If Jonathan Haidt, whose book The Righteous Mind is the best explanation of the liberal/conservative divide I have ever seen, ever makes a documentary film based on the book, video of the April 22 Senate hearing on immigration would provide an excellent opening scene.
There was Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, opening the session with this declaration:
We need an immigration system that lives up to American values, one that allows families to be reunited and safe. One that treats individuals with humanity and respects due process and civil liberties. One that shields the most vulnerable among us, including children and crime victims and asylum seekers and refugees.
Then came Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), the ranking Republican, who spoke for the "national duty to protect the borders and the sovereignty of this country". Grassley warned that the bill proposed by the bipartisan Gang of Eight senators "makes the same mistake that we did in 1986, and surely we don't want to screw up like we did 25 years ago."
That was a reference to the Immigration Reform and Control Act, which promised to balance the compassion of amnesty with a crackdown on employers who knowingly hired illegal immigrants.
Haidt writes that liberals and conservative are guided by different value systems. Each group, he says, unites around sacred principles that bind them righteously together and blind them to evidence from other perspectives. Indeed, he says, each side tends to demonize the other.
Under such circumstances, Haidt told Bill Moyers, "Compromise becomes a dirty word."
At the Senate hearing there was no explicit demonizing. The Senate's moral code discourages such incivility. But there was plenty of invocation of sacred values.
Democrat Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota spoke in favor of the special visa category that provides victims of sexual abuse an avenue to citizenship.
Another Democrat, Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, was concerned that the proposed bill would reduce extended family immigration, a subject she said "is of particular concern to those who are on the wait list from Asia." She also wanted provisions "to include LGBT families and children of Filipino World War II veterans."
Meanwhile, Republicans insisted that they had a right to be skeptical about the bill's promises that it would deliver enforcement robust enough to prevent another wave of illegal immigration.
Texas Republican John Cornyn wanted to ensure that the Department of Homeland Security wouldn't be able to rig its books to meet border security targets in the bill. He asked why the bill's promise of an entry/exit system that would track those who overstayed their visas would be realized, given the Congress first ordered such a system 16 years ago.
Mike Lee (R-Utah) said he thought the bill offered the Homeland Security Secretary too much authority to issue waivers that would provide a path to citizenship to criminal offenders who would otherwise be excluded.
Not all the concerns broke down neatly along the lines of Democrats as the Mommy Party and Republicans as the Daddy Party.
For example, California Democrat Diane Feinstein wanted firm measures against student visa fraud and tight screening of asylum seekers to ensure that they weren't national security threats. And Charles Schumer, the Democrat from New York whose claim that the bill represents a pragmatic compromise will be put to the test in the coming weeks, sought to establish his border-security credentials.
But the liberal/conservative dichotomy was clear, in tone and substance, during most of the long session. It was consistent with Haidt's observation that liberals assert their values "in the service of underdogs, victims, and powerless groups everywhere", while conservatives "are more parochial — concerned about their groups, rather than all of humanity."
Haidt's book helped me understand why every social worker and the great majority of reporters I have ever known are liberals, while just about all cops and accountants are conservatives.
Full disclosure: I was a reporter for many years. I still identify as a moderate liberal. In college I was a sociology major for a brief time before realizing I just wasn't that liberal.
More from Jonathan Haidt next time.
