When it was first released in 2013, Arnold Kling’s The Three Languages of Politics was a prescient exploration of political communication, detailing the “three tribal coalitions” that make up America’s political landscape. Progressives, conservatives, and libertarians, he argued, are “like tribes speaking different languages. As a result, political discussions do not lead to agreement. Instead, most political commentary serves to increase polarization.”

The first edition did not make it sufficiently clear that the three-axes model is meant to describe political psychology and political communication, rather than to dissect political thought. The second edition clarified that.

The second edition made only an offhand mention of the newly emerged phenomenon of Donald Trump. The third edition includes a brief chapter about this phenomenon.

Mr. Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election has stimulated interest in political psychology and political communication. But the insight that drove Kling to write the third version of this book is more durable and less accidental than that electoral outcome.

There is now widespread concern with the way that political divisions are exacerbated by the communication that takes place in both traditional and social media. The third edition includes an afterword that covers some of this very recent literature related to my theme.

The Three Languages of Politics is an accessible, precise, and insightful guide to how to lower 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 our ideologies, and how language intended to persuade instead divides. 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.

Arnold Kling received his PhD in economics from MIT in 1980. He is the author of several books, including Crisis of Abundance: Re-thinking How We Pay for Health Care, published by the Cato Institute. He writes a monthly column for the Library of Economics and Liberty. Find him online at www.arnoldkling.com. 

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In its dealings with the broader world, has the United States been a force for liberty? Should it be? And if so, how? 

To answer these questions, Peace, War, and Liberty: Understanding U.S. Foreign Policy traces the history of the United States foreign policy and the ideas that have animated it, and considers not only whether America’s policy choices have made the world safer and freer but also the impact of those choices of freedom at home. 

In this evenhanded but uncompromising commentary, Christopher A. Preble considers the past, present, and future of U.S. foreign policy: why policymakers in the past made certain choices, and how the world might look if America chose a different path for the future. Would America, and the world, be freer if America’s foreign policy were more restrained?

Christopher A. Preble is the vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. He is the author of three books including The Power Problem: How American Military Dominance Makes Us Less Safe, Less Prosperous and Less Free, which documents the enormous costs of America’s military power, and proposes a new grand strategy to advance U.S. security; and John F. Kennedy and the Missile Gap, which explores the political economy of military spending during the 1950s and early 1960s. Preble is also the lead author of Exiting Iraq: How the U.S. Must End the Occupation and Renew the War against Al Qaeda; and he co-edited, with Jim Harper and Benjamin Friedman, Terrorizing Ourselves: Why U.S. Counterterrorism Policy Is Failing and How to Fix It. Before joining Cato in February 2003, he taught history at St. Cloud State University and Temple University. Preble was a commissioned officer in the U.S. Navy, and served onboard USS Ticonderoga (CG-47) from 1990 to 1993. Preble holds a Ph.D. in history from Temple University.

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There is a well-worn image and phrase for libertarianism: “atomized individualism.” This hobgoblin has spread so thoroughly that even some libertarians think their philosophy unreservedly supports private persons, whatever the situation, whatever their behavior. Smith’s Self-Interest and Social Order in Classical Liberalism, corrects this misrepresentation with careful intellectual surveys of Hume, Smith, Hobbes, Butler, Mandeville, and Hutcheson and their respective contributions to political philosophy.

The essays in this book originally appeared on Libertarianism.org.

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