policing practices if not the police themselves.
Another interesting aspect of Kling’s model, and one that reveals why there’s no easy resolution to these controversies, is that it’s very easy to place our opponents on the bad end of our preferred axis. Just take progressives and conservatives. As progressives go after cops, conservatives paint them as advocating for anarchy; as conservatives defend cops, progressives paint them as aligning with the oppressors.
By putting your opponent in the wrong this way, conversations devolve into fights in which both sides can see themselves as the champions of right and their opponents as evil. The more we find ourselves denounced by the opposition, the more it validates (to us) our position. Thus each axis becomes self-reinforcing and grows more certain with every exchange.
So what’s the way forward? Awareness of the three languages can help. Progressives might find allies on the side of law enforcement if they, for instance, stop referring to all cops as bastards. Certainly some cops are bad and the system can be rigged and racist, but the oppressor-oppressed axis can prevent appeal to the good cops for help with both the bad cops and the system.
Likewise, conservatives might see that the police are supposed to stand against barbarism and that communities count on them to do so—but when police lash out at minorities, or enforce policies that unfairly target them, they are actually undermining the civilization they are charged with protecting. They’ve become the barbarians on their own axis.