Make sure you read into the comments. Brandon Eich who is mentioned in the post has a few comments. I also liked another comment about Red Tribe being focused on inter-group conflict and Blue Tribe focused on intra-group conflict.

It looks like more commenters here didn't read all the way to the end of the article.

I did.

Why don't you tell us what we missed instead of dropping an insult and running?

Since the Blue Tribe doesn't oppose those who actually threaten their lives and would carry out those threats given the chance (like terrorists and countries that claim they want to over throw America and kill all Americans), they would not have the ability to survive without the Red Tribe, which protects, aids, and abets the Blue Tribe.

Interesting post. I agree with what's been said below about the Red tribe actually being distributed among the Blue tribe, but keeping their heads down for fear of being outed and subjected to the 3 minute hate. One of the reasons why we all loved Andrew Breitbart.

"Once again, discrimination on the basis of party was much stronger than discrimination on the basis of race. The size of the race effect for white people was only 56-44 (and in the reverse of the expected direction); the size of the party effect was about 80-20 for Democrats and 69-31 for Republicans."

There's another story buried in that bit.

Assuming that he wasn't engaging in some flavor of parody, I did find it amusing that he couldn't figure out why there were no conservatives in his extended social circles.

Let me clue him in -- he is surrounded by conservatives even at Harvard -- especially at Harvard -- they just won't sign their own metaphorical death warrants because someone expressed curiosity about their beliefs.

On Monty Python, no one expected the Spanish Inquisition, but in real life conservatives are always expecting the Social Justice Warriors (great label btw Prof.). The last thing that any of us want is to be subjected to the never ending abuse that comes from being "outed" in front of a true-believing SJWs.

Hell, its why I even use initials on this website... some SJW might see and grief me in some other forum.

Thus, you get people only tentatively putting their little toe in the water and hyper qualifying any thought crime with phrases like "I completely support gay marriage, but I heard a conservative say once that it was wrong because of X, Y and Z -- we all took turns kicking him afterwards though so don't blame me because you asked...."

I've got the feeling that this article is going to get a lot of TL;DNRs.
Or maybe TFL;DNRs.

The article was a total self parody. It could have been on The Onion except for its length v

Well, the Chesterton bit was interesting but the rest up to "Red Tribe" was boring and forever-taking (though from his writing he seemed to think it was necessary to state) so I skipped to the last three paragraphs. I probably missed the best bits.

The worst thing that could happen to this post is to have it be used as convenient feces to fling at the Blue Tribe whenever feces are necessary. Which, given what has happened to my last couple of posts along these lines and the obvious biases of my own subconscious, I already expect it will be.

You worry too much.

But the best thing that could happen to this post is that it makes a lot of people, especially myself, figure out how to be more tolerant. Not in the “of course I’m tolerant, why shouldn’t I be?” sense of the Emperor in Part I. But in the sense of “being tolerant makes me see red, makes me sweat blood, but darn it I am going to be tolerant anyway.”

Sweating blood. Interesting turn of phrase but tolerance wasn't what was going on in the Garden of Gethsemane so I'm not sure that is the most appropriate turn of phrase. In any case, it's a nice idea his blog post will be used to generate tolerance but people with children have to do this all the time. I don't see what's with all the drama.

the rest up to "Red Tribe" was boring and forever-taking (though from his writing he seemed to think it was necessary to state) so I skipped to the last three paragraphs. I probably missed the best bits.

You missed him walking his readership through ideas that our side has always known.

Man, if I had $1,000 for every time a lefty told me, 'You seem like an intelligent guy, how come you're so conservative?', I'd be over at the Bentley dealership picking out upholstery.

They really seem to think their political views represent superior intelligence. Anyone know a reliable psychologist that could explain why this is so, in easy, small words?

One of the defining traits of humanity is that people like to think they're special. However, people define their specialness in different ways. Many people define their specialness by their blood. In fact, this is the key attraction of nationalism - you get to feel special without having to do anything. Just by virtue of your blood, you are part of a group that has achieved great things and you get to bask in the glory of the group.

In this regard, think of the Germans in the 30s and the early 40s. If you were a German during that time, you got to feel extra-special because you were part of a master race that was set to dominate the world. On a side note, I believe this need for specialness explains why various ethnic groups that might not have anything else in common, invariably have Jew-hatred in common. This is because you can't really consider your ethnic group special as long as the Jews are alive. If you are a German, or a Russian or an Arab, it is laughable to compare the accomplishments of your ethnic group to those of the Jews - whose culture has existed for 5,000 years. On an even further side note, I'm convinced this is why the Nazis tried to tie their history to the Aryans and on back even to Atlantis so that their history could stretch back at least as far as that of the Jews.

But getting back to liberals. Liberals define their specialness by their superior intelligence. And the proof of their intelligence is their adherence to their left/liberal belief system. So to a liberal, when you are arguing against their beliefs, what they are interpreting that as is that you are telling them that they are stupid. There is no middle ground. Either they are smart and you are stupid - or the unthinkable is true and you are smart and they are stupid. Hence, the uncontrollable rage at dissent and the need to do anything to prevent dissent from occurring. Because if the dissidents turn out to be correct, then liberals may not be either as smart or as special as they think they are.

A quick follow up on the difference between liberals and conservatives. Liberals believe they are special because they are really smart - which you have to be in order to believe in liberalism.

Conservatives on the other hand believe everyone is special. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, there are no ordinary people because we all immortal souls. And there is nothing more special than that.

This knowledge that everyone is unique beyond compare is a liberating belief. It liberates conservatives from the need to prove that they are more special than other people. It also allows conservatives to be unaffected by perhaps the greatest evil, which is envy. This is why conservatives are generally live-and-let-live types - because they are at peace with who they are and what they believe and the eternal nature of both.

Most of what you need to know about the Blue Tribe is found in the first pages of Dr. Seuss's "The Sneeches":

"The Star-Bellied Sneeches had bellies with stars,
But the Plain-Bellied Sneeches had none upon thars…"

Every time someone hits the fainting couch in a spasm of "being offended," they're really lifting their shirts and flashing the star on their bellies.

Liberalism is a faith. But its followers don't realize its a faith. The result is to be completely baffled that others don't believe the same thing they do.

And we have those same people absolutely ripping into their in-groups – straight, white, male, hetero, cis, American, whatever – talking day in and day out to anyone who will listen about how terrible their in-group is

The people doing that "ripping" do not regard straight, white, male, hetero, cis, Americans as their in-group, but as an out-group to themselves.

This is very similar to the tired liberal trope about how "conservatives prize loyalty and obedience to the state", unlike liberals who are allegedly a bunch of fearless free-thinkers. In fact conservatives are loyal to one thing (America) and liberals are loyal to something else, their own little ethnic in-groups - blacks to blacks, Jews to Jews, Hispanics to Hispanics, feminists to feminists, etc. In fact he goes on to discuss Jewish tribalism later in his article.