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Partisanship Quotes

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Partisanship Quotes

“For people who feel disrespected and unseen, politics is a seductive form of social therapy. Politics seems to offer a comprehensible moral landscape. We, the children of light, are facing off against them, the children of darkness. Politics seems to offer a sense of belonging. I am on the barricades with the other members of my tribe. Politics seems to offer an arena of moral action. To be moral in this world, you don’t have to feed the hungry or sit with the widow. You just have to be liberal or conservative, you just have to feel properly enraged at the people you find contemptible. Over the past decade, everything has become politicized. Churches, universities, sports, food selection, movie awards shows, late-night comedy— they have all turned into political arenas. Except this was not politics as it is normally understood. Healthy societies produce the politics of distribution. How should the resources of the society be allocated? Unhappy societies produce the politics of recognition. Political movements these days are fueled largely by resentment, by a person or a group’s feelings that society does not respect or recognize them. The goal of political and media personalities is to produce episodes in which their side is emotionally validated and the other side is emotionally shamed. The person practicing the politics of recognition is not trying to formulate domestic policies or to address this or that social ill; he is trying to affirm his identity, to gain status and visibility, to find a way to admire himself. But, of course, the politics of recognition doesn’t actually give you community and connection. People join partisan tribes, but they are not in fact meeting together, serving one another, befriending one another. Politics doesn’t make you a better person; it’s about outer agitation, not inner formation. Politics doesn’t humanize. If you attempt to assuage your sadness, loneliness, or anomie through politics, it will do nothing more than land you in a world marked by a sadistic striving for domination. You may try to escape a world of isolation and moral meaninglessness, only to find yourself in the pulverizing destructiveness of the culture wars.”

PoliticsEmotionMoralityTherapyBelongingResentmentPartisanshipPartisan PoliticsUs Vs Them
Book:How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen
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“The matter on which I judge people is their willingness, or ability, to handle contradiction. Thus Paine was better than Burke when it came to the principle of the French revolution, but Burke did and said magnificent things when it came to Ireland, India and America. One of them was in some ways a revolutionary conservative and the other was a conservative revolutionary. It's important to try and contain multitudes. One of my influences was Dr Israel Shahak, a tremendously brave Israeli humanist who had no faith in collectivist change but took a Spinozist line on the importance of individuals. Gore Vidal's admirers, of whom I used to be one and to some extent remain one, hardly notice that his essential critique of America is based on Lindbergh and 'America First'—the most conservative position available. The only real radicalism in our time will come as it always has—from people who insist on thinking for themselves and who reject party-mindedness.”

PoliticsUnited StatesInfluenceRevolutionIndiaHumanismIsraelContradictionIndividualismIrelandConservatismCollectivismFrench RevolutionPartisanshipRadicalismFree ThoughtThomas PaineSpinozismEdmund BurkeGore VidalAmerica First CommitteeCharles LindberghIsrael Shahak
Book:Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left
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“I love a good argument. I love differing points of view in all facets of things. I also love grace. I've got people in my family that are to the right of Attila the Hun. When people tell me, like, "How can you platform that person on your show?" I go, "I platform my uncle every fucking Thanksgiving." By the way, I love him. He's a three-dimensional human being who has qualities that I really admire, things about him. We've lost that. We've lost the ability to love people because we litmus test at every point in every single moment.”

LoveFamilyAcceptanceArguingPartisanshipAgree To Disagree
Author:Jon Stewart
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“Some people would regard people who look like they do as ugly if they did not look like them.”

LooksHumorBeautifulQuotesBeautyHumourPrejudiceQuoteUglyDiscriminationSatireBigotryThought ProvokingAphorismIntoleranceBiasQuotationsHandsomeInclinationUglinessAphorismsMake You ThinkOpen MindedDetachedSatiricalUnfairnessQuotationDisinterestedPartisanshipJustFairProvoke ThoughtMade Me ThinkEquitablePartialityUnbiasedDispassionateObjectiveFavoritismHandsomenessTendencyNeutralPartisanLeaningPredilectionImpartialOne SidednessFair MindedNonpartisanEvenhandedNondiscriminatoryUnprejudiced
Author:Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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“For many museums and libraries, there's a fear about getting involved in the contemporary issue--that you'll be pulled into the partisan times. I think you're gonna be pulled in no matter what. So the key is you should really, I think, do the best work you can to help a nation be made better. Yes, you're not gonna say that we're Democrat or Republican; what you're saying is that for the greater good of a nation, here are some of the ways we can move forward.”

PoliticsMuseumsLibrariesPartisanshipCultural InstitutionsGathering Spaces
Author:Lonnie G. Bunch III
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“There's no evidence from decades of Pew Research surveys that public opinion, in the aggregate, is more extreme now than in the past. But what has changed -- and pretty dramatically -- is the growing tendency of people to sort themselves into political parties based on their ideological differences.”

PoliticsNewsResearchIdeologyVotingPolitical PartiesPublic OpinionSegregationAmerican PoliticsAmerican CultureExtremismPartisansFactionsPublic PolicyAmericansPartisanshipCurrent EventsPolarizationIdeologuesCategorizationCurrent AffairsIdeologiesPolitical BeliefsChanging TimesU S PoliticsVoter BehaviorFactionalismSelf Segregation
Book:The Next America: Boomers, Millennials, and the Looming Generational Showdown
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“My commitment is to urge us all toward moderation and good will toward fellow citizens. If we can set aside unworthy emotions that deepen our political divide, concentrate on finding solutions to the problems our country and communities face, we can then work toward a brighter future with less rancor but firm in our purpose. Or, we can feed our primitive fight or flight impulse by lashing out in social media and then duck into our silos. If we do that, the unhealthy polarization of the time of Trump will get even worse.”

PoliticsSocial MediaPolitical PhilosophyPolitical CorrectnessFacebookPartisanshipBipartisanship
Book:Polarized! The Case for Civility in the Time of Trump: An Experiment in Civil Discourse on Facebook
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“Arnold's notion of the intellectual as disinterested critic distinguished him from both Marx and Hegel. For Marx, the proper function of the intellectual was to be a partisan on behalf of the proletariat, criticizing bourgeois society for its fundamental, structural oppression. For Hegel, the role of the intellectual was to stand above particular group interests, and to bring to consciousness the ethical basis of modern, capitalist society, in the process creating standards by which to guide politics and culture. Arnold's conception of "aliens" has obvious affinities with this Hegelian image of the intellectual. But "disinterestedness" for Arnold had a rather different meaning. It implied the ability to free oneself from partisanship, to take a distanced enough view to be able to criticize the side of the issue to which one had been committed, as circumstances required. "Living by ideas" he wrote, means that "when one side of a question has long had your earnest support, when all your feelings are engaged, when you hear all around you no language but one, when your party talks this language like a steam-engine and can imagine no other--still to be able to think, still to be irresistibly carried, if so it be, by the current of thought to the opposite side of the question..." The role of the intellectual, then, was to embody and encourage that quality of mind that allowed individuals to get some distance from their social, political, and economic milieu; to reflect critically, and to be carried away by truth. (p. 227)”

TruthDisinterestedPartisanshipPartisanDisinterestednessCarried Away By Truth
Book:The Mind and the Market: Capitalism in Western Thought
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“Burke's admonition--"The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please: We ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations"--never seems to have occurred to Hayek. The Arnoldian ideal of the disinterested intellectual willing to criticize one side and then the other in order to create balance and counteract the one-sidedness that led toward fanaticism: That, too, was as alien to Hayek as it had been to Marcuse. If it was partisanship that led Hayek to push forward intellectually to new insights, it was also partisanship that kept him from a balanced and rounded philosophy. Perhaps a familiarity with "the best that has been thought and said" about the market will aid us in obtaining a more disinterested and informed perspective. Such a perspective might well begin with Hayek's insights. But it would by no means end with them. p. 387”

LibertyDisinterestedPartisanship
Author:Jerry Z. Muller
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“More generally, I fear that we are becoming disconnected from the ideals that have long inspired and united us. When we laugh, it is more often at each other than with each other. The list of topics that can’t be discussed without blowing up a family or college reunion is lengthening. We don’t just disagree; we are astonished at the views that others hold to be self-evident. We seem to be living in the same country but different galaxies—and most of us lack the patience to explore the space between. This weakens us and does, indeed, make us susceptible.”

AmericaRelationshipsDemocracyPartisanshipDisagreementsAmerican Ideals
Book:Fascism: A Warning
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“In the tired hand of a dying man, Theodore Senior had written: "The 'Machine politicians' have shown their colors... I feel sorry for the country however as it shows the power of partisan politicians who think of nothing higher than their own interests, and I feel for your future. We cannot stand so corrupt a government for any great length of time.”

GovernmentPoliticsCorruptionPartisanshipPoliticansPolitical MachineTheodore Roosevelt Senior
Book:The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
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“But the point is: On the right, they’re pretending that our “truthfulness” is what’s really important to them. Which, ironically, is not true. What matters to them is discrediting anything that they believe harms their side. That is their prime directive. And unlike Kirk, they fuckin’ stick with it. They don’t just drop the protocol any time they feel like humping a green girl in a unitard. [video clip of Captain Kirk, pursuing a green girl in a unitard] And this, this, is their genius. Conservatives are not looking to make education more rigorous and informative, or science more empirical or verifiable, or voting more representative, or the government more efficient or effective. They just want all those things to reinforce their partisan, ideological, conservative viewpoint. ~ Jon Stewart”

PartisanshipPartisan Politics
Book:The Daily Show (The Audiobook): An Oral History as Told by Jon Stewart, the Correspondents, Staff and Guests
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“Active loyalists do not merely support the president but publicly defend even his most controversial moves. Passive loyalists retreat from public view when scandals erupt but still vote with the president. Critical loyalists try, in a sense, to have it both ways. They may publicly distance themselves from the president's worst behavior, but they do not take any action (for example, voting in Congress) that will weaken, much less bring down, the president. In the face of presidential abuse, any of these responses will enable authoritarianism.”

PartisanshipBlind LoyaltyParty Before Country
Book:How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future
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“I sensed that if I were ever to meet [Senator Orrin] Hatch face-to-face there would be little that we could agree upon. There was something about watching Hatch that reminded me of unpleasant, futile political arguments I had had in my life. I wondered whether such political disagreements did not issue from underlying, perhaps even innate. characteristics. Certainly, experience teaches us that when we encounter another person whom we instinctively dislike, constructive political dialogue is not likely to follow. Humans can intuitively sense through a variety of subtle clues (i.e., dress, accent, gestures) when another person possesses a mix of cultural and psychological characteristics that is so substantially different to our own that political discord is also likely. Put otherwise, a liberal can usually smell a conservative, and vice versa. Moreover, the smell is not a pleasant one. -- Red Genes, Blue Genes: Exposing Political Irrationality”

PoliticsIrrationalityPartisanshipPolitical Irrationality
Author:Guillermo Jimenez
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“The conflict between left and right in modern republics is a sort of perpetual-motion mechanism and negative spiral at the same time. When we support political parties, it is regrettable more than just a matter of adopting certain political beliefs. We are also expected to agree that our party's beliefs are better than those held by the other party. Feelings of hostility and superiority are an inevitable byproduct of partisan competition. The media encourages representatives of both sides to vent their emotions, because this sells newspapers and boosts ratings. When we hear that other disagree viscerally with us, we tend to return the feeling of emotional dislike.”

PartisanshipPolitical IrrationalityPolitical Hostility
Book:Red Genes, Blue Genes: Exposing Political Irrationality
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“The biggest cost of our innate group-bias is that it sustains America's two-party duopoly. The Democrats exploit hostility toward Republicans in order to monopolize liberals. Republicans exploit hatred of liberals to monopolize conservatives. Americans become like like the citizens of two, parallel Soviet states, with most voters turning out at every election to vote for the same party they did in the previous election. Consequently, our Congressional incumbents are re-elected at the Soviet-style rate of 98%,”

PartisanshipPolitical Irrationality
Author:Guillermo Jimenez
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“A super-legislator body is not what the court was intended to be, When I ponder our country and its greatness, its weakness, its potential, my heart aches for less divisiveness, less polarization, less finger-pointing, less bitterness, less mindless partisanship.”

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Author:Tom Coburn
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“You should have disagreements with your leaders and your colleagues, but if it becomes immediately a question of questioning people's motives, and if immediately you decide that somebody who sees a whole new situation differently than you must be a bad person and somehow twisted inside, we are not going to get very far in forming a more perfect union.”

PeopleIfsShouldPersonsWholePerfectSituationLeaderShould HaveUnionsMotiveQuestioningColleaguesTwistedDisagreementPartisanshipNew Situations
Author:William J. Clinton
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“Differences in political opinions are as unavoidable as, to a certain point, they may perhaps be necessary; but it is exceedingly to be regretted that subjects cannot be discussed with temper on the one hand, or decisions submitted to without having the motives, which led to them, improperly implicated on the other; and this regret borders on chagrin when we find that men of abilities, zealous patriots, having the same general objects in view, and the same upright intentions to prosecute them, will not exercise more charity in deciding on the opinions and actions of one another.”

MenMayHandsActionPoliticalCertainDifferencesAbilityDecisionViewsOpinionSubjectsObjectsRegretExerciseIntentionCharityBordersMotiveTemperPatriotPartisanshipZealousChagrinPolitical Opinions
Book:The real George Washington
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“Much indeed to be regretted, party disputes are now carried to such a length, and truth is so enveloped in mist and false representation, that it is extremely difficult to know through what channel to seek it. This difficulty to one, who is of no party, and whose sole wish is to pursue with undeviating steps a path which would lead this country to respectability, wealth, and happiness, is exceedingly to be lamented. But such, for wise purposes, it is presumed, is the turbulence of human passions in party disputes, when victory more than truth is the palm contended for.”

KnowsHumansCountryPoliticalPurposePassionWishDifficultWealthPartyStepsPathWiseVictoryTruth IsDifficultyPursueLengthSoleRepresentationPalmsPolitical PartiesDisputesMistRespectabilityPartisanshipTurbulenceWealth And Happiness
Book:The Writings of George Washington: Being His Correspondence, Addresses, Messages, and Other Papers, Official and Private, Selected and Published from the Original Manuscripts; with a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
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“So we have a choice to make. We can once again let Washington's bad habits stand in the way of progress. Or we can pull together and say that in America, our destiny isn't written for us but by us. We can place good ideas ahead of old ideological battles, and a sense of purpose above the same narrow partisanship. We can act boldly to turn crisis into opportunity and, together, write the next great chapter in our history and meet the test of our time.”

WayWritingIdeasTogetherAmericaPurposeTurnsChoicesNextOpportunityDestinyProgressWrittenHabitBattleTestsCrisisOur TimeGood IdeasChaptersOur DestinyIdeologicalBad HabitsPartisanship
Author:Barack Obama
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“I don't believe that the American people want us to focus on our job security. They want us to focus on their job security. I don't think they want more gridlock. I don't think they want more partisanship. I don't think they want more obstruction. They didn't send us to Washington to fight each other in some sort of political steel-cage match to see who comes out alive. That's not what they want. They sent us to Washington to work together, to get things done, and to solve the problems that they're grappling with every single day.”

PeopleThinkingWantBelieveDoneProblemTogetherJobsPoliticalFightingFocusAliveSecurityDon't BelieveSolveWorking TogetherSteelCagesWant UThings DonePartisanshipObstructionGrapplingGridlock
Author:Barack Obama
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“All political movements are like this - we are in the right, everyone else is in the wrong. The people on our own side who disagree with us are heretics, and they start becoming enemies. With it comes an absolute conviction of your own moral superiority. There's oversimplification in everything, and a terror of flexibility.”

PeopleRealityPoliticalPoliticsSidesCommunityPartyMoralEnemyGenerationsHuman NatureMovementBecomingEthicsAbsolutesStrategyUnityTerrorConvictionIdeologyTeaVotingDisagreeFree SpeechSuperiorityPolitical PartiesFlexibilityCivilityDisobedienceTea PartyCivil DisobedienceHereticPartisanshipThird PartiesPolitical MovementsOversimplificationMoral Superiority
Author:Doris Lessing
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“Nearly everything possible had been done to spoil the game: the heavy financial interest; the absurd transfer and player-selling system; the lack of any birth or residential qualifications; the absurd publicity given to every feature of it by the press; the monstrous partisanships of the crowds.”

DoneGamesGivenInterestPlayerFootballBirthPressesFinancialCrowdsHeavyAbsurdSellingSoccerFeaturesAnalysisSpoilPublicityMonstrousTransfersQualificationsPartisanship
Author:J. B. Priestley
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“Mr. Lincoln was generous by nature, and though his whole heart was in the war, he could not but respect the valor of those opposed to him. His soul was too great for the narrow, selfish views of partisanship. Brave by nature himself, he honored bravery in others, even his foes.”

HeartWarSoulWholeViewsBraveryBraveSelfishGenerousHonoredFoeValorPartisanship
Book:Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House
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“The Congressional Budget Office is a reactionary socialist institution which does not believe in economic growth, does not believe in innovation, and does not believe in data that it has not internally generated.”

BelieveDoeRealityPoliticalPoliticsGrowthLeadershipMoneyPartyTechnologyEconomicPolicyOfficeCapitalismInnovationInstitutionsIndividualityIdeologyDataBudgetsFree SpeechSocialistPolitical PartiesFree MarketEconomic GrowthReactionariesPartisanship
Author:Newt Gingrich
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“Racial discrimination in elections in Texas is no mere historical artifact. To the contrary, Texas has been found in violation of the Voting Rights Act in every redistricting cycle from and after 1970.”

Has BeensRealityFoundPoliticsJusticeHistoryDemocracyRightsGenerationsPolicyEqualEthicsConstitutionElectionHistoricalMereHuman RightsContraryDiscriminationIdeologyVotingCyclesTexasEqual RightsViolationDisobedienceCivil DisobedienceRight To VotePartisanshipRacial DiscriminationArtifactsVoting Rights ActRedistricting
Author:Ruth Bader Ginsburg
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