His concept about the decline of violence seems really similar to the conservative idea of history ending with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Is he a conservative in the Ron Paul type sense, does he think the free market is the panacea to the world’s problems?
His idea of violence declining isn’t really convincing when you consider the war in the Congo and the unrest of the Middle East. Of course there is more peace now than during WW2 and the Cold War, but it’s only been 23 years so I think it’s far too early to say we’ve entered a permanent era of world peace unfortunately. Especially since things seem to be getting worse in the Muslim world and old Soviet Union.
Pinker gave a lengthy interview to Reason magazine a few years ago, though I can’t find it at the moment. He definitely had harsh criticism for trendy ideas among left-wing scholars, especially the “blank slate” view of human nature.
Read the book. His argument is much better supported than you suggest and he’s looking at a much longer timeline than just the last 100 years. Particularly striking is his descriptions of the levels of violence in daily and public life in the past, that would be unthinkable in most of the world today.
As to his politics, I certainly would not describe him in any way as libertarian or conservative. On the other hand, he’s not a traditional liberal, either—he argues vociferously against the blank slate. He’s a scientist who goes where he thinks the data points.
Dr. Pinker’s view is in many ways driven by the Enlightenment/Victorian belief in human progress and improvement, albeit nuanced by the events of the 20th Century as opposed to the conservative view which takes a more pessimistic view of human affairs. Additionally Dr. Pinker definitely in a secular humanist in terms of personal philosophy something that has put him at odds with conservative critics who have a much more pessimistic view of human nature [1]. The “End of History” theories similarly were primarily advocated by centrist liberals and internationalists not by conservatives who tend towards more realist views of foreign policy. Also considering Dr. Pinker praises the State for reducing violence he hardly is a Ron Paul libertarian either.
This strikes me as pretty accurate. He’s not at all easily pigeonholed into any AMerican political category. For example, one of the big cases he makes in his book on violence is that a strong, effective state generally results in a major reduction in violence. Libertarians aren’t gonna love this idea. And read this passage from an interview:
OK, Pinker’s claim that “Americans commit more homicides with knives and baseball bats than Europeans, therefore that proves guns aren’t really the problem” is a terrible argument. (For what it’s worth, while Europeans don’t commit as many murders, they do commit a lot of other violent crimes including rape and robbery(.
It’s quite possible for murder and other crime events to happen in clusters, such that each murder (up to some point) increases the likelihood of another murder happening. (Maybe the police force gets overtaxed so that murderers are more likely to get away with it, maybe one murder spurs revenge/retaliatory killings, maybe people become desensitized, etc.). It’s perfectly possible for the widespread availability of guns to raise the gun-related homicide rate, and then for the high gun homicide rate to increase the rate of non-gun related homicides as well. Maybe that’s true and maybe it isn’t, but you can’t simply say 'well, a lot of murders don’t involve guns, so guns aren’t really the problem).
Pinker’s writings strike me as his thoughtful take on what the actual data says. If sometimes that aligns with so-called liberal or so-called conservative or libertarian beliefs that is just the way it falls. Unlike someone who is primarily of X or Y belief who chooses facts that comport with those beliefs, he believes what he sees the science as saying. Does not mean that his analysis is always correct or flawless, but it is not conclusion in search of supporting data; it is conclusion based on analysis of data.