We have just experienced the season of gifts, a moment at which images of plummy consumption dance in our heads. And I had a gift in mind. A magazine, or perhaps, a certain website.

I am a serial reader, and, sometimes, a reader of serials. As the Deliberately Considered audience knows – because I have admitted in cyber-print – I have ogled Glenn Beck: less as harassment or flirtation, and more as an imagined discourse. I promiscuously read conservatives and progressives – and others in left, right, and libertarian venues. I live by The New Yorker, I conserve the Weekly Standard, I reason with Reason, and Mother Jones is Mom. However, I have long regretted that I cannot get a daily dosage of civic nutriment in a single journalistic bowl. I hold to a somewhat eccentric contention that there are smart liberals (neo- and old-timey, pink and pinker), conservatives (neo- and paleo-), progressives, reactionaries, socialists, libertarians, and more. Is my generosity so bizarre?

It has been argued that one of the fundamental problems in American political culture is that citizens tend to read narrowly. Those who consider themselves conservatives will not squander their lives reading liberal intellectuals, and the same is true of liberals, should they even admit to such a creature as a conservative intellectual. The divide between red and blue is as evident in the library as in the voting booth. This argument was made most compellingly by the ever diverting Cass Sunstein in his 2001 book, Republic.Com. Sunstein argued that we feel comfortable in segregated domains of knowledge in which:

“People restrict themselves to their own points of view – liberals watching and reading mostly or only liberals; moderates, moderates; conservatives, conservatives; neo-Nazi, neo-Nazis.”

People reside in gated communities of knowledge. This is what the sociologist David Maines, referring to epistemic divisions between blacks and whites, described as racialized pools of knowledge. Our pools, suitable for private skinny dipping, are political. But if we are truly interested in the play of ideas, this chasm is a dispiriting reality. Of what are we afraid?

On the empirical side, there has been debate as to the validity of Sunstein’s claim as applicable to blog sites, at least according to a research paper by Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse Shapiro at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago. They discover that many political junkies are omnivores, reading widely.

But, putting aside web freebies, on the organizational side the argument seems more compelling. Gentzkow and Shapiro’s argument, if confirmed, applies to blogs like Deliberately Considered, but perhaps less to paper-and-ink magazines, where one must place one’s money where one’s politics is.

And so each week I open my copy of The New Yorker with a weary expectation. Yes, as they explain, it is the best magazine in America. Yet, it is surely predictable. Recently, Hendrik Hertzberg weighed in on Newt Gingrich (back when he was the front runner, in a piece entitled “Alt-Newt”) and, surprise!, he doesn’t think much of the former speaker. The New Yorker has not been kind to Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, or Herman Cain either. Also, The New Yorker won’t embrace Ron Paul, and someone is surely generating cold thoughts about Rick Santorum. Newt, we are told, is lousy writer, a hypocrite, and more of a megalomaniac than most potential presidents. Hertzberg’s essay is beautifully crafted, and it is not false as much as it is unanswered. There are those who write with glee and panache against the current incumbent, not only from the left, but from the right. But subscribers will never hear them. Then there is The New York Times whose stable of columnists range from (mostly) deep blue to light purple. Neither David Brooks nor Ross Douthat, thoughtful men both, are movement conservatives. William Kristol was chased off the reservation by patricians with pitchforks. Would one red-meat conservative violate the Gray Lady? Perhaps The Atlantic comes closest to this model, but the distance is still real.

What I wish for is a journal that is committed to excellence with ideological generosity. Perhaps there is not an audience for such a venture, despite the suggestion of Gentzkow and Shapiro, but I fantasize that Bill Buckley and Max Lerner could share a page. Charles Krauthammer and Frank Rich, too.

If one already knows that one knows, such a project is fundamentally misguided. Why read the wrong along with the right? However, for those of us who embrace independence, uncertainty and confusion are thrilling. A magazine that is neither red nor blue but multi-hued is a gift most devoutly to be wished for. It is not only that we wish to read clever writers, but we need to imagine a rainbow of clever ideas. Under my tree, I imagine a magazine that I cannot predict before opening the cover: a periodical of intellectual astonishment. A journal that is generously considered.

Let us pretend that we might be persuaded, and then read accordingly.

As we reflect upon the dramatic political developments in North Africa and the Middle East, and as we anticipate a tough political battle in the United States about the budget and the role of government, James M. Jasper, a sociologist of social movements, emotions, and strategy, reminds us in this post and in another tomorrow that politics and public debate are  not only reasoned. They also have an emotional side that must be critically understood. – Jeff

Emotions matter in politics. This is evident at home and abroad. In the last two years, we have seen American citizens shouting at their own Congressional representatives in town hall meetings, a hateful Jared Loughner attempt to assassinate his own representative, and a million Egyptians assemble in Tahrir Square and topple a repressive regime.This leads to a pressing question: What emotions matter and help mobilize political action?

A sense of threat and urgency, anger and indignation (which is morally tinged anger), sometimes a desire for revenge, and, on the positive side, hope that the dangers can be resisted – one of the most effective ways to pull these together is to find someone to blame. If there is no one to blame, collective mobilization lacks a focus. It is more likely to be the kind of cooperative endeavor we see after natural disasters: shock, but no politics. And the more concrete and vivid the perpetrators, as the case of Hosni Mubarak showed, the more focused and intense the outrage.

In such mobilization we see the “power of the negative”: negative emotions grab our attention more than positive ones. The events in Egypt and Libya suggest that the power of the negative is increased when hatred, rage, anger, and indignation are focused against one person. Most revolutionary coalitions are held together only by this outrage over the old ruler or regime. It is hard to question the mobilizing power of such feelings, whether the mobilization is for voting in elections or efforts at revolution.

But are there other ways to mobilize large numbers of people? In the US, Democrats’ electoral campaigns, and especially Obama’s, are full of reasoned arguments, based on empirical evidence, with a regard for fiscal responsibility and logical coherence. They mostly avoid nasty frontal attacks on opponents, such as the gun lobby, bankers, or other potential targets. As Dr. Phil might ask, “How’s that working for you?”

The strong Democratic showing in 2008 might reinforce our civilized sense that rational discourse, buttressed by the opinions of experts and especially economists, can prevail even in a nation where a solid third of the electorate believes in the literal truth of the Christian Bible. But did the Democrats win because of their reasoned arguments? Or because the elections occurred during one of the nation’s worst financial collapses ever? (Even eight years of the worst president in US history might not have been enough without the economic crisis.) Let’s not fool ourselves. In normal times an articulate “egghead” like Obama could not win.

2010 was a more typical election in the United States.

Since Plato and Aristotle, commentators have feared strong emotions in public debate. They have twisted their logic to defend rhetoric and democracy even while recognizing the power of emotions. They distinguish between good and bad rhetoric, thinking and feeling, or real and sham democracy. There is no way around it: democratic procedures can lead to results that no one likes – and certainly not the intellectuals who write about such things.

In the United States, Democratic politicians are rarely as cutthroat as their Republican opponents, who simply do not believe in democratic procedures as much as they believe in the substance of outcomes. For instance, Republicans continually attack the legitimacy of the judicial branch – until they need it to steal elections as in 2000. But one result of the Democrats’ decency is that they lose elections even when the majority agrees with their positions. Another downside of decency is that the Democrats lost an opportunity to use the financial meltdown of 2007-2009 to make the kind of structural reforms we desperately need. And the reason is their unwillingness to pin the blame on anyone too directly. If the Democrats could not make financiers and hedge fund managers into robust villains after the meltdown, they are simply not political beasts. They will never have a better chance to fix our financial system.

The emotional dynamics differ somewhat for voting and for protest movements. The organizational structure for the former is already there, so that a small emotional push can move people to vote: it is easy to do. Participating in a longer-term movement requires the creation of networks and organizations and communications and other infrastructure in addition to the arousal of emotions. In voting, the power of the negative helps explain the “pendulum of threat” that moves back and forth: one side wins, the other side feels threatened and mobilizes more energetically in the next election, and so on.