The Three Languages of Politics

Talking Across the Political Divides

De: Arnold Kling

Narrado por: Joshua Nicholson

The Three Languages of Politics is a profoundly illuminating exploration of communication in America’s political landscape. Progressives, conservatives, and libertarians are like tribes speaking different languages. Political discussions do not lead to agreement. Instead, most political commentary serves only to increase polarization.

This book could not be timelier, as Americans - whether as media pundits or while conversing at a party - talk past one another with ever-greater volume, heat, and disinterest in contrary opinions.

The Three Languages of Politics is an accessible, precise, and insightful guide to lowering the barriers coarsening our politics. This is not a book about one ideology over another. Instead, it is a book about how we communicate issues and ideologies and how language intended to persuade instead divides. Arnold Kling offers a way to see through our rhetorical blinders so that we can incorporate new perspectives, nuances, and thinking into the important issues we must together share and resolve.

©2019 Cato Institute (P)2019 Cato Institute

Explaining American political polarization

Outstanding piece of work by Arnold Kling. I came to read this via his appearances in Russ Roberts’ podcast “EconTalk.” His three models for understanding why and how liberals, conservatives, and libertarians speak to one another resonates with me. But he goes deeper to help us understand why this modern tribalism has expanded and polarized. His list of important references for his argument near the end is worth reviewing and exploring. Highly recommended corrective for Americans who value conflict resolution more than escalation.

Please read this book

This book makes an excellent case for how to resolve a political discussion without concluding the other person is inherently stupid, malicious, or crazy. Having lived all over the United States, I have friends from each of these camps. Learning to speak each language is not easy but it's so worth it. Even recognizing specific phrases from each group will help you connect. If you have a strong political opinion, please read this book.

A lot of information in a very small package

Although I can't entirely agree with many of Prof. Kling's specific conclusions his methodology and the basis of this book are supported and very insightful

Very interesting topic

The content of the book is very interesting, but the performance of the reader is not quite good. It’s too fast, and makes difficult to distinguish citations and author’s main text.

Full of Himself

The other seem to like to repeat the same thing over and over again to show how bright he was and how insightful he was. I don’t think he had anything to understand the political discourse.