conversableeconomist

Does the Fed Have Ammunition to Fight the Next Recession?

Ben S. Bernanke delivered his Presidential Address to the American Economic Association last weekend on the topic, \”The New Tools of Monetary Policy\” (January 4, 2020, here\’s a weblink to watch the lecture, and here\’s a written-out version of the paper on which the lecture was based). To set the stage, he started the talk with a figure similar to this one showing the \”federal funds\” interest rate–the key interest rate on which Fed policy focuses.

The shaded areas in the figure refer to recessions. As you\’ll see, in each recession since 1980 the Fed took actions to reduce the federal funds interest rate by about 5-6 percentage points as a way of stimulating the economy. Although the federal funds interest rate has risen a bit in the last few years, it now sits in the range of 2-2.25%. For some years now, there have been arguments that substantial rises in the global supply of financial capital (sometimes called the \”savings glut\”) has permanently reduce interest rates to these lower levels. Whatever one\’s views on these underlying arguments, it seems unlikely that  the federal funds seem likely to rise much or at all in the near future, and certainly not to climb back up to the range of 5-6% or more. Thus, when (not if) the next recession arrives, the Fed will be unable to reduce the federal funds interest rate by 5-6 percentage points. So what can it do?

Bernanke makes a case that the Fed will be able to compensate with a combination of two nontraditional monetary policies: quantitative easing and forward guidance. \”Quantitative easing\” is also commonly called \”large-scale asset purchases.\” For example, the Fed purchased US government bonds and also mortgage-backed securities from banks. From 2009-2014, Bernanke reports: \”Total net asset purchases by that point were about $3.8 trillion, approximately 22 percent of 2014 GDP.\” Banks hold reserves at the Fed, and so the Fed paid for these purchases by crediting the banks with a correspondingly higher level of reserves–which the banks could then lend out if they wished. 

\”Forward guidance\” refers to an announcement that the central bank intends to continue a certain policy into the future. For example, consider the situation circa 2010, when the federal funds interest rate had already fallen to near-zero and large-scale asset purchases were underway. Financial markets are always looking to the future, and so a natural concern would be whether these policies were likely to be reversed. When a central bank promises that certain policies will be sustained for a certain amount of time, or until certain economic objectives are achieved, it should dramatically reduce any concerns over a near-term policy reversal.

Bernanke argues that in a US context, the combination of large-scale asset purchases and forward guidance can have an economic effect similar to cutting the federal funds rate by about 3 percentage points. Thus, when (not if) the next recession hits, a combination of these tools and cutting the federal funds rate back to a near-zero rate should provide a sufficient stimulus–but just barely.

However, estimating the effect of policies like quantitative easing and forward guidance is an inexact science. As Bernanke writes: \”[T]he uncertainty surrounding the reported estimates is high. Reasonable people can disagree about the precise effects of asset purchases on financial conditions, the credibility of forward guidance, or the effects of changes in financial conditions on growth and inflation.\”

Kenneth Kuttner reviewed the US evidence in the Fall 2018 issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, and argued that the Fed\’s previous round of quantitative easing had a similar effect to reducing interest rates by 1.5% (\”Outside the Box: Unconventional Monetary Policy in the Great Recession and Beyond,\” 32:4, 121-46). But when the Federal Reserve started using such policies starting in 2008, no one could be sure how they would work or how long they would last.  If such policies were implemented again, one can make a case that their effects would be greater (because the policies would be better-coordinated and understood) or smaller (because they would no longer have the shock value of being new and different).

What if the Fed were to find that quantitative easing and forward guidance were not enough to boost the US economy in a recession? There are basically three other sets of options that Bernanke mentions.

First, central banks in other countries have experimented with other types of monetary policy tools.
For example, central banks in other countries didn\’t just purchase government debt and government-backed debt (like US mortgage backed securities), but also in some cases bought corporate debt, commercial paper, corporate stocks, and shares in real estate investment trusts. But Bernanke notes:
\”Other than GSE-backed mortgages, the Fed does not have the authority to buy private assets, except under limited emergency conditions, and—in light of the political risks and philosophical objections by some FOMC participants—seems unlikely to request the authority.\”

The Bank of England and the European Central Bank have in some cases offered direct loans to the private sector, rather than working though banks. Bernanke reports that the Fed considered this option, but decided that in the context of the US economy, borrowers had reasonable access to credit through bank loans and corporate bond markets, and so the Fed did not go down this road. But he adds: \” Still, one can imagine circumstances—for example, if constraints on bank lending are interfering with the transmission of monetary policy—in which this option might resurface in the United States.\”

A number of other countries have pushed their policy interest rate into negative territory. Bernanke comments: \”Federal Reserve officials believe that they have the authority to impose negative short-term rates (by charging a fee on bank reserves) but have shown little appetite for negative rates

thus far because of the practical limits on how negative rates can go and because of possible financial side effects. That said, categorically ruling out negative rates is probably unwise, as future situations in which the extra policy space provided by negative rates could be useful are certainly possible.\” In addition, other countries have pushed the policy  interest rate into slightly negative territory, but by much less than 1 percent.

A second broad option is that the central bank could aim for a substantially higher rate of inflation. Instead of the Fed\’s current target of 2% inflation, it could instead announce a target of, say, 5-6% annual inflation. A higher inflation rate would increase nominal interest rates (for example, in the figure above, high inflation rates explain why nominal interest rates were so  high circa 1980). Then it would again become possible for the Fed to cut the nominal interest rate by 5-6 percentage points: real interest rates would be negative, but not nominal interest rates. However, as Bernanke points out, a policy of raising the annual inflation rate to 5-6% has costs and risks, too. After 25 years or so of lower inflation rates, it would be a large and costly adjustment to move to higher inflation, and there\’s no guarantee that once such a large shift started, inflation would zoom straight to the desired level and remain there.

Thus, Bernanke suggests that to address concerns about whether monetary policy will have enough ammunition to address the next recession, a reasonable step would be to rely more on fiscal policy. In particular, budget rules could be written so that when unemployment (or some other signal of recession) rises by a certain amount, it triggers an automatic and immediate payment to US citizens–a payment that could be repeated a year later if still needed. Such immediate payments could then complement monetary policy in warding off the worst effects when (not if) the next recession arrives. For a discussion of such policies, see \”Strengthening Automatic Stabilizers\” (May 21, 2019).  

For those interested in the experience of other countries in using unconventional monetary policy tools (including negative interest rates and direct central bank loans as well as large-scale asset purchases), here are a couple of useful overviews. 
conversableeconomist

Abhijit Banerjee on Coaching the Poor

Tyler Cowen has conducted one of his thought-provoking and entertaining interviews in \”Abhijit Banerjee on Theory, Practice, and India\” (Medium.com, December 30, 2019, both podcast and transcript available). Among his other accomplishments, Banerjee was of course most recently a co-winner of the Nobel prize in economics last fall. The interview is worth consuming in full. As it says in the overview:

Abhijit joined Tyler to discuss his unique approach to economics, including thoughts on premature deindustrialization, the intrinsic weakness of any charter city, where the best classical Indian music is being made today, why he prefers making Indian sweets to French sweets, the influence of English intellectual life in India, the history behind Bengali leftism, the best Indian regional cuisine, why experimental economics is underrated, the reforms he’d make to traditional graduate economics training, how his mother’s passion inspires his research, how many consumer loyalty programs he’s joined, and more. 

Here, I\’ll just reproduce one exchange on the subject of how a combination of cash transfers to the poor combined with coaching and training has had high returns in low-income countries.

COWEN: You have a 2015 Science paper with Esther [Duflo], Dean Karlan, some other coauthors about how cash transfers to the poor, combined with training and coaching, have very high rates of return, over 100 percent, up to 433 percent. What exactly do you think the coaching is adding in those RCTs [randomized control trials]?

BANERJEE: … [W]e’ve actually done it without the coaching … in Ghana, and it doesn’t work. So we are reasonably confident that the coaching is doing something interesting. I wouldn’t say it does it necessarily for everybody, but the people targeted in this are the poorest of the poor. They’re among the poor.

And for them, I think confidence is an enormous issue because they’ve never actually done anything in their life successfully. They’ve been living hand to mouth, usually begging from people, getting some help. What that does to your self-confidence, your sense of who you are — I think those things, we haven’t even documented how brutal it is. People will treat you with a little bit of contempt. They might help you, but they treat you with a little bit of contempt as well. 

This is the kind of people — at least the one that I was a big part of studying was the one in India and also one in Ghana. Especially the one in Bengal. These women — they were living in places where nobody should live. One said, “Oh, we get snakes all the time.” Another one said, “I’m now vending knickknacks in the village,” basically kind of cheap jewelry, that cheap stone jewelry or plastic jewelry.  “Before the people from this NGO showed me where the market was to buy wholesale, I had never taken a bus, so I had no idea how to go there. They had to literally put me on a bus, show me where to get off. And it took a couple of times because I had never taken a bus. I couldn’t read, so if it’s a number X bus number, I don’t know what X is, so how would I know I’m getting on the right bus?”

All of these things are new. If you start from a place where you really never had a chance, I think it’s useful to have some confidence building. You can do it too. There’s nothing difficult about it.

COWEN: Do you think the coaching almost serves as a kind of placebo? You don’t have to teach them so much, but just show that someone else has confidence in them?

BANERJEE: That’s an interesting question. I think it’s a bit more than that. It’s also saying, “You can do it, and here are the steps.” Turning things into a set of processes is important. Otherwise, it looks like an unlikely proposition that I can do it. I’ve never done it. I’ve never bought and sold things. In fact, I’ve never sold anything, and how do I do it?

It’s a bit more than that. Turning things into process is important also, that here is how you get on a bus. You go there, you pay this much money, they give you something, you bring it back. One of the things they are doing is also turning it into a set of procedural steps, which is very different from saying, “Go do that.”

COWEN: How scalable do you think the coaching is?

BANERJEE: Scalable? I don’t think it’s difficult. One thing this organization does well is it teaches people to be quite sympathetic. The one we worked with in Bengal, the one I know well, the people we worked with were basically able to be sympathetic. …
Lots of people work for NGOs, after all. And they are often people who want to do things for the world, who are positive people, so I don’t imagine it being that difficult. It will require investment in training a particular kind of person, but I don’t know that it’s any different from training somebody for collecting money in a microfinance organization. It’s the same level of skill, the same kind of person, same set of places we did this people will come out of.

COWEN: This seemed to work in six countries: Ethiopia, Ghana, Honduras, India, Pakistan, Peru, as you well know. Why isn’t the whole world doing this?

BANERJEE: I think lots of people are. Somebody told me 43 different countries — they’re experimenting with it. I think this is the next stage, where we’re a bit proselytizers for this, and we get called in.

But actually, the story is kind of doing the rounds of the governments. Many state governments in India now want to just do it, and that’s my exposure. In fact, today we were a part of a long email exchange on exactly how it should be done in the state of Orissa in the east of India that wants to do it. I think it’s having some traction.

The idea that poor people can develop a greater ability to change their lives by being shown each step in a process of  how to get somewhere, how to apply for a job, and how to do a job seems important to me. It\’s interesting to speculate on what such coaching might look like in the US and other high-income countries. Also, you don\’t have to have outside trainers coach everyone: if the process works, then peer groups can  readily pass it along. 

 
conversableeconomist

What The Young Adults of 1920 Thought of the World They Were Inheriting

A century ago, John F. Carter wrote an essay about “These Wild Young People’ by One of Them,” in the Atlantic Monthly (September 1920,  pp. 301-304, an excerpt is here, although as far as I know the entire essay isn\’t freely available online). It offers a useful reminder that complaints from young adults about the terrible world they are inheriting, so much worse than any previous generation ever inherited, are nothing new. Enjoy the 100 year-old version of the classic young-to-old intergenerational rant:

For some months past the pages of our more conservative magazines have been crowded with pessimistic descriptions of the younger generation, as seen by their elders and, no doubt, their betters. Hardly a week goes by that I do not read some indignant treatise depicting our extravagance, the corruption of our manners, the futility of our existence, poured out in stiff, scared, shocked sentences before a sympathetic and horrified audience of fathers, mothers, and maiden aunts – but particularly maiden aunts. …

I would like to say a few things about my generation.

In the first place, I would like to observe that the older generation had certainly pretty well ruined this world before passing it on to us. They give us this Thing, knocked to pieces, leaky, red-hot, threatening to blow up; and then they are surprised that we don\’t
accept it with the same attitude of pretty, decorous enthusiasm with which they received it, \’way back in the eighteen-nineties, nicely painted, smoothly running, practically fool-proof. \’So simple that a child can run it!\’ But the child could n\’t steer it. He hit every
possible telegraph-pole, some of them twice, and ended with a head-on collision for which we shall have to pay the fines and damages. Now, with loving pride, they turn over their wreck to us; and, since we are not properly overwhelmed with loving gratitude, shake their heads and sigh, \’Dear! dear! We were so much better-mannered than these wild young people. But then we had the advantages of a good, strict,
old-fashioned bringing-up!\’ How intensely human these oldsters are, after all, and how fallible I How they always blame us for not following precisely in their eminently correct footsteps! 

Then again there is the matter of outlook.. When these sentimental old world-wreckers were young, the world was such a different place … Life for them was bright and pleasant. Like all normal youngsters, they had their little tin-pot ideals, their sweet little visions, their naive enthusiasms, their nice little sets of beliefs. Christianity had
emerged from the blow dealt by Darwin, emerged rather in the shape of social
dogma. Man was a noble and perfectible creature. Women were angels (whom they smugly sweated in their industries and prostituted in their slums). Right was downing might. The nobility and the divine mission of the race were factors that led our fathers to work wholeheartedly for a millennium, which they caught a glimpse of just around the
turn of the century. Why, there were Hague Tribunals! International peace was at last assured, and according to current reports, never officially denied, the American delegates held\’ out for the use of poison gas in warfare~ just as the men of that generation were later to ruin Wilson\’s great ideal of a league of nations, on the ground that such a
scheme was an invasion of American rights. But still, everything, masked by
ingrained hypocrisy and prudishness, seemed simple, beautiful, inevitable.

Now my generation is disillusionized, and, I think, to a certain extent, brutalized, by the cataclysm which their complacent folly engendered. The acceleration of life for us has been so great that into the last few years have been crowded the experiences and the
ideas of a normal lifetime. We have in our unregenerate youth learned the practicality and the cynicism that is safe only in unregenerate old age. We have been forced to become realists overnight, instead of idealists, as was our birthright. We have seen man at his lowest, woman at her lightest, in the terrible moral chaos of Europe. We
have been forced to question, and in many cases to discard, the religion of our fathers. We have seen hideous peculation, greed, anger, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness, unmasked and rampant and unashamed. We have been forced to live in an atmosphere of
\’to-morrow we die,\’ and so, naturally, we drank and were merry. We have seen the rottenness and shortcomings of all governments, even .the best and most stable. We have seen entire social systems overthrown, and our own called in question. In short, we have seen the inherent beastliness of the human race revealed in an infernal apocalypse.

It is the older generation who forced us to see all this … We are faced with staggering problems and are forced to solve them, while the previous incumbents are permitted a graceful and untroubled death. … A keen interest in political and social problems, and a determination to face the facts of life, ugly or beautiful, characterizes us, as it certainly did not characterize our fathers. We won\’t shut our eyes to the truths we have learned. We have faced so many unpleasant things already, – and faced them pretty well,-that it is natural that we should keep it up.

Now I think that this is the aspect of our generation that annoys the uncritical and deceives the unsuspecting oldsters who are now met in judgment upon us: our devastating and brutal frankness. And this is the quality in which we really differ from our predecessors. We are frank with each other, frank, or pretty nearly so, with our elders, frank in the way we feel toward life and this badly damaged world. It may be a disquieting and misleading ha.bit, but is it a bad one? We find some few things in
the ·world that we like, and a whole lot that we don\’t, and we are not afraid to
say so or to give our reasons. In earlier generations this was not the case. The young men yearned to be glittering generalities, the young women to act like shy, sweet, innocent fawns–toward one another. And now, when grown up, they have come to ·believe that they actually were figures of pristine excellence, knightly chivalry, adorable modesty,
and impeccable propriety. But I really doubt if they were so. …

The oldsters stand dramatically with fingers and toes and noses pressed against the bursting dykes. Let them! They won\’t do any good. They can shackle us down, and still expect us to repair their blunders, if they wish. But we shall not trouble ourselves very much about them any more. Why should we? What have they done? They have made us
work as they never had .to work in all their padded lives – but we\’ll have our cakes and ale for a\’ that. 

For now we know our way about. We \’re not babes in the wood, hunting for great, big, red strawberries, and confidently expecting the Robin Red-Breasts to cover us up with pretty leaves if we don\’t find them. We\’re men and women, long before our time,
in the flower of our full-blooded youth. We\’ have brought back into civil life some of the recklessness and ability that we were taught by war. We are also quite fatalistic in our outlook on the tepid perils of tame living. All may yet crash to the ground for aught that
we can do about it. Terrible mistakes will be made, but we shall at least make them intelligently and insist, if we are to receive the strictures of the future, on doing pretty much as we choose now. 

Insert a few references to some modern -isms–say, environmentalism, capitalism, militarism. racism, and sexism–and this essay from 1920 could be republished today. This doesn\’t make it wrong, of  course. The essay is a fair representation of one set of incomplete truths that each generation tells itself. At least some of the young, at least in a certain mood, are shocked, shocked, when they reach adulthood and discover that previous generations have let them down and the world still has problems. At least some of the middle-aged and old, at least in a certain mood, don\’t actually disagree with this insight that problems continue to exist, but they have a hard time viewing this discovery of the young as a profound or thoughtful insight. And so the generations go.

conversableeconomist

"They say. What do they say? Let them say."

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) had this phrase carved into the mantelpiece of his living room: \”They say. What do they say? Let them say.\”

A few years back, a writer at the Hard Honesty website dug down into the sources of this quotation.  It may trace back to the founding of Marischal College, in Aberdeen, back in 1593, at a time of high political and religious tensions.  The earlier version was: \”Thay Haif Said: Quhat Say Thay? Lat Thame Say.\”

Here, I\’m less interested in the history than in considering the sentiment itself. As we launch into a new year that will among other events bring a contentious national election, here\’s a reminder of the spirit that listening doesn\’t imply agreement, and letting people speak doesn\’t imply agreement, either. Anyone who is interested in learning will learn more by listening than by talking–even if you are only learning how to disagree more powerfully–and you can only listen if you let others speak.  In addition, ignoring speakers or smiling insincerely and shaking your head in sad disagreement while passing on are also legitimate responses to unwanted speech. There should be a powerful presumption against seeking to silence others.  And of course, there is no need to silence yourself, either. 

conversableeconomist

"Remember that Writing is not Typing"

Rebecca Solnit is a writer who crosses the boundaries of history, politics, feminism, and social criticism. I especially enjoyed River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West, which tells the story of the photographer who managed to capture high-speed motion in California in 1872 but also a meditation about the roots of Hollywood and Silicon Valley and the modern industrial economy.  A few years ago she wrote a short essay: \”How to Be a Writer: 10 Tips from Rebecca Solnit–Joy, Suffering, Reading, and Lots and Lots of Writing\” (Literary Hub website, September 13, 2016). It\’s a quick, fun read, but here are a few of her thoughts about writing that especially caught my eye:

Remember that writing is not typing. Thinking, researching, contemplating, outlining, composing in your head and in sketches, maybe some typing, with revisions as you go, and then more revisions, deletions, emendations, additions, reflections, setting aside and returning afresh, because a good writer is always a good editor of his or her own work. Typing is this little transaction in the middle of two vast thoughtful processes. There is such thing as too much revision—I’ve seen things that were amazing in the 17th version get flattened out in the 23rd—but nothing is born perfect. Well, some things almost are, but they’re freaks. And you might get those magical perfect passages if you write a lot, including all the stuff that isn’t magic that has to be cut, rethought, revised, fact-checked, and cleaned up. …

Time. It takes time. This means that you need to find that time. Don’t be too social. Live below your means and keep the means modest (people with trust funds and other cushions: I’m not talking to you, though money makes many, many things easy, and often, vocation and passion harder). You probably have to do something else for a living at the outset or all along, but don’t develop expensive habits or consuming hobbies.

Facts. Always get them right. The wrong information about a bumblebee in a poem is annoying enough, but inaccuracy in nonfiction is a cardinal sin. No one will trust you if you get your facts wrong, and if you’re writing about living or recently alive people or politics you absolutely must not misrepresent. (Ask yourself this: do I like it when people lie about me?) No matter what you’re writing about, you have an obligation to get it right, for the people you’re writing about, for the readers, and for the record. It’s why I always tell students that it’s a slippery slope from the things your stepfather didn’t actually do to the weapons of mass destruction Iraq didn’t actually have. If you want to write about a stepfather who did things your stepfather didn’t, or repeat conversations you don’t actually remember with any detail, at least label your product accurately.

conversableeconomist

\’The Tone of Civil Life Has Its Necessity and May Even Have Its Heroic Quality"

Yes, we live in outrageous times. But we also live in a time when there is cachet in being the most outraged, kudos to being the most highly angered and offended, and eminence in being the most exceptionally shocked and appalled. When the rewards for dialing up the emotional level are high, other discourse can be drowned out. This blog, in its own small way, tries to model the virtues of civil discourse.

I was moved to consider this point when I ran across a comment from the prominent literary critic Lionel Trilling in a 1951 letter to his former student Norman Podhoretz. Podhoretz had reviewed a book by Trilling, and in the course of an overall positive review raised concerns that the Trilling\’s exposition was perhaps not confrontational enough. Trilling responded in this way (the quotation is from Life in Culture: Selected Letters of Lionel Trilling, edited by Adam Kirsch, 2018, p. 193):

What I would have said about my own prose is that there is a need for a tone of reasonableness and demonstration, that it was of the greatest importance that we learn to consider that the tone of civil life has its necessity and may even have its heroic quality, that we must have a modification of all that is implied by the fierce posture of modern literature.

However, Trilling also expressed a fear that rises in the hearts of all of us who attempt to be civil–that our attempts at a kind of clarity and civility could mean that people just don\’t understand when or how we are disagreeing with them. Trilling continues:

I still think this … But with the arrival in the last few days of some of the English reviews of my book, I have come to feel that my tone isn\’t what I had thought or meant it to be. I have always supposed it had more intensity, irony, and acerbity than the English have been finding in it, and several remarks about its \”gentleness\” have disturbed me, for I don\’t think I am gentle in my intellectual judgments, and don\’t want to be. Possibly the British response is to my willingness to forgive the writer while condemning the idea, but I must also suppose there is something in the style itself–that something is there that I did not mean to be there, or something not there that I meant to be. 

To be clear, a civil tone doesn\’t mean avoiding disagreement. It doesn\’t mean go-along-to-get-along. It doesn\’t mean squishiness. It doesn\’t mean a belief that all discussions should be robotic or \”just-the-facts.\” It means a dose of earnestness about trying to convey one\’s own beliefs, and a dose of humility when confronted by differing beliefs of others.

It does mean not rising too quickly when the easy bait of anger and outrage is proffered. It means trying to make allowances for those who give in to excess, because none of us is perfect, but also not feeding or amplifying that excess, and indeed trying to tamp it down. It means that politeness will be the first and second and probably the third response to disagreements, and even in the cases where politeness must needs be abandoned, a cold, explicit, and angry disagreement can be followed by disengagement, rather than feeding the fire of disagreement for its own sake. 
Those who forsake a civil tone may find that later, when they wish to call on others for sober reflection or careful thought, they have done injury to this form of discourse. If and when they later wish to appeal for a civil discussion, it may no longer be available to them. When tempted to say that you find it impossible to disagree on certain subjects in a civil manner, it may be useful to ask oneself about whether you wish to encourage a society in which conversations will be ruled by those who can emote the loudest, longest, and hardest. 
Most people demonstrate a capacity for civil disagreement in many areas of their lives: family, friends, work, institutions of worship, clubs, local government, and others. In my own experience, there is often a kind of performative dishonesty and group-signalling that occurs when conversations disintegrate into passionate incivility.  What I have in mind here is similar to the sentiment that James Madison expressed in Federalist #50, when he wrote:

Throughout the continuance of the council, it was split into two fixed and violent parties. The fact is acknowledged and lamented by themselves. Had this not been the case, the face of their proceedings exhibits a proof equally satisfactory. In all questions, however unimportant in themselves, or unconnected with each other, the same names stand invariably contrasted on the opposite columns. Every unbiased observer may infer, without danger of mistake, and at the same time without meaning to reflect on either party, or any individuals of either party, that, unfortunately, passion, not reason, must have presided over their decisions. When men exercise their reason coolly and freely on a variety of distinct questions, they inevitably fall into different opinions on some of them. When they are governed by a common passion, their opinions, if they are so to be called, will be the same.

If someone\’s passion always aligns them with the same group, it seems to me a tell-tale sign that their membership in the group has become so important that they fear the possibility of being seen to disagree with the group more than they desire to think their own thoughts. In that way, the disciplline of civility offers a kind of personal freedom both to oneself and others.