Why It's OK to Ignore Politics

Christopher Freiman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000062359
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

Do you feel like you're the only person at your office without an "I Voted!" sticker on Election Day? It turns out that you're far from alone – 100 million eligible U.S. voters never went to the polls in 2016. That's about 35 million more than voted for the winning presidential candidate.

In this book, Christopher Freiman explains why these 100 million need not feel guilty. Why It's OK to Ignore Politics argues that you're under no obligation to be politically active. Freiman addresses new objections to political abstention as well as some old chestnuts ("But what if everyone stopped voting?"). He also synthesizes recent empirical work showing how our political motivations distort our choices and reasoning. Because participating in politics is not an effective way to do good, Freiman argues that we actually have a moral duty to disengage from politics and instead take direct action to make the world a better place.

Key Features:

• Makes the case against a duty of political participation for a non-expert audience
• Presupposes no knowledge of philosophy or political science and is written in a style free of technical jargon
• Addresses the standard, much-repeated arguments for why one should vote (e.g., one shouldn't free ride on the efforts of others)
• Presents the growing literature on politically motivated reasoning in an accessible and entertaining way
• Covers a significant amount of new ground in the debate over a duty of political participation (e.g., whether participating absolves us of our complicity in state injustice)
• Challenges the increasingly popular argument from philosophers and economists that swing state voting is effective altruism
• Discusses the therapeutic benefits of ignoring politics—it's good for you, your relationships, and society as a whole.

Notes

INTRODUCTION

1.Pew Research Center 2007, 49.

2.Ibid.

3.Dalton 2008, 30.

4.Ingraham 2016.

5.New York Times Editorial Board 2018.

6.Reimer 2016.

7.Ibid.

8.See Gelman et al. 2012, 325 for the probability of a single vote in California being decisive in the presidential election.

9.See, e.g., Mill 1977; Rawls 1999, 206.

10.Pope Paul VI 1965.

11.U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services 2019.

12.Ingraham 2016.

13.Schwitzgebel and Rust 2010.

14.See Hetherington 2008, 10.

15.As Jason Brennan (2012b, 5, fn 5) writes, “I sometimes worry that political philosophy suffers from parochialism, because it is written by political philosophers and thus reflects their peculiar concerns and interests. Plato suggested that philosophers should be kings, and Aristotle suggested that philosophizing was the highest form of life. They might be right, but we have to be suspicious, given that they are philosophers. Contemporary deliberative democrats often suggest that societies would be better if everyone acted like amateur political scientists and philosophers. They might be right, but we have to be suspicious when we hear this from political scientists and philosophers.”

IN PURSUIT OF POLITICAL WISDOM

1.See Brennan (2016a, 163) and Huemer 2012 for other uses of the analogy between political participation and medical intervention.

2.Rasmussen Reports 2009.

3.Bartels 1996, 194.

4.Luskin 2002, 282.

5.See, e.g., Bennett 1988; Somin 2013, 33–36.

6.Somin 2013, 33.

7.Ibid.

8.Ibid., 19.

9.Ibid.

10.Ibid., 24.

11.Ibid., 32.

12.Ibid.

13.First Amendment Center of the Freedom Forum Institute 2018.

14.Bill of Rights Institute 2010.

15.DiJulio et al. 2015.

16.For a full account of American political ignorance (from which some of the previous information is drawn), see Somin 2013, chapter 1.

17.Petrosino et al. 2013.

18.Aos et al. 2004, 7.

19.MacAskill et al. 2015.

20.Ibid.

21.See Caplan 2007, chapter 2

22.Ibid., chapter 3.

23.See Caplan et al. 2013; Pew Research Center 2015, respectively.

24.Christandl and Fetchenhauer 2009, 384.

25.Ibid.

26.Romer 2008, 128.

27.I say more about the importance of economic growth and its role in alleviating poverty elsewhere. See Freiman 2017, chapter 4.

28.Anson 2018.

29.Rozenblit and Keil 2002.

30.Ibid., 521.

31.Fernbach et al. 2013.

32.Philosopher Adam Ferguson (1782, section 2) writes, “The forms of society are derived from an obscure and distant origin; they arise, long before the date of philosophy, from the instincts, not from the speculations of men. The crowd of mankind, are directed in their establishments and measures, by the circumstances in which they are placed; and seldom are turned from their way, to follow the plan of any single projector. Every step and every movement of the multitude, even in what are termed enlightened ages, are made with equal blindness to the future; and nations stumble upon establishments, which are indeed the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design.”

33.See Dubner 2012.

34.Eskeland and Feyzioglu 1997.

35.The significance of this point is discussed in greater depth in Huemer 2012, 15.

36.Tetlock 2005.

37.Menand 2005.

38.Davis 2018.

39.Barnwell 2018.

40.Rozenblit and Keil 2002, 521.

41.Huemer 2012, 12.

42.On shortcuts, see for instance Lupia and McCubbins 1...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• In Pursuit of Political Wisdom One
• We’re All Partisan Hacks Two
• The Costs and Benefits of Political Three Participation Three
• Fairness and Free Riding Four
• Political Abstention and Complicity in Injustice Five
• The Morality of the Message Six
• Political Ignorance Is Bliss Seven
• Conclusion: Why It’s Obligatory to Ignore Politics
• Notes
• References
• Index