of American congressional testimony and press coverage in the early (1916–32) and late (1970–93) decades of the 20th century. They looked at the verbiage surrounding controversies in the two eras with roughly similar content, such as the Smoot-Hawley Act, which clamped down on free trade, and then the NAFTA agreement, which opened it up, and the granting of women’s suffrage and then the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. In almost every case, contrary to the worst fears of today’s political buffs, the integrative complexity of the political discourse increased from early to late in the century. The sole exception lay in congressmen’s statements on women’s rights. Here is an example of the quality of argument used to support voting rights for women in 1917:In the great Lone Star State, 58 counties of which it is my honor to represent, a State which is the largest in this Union, every person over 21 years of age may vote except a convict, a lunatic, and a woman. I am not willing that woman shall be placed in the same class and category in the Lone Star State with a convict and a lunatic.290
And here is an example of an argument used in 1972 to oppose the Equal Rights Amendment, from Senator Sam Ervin, born in 1896:[The ERA] says that men and women are identical and equal legal human beings. It gives consideration for many foolish things like that. It is absolutely ridiculous to talk about taking a mother away from her children so that she may go out to fight the enemy and leave the father at home to nurse the children. The Senator from Indiana may think that is wise, but I do not. I think it is foolish.291
But the unchanging inanity of the senators’ arguments on women’s rights was overshadowed by twenty-eight other comparisons that found an increase in sophistication over the course of the century. Ervin, by the way, was no troglodyte, but a respected senator who would soon be lionized for chairing the committee on Watergate that brought down Richard Nixon. The fact that his words sound so fatuous today, even by the low standards of senatorial speechifying, reminds us not to get too nostalgic for the political discourse of decades past.
In one arena, however, politicians really do seem to be swimming against the Flynn Effect: American presidential debates. To those who followed these debates in 2008, three words are enough to make the point: Joe the Plumber. The psychologists William Gorton and Janie Diels quantified the trend by scoring the sophistication of candidates’ language in the debates from 1960 through 2008.292 They found that the overall sophistication declined from 1992 to 2008, and the quality of remarks on economics began a free fall even earlier, in 1984. Ironically, the decrease in sophistication in presidential debates may be the product of an increase in the sophistication of political strategists. Televised debates in the waning weeks of a campaign are aimed at a sliver of undecided voters who are among the least informed and least engaged sectors of the electorate. They are apt to make their choice based on sound bites and one-liners, so the strategists advise the candidates to aim low. The level of sophistication cratered in 2000 and 2004, when Bush’s Democratic opponents matched him platitude for platitude. This exploitable vulnerability of the American political system might help explain how the country found itself in two protracted wars during an era of increasing peace.
There is a reason that I made reason the last of the better angels of our nature. Once a society has a degree of civilization in place, it is reason that offers the greatest hope for further reducing violence. The other angels have been with us for as long as we have been human, but during most of our long existence they have been unable to prevent war, slavery, despotism, institutionalized sadism, and the oppression of women. As important as they are, empathy, self-control, and the moral sense have too few degrees of freedom, and too restricted a range of application, to explain the advances of recent decades and centuries.
Empathy is a circle that may be stretched, but its elasticity is limited by kinship, friendship, similarity, and cuteness. It reaches a breaking point long before it encircles the full set of people that reason tells us should fall within our moral concern. Also, empathy is vulnerable to being dismissed as mere sentimentality. It is reason that teaches us the tricks for expanding our