[luckylion]

"Some random 59 year old from Ohio wrote this, so it's well known that that's conservativism in a nutshell" is a strange stance.

> Anti-conservatism isn't rooting for some other group, it's being against this kind of tribalism wholesale.

Do you have any examples of that? I've never seen someone who doesn't go mild on people who share beliefs he holds dear and judges harshly those who don't.

[skrebbel]

The ACLU was pretty anti-conservative in the past (before they got captured by the regressive left). Eg they helped protect the right of free expression of nazi groups, stuff like that.

ps. Fair, I agree that it's weird to elevate one random blog commenter's words to a "law", though this particular one is widely quoted because, I think, it resonates and hits the nail on the head. I do feel that "tribalism" is a better word for the concept, but "conservatism" isn't far off since every conservative group I know of (at least in the US and Europe) support this kind of tribalism to a fair extent.

[luckylion]

We'd have to see how ACLU-members react/reacted to transgressions of friends or allies vs opponents. Would they not be affected when evaluating e.g. corruption charges? It'd be very rare.

Defending both left and right against the government is another story, I think. There are more tribes than just left and right, and even left and right I'd see more as meta-tribes, tribes made up of other tribes. Depending on the issue you're looking at, alliances shift, e.g. on Ukraine or Israel where the fault lines are not the typical left/right divisions in most Western countries.

That "law" probably resonates with lots of people who aren't fans of conservatives, but that's a low bar to clear and doesn't say much about whether it's true and only conservatives form tribes (calling everything conservative that forms a tribe would turn it into tautological reasoning). Every political movement I've ever witnessed was tribal at its core. I'm not sure it's impossible to have a cohesive movement without forming a tribe, but it doesn't seem to be easy or we'd see it more often.

[seadan83]

I don't think 'Tribe' is really defined as merely a "political" group in the OG article. It's more a system of government rather than political affiliation. In tribalism, it is rule-of-the-strong, dominance over the weak; it is not 'rule of law'. Any group that believes in rule of law rather than dominance of the weak is not tribalistic. The article posits that the shift of tribalism comes about as a group can tear down the barriers that the rule of law provides - at which point society readily devolves to tribalism.

[kevin_thibedeau]

The libertarian stance leans toward magnanimity over those who don't share one's own beliefs. Provided their conduct doesn't interfere with others.

[luckylion]

That's true, but aren't they still tribal in practice? Granted, that's getting into very broad strokes, but libertarians don't feel different in e.g. defending transgressions of other libertarians, their reaction is tribal (like everyone else's).

That's not a moral failure in my view, it's just the default state of humans. Possibly connected to self-interest, everyone tends to view others from "his tribe" favorable, people from random unrelated tribes somewhat neutral, and people from enemy/rival tribes more negative.

That doesn't change much, but more wealthy / free societies create more elaborate tribes than just genetic relationship or age. Now you can join the iphone owners, console gamers, or flat earth believers, or you can join the dog owners (cat owners are a rival tribe, but they'll band together if you're from the pet-hater-tribe), bmw-drivers, or one of the linux-user subtribes (and look down on the windows- and macos-tribes).