The Other Political Spectrum

We hear a lot about left vs. right.

The left-right political divide has gotten a lot of attention in recent years. Americans have sorted ourselves into like-minded communities, both geographically and virtually, and we’ve become increasingly hostile to those who don’t vote like us.

But there’s a second spectrum at play here too—one that gets far less attention but is just as relevant to the health of our democracy. It’s less about what we believe and more about how we interact.

Before I delve into this second spectrum, let’s look at the first. Here’s how we typically think of the left-right spectrum:

Most of us tend to place voters into groups along that line, something like this:

Of course, this is grossly oversimplified. For one thing, Biden and Romney supporters aren’t the same. For another, many people swing left on one issue and right on another, and positions can also change. It’s generally unhelpful to portray us this way, as though we exist in isolated groups that don’t overlap.

But for our purposes here, I’m sticking with this simplified, linear spectrum. It’s a shorthand for how we tend to think about politics, it holds some truth, and it’ll help me illustrate my point.

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The other spectrum

Because the left-right spectrum can feel like a line, it feels like we’re battling to move each other along it horizontally, as if we’re on a giant see-saw. “If we can just persuade more Biden supporters to think like Bernie, we’ll finally tip the balance towards the left!”

The problem is, it’s hard to get people to move along this line. We’re stuck in a perpetual tug-of-war. Congress often winds up in stalemate, and we’re all unwilling to cede precious ground to the other side. How do we get out of this cycle?

That’s where the other spectrum comes in—a way to frame our different ways of interacting around politics.

Allow me to introduce…the Respectrum.

I struggled with what language to use here. Consulting with my husband, we brainstormed words to place at either end of this line. Open vs. Closed? Flexible vs. Rigid? Players vs. Haters? Ultimately, we landed on Respectful vs. Disdainful, and we figured calling it the “Respectrum” would be obnoxiously cheesy enough to stick in readers’ minds. So, Respectrum^TM it is.

On the Respectrum, “Respectful” is shorthand for open, curious, flexible, and willing to listen to others’ ideas. “Disdainful” means closed, dismissive, rigid, or hostile. Respect indicates intellectual humility—the willingness to truly listen, despite disagreement with another’s views. Disdain means shutting our minds to anyone whose beliefs differ strongly from our own.

Another way to think about the Respectrum is this wonderful, anonymous quote:

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who think there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don’t.

This idea was captured by my uncle when he guest blogged for me ten years ago. I laughed when I first read it. Distracted by the humor, I didn’t fully grasp the truth of it till many years later, thinking about the Respectrum.

We’re disdainful when we lapse into the worldview that there are two kinds of people, Us and Them. We’re respectful when we recognize that people can’t be divided so neatly, and that even when we are divided, each side has wisdom to offer.

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Respect vs. disdain

Most of us can locate ourselves or others along the Respectrum on a typical day. For example:

Again, I’m oversimplifying. Are Bernie and Colbert truly as disdainful and hostile as Trump and Limbaugh? I don’t think so—but many of their followers certainly are!

I’m also setting aside the question of which side’s disdain is more justified. My point here is, some of us choose respect far more than others. This is a value shared by those on one side of the Respectrum, but not shared by those on the other.

The names on the left may be unfamiliar. Fiery, disdainful speech or mockery grabs more attention than open, curious, respectful speech. Jonathan Haidt is a moral psychologist who authored The Righteous Mind, a brilliant book about why different groups wind up with different political views. Joan Blades is an activist who co-founded Living Room Conversations, a nationwide group fostering respectful political dialogue. John Gable, a former political aide and Silicon Valley manager, founded the website AllSides to educate readers about media bias and civil discourse. And Celeste Headlee is a communication expert who wrote a popular book called We Need to Talk.

These are just a handful of the many folks working to bridge the American political divide, and they hail from all points along the left-right political spectrum. Haidt is a centrist, although he leaned left when he wrote his book. Blades is progressive, while Gable is conservative.

This variety occurs because the Respectrum can be separated from our left-right stances. I value respect, but Ben, my right-wing, evangelical Christian cousin, shares this value with me. He and I have had several political conversations over videochat, and we’ve both found our dialogues enlightening and enjoyable, even though we disagree on so much.

Meanwhile, there are many folks on both sides of the left-right spectrum who don’t find dialogue useful. My dad was one. A sensitive, brilliant soul, he turned angry when talking about politics, and he and I once fought over his insistence that all Republicans were “evil.” I know other progressives who try to be respectful, but whose anger towards Republicans makes it hard for them to talk with conservatives without vitriol.

And I know plenty of conservatives who are dismissive and derisive of liberals, too.

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Combining the two spectrums

Here’s the fun part, at least for me. 🙂 Because the two spectrums don’t directly correlate, they can be juxtaposed in a two-dimensional chart, like this:

Find me and my dad on the chart, and notice how we’re both on the left. When he was alive, Dad and I largely agreed on political policy. Like me, he would have supported same-sex marriage, affirmative action, reparations for Black and Native Americans, vote by mail, environmental regulation, and a host of other progressive ideas.

But in terms of dialogue, he didn’t share my values at all, which is why he’s at the bottom while I’m at the top. Kindness, compassion, and intellectual humility are at my core, and these are just as important to me as my progressivism, although I practice them imperfectly. I share these values with people across the left-right spectrum.

So along the left-right political axis, I’m close to Dad. But along the up-down axis—the Respectrum—I’m much closer to my conservative cousin Ben.

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Other similar theories

I’m not the first person to come up with the idea of a two-dimensional political spectrum. Various political scientists have proposed charts shaped like mine, attempting to capture the complexity of people’s beliefs. In their charts, the different axes represent things like left-right economic policy, social policy, tendency towards authoritarianism, and other factors.

More well-known is the famous horseshoe theory, which many of us have observed without knowing its name. This is the idea that the political extremes are similar to each other—that their extremism takes them both so far from the mainstream that they wind up overlapping.

In the pandemic, it’s fascinating that anti-vaxxers hail from both the far right and the far left. These two groups seem to have little else in common, but it turns out they do have things in common: a rejection of scientific expertise, and a lack of civic-mindedness.

(I’ve always pictured this phenomenon as a circle, but when researching this post, I learned that it’s typically drawn as a horseshoe instead.)

All these ideas are probably somehow related to my own 2-D political spectrum. But they’re not the same as mine—they’re attempts to capture complex patterns in people’s political beliefs. The Respectrum, again, attempts to capture how we interact around politics.

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Doesn’t listening make you a moderate?

You may be wondering: Is my chart really accurate? Aren’t most “respectful” people really just moderates in disguise? How can anyone truly passionate about their own views be willing to listen respectfully to the nonsense on the other side?

If that was true, then my 2-D chart could actually be straightened back out into a line. The process would go something like this:

But that transformation doesn’t work. Joan Blades isn’t a moderate; along with Living Room Conversations, she co-founded the progressive activism website MoveOn.org. My cousin Ben isn’t a moderate conservative. And on most issues, I’m solidly progressive, not moderate. Each of us is at or near the left-right extreme—but we all believe strongly in respect. The 2-D chart is more accurate.

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Respect is best for the country.

Respectfulness is ingrained into my personality. I’ve always been curious about cultures and worldviews that differ from my own, and I have a strong faith in basic human goodness. But I also value respect for a more pragmatic reason: it’s far better for society than disdain is, because liberals and conservatives need each other.

All cultures seem to naturally include a mix of liberal- and conservative-minded people. In an interview with psychologist Jordan Peterson, Jonathan Haidt describes the “omnivore’s dilemma” of social behavior: we humans need to be open to novel experiences in order to gain information, but we also need to be cautious, because novel experiences can be risky.

Conservatives tend to be more cautious and liberals more open. Neither approach is universally right or wrong. A healthy society will be able to deliberate between these two inclinations, discerning what’s best for each new situation.

So even though I’m progressive, I want conservatives around. I want us all to remain scattered along the left-right political spectrum. When I talk to a conservative, my hope is not that I’ll convert him to being liberal like me. I’m just hoping his views (and mine) will gain more nuance.

To be clear, I’m not saying that both sides are always equally valid. In this age of Trumpian disinformation, I am hoping conservatives will see the errors their party leaders have been making. But although the Republican Party has gone astray in recent years, I want conservatism to remain alive and well in America.

And I also know that by listening to conservatives, I may become aware of errors on my side too. Even in today’s fraught politics, neither side has a perfect monopoly on the truth.

While respect is good for the country, disdain is terrible for it. This is why Twitter and Facebook are rife with bots and trolls created by Russia specifically to sew political discord. Authoritarian regimes are threatened by the very existence of democracy, so Russia works tirelessly to make us all believe the other side is crazy and refuse to listen to anything they say.

Trump was Putin’s favored candidate in 2016 and 2020, but Russian bots also favored Bernie over Biden. Bernie and Trump have wildly divergent politics—but what they have in common is that both are disdainful and divisive. Russia knew this. The more vitriol we have, the weaker we’ll be.

So in a healthy democracy, there will be fewer people practicing disdain. Most of us won’t be sitting in the bottom two quadrants of the chart. We’ll rise to the top.

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You can be passionate and still respectful.

While our political, left-right values don’t often change, where we fall along the Respectrum does have hope of changing. This is hard, and it takes actual work—not just lip service about the importance of respect, but genuine self-reflection and practice.

Listening respectfully is far more intellectually and spiritually challenging than disdain. It even runs against our natural tribal instincts.

But it’s well worth the trouble, for our own mental health and the health of our democracy. And many organizations around the country and the world are helping people do this hard work.

In the U.S., the most prominent group is Braver Angels, which has around 40,000 members and subscribers and hosts frequent workshops on “depolarizing within.” Here’s their online quiz to find out how polarized you are—i.e., how close you are to the “disdainful” end of the Respectrum.

And here are a few ideas if you’d like to work on respect; still more can be found on my resources page:

• Learn about different groups’ morals through reading Jonathan Haidt or watching his morals TED Talk.
• Inspire yourself with real stories of how listening, compassion, and friendship have transformed bigotry and hatred—such as here, here, and here.
• Educate yourself about media bias and depolarize your media intake.
• Rewire your trigger-happy nervous system through loving-kindness meditation.
• Practice listening in a group like Living Room Conversations or Braver Angels.

Respecting the other side doesn’t have to affect our left-right political beliefs; those will likely stay intact. But I hope more and more of us will join the bridging movement, elevating ourselves and our country away from dysfunction. We’ll all be better off.