One of my favorite moments of my Public Policy course comes on day one of the social welfare policy unit. I begin by skewering a bumper sticker popular among some conservatives: “Work harder! Millions on welfare depend on you.” I demonstrate to my students how reductive and deceptive this is by walking them through many different policies and programs that make up the American welfare state and showing them how much money is spent on each. They learn that the share of the federal budget spent on aid to working-age, able-bodied adults who aren’t working is in fact quite small.
People on the political left aren’t immune to the temptation to reduce nuance and complexity to facile slogans. We’ve all seen the yard sign: “In this house we believe…” What follows is a list of progressive bromides. One line always stands out to me: “Science is real.”
It’s hard to know what this means. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, I took the phrase as a reference to climate change. Progressives are deeply concerned about the warming planet and advocate for a robust policy response; there are too many Americans who still do not believe in anthropogenic global warming, and most of these unbelievers are on the political right. Post-pandemic, one might read “science is real” to mean something like “the Covid vaccine is safe and effective, and you should take it.”
But the claim on the sign is far broader than either of these interpretations. It seems to suggest that our political community can be neatly divided into two camps: one which believes in and follows “science,” and another which rejects it. This is not an accurate description of reality. Most progressives are not loyal adherents to science, just as most conservatives are not anti-science zealots.
Consider Nicholas Kristof’s commendable observation in a recent New York Times op-ed that too many progressives refuse to reckon with social science showing the clear benefits of two-parent households. Among the facts Kristof cites: “Families headed by single mothers are five times as likely to live in poverty as married-couple families.” Yet Kristof reports that, shockingly, just 3 in 10 college-educated progressives agree that “children are better off if they have married parents.” Among college-educated conservatives, more than 9 in 10 agreed with the statement [1].
In other instances, progressives’ use of data, of facts, of “the science,” is incomplete and thus rather misleading. The issue of police killings has been at the heart of progressive calls for racial justice since the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. Progressives are correct to point out that Black Americans are killed by police at a disproportionate rate. However, as data from The Washington Post show, police killings of unarmed individuals are quite uncommon. Since the Post began tracking them eight years ago, there have been roughly 1,000 fatal police shootings per year. In fewer than 10 percent of these cases, the victim was unarmed. Approximately 20 unarmed Black Americans are fatally shot by police each year [2]. These numbers are obviously still too high. But they are at odds with the claims of some progressives, who have asserted that police kill unarmed Black men far more frequently. For example, during a 2022 judicial confirmation hearing, Senator John Kennedy noted that district court nominee Nusrat Choudhury had incorrectly claimed, “The killing of unarmed Black men by police happens every day in America” [3]. Choudhury’s misstatement jibes with survey results indicating that it is common for progressives to significantly overestimate the number of unarmed Black men killed by police [4].
During the Covid pandemic, progressives often instructed everyone to “follow the science.” One of the policies pursued under this banner was the prolonged closure of schools. Certainly, there was science that pointed toward closing schools, especially during the early stage of the pandemic when little was known about the virus. But there was also plenty of evidence suggesting that prolonged isolation and remote learning for children was likely to have myriad negative effects on child development. That’s why in the summer of 2020—well before the vaccine was available—the American Academy of Pediatrics argued for reopening schools on a more aggressive schedule than the CDC was recommending [5]. Scientists were disagreeing with other scientists. How is one supposed to “follow the science” when there is real science on both sides of an issue? Here, the progressive recourse to science was not particularly helpful. As is often the case, there was no scientifically-prescribed answer to the difficult question at hand.
I recently came across a different version of the “In this house” yard sign. It reads, “In this house we believe that simplistic platitudes, trite tautologies, and semantically overloaded aphorisms are poor substitutes for respectful and rational discussion about complex issues.” I must admit that, for a split second, I thought about putting it on my front lawn.
Endnotes
[1] Nicholas Kristof, “The One Privilege Liberals Ignore,” The New York Times, September 13, 2023. Opinion | The One Privilege Liberals Ignore - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
[2] Police Shootings Database, “Fatal Force,” The Washington Post, last updated September 23, 2023. Police shootings database 2015-2023: Search by race, age, department - Washington Post
[3] Jason L. Riley, “Was a Judicial Nominee Prejudiced in Her ‘Role as an Advocate’?,” The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 2022. Was a Judicial Nominee Prejudiced in Her ‘Role as an Advocate’? - WSJ
[4] Zach Goldberg, “Perceptions Are Not Reality: What Americans Get Wrong About Police Violence,” Manhattan Institute, August 10, 2023. Perceptions Are Not Reality: What Americans Get Wrong About Police Violence | Manhattan Institute
[5] Dana Goldstein, “Why a Pediatric Group Is Pushing to Reopen Schools This Fall,” The New York Times, June 30, 2020. Why A.A.P. Guidelines Are Pushing for Schools to Reopen This Fall - The New York Times (nytimes.com)