This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, May 24th, 2017.

I'm Caleb Brown.

How does the language we use affect our attempts to influence each other?

And are we really trying to influence each other or merely earning status

within our own ideological groups.

Arnold Kling is author of the new revised edition of The Three Languages of Politics, published by Libertarianism.org and the Cato

Institute. We spoke last month. We've discussed this issue before about how to be

essentially compassionate when other people present their views to you and seek

first to understand, as we're often told.

But Arnold, let me hit you with this.

One, I cannot be pitch and hold on the basis of heuristics.

I arrive at my political beliefs through careful reasoning and consideration of the evidence.

It is a characteristic of the people who share my political beliefs that we carefully weigh the facts

and arrive at realistic sound conclusions.

And it's a characteristic of the other side, essentially that they are slaves to dogma and impaired in the use of reason.

Yes, that's what everyone believes and it's...

Oh, but I...

But for me it's really true, Arnold.

So every progressive believes that they're the reason that progressive views are reasonable and that other people arrive at their views for

Irrational reasons of one sort or another

libertarians irrational reasons of one sort or another. Libertarian believe that they are the rational ones and other people arrive at their views

from irrational reasons and conservatives do the same thing.

...