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The Politics of Truth in Polarized America
The Politics of Truth
in Polarized America
Edited by
DAV I D C . BA R K E R A N D
E L I Z A B E T H SU HAY
1
3
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.
© Oxford University Press 2021
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
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rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.
You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Barker, David C. (David Christopher), 1969– editor. |
Suhay, Elizabeth, editor.
Title: The politics of truth in polarized America /
[edited by] David C. Barker and Elizabeth Suhay.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2021] |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2021015173 (print) | LCCN 2021015174 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780197578384 (hardback) | ISBN 9780197578407 (epub) |
ISBN 9780197578414 (online)
Subjects: LCSH: Political culture—United States. | Belief and
doubt--Political aspects. | Political science—Philosophy. |
Polarization (Social sciences)—United States. | Social conflict—United States. |
United States—Politics and government—2017–
Classification: LCC JK1726 .P65175 2021 (print) | LCC JK1726 (ebook) |
DDC 306.20973—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021015173
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021015174
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197578384.001.0001
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America
Contents
Contributors vii
Notes on Contributors ix
The Politics of Truth in Polarized America: Contexts, Concepts,

Causes, and Correctives 1
Elizabeth Suhay, David C. Barker, and Ryan DeTamble
PA RT I C O N T E X T A N D C O N C E P T S
1. Neither Dogmatism Nor Relativism: Lessons from the Politics

of Truth in Western Philosophy 17
Alan Levine
2. Lies, Damned Lies, and American Democracy 38
Robert Y. Shapiro
3. The Social Function of News and (Mis)Information Use 63
Benjamin Toff
4. The Expressive Value of Answering Survey Questions 83
Matthew H. Graham and Gregory A. Huber
5. American Hubris: The Politics of Unwarranted Epistemic
Certitude in the United States 113
David C. Barker, Morgan Marietta, and Ryan DeTamble
PA RT I I C AU SE S
6. The Evolutionary Psychology of Conflict and the Functions

of Falsehood 131
Michael Bang Petersen, Mathias Osmundsen, and John Tooby
7. Political Subgroups, Knowledge, and Information: Gun Issues
and Gun Ownership 152
Donald Haider-Markel, Abigail Vegter, and Patrick Gauding
8. Value Projection and the Marketplace of Realities 177
David C. Barker and Morgan Marietta
9. Conspiracy Theories and Political Identities 200
Adam M. Enders and Joseph E. Uscinski
vi Contents
10. Conspiracy Stress or Relief? Learned Helplessness and

Conspiratorial Thinking 223
Christina E. Farhart, Joanne M. Miller, and Kyle L. Saunders
PA RT I I I C O R R E C T I V E S
11. Opinion Formation in Light of the Facts: How Correcting

Mistaken Beliefs about Income Inequality Affects Public
Support for Redistribution 259
Cheryl Boudreau and Scott A. MacKenzie
12. Can Facts Change Minds? The Case of Free Trade 283
Ethan Porter and Thomas J. Wood
13. Do Facts Change Public Attitudes toward Fiscal Policy? 305
John Sides
14. Authoritarianism, Fact-Checking, and Citizens’ Response to
Presidential Election Information 330
Amanda L. Wintersieck
15. Combatting the Anti-Muslim Rhetoric of the 2016 Presidential
Campaign: An Experimental Investigation of the Impact of
Corrective News 362
Kim Fridkin and Jillian Courey
16. Citizen Deliberation as a Correction: The Role of Deliberative
Mini-Publics in Addressing Political Misperceptions 384
Justin Reedy, Chris Anderson, and Paola Conte
17. Intuitive Politics and Why Thinking Isn’t Guaranteed to Save Us 398
Kevin Arceneaux and Ryan J. Vander Wielen
Index 417
Contributors
Chris Anderson Patrick Gauding

Doctoral Student PhD Candidate
University of Oklahoma University of Kansas
Kevin Arceneaux Matthew H. Graham

Professor Postdoctoral Research Scientist
Center for Political Research at Sciences George Washington University
Po Paris
Donald Haider-Markel
David C. Barker Professor
Professor University of Kansas
American University
Gregory A. Huber
Cheryl Boudreau Professor
Professor Yale University
University of California, Davis
Alan Levine
Paola Conte Associate Professor
Doctoral Student American University
University of Oklahoma
Scott A. MacKenzie
Jillian Courey Associate Professor
PhD Candidate University of California, Davis
Arizona State University
Morgan Marietta
Ryan DeTamble Associate Professor
Doctoral Student University of Massachusetts Lowell
American University
Joanne M. Miller
Adam M. Enders Associate Professor
Assistant Professor University of Delaware
University of Louisville
Mathias Osmundsen
Christina E. Farhart Assistant Professor
Assistant Professor Aarhus University
Carleton College
Michael Bang Petersen
Kim Fridkin Professor
Professor Aarhus University
Arizona State University
viii Contributors
Ethan Porter John Tooby

Assistant Professor Professor
George Washington University University of California, Santa Barbara
Justin Reedy Joseph E. Uscinski

Associate Professor Associate Professor
University of Oklahoma University of Miami
Kyle L. Saunders Ryan J. Vander Wielen

Professor Associate Professor
Colorado State University Stonybrook University
Robert Y. Shapiro Abigail Vegter

Professor Doctoral Candidate
Columbia University University of Kansas
John Sides Amanda L. Wintersieck

Professor Assistant Professor
Vanderbilt University Virginia Commonwealth University
Elizabeth Suhay Thomas J. Wood

Associate Professor Assistant Professor
American University The Ohio State University
Benjamin Toff
Senior Research Fellow
University of Oxford
Notes on Contributors
Chris Anderson is a doctoral student in the Department of Communication at the

University of Oklahoma. His research focuses on how persuasive messages and other
interventions increase participation in political, educational, and other contexts. This re-
search meets at the confluence of political communication, social influence, and public
opinion.
Kevin Arceneaux is Professor of Political Science in the Center for Political Research at
Sciences Po Paris. He studies political communication, political psychology, and political
behavior, focusing on the interaction between political messages and people's political
predispositions. His recent book, Taming Intuition: How Reflection Minimizes Partisan
Reasoning and Promotes Democratic Accountability (2017, Cambridge University Press,
coauthored with Ryan Vander Wielen) won the Robert E. Lane Award from the American
Political Science Association Political Psychology section and was named a cowinner of
the Best Book Award from the APSA Experimental Research section.
David C. Barker is Professor of Government and Director of the Center for Congressional
and Presidential Studies at American University. He studies American politics, public
opinion, and political psychology, with a particular focus on the dynamics of polit-
ical polarization. He is the author or coauthor of three university press books: Rushed
to Judgment: Talk Radio, Persuasion, and American Political Behavior (2002; Columbia
University Press), Representing Red and Blue: How the Culture Wars Change the Way
Citizens Speak and Politicians Listen (2012; Oxford University Press) and One Nation, Two
Realities: Dueling Facts in American Democracy (2019; Oxford University Press). His work
has also appeared in American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, British Journal
of Political Science, Public Opinion Quarterly and many other peer-reviewed outlets. He
has served as principal investigator on externally funded research projects totaling more
than $16 million, which include support from the National Science Foundation, the
National Institutes of Health, the Hewlett Foundation, and many others.
Cheryl Boudreau is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Davis.

Her research examines whether and when various types of political information help
uninformed voters to make political decisions that improve their welfare. This informa-
tion may come from trusted endorsers, voter guides, public opinion polls, politicians
competing in a debate, or discussions with fellow citizens. Using laboratory and survey
experiments, as well as observational studies, Boudreau’s research sheds light on when
these various types of information help uninformed voters to behave as though they
are more informed. She is the author of more than two dozen scientific research articles
in outlets such as the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Political
x Notes on Contributors
Behavior, Political Communication, and Political Research Quarterly. She also serves as
Associate Editor for the Journal of Experimental Political Science.
Paola Conte is a doctoral student in the Department of Communication at the University

of Oklahoma. She received an Master’s in Public Administration from University of
Miami and a Master of Arts degree in foreign languages from University of Padua (Italy).
Her research interests hinge on innovation and organizational learning in for-profit
organizations.
Jillian Courey is PhD candidate at Arizona State University. Her research interests in-
clude political psychology and American Politics.
Ryan DeTamble is a PhD student at American University. His research focuses on

questions of American political behavior, especially those related to public opinion, cer-
tainty, partisanship, and polarization. He has previously worked as an Editorial Assistant
for the American Journal of Political Science. Prior to his time at American University,
Ryan was a Chancellor’s Scholar at Texas Christian University.
Adam M. Enders is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Louisville,

where he studies conspiracy theories, misinformation, and political polarization.
Dr. Enders has published many peer-reviewed articles in outlets such as the Journal of
Politics, British Journal of Political Science, and Political Behavior, in addition to essays
appearing in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and The Guardian.
Christina E. Farhart is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Carleton College. Her

work utilizes an interdisciplinary approach to study the causes and consequences of po-
litical attitudes and mass behavior. More specifically, she studies learned helplessness and
political disaffection as explanations for consequential political attitudes and beliefs, as
well as the use of alternative methodologies such as implicit candidate evaluations. She
and her coauthors are working on projects related to the political and psychological
explanations for conspiracy endorsement and misinformed belief. This work received the
Paul Lazarsfeld Award for the best paper presented in the Political Communication sec-
tion of the American Political Science Association (co-authored with Joanne M. Miller
and Kyle L. Saunders). She has published in peer-reviewed journals including the
American Journal of Political Science, Political Psychology, Electoral Studies, the Canadian
Journal of Political Science, Politics and Gender, and Analyses of Social Issues and Public
Policy. Her work has also been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post,
Salon, Vox, The Atlantic, and National Public Radio, among other outlets.
Kim Fridkin is Foundation Professor of Political Science at Arizona State University.

She has authored or coauthored five books, including Taking Aim at Attack
Advertising: Understanding the Impact of Negative Campaigning in U.S. Senate Races
(Oxford University Press, 2019), The Changing Face of Representation: The Gender of U.S.
Senators and Constituent Communications (University of Michigan Press, 2014), No Holds
Barred: Negative Campaigning in the U.S. Senate (Prentice Hall, Inc., 2004), The Spectacle of
U.S. Senate Campaigns (Princeton University Press, 1999), and The Political Consequences
Notes on Contributors xi
of Being a Woman (Columbia University Press, 1996). Her work has been supported by
the National Science Foundation and has been published in the American Political Science
Review, the American Journal of Political Science, and the Journal of Politics. She is the
Director of the School of Politics and Global Studies Experimental Laboratory at Arizona
State University. Her research interests include political communication, women and pol-
itics, and senate elections.
Patrick Gauding is PhD candidate in political science at the University of Kansas. His
research interests in American politics and public policy include criminal justice policy
and gun politics.
Matthew H. Graham is Postdoctoral Research Scientist at the Institute for Data,

Democracy, and Politics at George Washington University. He earned his PhD in
Political Science from Yale University in 2020. His research examines how political po-
larization acts as an obstacle to effective democratic accountability. His dissertation
project, Mismeasuring Misperceptions: How Surveys Distort the Nature of Partisan Belief
Differences, shows that partisan differences in factual beliefs are smaller and less de-
pendent on misperceptions than is evident in face-value interpretations of survey data.
Donald Haider-Markel is Professor and Chair of Political Science at the University of

Kansas. His research and teaching is focused on the representation of interests in the
policy process and the dynamics between public opinion, political behavior, and public
policy. He has more than twenty years of experience in survey research, interviews, and
policy studies.
Gregory A. Huber is the Forst Family Professor and Chair of Political Science at Yale
University, Associate Director of the Center for the Study of American Politics, Resident
Fellow at the Institution for Social and Policy Studies, and Associate Editor of Quarterly
Journal of Political Science. Huber’s research focuses on American Politics and is moti-
vated by a desire to understand how individuals think about the government, how these
attitudes are shaped by government action and political campaigns, and how those
beliefs, in turn, shape citizens’ political activities and government policy. He draws on
multiple methodologies, including field interviews, formal modeling, survey and ad-
ministrative records analysis, and field, lab, and quasiexperiments. He is the author of
the book, The Craft of Bureaucratic Neutrality (Cambridge, 2007) and over fifty peer-
reviewed articles. Huber has been the recipient of numerous awards and grants, most
recently a National Science Foundation grant on the topic of how individuals assess le-
gitimate authority.
Alan Levine is Associate Professor of Government and Director of the Political Theory
Institute at American University. He is the author of Sensual Philosophy: Toleration,
Skepticism, and Montaigne’s Politics of the Self (2001), editor of Early Modern Skepticism
and the Origins of Toleration (1999), and coeditor of A Political Companion to Ralph
Waldo Emerson (2011 with Daniel Malachuk) and The Political Thought of the Civil War
(2018 with Thomas Merrill and James Stoner). He is the recipient of several grants and
fellowships, including from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Hoover
xii Notes on Contributors
Institution at Stanford University, and the James Madison Program in American Ideals
and Institutions at Princeton University.
Scott A. MacKenzie is Associate Professor at the University of California, Davis. His

research focuses broadly on American politics with specific interests in legislative
institutions and decision-making, subnational political institutions and policy-making,
and voting behavior and representation in low-information elections. He is coauthor
of Paradise Plundered, winner of the Best Book Award for the best book published on
urban politics in 2011 from the urban politics section of the American Political Science
Association. His is the author of more than a dozen scientific research articles in outlets
such as the American Journal of Political Science, Election Law Journal, Journal of Politics,
Journal of Urban Affairs, Political Behavior, Political Research Quarterly, and Urban
Affairs Review.
Morgan Marietta is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of

Massachusetts Lowell, where he teaches political psychology and constitutional poli-
tics. His research focuses on the political consequences of belief. He is the author of four
books, The Politics of Sacred Rhetoric: Absolutist Appeals and Political Influence, A Citizen’s
Guide to American Ideology: Conservatism and Liberalism in Contemporary Politics,
A Citizen’s Guide to the Constitution and the Supreme Court: Constitutional Conflict in
American Politics, and most recently One Nation, Two Realities: Dueling Facts in American
Democracy (with David C. Barker). He is the editor of the annual SCOTUS series at
Palgrave Macmillan on the major decisions of the Supreme Court and co-editor (along
with Bert Rockman) of the Citizen Guides to Politics & Public Affairs.
Joanne M. Miller is Associate Professor of Political Science & International Relations and
Psychological & Brain Sciences at the University of Delaware. Her work, which has been
funded by the National Science Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts, centers on the
psychological underpinnings of political attitudes and mass behavior. She is the recipient
of three best paper awards from the American Political Science Association, including
the Paul Lazarsfeld Award for the best paper delivered on a Political Communication
panel (for her coauthored paper [with Kyle L. Saunders and Christina E. Farhart] titled
“Conspiracy Endorsement as Motivated Reasoning: The Moderating Roles of Political
Knowledge and Trust”). She has published articles in journals such as the American Journal
of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Political Psychology, and Public Opinion Quarterly.
Her most recent research, on the antecedents of conspiracy beliefs, has been featured in
national and regional outlets such as The New York Times, Salon, The Washington Post, The
Atlantic, National Public Radio, The Pacific Standard, and The Guardian.
Mathias Osmundsen is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Aarhus University in

Denmark. His work focuses on the psychology of political communication. His PhD fo-
cused on how the negativity bias shapes the processing of political information and his
postdoctoral work focuses on the psychology underlying the sharing of “fake news” on
social media. This research, financed by both public and private foundations, has been
published in Political Psychology, Social Cognition, Frontiers in Psychology. His most
Notes on Contributors xiii
recent work, on the psychology underlying “fake news,” has been featured in The New York
Times, Salon Magazine, and National Public Radio.
Michael Bang Petersen is Professor of Political Science at Aarhus University in Denmark.

His work focuses on the evolutionary psychology of political attitudes and has received
funding from several private and public foundations. He has received the Erik Erikson
Early Career Award for his contributions to political psychology and is an appointed
member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters. His work has been
published in, among other journals, American Political Science Review, American Journal
of Political Science, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, and Psychological Science. His work has
been featured in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Pacific Standard, Salon, The Economist, and
National Public Radio.
Ethan Porter is Assistant Professor at George Washington University. He holds

appointments in the School of Media and Public Affairs and the Political Science
Department and is the Cluster Lead of the Misinformation/Disinformation Lab at
GW’s Institute for Data, Democracy and Politics. False Alarm: The Truth About Political
Mistruths in the Trump Era, a book coauthored with Thomas J. Wood, was published in
2019 by Cambridge University Press. His second book, The Consumer Citizen, is forth-
coming from Oxford University Press.
Justin Reedy is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and a research

associate in the Center for Risk & Crisis Management at the University of Oklahoma.
He studies political communication and deliberation, mass and digital media, and group
communication. In particular, his research focuses on how groups of people make po-
litical and civic decisions in face-to-face and online settings; how public opinion on po-
litical, scientific, and technical issues is formed; and how people and policymakers can
come together to deliberate and make better decisions on public policy issues that involve
significant societal and personal risk.
Kyle L. Saunders is Professor of Political Science at Colorado State University. Saunders’s

research, which has been funded by multiple organizations including the National Science
Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts, includes work on the determinants of political
attitudes and behaviors and their effects on political polarization. Saunders’ research can
be found in some of the field’s best peer-reviewed journals including the American Journal
of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, the British Journal of Political Science, Political
Research Quarterly, and Comparative Political Studies, as well as in many other outlets.
Saunders’ most recent research on the antecedents of conspiracy beliefs has been featured
in The New York Times, Salon, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, National Public Radio,
and other national and regional outlets.
Robert Y. Shapiro is the Wallace S. Sayre Professor of Government and International and
Public Affairs at Columbia University. He is currently the President of the Academy of
Political Science and Editor of its journal, Political Science Quarterly. He specializes in
American politics with research and teaching interests in public opinion, policymaking,
political leadership, the mass media, and applications of statistical methods. He is
xiv Notes on Contributors
coauthor of The Rational Public: Fifty Years of Trends in Americans’ Policy Preferences (with
Benjamin Page, University of Chicago Press, 1992) and Politicians Don’t Pander: Political
Manipulation and the Loss of Democratic Responsiveness (with Lawrence Jacobs,
University of Chicago Press, 2000). His most recent books are The Oxford Handbook
of American Public Opinion and the Media (edited with Lawrence R. Jacobs, Oxford
University Press, 2011), Selling Fear: Counterterrorism, the Media, and Public Opinion
(with Brigitte L. Nacos and Yaeli Bloch-Elkon, University of Chicago Press, 2011), and
Presidential Selection and Democracy (coedited with Demetrios James Caraley, Academy
of Political Science, 2019). He is also coauthor or coeditor of several other books and has
published numerous articles in major academic journals. Shapiro served for many years
as editor of Public Opinion Quarterly’s “The Polls-Trends” section, and is Chair of the
Board of Directors of the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research.
John Sides is Professor of Political Science and William R. Kenan, Jr. Chair at Vanderbilt
University. He studies political behavior in American and comparative politics. He is an
author of Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and The Battle for the Meaning of
America and other research.
Elizabeth Suhay is Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director in the Department
of Government, and a Fellow at the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies
at American University. Suhay specializes in the study of public opinion, political psy-
chology, and political communication. Her current research rests at the intersection of
politics, knowledge, and inequality. She is interested in how and why many topics, ran-
ging from climate change to explanations for socioeconomic inequality, have become so
politicized in recent years and how experts, science communicators, and policymakers
can work together to ensure quality evidence informs the policymaking process. Suhay is
the author of numerous scholarly articles, with her research appearing in The American
Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Public Opinion Quarterly, Political Behavior,
and Political Psychology, among other journals, and she is the co-editor of two prior
edited works, The Oxford Handbook of Electoral Persuasion (with Bernard Grofman
and Alexander Trechsel) and the “The Politics of Science” issue of The ANNALS of the
American Academy of Political and Social Science (with James Druckman). Suhay’s re-
search has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the National
Academy of Sciences, and the Russell Sage Foundation.
Benjamin Toff (PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison) is Senior Research Fellow at

the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford where he
leads a multimethod, comparative project examining the drivers of trust in news across
Brazil, India, the United States, and the United Kingdom. He is also Assistant Professor
of Journalism and Mass Communication and an affiliate of the Center for the Study of
Political Psychology at the University of Minnesota.
John Tooby is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of California,

Santa Barbara. He is best known for his work in pioneering the new field of evolutionary
psychology. He has published in journals within cognitive psychology, evolutionary
Notes on Contributors xv
biology, cultural and biological anthropology, genetics and economics, including in

Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the Royal Society,
and American Economic Review. He has won a Presidential Young Investigator Award
from the National Science Foundation, received J. S. Guggenheim Fellowships, and has
served as President of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society. His work has been fea-
tured by multiple major news magazines.
Joseph E. Uscinski is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Miami

College of Arts & Sciences, where he teaches courses on public opinion and conspiracy
theories. Dr. Uscinski is coauthor of American Conspiracy Theories with Joseph M. Parent
(Oxford University Press, 2014) and editor of Conspiracy Theories & the People Who
Believe Them (Oxford University Press, 2014). His essays have appeared in The Washington
Post, Newsweek, and Reason Magazine, among many other outlets.
Ryan J. Vander Wielen is Associate Professor of Political Science at Stony Brook

University. His research examines how legislators strategically navigate their electoral
circumstances, and whether voters hold elected representatives accountable for their be-
havior in office. His recent book, Taming Intuition: How Reflection Minimizes Partisan
Reasoning and Promotes Democratic Accountability (2017, Cambridge University Press,
coauthored with Kevin Arceneaux) won the Robert E. Lane Award from the American
Political Science Association Political Psychology section and was named a cowinner of
the Best Book Award from the APSA Experimental Research section.
Abigail Vegter is a political science doctoral candidate at the University of Kansas, con-
centrating in the subfields of American politics and public policy with a minor in research
methodology. She maintains an active research agenda focusing on religion and poli-
tics, primarily investigating the relationship between religion and gun ownership in the
United States.
Amanda L. Wintersieck is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Virginia Common

wealth University. Her research interests lie in political behavior and political communica-
tion. Specifically, she is interested in the effects of political campaigns on voters’ evaluations
of candidates, on the role the media plays in citizens’ vote choice, and the conditions that
advantage a candidate’s campaign. Her current research focuses on the role of news media
and the impact of the electoral context in political campaigns. She pursues these interests
utilizing a multi-methodological approach, including experiments, surveys, and content
analysis. Her work has appeared in Political Communication, American Politics Research,
Politics, Groups, & Identities, HKS Misinformation Review, and The London School of
Economics American Politics and Policy Blog.
Thomas J. Wood is Assistant Professor of Political Science at The Ohio State University,
where he studies public opinion and voting behavior. He has been published in the
American Journal of Political Science, Public Opinion Quarterly, Political Behavior,
and elsewhere. His first book, Enchanted America (coauthored with Eric Oliver), was
published at University of Chicago Press in 2018.
The Politics of Truth in Polarized America
Contexts, Concepts, Causes, and Correctives
Elizabeth Suhay, David C. Barker, and Ryan DeTamble
Democratic governance rests on the assumption that citizens know what is true.
A shared understanding of reality is critical to making sound decisions, both at
the ballot box and in our political institutions. If that assumption is wrong—that
is, if peoples’ minds are filled with misinformation and “alternative facts”—then
citizens will have difficulty casting votes that reflect their interests and values and
holding leaders accountable. Likewise, if truth often gives way to “truthiness”
(Colbert 2005) in public discourse, then the mythical “marketplace of ideas”
may, in fact, be more of an ideational flea market. Instead of the best ideas rising
to the top through vigorous but reasonable deliberation, the loudest and cheapest
points of view are most likely to prevail.
As it turns out, the premise that most Americans1 have a firm grasp of po-
litically relevant facts is incorrect (e.g., Barabas et al. 2014; Barabas and Jerit
2009; Bartels 1996; Boudreau 2013; Dancey and Sheagley 2013; Delli-Carpini
and Keeter 1996; Gilens 2001; Jerit and Barabas 2012, 2017; Jerit, Barabas, and
Bolsen 2006; see also Althaus 1998). Making matters worse, their perceptions
of the world often are biased by various forms of “motivated reasoning” (Ditto
et al. 1998; Edwards and Smith 1996; Flynn, Nyhan, and Reifler 2017; Kunda
1990; Molden and Higgins 2005, Taber and Lodge 2006, 2013), which often
leads to confident wrongheadedness (Hochschild and Einstein 2015; Hofstetter
and Barker 1999; Kuklinski et al. 2000; Southwell and Thorson 2015; Southwell,
Thorson, and Sheble 2018; Swire et al. 2017) and interpersonal contempt
(Marietta and Barker 2019).
But none of this should be surprising. Scholars of politics have rendered
such judgments for at least a century (Lippmann 1922; Campbell, Converse,
1 This volume focuses mainly on the U.S. case, although its conclusions will be relevant to other
democratic nations.
Elizabeth Suhay, David C. Barker, and Ryan DeTamble, The Politics of Truth in Polarized America In: The Politics of Truth
in Polarized America. Edited by: David C. Barker and Elizabeth Suhay, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press
2021. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197578384.003.0001
2 The Politics of Truth in Polarized America
Miller, and Stokes 1960). The nation’s Founders even had their doubts about
the typical person’s intellectual capabilities and judgment (e.g., Hamilton 1787;
Sherman 1787), and James Madison famously worried over people’s self-interest
and passions (Madison 1787). Indeed, in large part due to their concerns about
human nature, the Founders built representative political institutions not only
with numerous checks and balances in place but also with limited citizen involve-
ment. Intriguingly, however, as the country became more democratic during the
late nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth (e.g., the direct election of
Senators, the gradual expansion of suffrage, the introduction of presidential pri-
mary elections), the nation on balance grew more prosperous and stable.
Many scholars have sought to square the circle of insufficient political know-
ledge among citizens and a relatively well-functional representative democracy
by arguing in favor of coordinated elite influence (e.g., Cohen, Karol, Noel, and
Zaller 2008) and savvy knowledge shortcuts (e.g., Lupia 1994; Popkin 1994).
Yet, however well these and other workarounds bolstered good governance
in the past, they seem to be faltering today. One likely contributor is not igno-
rance or bias per se but, rather, deep disagreement between partisans and other
groups over factual matters, ranging from the existence of anthropogenic climate
change to discrimination against non-white Americans. The truth has become
so politicized that we cannot even agree on whether the spread of COVID-19
can be slowed by wearing a mask or if the contagion that has killed over 500,000
Americans at the time of this writing is a serious health threat (Huang 2021;
Lewis 2020; Rojas 2020)—a state of bewilderment that has likely contributed
to the distressingly impotent U.S. response to the pandemic (Lawler 2020). The
nation’s disagreements over a range of topics have become so severe that we have
recently witnessed a sharp uptick in violence with political roots (Allam 2020;
Craig 2020; O’Harrow 2021).
Why have circumstances deteriorated so? It is unlikely that human nature
has changed. Rather, circumstances have. Over time, not only have the nation’s
political institutions become more democratic, its sources of information have,
too. Whereas throughout most of the twentieth century, citizens shared expo-
sure to a handful of professional news outlets that catered to a mass audience
and therefore tried diligently to adhere to norms of objective reporting, the last
thirty years or so have seen a steady move toward an increasingly decentralized
and fragmented media environment, in which “narrowcasting”— or the
catering to particular segments of the electorate—is paramount (Metzger
2017). The perspective-driven (Arceneaux and Johnson 2013), the sensational
(Hendriks-Vettehen and Kleemans 2018), the negative (Trussler and Soroka
2014), the subjective (Kavanaugh et al. 2019) and, yes, the untrue (Vosoughi,
Roy, and Aral 2018) are all incentivized and rewarded with attention, ratings,
and profits.
Contexts, Concepts, Causes, and Correctives 3
These changes have, in turn, led to a precipitous decline in Americans’ trust

in the media. In a 2019 Gallup poll, only 15% of Republicans expressed trust
in the mainstream news media, which is less than one quarter the number of
Democratic respondents who trust the media (Brenan 2019). This uniquely
partisan lack of trust may be due to antimainstream media elite cues (Ladd
and Podkul 2020), media bias (Groseclose and Milyo 2005), a combination
of the two, and/or some other factor, but it motivates a huge segment of the
American population to seek out nontraditional and often partisan sources of
information—including in some cases an almost exclusive reliance on social
media echo chambers (Barberá et al. 2015). In such a confusing and muddy in-
formation environment, even the most earnest and independent individuals will
have difficulty sorting out true from false.
Adding fuel to the fire is the intensification of political competition (Lee
2016) and cultural realignments (e.g., Barker and Carman 2012; Layman
2001) that have led to partisan tribes that are much more distinct and homog-
enous with respect to just about every demographic and value divide that one
can name: race, gender, religion, age, education, geography, and of course ide-
ology (e.g., Mason 2018). As several of the authors in this volume discuss, the sa-
lience of partisan and social identities further degrades our ability to perceive the
world as others do. Not only are these identities associated with distinct values
and worldviews, but the combination of these things can cause intense distrust
of those with differing identities and views. This distrust further decreases the
likelihood that we will correct our blind spots by listening to the other side in an
open-minded way.
The recent march toward what some call “post-truth” politics has been
gradual, but it most likely reached its peak during the Trump administration.
President Trump was unique—at least in high level U.S. politics—in two impor-
tant ways: He had little regard for the truth in his public statements (Leonhardt
and Thompson 2017), making it even more difficult for the lay person to tell true
from false, and he disparaged and undermined traditional information sources
(Ladd and Podkul 2020). This said, while Trump did—and continues to—
exacerbate the problem, his election was in part a consequence of existing truth
decay. The problem was building long before Trump came onto the scene, and it
will still be here after he is gone.
In response to this unnerving state of affairs, the scholarly literature on mis-
information, conspiracy theories, “dueling fact perceptions,” and the like has
exploded in recent years (e.g., Berinsky 2017; Hochschild and Einstein 2015;
Jerit and Zhao 2020; Marietta and Barker 2019; Scheufele and Krause 2019;
Southwell, Thorson, and Sheble 2018; Uscinski 2020). It is at this inflexion point
that the scholarship published herewith enters. This volume grows out of a con-
ference that we organized in the spring of 2018, at American University’s Center
for Congressional and Presidential Studies. With support from the National
Science Foundation, the conference brought together over fifty national experts
from academia and journalism. The authors in this volume seek to understand
this current moment, citizens’ susceptibility to believing ideas with little demon-
strable basis in fact, the consequences of these tendencies, and what we might do
about it.
The volume begins by situating the problem of misinformation and disagree-
ment over what is true in historical and contemporary contexts and by introdu-
cing novel concepts and theoretical frameworks. Next, the volume explores the
psychological causes of polarized beliefs and conspiracy theories. The authors
in this section move beyond the widely discussed topic of partisan tribalism
to the influence of other social identities, value projection, personality char-
acteristics, and evolutionarily shaped psychological motivations. Finally, an
industry has emerged of reformers who propose various correctives to our cur-
rent information environment. Authors in the last section score the usefulness
of some of these initiatives, particularly fact-checking. The concluding chapter
weaves together the volume’s multiple themes—arguing that error-prone human
intuitions drive political choices but that some of their negative effects can be
ameliorated via new institutional designs, such as ranked-choice voting. With
these contributions, we hope The Politics of Truth in Polarized America fosters a
shared understanding of what is known about this critical topic as well as what
remains to be discovered.
Part I: Context and Concepts
The first section of the volume examines the politics of truth through a wide lens.
Authors draw from philosophical, historical, social scientific, and methodolog-
ical traditions to offer novel perspectives on truth, lying, misinformation, and
epistemic hubris.
In Chapter 1, “Neither Dogmatism Nor Relativism: Lessons from the Politics
of Truth in Western Philosophy,” Alan Levine provides a chronological road
map to our disharmonious present moment while also complicating our under-
standing of “the politics of truth.” His essay traces major conceptions of truth
in Western philosophy from Socratic skepticism and medieval faith to enlight-
enment optimism and postmodern rejection, arguing that aspects of all these
belief traditions are alive and kicking, forming in our polity a kind of “meta-
physical pluralism.” To navigate our current pluralist or fractured conceptions
of truth, Levine argues that we should strive to avoid both excessive dogmatism
and relativism. If one thinks one possesses the truth, the “other” is demonized
and compromise seems immoral. Similarly, the view that there is no truth can
become a self-serving cloak for complacency and a willful disregard of the value
of engaging with different views. Both dogmatism and relativism undermine
incentives to question one’s own views. We always need, especially in times of
fiercely competing factions, to examine our presuppositions and cultivate a
proper understanding of our abilities and the limits of politics. A better under-
standing of these difficulties can help us avoid parochial and simplistic answers
to our current problems.
In Chapter 2, “Lies, Damned Lies, and American Democracy,” Robert Shapiro
documents the rising tide of dishonesty in American politics and its democratic
consequences. Lying is certainly not a new feature of American politics, but the
visibility and blatant use of such dishonesty by political elites appears to have
reached new heights in recent times. Shapiro discusses the history of such con-
duct, including a pattern of deceit in recent presidential administrations, as well
as the reasons for the rise of “damned lies” and their damaging effects. He then
asks whether the traditional mechanisms and institutions in place in American
society are up to the challenge of fighting this truth war. Ultimately, Shapiro
points to the importance of an information environment in which the media
embraces its “watchdog” role and government officials and experts resist and
stall damned lies.
In Chapter 3, “The Social Function of News and (Mis)Information Use,”
Benjamin Toff warns that too much research on misinformation is being pro-
duced in disciplinary silos. Synthesizing scholarship from the fields of polit-
ical psychology, journalism studies, and communications, Toff proposes a new
framework for thinking about research on misinformation that integrates the
study of information exposure, information processing, and information effects.
At the same time, Toff argues that focusing only on these factors obscures a cru-
cial dynamic at the heart of the misinformation problem—the role and function
of news in society is largely social, not informational. Understanding how rela-
tional forces influence the spread of misinformation in society will allow us to
understand better how misinformation becomes widespread and how it might
be curbed.
In Chapter 4, “The Expressive Value of Answering Survey Questions,”
Matthew H. Graham and Gregory A. Huber introduce a new method for un-
derstanding the expressive value of answering survey questions—that is, the
idea that people may misreport their true beliefs to gain some type of expres-
sive benefit. Drawing on data from a survey-embedded experiment that allowed
participants to choose to answer additional survey questions, the authors gen-
erate several novel findings: Most survey respondents derive expressive benefits
from answering survey questions; expressive responding is more common in
surveys with partisan content and among individuals who are more politically
engaged and partisan; and expressive responding appears to be driven more by
internal factors than by a desire to be “heard” by others. These findings have nu-
merous methodological and interpretive implications for social scientists who
study public opinion.
Finally, in Chapter 5, “American Hubris: The Politics of Unwarranted
Epistemic Certitude,” David C. Barker, Morgan Marietta, and Ryan DeTamble
introduce a new concept to the field of political science: epistemic hubris—
which they define as unwarranted certitude when it comes to one’s factual
perceptions. Although the evidence is clear with respect to many important
politico-factual disputes, it is not with respect to many others. Barker and
colleagues find that Americans—Democrats and Republicans alike—tend
to express certainty toward such blurred realities about 40% of the time,
and that such unwarranted certitude, or hubris, is aggravated among men,
younger people, partisans, those who are heavy news consumers, those who
are highly active on social media, and—especially—those with strong value
commitments. Finally, they observe that such epistemic hubris is strongly
predictive of an unwillingness to accept legislative compromises with partisan
adversaries.
Part II: Causes
The second section of the volume focuses on the question of why the truth has
become so politicized, and why so many people are attracted to conspiracy the-
ories. Proposed culprits include intergroup conflict, value projection, partisan-
ship, and “learned helplessness.”
In Chapter 6, “The Evolutionary Psychology of Conflict and the Functions of
Falsehood,” Michael Bang Petersen, Mathias Osmundsen, and John Tooby seek
to explain why “truth is the first casualty of war.” They question the assump-
tion that humans are solely motivated to pursue accurate beliefs, arguing that
the current circulation of fake news, conspiracy theories, and hostile political
rumors is the expected outcome of a deep-seated motivation to dispense with
truth in situations of conflict. The authors theorize that the occurrence of inter-
group conflict throughout human evolutionary history has built psychological
motivations into the human mind to spread information that (a) mobilizes the
ingroup against the outgroup, (b) facilitates the coordination of attention within
the group, and (c) signals commitment to the group to fellow ingroup members.
Petersen, Osmundsen, and Tooby hypothesize that, in all of these instances,
human psychology is designed to select information that accomplishes these
goals most efficiently rather than to select information on the basis of its veracity.
Thus, they conclude that when intergroup conflict is salient, humans are psycho-
logically prepared to prioritize misinformation over truth.
In Chapter 7, “Political Subgroups, Knowledge, and Information: Gun Issues

and Gun Ownership,” Donald Haider- Markel, Abigail Vegter, and Patrick
Gauding continue making the case for the importance of social group differences
as determinants of misinformation—specifically as applied to differences in
political knowledge between gun owners and non-gun owners. Making use of
survey data from an original poll of U.S. adults, the authors demonstrate that,
overall, gun owners display a high degree of accuracy when answering questions
about gun ownership, but that they routinely overestimate the number of gun
owners in the United States. This said, associated experimental data suggest
that correcting people’s estimates of gun ownership rates does little to influence
attitudes toward gun regulation. This study highlights the need for more research
on knowledge and misinformation among subgroups in American society other
than Democratic and Republican partisans.
In Chapter 8, “Value Projection and the Marketplace of Realities,” David
C. Barker and Morgan Marietta take a different tack. They argue that dueling
fact perceptions—competing assessments of reality—stem at least as much
from differences in political values as from differences in knee-jerk partisan-
ship, simple tribal identities, or top-down propagandizing by media elites.
Accompanying these findings is an important and somewhat disheartening
conclusion that dueling fact perceptions are not likely to become shared any-
time soon; in these authors’ view, none of the commonly proposed “correctives”
stand much chance of working.
The next two chapters in the volume focus on some Americans’ attraction to
conspiracy theories. In Chapter 9, “Conspiracy Theories and Political Identities,”
Adam M. Enders and Joseph Uscinski draw on a recent survey of Americans to
gauge the popularity of prominent conspiracy theories and understand their
causes. The authors establish two main causes underlying belief in conspiracy
theories: for many, partisan bias encourages belief in conspiracy theories aligned
with their political views; for some, a psychological attraction to conspiracy
beliefs motivates their adoption regardless of political content. Although con-
spiracy theories and beliefs are ever present, they are most likely to proliferate
during polarized periods such as the present, when partisan elites are unfortu-
nately more willing to push conspiracy theories for political gain.
In Chapter 10, “Conspiracy Stress or Relief? Learned Helplessness and
Conspiratorial Thinking,” Christina Farhart, Joanne Miller, and Kyle Saunders
investigate another possible cause of conspiracy theory belief: learned helpless-
ness. Learned helplessness arises when individuals perceive themselves as un-
able to avoid negative situations in their lives or to affect desired change. Such
perceptions become incorporated into the self-concept and manifest as feelings
of anxiety or loss of control. Drawing on nationally representative panel data
sets, the authors demonstrate that learned helplessness increases the likelihood
of conspiratorial thinking and that, importantly, this relationship appears to be

bidirectional—over time, conspiratorial thinking also tends to increase learned
helplessness. Farhart, Miller, and Saunders’s account has important implications
for the demand-side account of conspiracy theory origins.
Part III: Correctives
The volume’s final section—its largest—addresses a deceptively simple ques-

tion: Can we correct misinformed beliefs by providing people with the “cor-
rect” information? And, importantly, what are the consequences, if any, of
doing so? Overall, these chapters provide cause for cautious optimism. Fact
checks do not always work, and do not work across all groups; however, on bal-
ance, the evidence seems to tip in favor of corrective effects with real political
relevance.
The first three chapters in this section all grapple with the effects of corrective
information related to the economy. In Chapter 11, “Opinion Formation in Light
of the Facts: How Correcting Mistaken Beliefs about Income Inequality Affects
Public Support for Redistribution,” Cheryl Boudreau and Scott MacKenzie
tackle Americans’ beliefs about the current state of wealth division. They the-
orize that mistaken beliefs about income inequality contribute to citizens’ lack
of demand for greater redistribution. To test this theory, the authors conduct a
survey-embedded experiment that randomly assigned participants to receive
factual or partisan information on economic inequality. They find that misinfor-
mation about inequality is indeed rampant. When provided accurate informa-
tion about high levels of wealth inequality, however, participants—regardless of
partisanship—better connect their value for greater equality to their redistribu-
tion preferences. The authors’ findings suggest that opinion on other political is-
sues may be shaped by the same underlying dynamics—public misconstructions
of reality standing in the way of properly linking popular values to public policy
proposals.
In Chapter 12, “Can Facts Change Minds? The Case of Free Trade,” Ethan
Porter and Thomas J. Wood discuss the understudied case of free trade. Like
many economic topics, free trade is an issue about which the public knows little.
Unlike with other economic topics, however, the views of political elites on trade
have shifted in recent years. It is within this context that Porter and Wood ex-
amine the impact of fact checks that counter anti-free trade misperceptions. The
authors find not only that this information changed people’s factual beliefs about
free trade, but that it also led respondents to become more supportive of free
trade. This study is especially important because few researchers have shown
such direct attitudinal change in response to factual information.
In Chapter 13, “Do Facts Change Public Attitudes toward Fiscal Policy?” John
Sides comes to a different conclusion. He finds corrective information does not
change minds, at least not in the arena of fiscal policy. Across three original survey
experiments, he examines the effect of providing people with information about
the country’s fiscal health—especially its budget deficit and national debt. In ge-
neral, this information did not lead voters to align their policy preferences with
their concerns about the deficit and debt nor did it change attitudes about fiscal
policy, even when substantial misperceptions were corrected. Thus, although
continued partisan spin about fiscal politics is unfortunate, Sides concludes that
a more “truthful” fiscal politics might not change public opinion much.
Considering the conflicting findings of Sides as opposed to Porter and Wood,
the next step in this research agenda would seem to be better understanding of
the conditions under which corrective information influences people. Thus,
in Chapter 14, “Authoritarianism, Fact-Checking, and Citizens’ Response to
Presidential Election Information,” Amanda Wintersieck focuses on the differ-
entiating impact of personality. To better understand how authoritarianism in
the public influences individuals’ responses to fact-checking opportunities and
information, Wintersieck analyzes an original experiment conducted during the
2016 presidential election. She finds that those who score low versus high in au-
thoritarianism choose different fact-check sources, with those lower in author-
itarianism preferring more neutral sources. Importantly, the success of the fact
checks themselves is mixed and influenced in complex ways by the interaction of
authoritarianism and partisanship. These findings highlight the fact that “on av-
erage” effects of corrective information likely hide considerable variation at the
individual level.
The next two chapters in this section focus on corrective information as it
pertains to social issues. In Chapter 15, “Combatting the Anti-Muslim Rhetoric
of the 2016 Presidential Campaign: An Experimental Investigation of the Impact
of Corrective News,” Kim Fridkin and Jillian Courey examine the potential power
and limits of corrective news about Muslim Americans in today’s highly polar-
ized media environment. Focusing on the differential influence of news sources
(here, Fox News, MSNBC, and Reuters), the authors find that “disfluency” expe-
rienced when corrective information contrasts with the expected partisan slant
of a news source impedes learning and opinion change. Subjects who received
favorable, corrective facts about Muslims from Fox News took longer to process
the information, were less likely to recall the facts presented, and held more neg-
ative views about Muslims and Syrian refugees than those who received informa-
tion from other sources.
In Chapter 16, “Citizen Deliberation as a Correction: The Role of Deliberative
Mini- Publics in Addressing Political Misperceptions,” Justin Reedy, Chris
Anderson, and Paola Conte go beyond ordinary fact checks to investigate the
role of deliberative mini-publics in correcting misperceptions about the legal-

ization of marijuana. Deliberative mini-publics are forums that bring together
members of the public to engage in careful and unbiased analysis of a policy
issue. They often then provide advice to the broader public on the topic they
have studied. In 2016, the Arizona Citizens’ Initiative Review (CIR) came to-
gether to discuss and provide guidance on a proposed recreational marijuana
ballot measure. Analyzing data from an original experiment, Reedy, Anderson,
and Conte find that the CIR Citizens’ Statement was indeed effective in reducing
issue-related misperceptions among citizens. Despite this promising result, the
authors note that the group’s inability to widely circulate its guidance likely lim-
ited its effectiveness.
In Chapter 17, “Intuitive Politics and Why Thinking Isn’t Guaranteed to
Save Us,” Kevin Arceneaux and Ryan J. Vander Wielen conclude the volume by
arguing that impulses and intuitions, not rational thought, drive much of po-
litical decision-making. The result is too often counterproductive tribalism
throughout modern electoral democracies. But all hope is not lost. Arceneaux
and Vander Wielen discuss the conditions under which people may use thinking
to be more reflective and conclude that the key to maintaining representative
democracy in the face of messy human impulses may be the same solution iden-
tified by the Founding Fathers: careful institutional design.
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PART I
C ON T E XT A N D C ONCE P T S
1
Neither Dogmatism Nor Relativism
Lessons from the Politics of Truth in
Western Philosophy
Alan Levine
Truth has been continually contested throughout Western history. Nietzsche

described struggles over truth as “truly grand politics,” because truth defines how
people should live and the kind of political order that is justifiable (Nietzsche
1989a, I.8: 35).1 Once the key metaphysical truths are established, these constrain
the range of possible answers to smaller questions. Every society has debates,
but during ordinary times one conception of truth frames them, and society
functions relatively smoothly because its struggles are contained within some
shared parameters. Although the current American political debates are in the
grand scheme of things relatively small—all sides, for the time being, seem com-
mitted to the republic—the horizon of our disagreements has expanded, making
us feel that we have lost any community based in truth. Partisanship, culture wars,
and the rise of illiberalism increasingly alienate us from one another. Our sepa-
rate realities are growing apart (Marietta and Barker 2019), with our commitment
to a common understanding of truth itself in question. One side derides “alter-
native facts” as a new low in shameless post-truth politics, the other denounces
“fake news” and the “lamestream” media (Baggini 2017, Kalpokas 2019, McIntyre
2018).2 Although the indignation on both sides shows that we still want to believe
in a truth that transcends partisanship, the mutual recriminations have invested
the question of truth with politically urgent passion.
This essay traces major conceptions of truth in Western philosophy—ancient,
medieval, modern, and postmodern—to unearth the roots of today’s views
and shed light on the broader philosophical context within which our current
politics takes place. It demonstrates both the shared assumptions and disputes
in each epoch as well as the major differences between them regarding what
is true, how truth may be known, and what value, if any, it has. In tracing the
1 Italics in original in all quotations except when noted otherwise.

2 For a special journal issue dedicated to multiple aspects of and around post-truth politics, see
Sismondo 2017. For one way out, see Curry 2019.
Alan Levine, Neither Dogmatism Nor Relativism In: The Politics of Truth in Polarized America. Edited by:
David C. Barker and Elizabeth Suhay, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2021.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197578384.003.0002
18 Context and Concepts
philosophical forerunners of today’s politics of truth, this piece thus reveals the
depth of these divides. These divides did not directly cause our current political
crisis; they have been around much longer. Nor will understanding them simply
resolve our political disputes; we have to do that hard work for ourselves. But
they do show how complex and enduring the problem of truth is and suggest that
to the extent our political cleavages are rooted in metaphysical divides, ordinary
politics is no match for them. We cannot hope to bridge profound rifts between
worldviews simply by changing a particular politician or party, passing a consti-
tutional amendment, or overturning a Supreme Court ruling. Some new meta-
physical consensus might be required—and this hardly seems on the horizon. It
is my hope that by elucidating the background constraints on our politics, this
essay will discourage simplistic political solutions to our deepest disagreements.
The essay’s conclusion suggests that a path forward requires avoiding both
dogmatism and relativism. If one thinks one possesses the truth, the “other” is
demonized and compromise seems immoral. Similarly, the view that there is no
truth easily becomes a self-serving cloak for complacency and a willful disregard
of the value of engaging with different views. Both dogmatism and relativism
undermine incentives to question one’s own views. We always need, especially in
times of fiercely competing factions, to examine our presuppositions and culti-
vate a proper understanding of our abilities and the limits of politics.
Ancient and Medieval Views of Truth
The ancient and medieval thinkers sought to understand physical reality and the
good and moral life. In short, they wanted to know how a human being should
live. They were sure that questions of moral truth were essential, and this has led
to charges of dogmatism against them. These charges are unfair because they
were far from sure that the answers were attainable. They were open to the possi-
bility that some few individuals might discover those truths (even this is uncer-
tain), but they doubted a whole society could. They wanted to show what a full
conception of truth would look like and urged attention to it as much as possible,
while also offering politically useful advice on how to live in the absence of such
truths. Above all, they insisted on the necessity of seeking the truth, as a human-
izing practice, as a check on our worst impulses, as the most rational response to
the paradoxes of justice and knowledge, and as itself the best life.
The emphasis on universal moral truth is generally considered to have begun
with Socrates. Philosophers before Socrates distinguished between physis
and nomos. Physis is the ancient Greek word for nature (from which we get
physics) and nomos was their word for convention. The pre-Socratic thinkers
noted that some things seemed to be universally true and others not. It is true
Politics of Truth in Western Philosophy 19
everywhere that every living thing dies, fire flames up, and dropped objects
fall down, but laws, religions, and moral codes vary from place to place. From
these observations they concluded that universal truth existed for physical but
not moral things; moral things were made by human beings and existed only by
convention. Socrates is credited as the first thinker to take seriously the exist-
ence of universal moral truth, moral truth for a human being as such. Socrates
understood that the existing laws and moral codes were human inventions and
that none of them were simply just or good. But if human nature was the same
everywhere, he surmised that there was some universal human good. Socrates
“brought philosophy down from the heavens” and turned it toward knowing the
truth about human beings (Cicero 1927, V.iv: 345).
For Socrates, as for Plato and Aristotle, nature (and therefore truth) is acces-
sible to reason. Reason enables human beings to know nature and human na-
ture. Plato’s Socrates constantly distinguishes between opinion, beliefs, customs,
and so forth, on the one hand and truth on the other. Truth is eternal and un-
changing. It is “what is,” Being itself, the essence of reality (Plato 1968, 477b and
521c).3 The goal is to know these timeless truths, to make the “ascent to what
is,” to attain “that learning which discloses . . . something of the being that is
always” (Plato 1968, 521c and 485b). Everything else is subjective, uncertain,
and probably biased and off-the-mark. Biases exist on at least two fundamental
levels, the individual and the social/political. On both levels there are conflicting
views and, at most, only one can be correct. Socrates does not empathetically val-
idate individual opinions or encourage people to embrace their own views. He is
not interested in the diversity of opinions (most of which are misguided) except
insofar as questioning them allows him to progress toward truth. On the polit-
ical level, Plato’s Socrates famously describes every “city” or political commu-
nity as a cave. He describes this cave as having an artificial light, a fire tended by
the authorities that casts shadows on the walls. Ordinary citizens are enchained,
seeing only those shadows and believing them to be reality itself, when they are
but dim facsimiles, not even of the truth, but of human-made statues, interpret-
ations of the truth. The authorities manipulate the light they possess to keep
their prisoners distracted from the fact of their captivity. The aim, for any se-
rious person, Plato tells us, is to escape the cave and see the light (Plato 1968,
514a–521c)4—that is, the sunlight, which represents the whole truth in its to-
tality. Plato never suggests that a whole city can escape ignorance. Through lack
of opportunity, education, and inclination, most people are doomed to live in
darkness. According to the allegory of the cave, only the person who has seen
3 Plato uses a series of synonyms for “what is,” such as the “forms” (476a), “ideas” (486d), things
themselves (480a), and “patterns” (472c–e, 500e, 592b).

4 As far as I know, this is the origin of the “seeing the light” metaphor for knowing truth.
the light is able to know how to live a good life for himself and for the city. Of
course, Plato’s cave is a metaphor. There is no physical cave but a mental cave of
conventional truths. We must reason our way out by questioning these givens to
discover the universal truth; this is key to living a good life as a human being and
as a citizen.
This quest for truth is difficult, for reason’s access to nature is not direct. For
Plato it is only through the medium of opinion that the search for truth can take
place. All philosophizing must begin in the cave. Platonic dialectic involves ra-
tional critique of opinion by stating hypotheses, testing them, refining the ini-
tial hypotheses based on the results, and repeating until one comes to “know”
the truth of the starting point (Plato 1968, 532a–534e). Plato, however, never
offers anything that he says is definitively true. The fruit of his dialectic seems
to be a deeper understanding of the question, rather than politically translat-
able answers. Indeed, Plato never even writes a word in his own name. He writes
dialogues in which the main character is typically but not always Socrates.5 Plato’s
Socrates barely even makes moral truth claims. Rather, he typically claims not to
know anything. Many doubt that Socrates means what he says about his igno-
rance, given that he brilliantly shreds everyone else’s views, but the “just city” of
the Republic turns out to have insurmountable practical difficulties and Socrates
himself concedes it is impossible (Plato 1968, 592b).6 The truth may be para-
doxical in a way that the philosopher can live with but the community cannot,
and the complete truth may be inaccessible to anyone. Moreover, Socrates often
advances his ideas about truth using imagery (such as the cave) that he explicitly
states is not in itself literally true. He wants readers to feel their own ignorance,
to inspire them with a fervent need to seek truth. He wants to persuade us that all
of the time, energy, and resources of thoughtful individuals and societies should
be marshalled in this quest. Yet we must remain acutely aware of our ignorance,
or to use Socrates’s famous phrase, to know that we know nothing (Plato 1984,
21d). The power of Plato is that his Socrates shows both what complete truth
would look like and that we do not possess it. In its absence, Socrates is humble
and moderate. It is the stability of his community that enabled Socrates to phi-
losophize, and he is thus mindful of the need for a political community that
provides this stability (and a modicum of freedom and justice). Society is fragile,
so thinkers should be careful not to undermine the polities in which they live.
5 Socrates is sometimes taken as Plato’s mouthpiece and sometimes it is argued that other
characters and the action of the dialogue are deliberately crafted to show that Socrates is ironic and
does not fully mean what he says.
6 This interpretation follows Leo Strauss 1964. Not all interpreters agree, however, that Plato
concedes the just city is impossible. Some Christian natural law thinkers find Plato’s aspirations
consistent with the moral truths of Christianity and in accord with its natural law and eternal law
teachings. See, for example Finnis 2011, 393–98, 407–10. See also Popper 2002, 95–130, who believes
Plato aspires to institute the just city and thus considers him the first totalitarian.
Aristotle also puts his fundamental emphasis on truth, although he is some-

what more interested in and tolerant of common human opinions than is Plato.
He typically begins his inquiries by cataloging the array of opinions on a sub-
ject and then focusing in on the most likely contenders. For him, as for Plato,
reason enables human beings to classify everything that “is” with a view to
understanding how each thing “ought” to live, that is, by knowing its proper
activity. Due to our rationality, human activity includes choice and moral ac-
countability. Reason has a twofold role. Practical reason aims to regulate the
lower animal passions in us properly. Theoretical reason looks “up” and attempts
to grasp the unchanging truth of the cosmos, to know what is forever and eter-
nally true. Aristotle deems theoretical reason to be the defining element in
humanity. Its exercise is thus essential to a human being’s full-flourishing happi-
ness. Knowing human nature and man’s place in the universe shows us how we
ought to live: “perfect happiness is contemplative activity,” “a kind of contempla-
tion” of the eternal, unchanging truths of the cosmos (Aristotle 1984a, 1178b8
and 1178b22–23; see also 1097b22–1098a20). Like Plato, Aristotle expects few
human beings to live lives of philosophy, but he nonetheless argues that the pur-
suit of truth is the highest and best life for a human being to live.
As with Plato, actual politics for Aristotle is conducted in the absence of com-
plete truth. He continually reminds the reader what a perfect person or regime
might look like to remind us that we are not that. He wants to give us something
to strive for, but illusions must be dispelled. Aristotle examines political life
from all imaginable angles, including counseling would-be revolutionaries and
those wanting to put revolutions down, but his primary goal is to understand
each regime, for example, democracy, oligarchy, tyranny, mixed, on its own
terms. He takes seriously their moral claims and tries to buttress their strengths
while correcting, as far as possible, their weaknesses. One of Aristotle’s main
insights is that partisans undermine their regimes by insisting that their partial
conception of truth is the whole truth, thus provoking justified protests. For
example, for Aristotle, politics in almost all times and places is a struggle be-
tween the rich and the poor with their accompanying ideologies of oligarchy
and democracy (Aristotle 1984b, 1279b36–39). Both the rich and poor have
self-serving accounts of what constitutes the politically relevant equality or
inequality, but neither adequately articulates justice as a whole. Just and pru-
dent politics require seeing as clearly as possible in what decisive respects one’s
own views are partial. Aristotle is acutely aware of the tendency of actors to get
carried away by their own moral perspective and thus of the resulting fragility
of politics. He advises us to correct for the partisan or unjust tendencies of one’s
own viewpoint, even though, and precisely because, it goes against one’s “nat-
ural” inclinations. Rather, one should take great pains to see the virtues and
justice of the other side. Justice demands going beyond one’s habitual partisan
views and moderately and reasonably working toward a higher vision of truth
and justice.
Medieval thought also put truth above everything else, but unlike the ancient
philosophers, medieval thinkers had to contend with the claims of revelation and
of those who interpreted it. The religious traditions have a different standard of
truth than the ancient pagan philosophers. Their touchstone is not nature but
God. God was known through revelation, His revealed truth to His prophets re-
corded in scripture. For Judaism, scripture is the Tanakh; for Christianity, those
Hebrew Scriptures plus the New Testament; and for Islam, the Koran—which
makes frequent mention of the Hebrew Scriptures and the Gospels. Christianity
and Islam thus accept the revealed writings of the preceding religion(s) as valid
but give greater weight to their own particular revelation.
Aware of the ancient pagan philosophers, the philosophers in each of these
religious communities tried to reconcile or harmonize reason and revelation.
Generally speaking, Jews and Muslims had to defend philosophical investigation
before the tribunal of divine law, whereas Christian defenders of the faith were
more intent upon using philosophical investigation to justify what Scripture had
to say about God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost. For example, Thomas Aquinas sees
Aristotle as having gone as far as unaided human reason can go and considers
revelation its necessary supplement. For Alfarabi, in all important respects the
first philosopher in the Islamic tradition, religion is best understood as a rhe-
torical or poetical presentation of philosophical insights. Philosophy is, there-
fore, not opposed to religion; rather, it provides the undergirding needed to
make sense of religious claims and, most important, religious attempts to guide
the faithful.7 Most subsequent philosophers in the Islamic and Jewish traditions
followed Alfarabi on the relationship between reason and revelation as well
as his attempts to soften the irrationalities of their respective religions. Thus,
Maimonides, like his fellow Cordoban, Averroes, urges that religious doctrine be
stated in terms the populace can readily grasp even if the wise must understand it
allegorically. For example, the Hebrew Scriptures frequently speak of God’s face
and hands and the Koran of Him sitting on a throne or moving from one place to
another. Given that it is evident that God must be incorporeal, Maimonides and
Averroes patiently explain how these references are to be understood by compe-
tent students of Scripture even while refraining from chastising those who take
Scripture at face value. Averroes even argues that philosophy is commanded by
7 Alfarabi sums this position up in two important treatises, his Attainment of Happiness and
Book of Religion. The former includes his famous declaration that “the meaning of philosopher,
supreme ruler, prince, lawgiver, and imam is the same.” In the second, he provides the full theo-
retical underpinning for religion’s subordination to both theoretical and practical philosophy. See
Alfarabi, Attainment of Happiness, sec. 58 and Book of Religion, secs. 5 and 27, in eds. Parens and
Macfarland 2011.
divine law because it allows people to better understand God and the purpose of
His revelation, namely, bringing people to true knowledge and true practice (see
Maimonides 1963, 1.1: 21–23; 3.26–28: 506–514; Maimonides 2011, ch. 6; and
Averroes 2011, secs. 30 and 38). In this way, the medieval philosophers aim to
promote reason and moderate the less reasonable parts of their traditions.
In sum, the ancient and medieval philosophers take universal moral truth
seriously based on humanity’s rational nature, even while doubting humanity’s
ability fully to know it. By insisting on truth as a possibility, they fend off rel-
ativism. By being dubious of attaining it, they fend off dogmatism. For them,
human beings must question moral, political, and religious assumptions and
opinions—especially their own—in order to uncover what truths we can and to
live the best life: “it is our duty, to forsake even what is close to us in order to pre-
serve the truth . . . for while both are dear, it is sacred to honor truth above” all else
(Aristotle 1984a, 1096a11–16). In the absence of knowledge or where revelation
is unclear—which is every human’s situation—one must act reasonably, moder-
ately, with critical self-awareness, and with attention to the necessities of one’s
community. Human virtues develop in political communities. Though individ-
uals might transcend their community in terms of wisdom, the city is a prereq-
uisite to the philosopher’s life, anterior and therefore necessary to it. Thus, the
ancient and medieval thinkers exhort us to promote justice prudently, without
undermining the community that is the source of so many human goods. They
encourage us both to transcend and tend to the city.
Modern Views of Truth
Unlike the ancient and medieval thinkers, modern thinkers tend to draw a
sharp distinction between physical and moral truth. Modern thinkers hold a
variety of views on moral truth, some of which will be highlighted here, but
for the most part their account of the cosmos is one devoid of morality other
than as an artificial human creation. Insofar as science emerges as modernity’s
dominant authority about truth claims, the ultimate effect of the distinction be-
tween physical and moral truth is twofold. First, it enabled science to achieve
astounding successes in the physical realm. But, second, in ultimately rejecting
the possibility of a scientifically knowable moral truth, science defines itself
such that it cannot scientifically prove the goodness or purpose of science—or
of anything else. The modern scientific separation of the realm of truth from the
realm of morality, of “facts” from “values,” thus contributed both to modernity’s
astounding material advances and to a modern inability to rationally defend
substantive ultimate ends. Modern thought thus culminates in the intellectual
crisis of nihilism.
The modern turn away from the ancient and medieval conceptions of moral
truth was prepared by Machiavelli, often considered the first modern polit-
ical thinker because of his new attitude toward moral truth. Machiavelli self-
consciously sets out to change the way humanity thinks: “I have decided to take
a path as yet untrodden by anyone,” to advocate “new modes and orders” for the
“common benefit of mankind” (Machiavelli 1996, I. preface: 5). Machiavelli’s new
way is based on an account of the cosmos as amoral and indifferent to human
beings. To successfully make our way, we must be devoid of illusions. Machiavelli
rejects the idea of objective moral truth and utopian “imagined republics and
principalities that have never been seen or known to exist.” Instead, he focuses
on “the effectual truth,” that is, the real, observable patterns of human behavior.
According to Machiavelli, living morally leads to one’s “ruin rather than his pres-
ervation.” Machiavelli thus advises “to learn to be able not to be good, and to
use this and not use it according to necessity” (Machiavelli 1985, ch.15: 61). For
Machiavelli, virtue is not finding the right means to predetermined ends fixed
by nature or God but finding the right means to one’s own ends based on a clear-
sighted understanding of the necessities of reality. There are thus only two kinds
of people in the world: those who attain their goals and those who do not. The
former possess Machiavelli’s redefined virtue, while the latter are overcome by
“fortune.” Machiavelli sets out to tame and control fortune based on an under-
standing of the effectual truth of human necessity. Just as dikes and dams can
control a flood, so Machiavelli advocates a new science of politics to build po-
litical institutions to control and channel human passions and behaviors.8 He
articulates the idea of political checks and balances to make ambition counter
ambition to control the floods of human passions and behaviors (Machiavelli
1996, I.3–6 & 30: 15–23, 67–68). Setting up such institutions (his new modes and
orders) based on the effectual truth of human nature will benefit those who live
under them and bring glory to their founder.
The theoreticians of modern science followed in Machiavelli’s footsteps in
some significant ways and diverged from his path in others. Like Machiavelli,
science from the beginning operated outside the then-dominant metaphysics
of Christian Aristotelianism. Finding nothing but confusion in the legacies of
the past, Descartes and Bacon set out to articulate a new method to understand
the world. Both thought the physical world was essentially rational and compre-
hensible, but both agreed that unassisted human reason was fallible. The human
8 See Prince, ch. 25. Despite using some metaphors of applied science, such as building dikes and
dams to control floods and knowing the nature of sickness and disease and their remedies (ch. 3: 12),
Machiavelli does not ultimately believe politics is or can be a science. Machiavelli can teach what
one needs to think about; applying his insights is and always will be dependent on the prudence and
virtue of the actor. Rules suffice for ordinary times but when the extraordinary comes along, and it
always does, one will be at a loss if dependent on general rules. Politics is thus not a science but an art.
mind needed assistance from a reliable method, otherwise it could not tell
truth from falsehood at all (see, for example, Descartes 1961 and 1998).9 Their
methods are not identical. Whereas Descartes proceeds deductively from idea
to observation and uses mathematical modeling to aid his inquiries, Bacon pro-
ceeds inductively from observation to idea. But they agreed that attaining truth
required a verifiable, sound method.
Like Machiavelli, science understood itself not merely as understanding the
world but also as directing it. Bacon famously articulates the goal of science as
“the relief of man’s estate” (Bacon 2011, III: 294), as “Finding out the true nature
of all things” so that humanity can have “the more fruit in the use of them.” “The
end” of science, its ultimate purpose, “is the knowledge of Causes, and secret
motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of Human Empire, to the
effecting of all things possible.” In short, the purpose of scientific understanding
is not simply to contemplate the nature of things, but rather “to draw out of them
things of use and practice for man’s life”10 (Bacon 1989, 58, 71, 81 [emphasis
added]). Bacon concludes, “Truth, therefore, and utility, are here perfectly iden-
tical, and the effects are of more value as pledges of truth” (Bacon 1902, 100). Just
as Machiavelli used the effectual truth to demystify the world in order to direct
human beings, so science uses the effectual truth to demystify it in order to con-
trol nature.
The question arises, however, of just what science could be useful for. While
science’s methods proved powerful in explaining the truth of physical reality,
it is well known (and discussed later) that to achieve replicable results it ul-
timately had to drop any aspirations of explaining human ends. But there is
scholarly disagreement on whether this distinction is there at the beginning.
Descartes and Bacon, for example, both write at times about science proving
the existence of God. Some take these arguments seriously, but many sus-
pect these arguments are window dressing, necessary to avoid the fate of, say,
Galileo (see Kennington 2004). In any case, several views emerged of the kind
of truth that science could supply.
At an optimistic moment at the peak of the Enlightenment some thinkers
affirmed science as capable of also finding the truth on moral questions. This is
nicely embodied and explained in The Encyclopedia of Diderot and D’Alembert,
a mammoth project of 71,818 articles in 28 volumes published over the course
of 22 years, which has been called “the most famous and one of the greatest
projects of the European Enlightenment” (Israel 2001, 711). In its entry titled
“Encyclopedia,” Diderot captures the spirit of the optimistic Enlightenment in
9 See especially Descartes, Rules for the Direction of the Mind, Rules 2 and 4.
10 Emphasis added. This account is found in his description of a utopian scientific community,
which was influential in setting up The Royal Society of Science in England.
explaining the project’s aim: “to collect all the knowledge that now lies scattered
over the face of the earth [and] to make known its general structure” (Diderot
2001, 277). In practice, this meant attacking what they deemed superstition, in-
cluding religion and many of the social, economic, and political institutions of
their day, and replacing them with a radically materialistic scientific account of
the cosmos. Humans are but matter. There is no God who can break the laws of
nature. In aiming to “shake off the yoke of authority and tradition” and to pro-
mote a “revolution that will occur in the minds of men,” they hoped that “as
[people] became better educated, [they] may at the same time become more vir-
tuous” “and—consequently—inspire in men a taste for science, an abhorrence
of lies, a hatred of vice and a love of virtue; for whatever does not have happiness
and virtue as its final goal is worth nothing” (Diderot 2001, 277, 287, 294). Note
here the association of education with happiness and virtue, as opposed to mere
utility. This Enlightenment hope is that rational, scientific understanding will
make people morally better and happier. These Enlightenment thinkers, unlike
the ancients, thought that everyone or nearly everyone could be brought out of
the cave. The universality of the scientific method, the notion that truth, even
moral truth, is accessible to all armed with the proper approach, suggested that
everyone could be enlightened and not merely a few, as the ancients thought.
Ignorance and evil could be overcome by education.
In reaction against the Enlightenment’s exuberance for science, Romantics
condemned science as fundamentally unable to account for the deepest truths.
These thinkers rejected modern science’s rationalistic, materialistic, and uni-
versalistic conception of truth because they deemed it as overlooking the very
essence of the human experience and unable to grasp the whole or authentic
person, which they believed to be more particularistic. There are many vari-
ations within this school of thought, but these thinkers generally fall into two
kinds, individualistic and communal. The individualistic thread was first made
famous by Rousseau’s account of the “solitary walker,” a person who communes
with nature in a nonrational, dream-like state and who feels her or his way
through life (Rousseau 1979). It has advocates in those who celebrate intuition or
feeling as deeper, more genuine, more authentic, and truer than what they deem
the tinnier sphere of reason, and is nicely captured in Emerson’s idea to “Trust
[your] instinct to the end, though you can render no reason . . . it shall ripen into
truth and you shall know why you believe” (Emerson 1983, 419). According to
this view, reason, let alone scientific method, is essentially unable to grasp the
most important truths. Romanticism’s group-based manifestations vary from
apolitical celebrations of particular linguistic, religious, or cultural identities, to
more political celebrations of a Volk or people, to foul racism. But at its heart is
the belief that some particular shared, social phenomena make the individual
who he or she truly is and that the deepest truth and greatness is found only
on that level and in that context. Fichte put it this way: “Those who speak the
same language are joined to each other by a multitude of invisible bonds . . . they
understand each other . . . they belong together and are by nature one and an in-
separable whole” (Fichte 1968, 190–191). Accordingly, the truest knowledge is
not universal but contextually bound. It is found “Only when each people, left
to itself, develops and forms itself in accordance with its own peculiar quality”
(Fichte 1968, 197–198). The individualistic and group-based Romantic thinkers
disagreed with one another on the solutions, but they both reject the universal-
istic rationalism of science as inadequately able to capture the deepest truths of
the human condition.
Aware of these opposite assessments, science tried to define what it could
and could not do. Max Weber, for example, carefully distinguished between the
sphere of facts and the sphere of values. Facts belonged to the realm of science;
values to politics and morality. Weber painstakingly delineated each sphere’s
strengths and limits. A man of science himself, Weber is humble in his claims
for science. According to him, it can do various things in ascertaining and con-
figuring facts. It is useful as a tool: “science contributes to the technology of con-
trolling life by calculating external objects as well as man’s activities” (Weber
1946a, 150). Science does this through “methods of thinking” that give “clarity”
by showing the means to a given end, the consequences of acting or not acting,
and the “inner consistency” of a position or policy (Weber 1946a, 150). At its best
it can thus give “ ‘inconvenient’ facts” to make people face the consequences of
their decisions (Weber 1946a, 147). But according to Weber, this is all that sci-
ence can offer. With these benefits, “we come to the limits of science” (Weber
1946a, 151). Science cannot give meaning in life: “We know of no scientifically
ascertainable ideals” (Weber 1978, xxxiii). From this fact, Weber draws the harsh
conclusion that science is meaningless in the ultimate, metaphysical sense “be-
cause it gives us no answer to . . . the only question important for us: ‘what shall we
do and how shall we live?’ ” (Weber 1946a, 143).11 According to Weber answers
to that question are subjective and the creation of human will. Indeed, Weber
states that every “genuine man” and all “genuine leaders, that is prophets of rev-
olution” must choose their own “god or demon” (Weber 1946b, 115, 125, 127;
see also Weber 1946a, 148). Such choosing is what makes life meaningful—but
because the two spheres are so radically distinct, the choice of “god or demon” is
denuded of scientific underpinning, so the sphere of values is eventually reduced
to irrationality. This leads to what Weber calls the “disenchantment of the world”
(Weber 1946a, 155). Ultimate values are reduced to being essentially arbitrary.
Science, too, according to Weber suffers this same fate, because even in striving
to stick to facts, it is typically colored nonetheless by values. He writes: “The
11 Weber is here approvingly citing Tolstoy.

various great ways of leading a rational and methodical life have been charac-
terized by irrational presuppositions, which have been accepted simply as ‘given’
and which have been historically and socially determined, at least to a large ex-
tent” (Weber 1946c, 281). If the goals and aims of science also are presupposed
and given, then “these values and positions were thus religiously determined,”
that is, accepted on faith (Weber 1946c, 286). Thus, “No science is absolutely
free from presuppositions” (Weber 1946a, 153). Science is thereby open to two
criticisms. First, if science is colored by various “historically and socially deter-
mined” presuppositions, then it can be biased. This charge is leveled by a host of
critical thinkers today (see, for example, Latour and Woolgar 1986). Second, be-
cause “no science can prove its fundamental value to the man who rejects these
presuppositions” (Weber 1946a, 153), scientists and religious (or other value)
believers are in a metaphysical standoff. Just as the scientist can reject religion’s
truth claims, so believers can reject science. Neither has grounds to definitively
prove why its approach trumps the other.
In sum, modern thinkers, like their ancient and medieval counterparts, indis-
putably loved truth, but the conceptions of truth in the different eras are quite
different. The ancients and medievals tended to think that the truth measured
mankind, that human beings must seek to discover and conform to a natural or
divine preexisting order to be happy and whole. By contrast, the moderns tended
to doubt that any such preexisting moral order exists, let alone whether it can be
known, and to shunt the question of moral truth aside, reducing claims about it
to irrationality. Where the ancients live humbly in the face of their ignorance, the
moderns prioritize human freedom and creativity and want to use their know-
ledge to make the world our own. The modern move to try to conquer nature
contributed to the advances of science and technology but reduced moral truths
to mere subjective values culminating in an age of moral nihilism.
Postmodern Rejections of Truth
Whereas many ancient, medieval, and modern philosophers genuinely sought

objective truth within the spheres in which they thought it existed, a more rad-
ical attitude toward truth developed at the end of the nineteenth century. This
view denies that objective truth—moral or physical—exists and thus wants to
abandon the concept of truth altogether. These thinkers claim that truth was al-
ways a sham, sometimes promoted in bad faith, often based on the self-deception
of its proclaimers, and always (or mostly) a tool of domination. Given that all
truth claims are, have always been, and will forever be but humanly constructed
stories, they want to be honest and open about it. This position has taken many
forms and led thinkers to many kinds of politics. This section sketches three
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was but slightly guarded, and that by making a wide détour in the
rear of our lines the chances were good for them to add a few rations
of fresh beef to the bacon and corn-meal diet of the Rebel army, a
strong force of cavalry under Wade Hampton made the attempt,
capturing twenty-five hundred beeves and four hundred prisoners,
and getting off with them before our cavalry could intervene. The
beeves were a blessing to them, far more precious and valuable
than as many Union prisoners would have been; for they already had
more prisoners than they could or would feed. As for us, I do not
remember that fresh meat was any the scarcer on account of this
raid, for the North, with its abundance, was bountifully supplying the
government with whatever was needed, and the loss of a few
hundred cattle could scarcely cause even a temporary
inconvenience. Had the army been on the march, away from its base
of supplies, the loss might have been felt more severely.
Whenever the army made a move its supply of fresh meat went
along too. Who had charge of it? Men were detailed for the business
from the various regiments, who acted both as butchers and drovers,
and were excused from all other duty. When a halt was made for the
night, some of the steers would be slaughtered, and the meat
furnished to the troops upon presentation of the proper requisitions
by quartermasters. The butcher killed his victims with a rifle. The
killing was not always done at night. It often took place in the
morning or forenoon, and the men received their rations in time to
cook for dinner.
The manner in which these cattle were taken along was rather
interesting. One might very naturally suppose that they would be
driven along the road just as they are driven in any neighborhood;
but such was not exactly the case. The troops and trains must use
the roads, and so the cattle must needs travel elsewhere, which they
did. Every herd had a steer that was used both as a pack animal and
a leader. As a pack animal he bore the equipments and cooking
utensils of the drovers. He was as docile as an old cow or horse, and
could be led or called fully as readily. By day he was preceded in his
lead by the herdsman in charge, on horseback, while other
herdsmen brought up the rear. It was necessary to keep the herd
along with the troops for two reasons—safety and convenience; and,
as they could not use the road, they skirted the fields and woods,
only a short remove from the highways, and picked their way as best
they could.
LEADING THE HERD.
By night one of the herdsmen went ahead of the herd on foot,

making a gentle hallooing sound which the sagacious steer on lead
steadily followed, and was in turn faithfully followed by the rest of the
herd. The herdsman’s course lay sometimes through the open, but
often through the woods, which made the hallooing sound necessary
as a guide to keep the herd from straying. They kept nearer the road
at night than in the day, partly for safety’s sake, and partly to take
advantage of the light from huge camp-fires which detachments of
cavalry, that preceded the army, kindled at intervals to light the way,
making them nearer together in woods and swamps than elsewhere.
Even then these drovers often had a thorny and difficult path to
travel in picking their way through underbrush and brambles.
THE LAST STEER.
Such a herd got its living off the country in the summer, but not in
the winter. It was a sad sight to see these animals, which followed
the army so patiently, sacrificed one after the other until but a half-
dozen were left. When the number had been reduced to this extent,
they seemed to realize the fate in store for them, and it often took the
butcher some time before he could succeed in facing one long
enough to shoot him. His aim was at the curl of the hair between the
eyes, and they would avert their lowered heads whenever he raised
his rifle, until, at last, his quick eye brought them to the ground.
From the manner in which I have spoken of these herds, it may be
inferred that there was a common herd for the whole army; but such
was not the case. The same system prevailed here as elsewhere.
For example, when the army entered the Wilderness with three days’
rations of hard bread, and three days’ rations of meat in their
haversacks, the fresh meat to accompany the other three days’
rations, which they had stowed in their knapsacks, was driven along
in division herds. The remainder of the meat ration which they
required to last them for the sixteen days during which it was
expected the army would be away from a base of supplies was
driven as corps herds. In addition to these there was a general or
army herd to fall back upon when necessary to supply the corps
herds, but this was always at the base of supplies. Probably from
eight to ten thousand head of cattle accompanied the army across
the Rapidan, when it entered upon the Wilderness Campaign.
THE ARMY HORSE.

I have already stated that the horse was the sole reliance of the
artillery and cavalry, and have given the reasons why the mule was a
failure in either branch. I have also stated that the mule replaced
him, for the most part, in the wagon-trains, six mules being
substituted for four horses. I did not state that in the ambulance train
the horses were retained because they were the steadier. But I wish
now to refer more particularly to their conduct in action and on duty
generally.
First, then, I will come directly to the point by saying that the horse
was a hero in action. That horses under fire behaved far better than
men did under a similar exposure would naturally be expected, for
men knew what and whom to fear, whereas a horse, when hit by a
bullet, if he could get loose, was fully as likely to run towards the
enemy as from him. But not every horse would run or make a fuss
when wounded. It depended partly upon the horse and partly upon
the character and location of the wound. I have seen bullets buried in
the neck or rump of steady-nerved horses without causing them to
show more than a little temporary uneasiness. The best illustration of
the fortitude of horse-flesh that I ever witnessed occurred on the 25th
of August, 1864, at Ream’s Station on the Weldon Railroad. In this
battle the fifty-seven or eight horses belonging to my company stood
out in bold relief, a sightly target for the bullets of Rebel
sharpshooters, who, from a woods and cornfield in our front,
improved their opportunity to the full. Their object was to kill off our
horses, and then, by charging, take the guns, if possible.
GENERAL HANCOCK AT REAM’S STATION, VA., AUGUST 25, 1864.
It was painfully interesting to note the manner in which our brave

limber-horses—those which drew the guns—succumbed to the
bullets of the enemy. They stood harnessed in teams of six. A
peculiar dull thud indicated that the bullet had penetrated some
fleshy part of the animal, sounding much as a pebble does when
thrown into the mud. The result of such wounds was to make the
horse start for a moment or so, but finally he would settle down as if
it was something to be endured without making a fuss, and thus he
would remain until struck again. I remember having had my eye on
one horse at the very moment when a bullet entered his neck, but
the wound had no other effect upon him than to make him shake his
head as if pestered by a fly. Some of the horses would go down
when hit by the first bullet and after lying quiet awhile would struggle
to their feet again only to receive additional wounds. Just before the
close of this battle, while our gallant General Hancock was riding
along endeavoring by his own personal fearlessness to rally his
retreating troops, his horse received a bullet in the neck, from the
effects of which he fell forward, dismounting the general, and
appearing as if dead. Believing such to be the case, Hancock
mounted another horse; but within five minutes the fallen brute
arose, shook himself, was at once remounted by the general, and
survived the war many years.
When a bullet struck the bone of a horse’s leg in the lower part, it
made a hollow snapping sound and took him off his feet. I saw one
pole-horse shot thus, fracturing the bone. Down he went at once, but
all encumbered as he was with harness and limber, he soon
scrambled up and stood on three legs until a bullet hit him vitally. It
seemed sad to see a single horse left standing, with his five
companions all lying dead or dying around him, himself the object of
a concentrated fire until the fatal shot finally laid him low. I saw one
such brute struck by the seventh bullet before he fell for the last time.
Several received as many as five bullets, and it was thought by
some that they would average that number apiece. They were
certainly very thoroughly riddled, and long before the serious fighting
of the day occurred but two of the thirty-one nearest the enemy
remained standing. These two had been struck but not vitally, and
survived some time longer. We took but four of our fifty-seven horses
from that ill-starred fray.
REAL “HORSE SENSE.”
But, aside from their wonderful heroism,—for I can find no better

name for it,—they exhibited in many ways that sagacity for which the
animal is famous. I have already referred to the readiness with which
they responded to many of the bugle-calls used on drill. In the
cavalry service they knew their places as well as did their riders, and
it was a frequent occurrence to see a horse, when his rider had been
dismounted by some means, resume his place in line or column
without him, seemingly not wishing to be left behind. This quality was
often illustrated when a poor, crippled, or generally used-up beast,
which had been turned out to die, would attempt to hobble along in
his misery and join a column as it passed.
Captain W. S. Davis, a member of General Griffin’s staff of the
Fifth Corps, rode a horse which had the very singular but horse-
sensible habit of sitting down on his haunches, like a dog, after his
rider had dismounted. One morning he was missing, and nothing
was seen of him for months; but one night, after the corps had
encamped, some of the men, who knew the horse, in looking off
towards the horizon, saw against the sky a silhouette of a horse
sitting down. It was at once declared to be the missing brute, and
Captain Davis, on being informed, recovered his eccentric but highly
prized animal.
CHAPTER XVIII.
BREAKING CAMP.—ON THE MARCH.
“And now comes ‘boots and saddles!’ Oh! there’s hurrying to and
fro,
And saddling up in busy haste—for what, we do not know.
Sometimes ’twas but a false alarm, sometimes it meant a fight;
Sometimes it came in daytime, and sometimes it came at night.”
The subject of this chapter is a very suggestive one to the old

soldier. It covers a whole realm of experience which it would be
nearly impossible to exhaust. But there is much in this as in other
experiences which was common to all long-term veterans, and to
this common experience more especially I shall address my
attention.
From the descriptions which I have already given of the various
kinds of shelter used by the soldiers it will be readily understood that
they got the most comfortably settled in their winter-quarters, and
that in a small way each hut became a miniature homestead, and for
the time being possessed, to a certain extent, all the attractions of
home. The bunk, the stools, and other furniture, the army bric-à-
brac, whether captured or of home production, which adorned the
rough tenement within and without, all came to have a value by
association in the soldier’s thought, a value which was not fully
computed till campaigning impended—that usually direful day, when
marching orders came and the boys folded their tents and marched
away. This sketch will relate something of army life as it was lived
after marching orders were received.
When the general commanding an army had decided upon a plan
of campaign, and the proper time came to put it in operation, he at
once issued his orders to his subordinate commanders to have their
commands ready to take their place in column at a given hour on a
given day. These orders came down through the various corps,
division, brigade, regimental, or battery headquarters to the rank and
file, whose instructions given them on line would be to the effect that
at the stated hour they were to be ready to start with three days’
rations in their haversacks (this was the usual quantity), the infantry
to have forty rounds of ammunition in their cartridge-boxes. This
latter quantity was very often exceeded. The Army of the Potomac
went into the Wilderness having from eighty to a hundred rounds of
ammunition to a man, stowed away in knapsacks, haversacks, or
pockets, according to the space afforded, and six days’ rations
similarly disposed of. When Hooker started on the Chancellorsville
Campaign, eleven days’ rations were issued to the troops.
Sometimes marching orders came when least expected. I
remember to have heard the long roll sounded one Saturday
forenoon in the camp of the infantry that lay near us in the fall of ’63;
it was October 10. Our guns were unlimbered for action just outside
of camp where we had been lying several days utterly unsuspicious
of danger. It was quite a surprise to us; and such Lee intended it to
be, he having set out to put himself between our army and
Washington. We were not attacked, but started to the rear a few
hours afterwards.
Before the opening of the spring campaign a reasonable notice
was generally given. There was one orderly from each brigade
headquarters who almost infallibly brought marching orders. The
men knew the nature of the tidings which he cantered up to
regimental headquarters with under his belt. Very often they would
good-naturedly rail at him as he rode into and out of camp, thus
indicating their dislike of his errand; but the wise ones went directly
to quarters and began to pack up.
PACKING UP.
When it was officially announced to the men on line at night that

marching orders were received, and that at such an hour next
morning tents would be struck and the men in place, equipped and
provided as already stated, those men who had not already decided
the question retired to their huts and took an account of stock in
order to decide what to take and what to leave. As a soldier would
lay out two articles on the bunk, of equally tender associations, one
could seem to hear him murmur, with Gay,
“How happy could I be with either

Were t’other dear charmer away.”
as he endeavored to choose between them, knowing too well that

both could not be taken. The “survival of the fittest” was the question,
which received deeper and tenderer consideration here in one
evening than Darwin has ever given it in the same time. Then, there
was the overcoat and the woollen blanket which should be left?
Perhaps he finally decided to try taking both along for a while. He will
leave the dress-coat and wear the blouse. He has two changes of
flannels. He will throw away those he has on, don a clean set and
take a change with him. These flannels, by the way, if they were
what he drew from the government stores, were often as rough to
the skin as coarse sand-paper, which they somewhat resembled in
color.
From the head of his bunk he takes a collection of old letters which
have accumulated during the winter. These he looks over one by one
and commits to the flames with a sigh. Many of them are letters from
home; some are from acquaintances. Possibly he read the Waverly
Magazine, and may have carried on a correspondence with one or
more of the many young women who advertised in it for a “soldier
correspondent, who must not be over twenty,” with all the virtues
namable. There was no man in my company—from old Graylocks, of
nearly sixty, down to the callow “chicken” of seventeen—but what felt
qualified to fill such a bill, “just for the fun of it, you know.” The young
woman was generally “eighteen, of prepossessing appearance, good
education, and would exchange photographs if desired.”
An occasional letter from such a quarter would provoke a smile as
the soldier glanced at its source and contents before committing it to
the yawn of his army fireplace. This rather unpleasant task
completed, he continues his researches and work of destruction. He
tucks his little collection of photographs, which perhaps he has
encased in rubber or leather, into an inside pocket, and disposes
other small keepsakes about his person. If he intends to take his
effects in a knapsack, he will at the start have put by more to carry
than if he simply takes his blankets (rubber and woollen) rolled and
slung over his shoulder. Late in the war this latter was the most
common plan, as the same weight could be borne with less fatigue in
that manner than in a knapsack, slung on the back.
I have assumed it to be evening or late afternoon when marching
orders arrived, and have thus far related what the average soldier
was wont to do immediately afterwards. There was a night ahead
and the soldiers were wont to “make a night of it.” As a rule, there
was little sleep to be had, the enforcement of the usual rules of camp
being relaxed on such an occasion. Aside from the labor of personal
packing and destroying, the rations were to be distributed, and each
company had to fall into line, march to the cook-house, and receive
their three or more days’ allowance of hardtack, pork, coffee, and
sugar, all of which they must stow away, as compactly as possible, in
the haversack or elsewhere if they wanted them. In the artillery,
besides securing the rations, sacks of grain—usually oats—must be
taken from the grain-pile and strapped on to the ammunition-chests
for the horses; the axles must be greased, good spare horses
selected to supply the vacancies in any teams where the horses
were unfit for duty; the tents of regimental headquarters must be
struck, likewise the cook-tents, and these, with officers’ baggage,
must be put into the wagons which are to join the trains;—in brief,
everything must be prepared for the march of the morrow.
After this routine of preparation was completed, camp-fires were
lighted, and about them would gather the happy-go-lucky boys of the
rank and file, whose merry din would speedily stir the blood of the
men who had hoped for a few hours’ sleep before starting out on the
morrow, to come out of their huts and join the jovial round; and soon
they were as happy as the happiest, even if more reticent. As the fire
died down and the soldiers drew closer about it, some comrade
would go to his hut, and, with an armful of its furniture, the stools,
closets, and tables I have spoken of, reillumine and enliven the
scene and drive back the circle of bystanders again. The
conversation, which, with the going down of the fire, was likely to
take on a somewhat sober aspect, would again assume a more
cheerful strain. For a time conjectures on the plan of the coming
campaign would be exchanged. Volumes of wisdom concerning what
ought to be done changed hands at these camp-fires, mingled with
much “I told you so” about the last battle. Alexanders simply
swarmed, so numerous were those who could solve the Gordian
knot of success at sight. It must interest those strategists now, as
they read history, to see how little they really knew of what was
taking place.
WAITING FOR MARCHING ORDERS.
When this slight matter of the proper thing for the army to do was
disposed of, some one would start a song, and then for an hour at
least “John Brown’s Body,” “Marching Along,” “Red, White, and
Blue,” “Rally ’round the Flag,” and other popular and familiar songs
would ring out on the clear evening air, following along in quick
succession, and sung with great earnestness and enthusiasm as the
chorus was increased by additions from neighboring camp-fires, until
tired Nature began to assert herself, when one by one the company
would withdraw, each going to his hut for two or three hours’ rest, if
possible, to partially prepare him for the toils of the morrow. Ah! is
not that an all-wise provision of Providence which keeps the future a
sealed book, placing it before us leaf by leaf only, as the present?
For some of these very men, it may have been, whose voices rang
out so merrily at that camp-fire, would lie cold and pale ere the week
should close, in the solemn stillness of death.
But morning dawned all too soon for those who gave up most of
the night to hilarity, and all were summoned forth at the call of the
bugle or the drum, and at a time agreed upon The General was
sounded.
The above is the General of infantry. That of the artillery was less
often used and entirely different.
At this signal, every tent in a regiment was struck. It was quite an
interesting sight to see several acres of canvas disappear in a
moment, where before it had been the prominent feature in the
landscape. As a fact, I believe the General was little used in the
latter part of the war. For about two years, when the troops were
sheltered by the Sibley, Wedge, and Wall tents, it was necessary to
have them struck at an early hour, in order that they might be packed
away in the wagon-train. But after the Shelter tent came into use,
and each man was his own wagon, the General was seldom heard
unless at the end of a long encampment; for, when marching orders
came, each man understood that he must be ready at the hour
appointed, even if his regiment waited another day before it left
camp.
PLATE VI.
McIndoe Bros., Printers, Boston.
No more provoking incident of army life happened, I believe, than

for a regiment to wait in camp long after the hour appointed to
march. But such was the rule rather than the exception. Many a
man’s hearth-stone was then desolate, for if the hour of departure
was set for the morning, when morning came and the stockade was
vacated, it often suffered demolition to increase the heat of the
camp-fires, as previously noted. But as hour after hour wore on, and
men still found themselves in camp with nothing to do and plenty of
help, they began to wish that they had not been so hasty in breaking
up housekeeping and tearing down their shanties, else they might
resort to them and make their wait a little more endurable. Especially
did they repent if rain came on as they lingered, or if night again
overtook them there with their huts untenable, for it would have been
the work of only a moment to re-cover them with the Shelter tents.
Such waits and their consequences were severe tests to the
patience of the men, and sometimes seemed to work more injury to
their morals than the average army chaplain could repair in days.
But there is an end to all things earthly, this being no exception.
The colors of corps headquarters borne at the heels of the corps
commander, and followed by his staff, are at last seen moving into
the road. The bugler of the division having the lead sounds the call
Attention.
This call is the Attention of infantry at which the men, already in
column, take their places, officers mount, and all await the next call,
which is
At this signal the regiments take “right shoulder shift,” and the
march begins. Let the reader, in imagination, take post by the
roadside as the column goes by. Take a look at corps headquarters.
The commander is a major-general. His staff comprises an assistant
adjutant-general, an assistant inspector-general, a topographical
engineer, a commissary of musters, a commissary of subsistence, a
judge-advocate, several aides-de-camp—and perhaps other officers,
of varying rank. Those mentioned usually ranked from colonel to
captain. In the Union army, major-generals might command either a
division, a corps, or an army, but in the Confederate service each
army of importance was commanded by a lieutenant-general. Take a
look at the corps headquarters flag. Feb. 7, 1863, General Hooker
decreed the flags of corps headquarters to be a blue swallow-tail
field bearing a white Maltese cross, having in the centre the number
of the corps; but, so far as I can learn, this decree was never
enforced in a single instance. Mr. James Beale, in his exceedingly
valuable and unique volume, “The Union Flags at Gettysburg,”
shows a nondescript cross on some of the headquarters flags, which
some quartermaster may have intended as a compliance with
Hooker’s order; but though true copies of originals they are
monstrosities, which never could have had existence in a well
ordered brain, and which have no warrant in heraldry or general
orders as far as can be ascertained. When the army entered upon
the Wilderness Campaign, each corps headquarters floated a blue
swallow-tailed flag bearing its own particular emblem in white, in the
centre of which was the figure designating the corps, in red.
Here comes the First Division. At the head rides its general
commanding and staff. Behind him is the color-bearer, carrying the
division flag. If you are familiar with the corps badges, you will not
need to ask what corps or division it is. The men’s caps tell the story,
but the flags are equally plain-spoken.
This flag is the first division color. It is rectangular in shape. The
corps emblem is red in a white field; the second has the emblem
white in a blue field; the third has the emblem blue in a white field.
The divisions had the lead of the corps on the march by turns,
changing each day.
But here comes another headquarters. The color-bearer carries a
triangular flag. That is a brigade flag. May 12, 1863, General Hooker
issued an order prescribing division flags of the pattern I have
described, and also designated what the brigade flags should be.
They were to be, first of all, triangular in shape; the brigades of the
first division should bear the corps symbol in red in the centre of a
white field, but, to distinguish them, the first brigade should have no
other mark; the second should have a blue stripe next the staff, and
the third a blue border four and one-half inches wide around the flag.
The brigades of the second division had the corps symbol in white
in the centre of a blue field, with a red stripe next the staff to
designate the second brigade, and a red border the third.
The third division had its brigades similarly designated, with the
symbol blue, the field white, and the stripes red.
Whenever there was a fourth brigade, it was designated by a
triangular block of color in each corner of the flag.
The chief quartermaster of the corps and the chief of artillery had
each his appropriate flag, as designated in the color-plate, but the
arrangement of the colors in the flag of the chief quartermasters
differed in different corps.
This scheme of Hooker’s, for distinguishing corps, division, and
brigade headquarters remained unchanged till the end of the war.
The brigades took turns in having the lead—or, as military men
say, the right—of the division, and regiments had the right of
brigades by turns.
There goes army headquarters yonder—the commanding general,
with his numerous staff—making for the head of the column. His flag
is the simple star-spangled banner. The stars and stripes were a
common flag for army headquarters. It was General Meade’s
headquarters flag till Grant came to the Army of the Potomac, who
also used it for that purpose. This made it necessary for Meade to
change, which he did, finally adopting a lilac-colored swallow-tail
flag, about the size of the corps headquarters flags, having in the
field a wreath enclosing an eagle, in gold.
You can easily count the regiments in column by their United
States colors. A few of them, you will notice, have a battle-flag,
bearing the names of the engagements in which they have
participated. Some regiments used the national colors for a battle-
flag, some the state colors. I think the volunteers did not adopt the
idea early in the war. Originally battles were only inscribed on flags
by authority of the secretary of war, that is, in the regular army. But
the volunteers seemed to be a law unto themselves, and, while
many flags in existence to-day bear names of battles inscribed by

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The Politics of Truth in Polarized

America David C. Barker

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The Communist Manifesto in the Revolutionary Politics

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

© Oxford University Press 2021

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

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Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data

The Politics of Truth in Polarized America: Contexts, Concepts,

1. Neither Dogmatism Nor Relativism: Lessons from the Politics

6. The Evolutionary Psychology of Conflict and the Functions

10. Conspiracy Stress or Relief? Learned Helplessness and

11. Opinion Formation in Light of the Facts: How Correcting

Chris Anderson Patrick Gauding

Kevin Arceneaux Matthew H. Graham

Ethan Porter John Tooby

Justin Reedy Joseph E. Uscinski

Kyle L. Saunders Ryan J. Vander Wielen

Robert Y. Shapiro Abigail Vegter

John Sides Amanda L. Wintersieck

Elizabeth Suhay Thomas J. Wood

Chris Anderson is a doctoral student in the Department of Communication at the

Cheryl Boudreau is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Davis.

Paola Conte is a doctoral student in the Department of Communication at the University

Ryan DeTamble is a PhD student at American University. His research focuses on

Adam M. Enders is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Louisville,

Christina E. Farhart is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Carleton College. Her

Kim Fridkin is Foundation Professor of Political Science at Arizona State University.

Matthew H. Graham is Postdoctoral Research Scientist at the Institute for Data,

Donald Haider-​Markel is Professor and Chair of Political Science at the University of

Scott A. MacKenzie is Associate Professor at the University of California, Davis. His

Morgan Marietta is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of

Mathias Osmundsen is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Aarhus University in

Michael Bang Petersen is Professor of Political Science at Aarhus University in Denmark.

Ethan Porter is Assistant Professor at George Washington University. He holds

Justin Reedy is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and a research

Kyle L. Saunders is Professor of Political Science at Colorado State University. Saunders’s

Benjamin Toff (PhD, University of Wisconsin-​Madison) is Senior Research Fellow at

John Tooby is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of California,

biology, cultural and biological anthropology, genetics and economics, including in

Joseph E. Uscinski is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Miami

Ryan J. Vander Wielen is Associate Professor of Political Science at Stony Brook

Amanda L. Wintersieck is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Virginia Common­

These changes have, in turn, led to a precipitous decline in Americans’ trust

Part I: Context and Concepts

Part II: Causes

In Chapter 7, “Political Subgroups, Knowledge, and Information: Gun Issues

of conspiratorial thinking and that, importantly, this relationship appears to be

Part III: Correctives

The volume’s final section—​its largest—​addresses a deceptively simple ques-

role of deliberative mini-​publics in correcting misperceptions about the legal-

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

1. Neither Dogmatism Nor Relativism: Lessons from the Politics

6. The Evolutionary Psychology of Conflict and the Functions

10. Conspiracy Stress or Relief? Learned Helplessness and

11. Opinion Formation in Light of the Facts: How Correcting

Donald Haider-Markel is Professor and Chair of Political Science at the University of

Benjamin Toff (PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison) is Senior Research Fellow at

Amanda L. Wintersieck is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Virginia Common

The volume’s final section—its largest—addresses a deceptively simple ques-

role of deliberative mini-publics in correcting misperceptions about the legal-

themselves (480a), and “patterns” (472c–e, 500e, 592b).