I'll second the "mandatory reading" suggestion. The SCC post has considerably better analysis of these tribal disagreements than most anything else I've read on the subject, particularly the NYT column.

The article is almost cute. Like, "Did you know people are tribal? And did you ever think that might be a bad thing?" It's not a profound new idea, and it's one that's been better discussed elsewhere, from the SCC posts on the subject (see also the recent one on Albion's Seed[1]) to Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind[2] to Joshua Greene's Moral Tribes[3] to the many, many articles[4][5] that have already been written about partisan polarization in the U.S. (and probably globally, if Europe is any indication).

I mean I'm glad that a random NYT column is provoking further discussion about an important subject, but there's so much more and better stuff that has been said about it than just what this touches on.

[1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/27/book-review-albions-see...

[2] http://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Religi...

[3] http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Tribes-Emotion-Reason-Between/dp...

[4] https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/how-divided-are-...

[5] http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/24/why-are-stat...

> Since there is no objective standard of morality, and since "morality" is just a fancy word for "things that people consider good or bad," we probably just have to look out into the world and see whether advertising is against the morals of most. Given that we see little great outrage over the use of advertising, even among those who are aware of its risks, I have to conclude that advertising is morally justifiable.

This is a bold statement (italics) and you run into a circular reasoning by the end of that sentence (advertising is morally justifiable because some people are okay with it). May I suggest the following summer read: http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Tribes-Emotion-Reason-Between/dp... and http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jan/17/moral-tribes-jo... and then http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115279/joshua-greenes-mor...