Safety First?

In recent years it has become en vogue in conservative circles to mock liberals as overly sensitive wimps. In particular this has become a rallying cry deriding college campuses, after administrators or young scholars describe the need to create a safe sheltering environment for students of all backgrounds.

The specifics of the attack take a number of forms from the sarcastic: calling students precious snowflakes, offering them teddy bears for comfort, - to the blunt: Donald Trump supporters wearing t-shirts that read "F%*k Your Feelings".

Let me be the first to say I do think Political Correctness can be taken overboard sometimes. I've rolled my eyes at mission statements so filled with platitudes there hardly seems to be any content at all, and listened with mild amusement as speakers take great pains to tiptoe around using any language that might be considered even the slightest bit indelicate. But on the whole I truly believe it is a good thing, and I struggle to understand the intense feelings, ranging from ridicule to disgust, that the concept seems to inspire in large swaths of the population. 

For what is Political Correctness other than an attempt to prevent people from being ostracized, particularly ones (whether women, the handicapped, or racial, religious, or sexual minorities) who have been historically marginalized?

I would argue that society is absolutely better off when it doesn't tolerate even subtly bigoted comments. Can you still say them? Sure, even the harshest of hate speech is Constitutionally protected, but you shouldn't expect the rest of us to passively accept it or let it go unchallenged. That kind of speech does filter down and have real world impacts on others' feelings and actions, from increased suicide rates to PTSD. And the fact that what seems at worst a mild inconvenience for the speaker - stifling an impulse to say something that others might find offensive - is apparently one of the primary factors many were using to decide their vote on the leader of the free world would appear to indicate a pretty flawed list of priorities.
Take these quotes for instance:

-Democratic Minnesota Representative Collin Peterson on the concerns of the rural voters in his District (which voted overwhelmingly for Trump):

“They don’t like the government telling them what to do or telling them how to live their lives. They think [the government is] coddling people, like when people’s feelings are hurt at the colleges and they send somebody in to make them feel better. Stuff like that drives [voters here] crazy.”

-Conservative columnist Christian Schneider:

"For many Americans, voting for Donald Trump was a punk rock-style single-digit salute to the existing power structure. Ordinary citizens are tired of safe spaces and vegans."

-One of the most up-voted comments on an article about replacing Nigel Farage, one of the leaders of the Brexit movement:

"Nigel Farage has cut off the balls of the Burghers of Brussels and wrapped them in Trump gold. May the pair continue to prosper and liberate us from the tyranny of Political Correctness."

-Republican Wisconsin Representative Sean Duffy, after falsely claiming that only left-leaning Dane County was recounting ballots by hand in order to stall the Wisconsin Presidential Recount (47 out of 72 counties did):

"the PC crowd is humorless... I'll send a therapy dog to your `safe place' of choice in Madison."

Many rural or conservative critics claim that P.C. culture suppresses thought or free speech. In actuality it has done the opposite by opening up the discussion to more groups of people, and ensuring all races, religions, or any others in protected classes feel comfortable sharing their ideas and participating in society.

But let's examine a bit further the claim that Political Correctness might be infringing on citizens' freedom of thought or expression. The idea, it would seem, is that people feel they can't make "controversial" remarks that might either A. hurt someone's feelings or B. run contrary to newly established cultural norms, without being told off.

The first type of comment really just falls under the purview of what is considered common decency - which often varies by region. In Manhattan a person might have no qualms telling their neighbor on the subway that they're overweight or that they have bad breath. In the Midwest they're more likely to hold their tongue. Sometimes refraining from that kind of personal straight-forwardness is lumped into the category of Political Correctness. The merits of which approach is better can be debated elsewhere, but nothing is really holding anyone back from making overt declarations like these aside from an individual's own comfort level.

It's the second variety of comment that is more important.

The second kind of comment often comes in the form of a generalization about a group or class of people. It could be that only women should do housework, or that refugees are terrorists, or that minorities are taking advantage of hardworking residents by relying on welfare. These are the comments that supposedly make hordes of fragile undergrads muffle their ears and retreat to their safe zones.

To bring things back to college campuses: beyond simply stymieing such talk in casual conversation, the right-wing asserts that Political Correctness has resulted in more sinister effects by shutting dissenting opinions out of universities' research and coursework.

The thing is, these non-P.C. ideas rarely constitute the kind of challenges to orthodoxy universities had in mind when establishing tenure so professors could have the freedom to pursue new or unconventional theories. Why? Often simply because many are not new theories at all. They are reflections of old societal mores or oversimplified studies that, in many cases, have already been disproved.

Perhaps more dangerous than basic hurtful remarks or obsolete hypotheses, these conservative challenges demanding a platform from academia sometimes come in the form of subtle racism or sexism dressed up as scientific theories (neo-eugenics for one), that have long been debunked.

While I'd disagree, many on the right say that the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math), not the fluffy liberal arts, are the only worthwhile disciplines still being taught at colleges. But if that is your stance, at least respect the results of STEM research.

This is not to say that conservative voices have nothing to add to our post-secondary knowledge base, or that all existing theories supported by current professors, whether left-leaning or not, are beyond reproach. If any notion currently being written off as politically incorrect falls into this category, by all means it should be encouraged and thoroughly vetted, not ignored. However, if it has already been studied, peer-reviewed, field tested, and proven false, let's move on and preserve our time, energy, and tax funded research for unsolved challenges, whether medical (cancer research), social (chronic Veteran homelessness), environmental (renewable energy), technological (safer transportation), or otherwise.

And curiously none of the conservative critics seem to acknowledge the troubling 2014 attempt by a Colorado School Board to codify a revisionist history of American Exceptionalism into their public school curricula.

But this still doesn't get to the root of the problem of why so many everyday people are so upset about Political Correctness, or how to reach out to them.

I keep coming back to the quote from Rep. Peterson, one of the last remaining rural Democrats in D.C.: "They think [the government is] coddling people, like when people’s feelings are hurt at the colleges and they send somebody in to make them feel better. Stuff like that drives [voters here] crazy."

Why? Why does the concept of not hurting peoples' feelings drive them so crazy?

Even if they're correct and students are being over-protected, they don't live on college campuses, it doesn't affect them, so why is it such a hot button issue motivating them to the polls? Why not health care, or K-12 education, or workforce training, or agricultural groundwater contamination?

The best over-generalized answer I can surmise, posited elsewhere both before and after the election, is that they feel these students and professors, and the whole host of minority demographic groups many of them support, are getting too much attention, while they and their needs are being ignored.

Make no mistake, while the economy has been rebounding in U.S. cities, the basic metrics of quality of life (from poverty levels, to life expectancy, to drug usage, to educational attainment) have been worsening steadily in much of rural America for a generation. Their problems are real. Sick of waiting for "safe" incremental progress, they wanted to do something reckless, perhaps without an eye toward the vast potential long-term consequences.

The hypothetical blue collar Trump voter might declare, "who cares about gender neutrality or diversity at the Oscars when we're broke and dying." The quick answer is that they're not mutually exclusive - a solution for one doesn't have to come at the expense of the other. But it doesn't necessarily feel that way to John the Farmer.

Which brings me to my next point, many Trump backers celebrate him for "telling it like it is", but in reality what he's doing is merely telling it like it feels to them - that's an important distinction. Fact check after fact check has dispelled his more brash declarations, but his most avid fans eat them up and spread them further because it conforms to the stereotypes they already believe about urban dwellers or aliens, built up through one-sided media narratives and partial truths, but often limited first hand experience.

They know their lives are hard right now, and Trump has been happy to point them toward a variety of different scapegoats. Illegal immigrants stealing their jobs. Non-Christian refugees who sow seeds of terror. Coastal elites who get rich without ever getting their hands dirty, whether they be gaudy celebrities, or bookish bankers quick to foreclose on the family farm (the irony being of course, that's almost exactly what Trump is himself). Government bureaucrats who audit their taxes with a fine-tooth comb. Greedy executives outsourcing their factories. Minority populations that slowly grow, spreading drugs and crime in their wake, all while collecting the dole and living in public housing as they mooch off of the hard earned tax dollars of the white working class. Godless, jobless hippies and homosexuals who corrupt their children. Hipsters whining about justice for their black neighbor or playing the victim themselves, when they know nothing of real hardship.

There are real life examples of nearly every negative stereotype on that list. They are not the majority, but they exist. In some cases our hypothetical voters encounter these people, perhaps as stingy bankers, smarmy middle managers, or a family of insular immigrants, in their daily lives and form negative impressions of these individual acquaintances that can be extrapolated onto whole professions or social castes, fanned by similar selective depictions in stump speeches, right-wing media, and friends' Facebook posts. And for many of the other assorted types of boogeyman listed above, they may have little to no personal contact at all.

It's not wrong to have gut feelings like this; it's easy to form negative opinions when you don't have any Muslim teammates, friends with Master's degrees, nieces attending Vassar, or co-workers who grew up in inner-city poverty. But it is wrong to let them sit untested, whether they're expressed in our own minds or from the mouths or keyboards of those we interact with. With such a small sample size our perceptions have a tendency to globalize and simplify things, but that's a slippery slope, and it's a tendency we need to fight for risk of judging, and ultimately treating, others unfairly. Our individual experiences are not universal.

In this case, Political Correctness is simply a way of saying, "let's not get carried away and lump all these people together." A number of those listed stereotypes are also representative of real issues that could be the focus of government policy debates. But starting off with such uncompromising assumptions is not solid grounding for a productive discussion.

And of course this is a two way street, all the city dwellers who flip the script and say that none of those people or problems exist, or that most Trump supporters are racist, is just as wrong. Many urbanites don't have close-knit relationships with rural residents either and are susceptible to pigeonholing them. I'm generalizing too in writing this essay; if I had more rural friends I wouldn't need to engage in so much guess-work, I could just ask them about their beliefs. I'm implicitly alienating a segment of the populace every time I use the word "they".

But it is, by and large, voices on the right who continue to vigorously attack any attempt to correct such broad sweeping claims as an assault on freedom of thought, often retorting that if people don't like what they're saying they should, once more, retreat to their liberal safe spaces.

Which is why I found a recent article from the Minnesota Daily all the more interesting. It focuses on the idea, mentioned previously, that conservatives feel their points of view are being crowded out on college campuses - specifically the University of Minnesota in this instance.

What I found most noteworthy was the language one of the young Republicans used to describe the situation:

"Mason Nuss, president of Students for a Conservative Voice and editor-in-chief of The Minnesota Republic, a senior, said his group provides an outlet for students to come and talk about their views with other like-minded individuals. These meetings, he said, come as a welcome respite for him and the others who attend.

'The people agree with you, or at least aren’t going to crucify you for your opinions,' he said. 'Frankly, it’s kind of relieving, it’s kind of nice.'"  

That sounds an awful lot to me like an endorsement for a conservative safe space.

Would Nuss' presumed allies on the right mock and jeer at his desire for a sanctuary as they've done for years to those on the left? Would they call him a wimp or a pansy? After all, one of the other students quoted said that continuously being confronted by liberal perspectives on campus had only strengthened his beliefs.

Or perhaps it's more fair to simply conclude that having a place on campus where one feels supported doesn't automatically constitute a nanny-state.

To be clear, I do think the article touches on a good point. No one should shout down someone for trying to speak their beliefs without giving them a chance to talk. That is indeed stifling free speech and risks building a stagnant bubble of ideas which all universities should discourage. And while that certainly does happen to conservatives on occasion on campuses, most of the stories shared in the article described discussions that became heated, meaning an exchange of ideas did occur, but viewpoints differed and tensions rose - which, while not especially constructive, is unfortunately par for the course in the bulk of contemporary political debates.

Other students quoted said they essentially censored themselves because they were too timid to argue. And while I'd suggest the school would do well to try and bring some of those timid voices to the surface, the same way colleges worked so hard in the past to encourage participation form previously silenced historically disenfranchised demographic groups, it's hardly as if this is some liberal conspiracy; it's merely human nature to be coy about your beliefs when you're in the minority. And as mentioned previously, some of the time the issues they're trying to raise aren't so much philosophical differences as previously settled facts (i.e. evolution).

As I type this I can already feel some future readers, in an attempt to discredit my last paragraph, queuing up a list of links to instances where right-wing students or speakers have been pilloried on post-secondary campuses. To which I pre-rebuttal: Yes, I'm aware that there are literally thousands of liberals who have acted terribly or otherwise not given conservatives a fair shake, but these incidents are not representative of every or even most progressive students or faculty members at every college in the country. Don't pretend that they are. As we've gone over earlier, it's easy to broadly typecast people based on anecdotes, but it's not an accurate reflection of the incredibly varied patchwork of people that nominally meet their criteria.

Take this post for instance, from a conservative site called The Federalist Papers: http://thefederalistpapers.org/us/what-liberals-are-teaching-our-kids-in-college-speaks-volumes-right-now

It takes the example of a single "healing circle" for students held at San Diego State University in the wake of the Presidential election, and quickly comes to a number of flawed and far-reaching "conclusions". The author is absolutely incredulous that students could be so upset about Trump's win, and mocks them to no end for it, hardly able to harness his or her contempt. And yet, they never once think to ask the students why they're distraught, convinced immediately that it can only be because "they didn't get their way". It couldn't possibly be because they are themselves afraid or personally know any Muslims afraid of a candidate who has toyed with creating a registry of Islamic citizens, because they fear their undocumented relatives or friends might be deported, or because they're concerned a candidate who bragged about grabbing women's genitalia might embolden a rise in assaults by like-minded men.

Can you imagine the uproar that would ensue if the federal government tried to create a registry of Christians or, heaven forbid, a database of gun owners? And yet many of these same big-government loathing citizens ridicule and scoff at Muslim-Americans and their allies for being concerned.

Further, this single healing circle, attended by a handful of students at one institution, is quickly used to paint millennial college students in general as, "annoying", "privileged and entitled", "offensive", and states in summary that, "they take for granted their privileged place in the world and complain over absolutely nothing." It also sarcastically calls them (emphasis theirs), "unique", "snowflakes", "special", "fragile", "snowflakes". All in the space of under 250 original words. They know their buzz-words, I'll give him that.

And while both sides engage in the practice to varying degrees, I find this sort of generalizing rather contradictory when espoused from conservative critics. The right-wing purports to value individualism and rails against collectivism. I've even seen it argued by a conservative Newsweek columnist that liberals only really want high-speed rail not because they're concerned about the environment, or find it more convenient, but because it's a more communal form of transportation relative to private cars. Liberals and communists, the argument goes, want to wipe away our identities and form them into one singular image.

All of which flies directly in the face of the frequent conservative criticism, sarcastically flung at undergraduates, that they're "unique little snowflakes". The real message being: you're not as special as you think.

First of all, everyone is unique - I thought the right thought that was a good thing, but now many jeer at those who celebrate that diversity. So which is it? Are college students socialists who practice homogeneous group-thought, or are they all individuals over-obsessed with their uniqueness? And why do so many supposed champions of personal freedom on the right call for total cultural assimilation by outsiders? For the record, the goal isn't that everyone is supposed to think the same way, it's that everyone is granted, within reason, the same opportunity to succeed if they seize it.

Second, to return to our core theme, as with the overall concept of Political Correctness I've been trying to understand where this intense disdain among rural voters for the idea of "safe spaces" springs from.

I get that it's tied to an exaggerated notion of college kids being spoiled and naive, and further that all of this is linked to a broader legitimate argument about personal vs. shared responsibility and government's role in that, but I suppose I still simply don't understand why the concept of a safe space elicits such strong reactions.

What is so offensive about the idea of college campuses, or urban centers more broadly, providing a few places of mental or physical refuge for their inhabitants, especially when space and privacy are scarce there?

If city-dwellers want to create that kind of community for themselves, why does it matter so much to rural residents? Is it such a joke to try and build a person's self-confidence and provide them with a support system? Not everyone has a family they can fall back on.

And it's not as if college is one giant ego massage. The stakes are real, hard work is imperative, and frat parties are hardly judgement free zones.

The formation of the safe space as a symbol of everything wrong with City life and the liberal mentality, seems to be another attempt by right-wing media to blow something far out of proportion and stoke class resentment by driving a wedge between rural/urban and blue-collar/white-collar voters.

Weak effete urbanites convinced of their own importance have thus become one of the primary symptoms of how cushy life must be in the city, and those in the country take some hollow satisfaction in verbally abusing this caricature.

To be sure, there are some on campus who take the concept too far. Some dramatize things unnecessarily, taking offense or playing the victim far too quickly, if not outright lying, which does a huge disservice to the legions of real victims by giving ammunition to the doubters, hurting their credibility by crying wolf. Perhaps the most notorious example is Melissa Click, the University of Missouri professor who tried to forcibly remove a student reporter attempting to document the campus' racial injustice protestors and separately cussed out a cop who tried to peacefully clear their protest out of the street. All this occurred just as the protestors appeared to be gaining traction for their valid concerns via the resignation of the University President and Chancellor, following a sequence of racist incidents targeted towards black students.

Yet again, these are the exceptions not the rule, but their example is played on loop to an eager right-wing audience, primed to reinforce their image of the students, academics, and professionals who populate our metro areas as pampered dandies. This construct took an unexpected twist when Mike Pence attended a performance of Hamilton on Broadway, and the cast asked him to listen to a brief conciliatory statement they had prepared after the curtain. In response to this supposedly outrageous behavior (and despite Pence's stated indifference), Donald Trump, seemingly unaware of the irony, demanded the cast apologize and declared that the theater should be a "safe and special place".

But what is a safe space? What are these things that breed such ire among rural Americans?

Many are literally physical locations, whether a person's own home, a neighborhood center, the school counselor's office, a church, a domestic violence shelter, or even an entire campus that has enacted anti-discrimination or sexual harassment policies.

Others versions consist of networks of people and resources. Often as basic as a having family or friends to lean on, it can also include after school programs, hotlines, advocacy or survivors groups, or even political clubs such as the conservative student groups at the University of Minnesota.

To those who make fun of the concept, I realize you may not have or use any of these organizations, but are these people and places truly worthy of such taunting? How did we move from light-hearted satire to sneering and scorn?

To many a right-wing voter, safety itself has practically become a four letter word. Its mockery has become an applause line. The mere mention of trigger warnings now ironically triggers venom and derision.

When did compassion, forgiveness, or even compromise become signs of weakness? Isn't lending a hand or words of comfort in a time of need supposed to be a revered small-town value? But no, for many Americans it has been replaced by "F%*k Your Feelings".

If you're purely attacking the idea that they're always looking for a crutch, can you honestly say you've never needed assistance? If it was strictly a question of government run safety nets, I'd understand the terms of the argument a bit better, but the attacks are usually not targeted towards federal entitlement programs but toward shelter in general.

Further, I would ask to those doing the criticizing, do you truly feel able to pass judgement on those whom these safe spaces are most intended for? Did you grow up as a minority in the projects? Were you bullied because of your sexual orientation? Have you never in your life confided in a friend or found solace in a community during a difficult time? If so, congratulations on your self-sufficiency; you are few and far between and I hope your struggles haven't hardened you too much to see that.

One gets the impression they liked Ebenezer Scrooge a lot better as a miserly shut-in than a generous philanthropist. The world doesn't have to be that cruel, we are given some latitude to push back and shape it.

It's important to point out that, on the whole, conservatives give more to charity than liberals, and they should be commended for it. Many harbor no hardness in their hearts for the needy, and a large portion are equally compassionate towards the rest of the nation as well. This essay isn't directed to them.

This message is for those who seem so willing to help the homeless, but carry this dissonance that allows them to simultaneously lambaste others in need of other forms of emotional or material support. Or to those who view any kind of charity as a nothing more than a drain on the market. There seems to be a groundswell embracing this latest iteration of social Darwinism.

Receiving help sporadically, no matter the form, is nothing to be ashamed of. No one worthwhile will think less of you and there's no reason to think less of yourself; in fact pride is a sin if I'm not mistaken.

Yes, the world is harsh, and there is validity to the concern that sheltering people from it will only make them less able to deal with it when they need to face it for themselves. But for many, college may be the first time they are able to find a moment of reprieve from its cold realities. And regardless, if someone spends their entire life enduring excessive disparagement, it makes it a lot tougher to develop a sense of self-esteem or firm footing to stand on and fight back from. What better time than college to provide this haven where self-discovery and growth can occur? Where else better to plant the seeds that may eventually lead a pupil to technological or cultural innovation benefiting us all?

The key is striking a balance between the two. Some adversity is required to build the resiliency necessary to tackle life's challenges, whether social or scholastic, but we don't need to make it so hard that the budding researcher spends all his or her time trying to cope with personal trauma rather than finding a cure to cancer. Or put another way: a man can't learn to fish if he's too hungry to focus.

And while not every college attendee grew up in distress, if in the process of providing a nurturing environment these supposedly coddled graduates bring a little more empathy with them that rubs off on the cutthroat society they encounter afterward, that doesn't sound like such a bad thing either.

I know this is only a small piece of the puzzle, and that most people didn't vote primarily just to stick it to another group of citizens or to reject a philosophy those other citizens purportedly emblemize, but the possibility that any significant number of people did vote for that reason makes this an issue worth addressing.

While those who know better and still fan the flames of overblown stereotypes out of laziness or self-interest are partly to blame, we can't be complacent, we need to actively resist the urge to buy in and indulge the simplicity of those claims, because reality is almost always more nuanced.

If you think this is much ado about nothing, and that people who get upset when others generalize should simply "not take everything so literally", I'd only ask, the next time someone calls you out on such a statement, place some demographic group you are a part of in the statement and think about whether or not it would tick you off if someone said that about you. Liberals, do you like it when someone says all of you are freeloaders? Conservatives, do you like it when someone says all of you are racist? I've seen multiple people say they voted for Trump because they were sick of being categorized unfairly as racist, and yet many of those same people complain that liberals shouldn't take the broad-sided insults hurled at the left-wing seriously, it's rather a double standard.

If you disagree with the over-generalizations and miscast blame you see and choose to debate those proliferating it - heed some simple advice: be better. Don't insult the speaker or get off topic, don't exaggerate, don't condescend, don't even use ALL CAPs or exclamation points unless necessary. Even if your opponent insults you, ignores, twists, or fabricates facts, or remains obstinate, don't sink to their level. If you insult someone they're only likely to double down because now it has become personal and they're emotionally invested. Some people may never change their minds, but some can. It can be slow and arduous, you may not convince them in one comment battle, but it can be done. And remember, silent moderates may be reading your comments as well and forming opinions. As we've just gone over, many people you may disagree with probably don't know people like you, and they may well form generalizations about others of your political persuasion based on their interactions with you. The 'other side' may do it more, and it may not be fair, but it's human nature. Set a good example. Be the tolerant understanding person they mock.

It feels good to call people stupid when something seems so obvious to you - and maybe it's even true, and it's exasperating when they don't buy your fact based arguments, but the absence of knowledge is no crime, and you're rarely going to win many converts by calling people names. Much of the time they simply know not what they do. So don't scratch that itch, if you do, you're no better than those who harp about Political Correctness because it prevents them from making vulgar remarks. Democrats love repeating Michelle Obama's famous line, "When they go low, we go high", but many rarely seem to follow their own party's advice when sparring with Republicans.

That said, scientific or social progress should not be ceded merely in the name of providing a balanced perspective. While their expression is secured by the First Amendment, discredited fringe theories cannot be granted a false equivalency, or even the trappings of legitimacy, in the name of toleration. Ignorance isn't a viewpoint - it's a lack of one.

A number of conservatives have attempted to set up a Catch-22 here. They call liberals hypocritical for billing themselves as tolerant because liberals won't abide the intolerance expressed by some members of the anti-P.C. crowd. Or they try to equate mainstream credentialed news-media who occasionally fail to vet sources or slant their presentation, with websites whose entire existence is based upon fabricating stories out of thin air.

The primary goal of Political Correctness has been to break the hegemony of people in the United States recognizing one default religion, family structure, or race. In effect, sure, it feels a bit silly to either exhaustively list every holiday and religion or to celebrate around a non-denominational "Holiday wreath" at work, but is that really tyranny? That feels like an extreme reaction. And there's little doubting some of the push-back is simply bound up with an annoyance some folks have with restraining their base impulses or traditional slurs, and being reprimanded by people who "can't take a joke", further exacerbated by class differences.

But liberals, if someone forgets to name-check your demographic group don't bite their heads off; gently tell the person you feel left out, don't publicly shame them if there was no ill intent. Extremism from both ends of the spectrum is best consumed with a shaker of salt.

And let me state as a millennial who has never been especially competitive, and who believes in reasonable safety-nets and the merits of building an inclusive society: I have always hated participation trophies. Even if some of us advocate for support-systems, that doesn't make us commies, the large majority still believe in the concept of requiring hard work to achieve success, otherwise it's meaningless and undeserved, and competition surely helps drive innovation. But that doesn't mean the playing field couldn't use some flattening, or that those that lose out should be permanently cast aside.

If we cooperate, rather than drawing lines, fighting one another ("they're taking our jobs!"), and treating the world as a finite resource of table scraps, we'll all be better off. That's not some Marxist fantasy, that's the reality borne out by free-market economic statistics, regional clusters, and the advent of "Conscious Capitalism."