World View - Politics

Politics

According to Michael Lind, "a worldview is a more or less coherent understanding of the nature of reality, which permits its holders to interpret new information in light of their preconceptions. Clashes among worldviews cannot be ended by a simple appeal to facts. Even if rival sides agree on the facts, people may disagree on conclusions because of their different premises." This is why politicians often seem to talk past one another, or ascribe different meanings to the same events. Tribal or national wars are often the result of incompatible worldviews. Lind has organized American political worldviews into five categories:

• Neoliberal Globalism believes that at home governments should provide only basic public goods like infrastructure, health care and security, and do so by market-friendly methods
• Social Democratic Liberalism claims an economic safety net, protecting citizens from unemployment, sickness, poverty in old age and other disasters, is necessary if democratic government is to retain popular support.
• Populist Nationalism tends to favor restriction of legal as well as illegal immigration to protect the core stock of the tribe-state from dilution by different races, ethnic groups or religions. Populist nationalism also tends to favor protectionist policies that shield workers and businesses, particularly small businesses, from foreign competition.
• Libertarian Isolationism would abandon foreign alliances, dismantle most of its military, and return to a 19th-century pattern of decentralized government and an economy based on small businesses and small farms.
• Green Malthusianism synthesizes mystical versions of environmentalism with alarm about population growth in the tradition of the Rev. Thomas Malthus

Not all people will fit neatly into only one category or the other, but Lind argues that their core worldview shapes how they frame their arguments.