Saturday, April 14, 2012

Democrat contempt for the traditional family bubbles to the surface

Marx taught that the family was the chief obstacle to socialism

The Obama campaign is engaged in a frantic damage limitation exercise after a top Democratic strategist prompted a wave of indignation by claiming that Mitt Romney’s wife Ann had ‘never really worked a day in her life’.

Hilary Rosen, a lobbyist and party operative whose firm advises the Democratic National Committee, took aim at the mother of five and multiple sclerosis survivor during a discussion about the economy on CNN.

'What you have is, Mitt Romney running around the country saying, 'Well, you know, my wife tells me that what women really care about are economic issues,’ she said. ‘And when I listen to my wife, that's what I'm hearing.


She continued: 'There's something much more fundamental about Mitt Romney. 'He seems so old-fashioned when it comes to women, and I think that comes across, and I think that that's going to hurt him over the long term. He just doesn't really see us as equal.'

The comments were a gift for the Romney campaign, which is struggling to close a sizeable gender gap and has been accused by Democrats of waging a ‘war on women’ by advocating de-funding of Planned Parenthood and restricting contraception rights.

Mrs Romney immediately entered the debate by joining twitter and sending out her first tweet, using the handle @AnnDRomney: ‘'I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys. Believe me, it was hard work.’

Rosen responded via Twitter: 'I am raising children too,' Rosen replied. 'But u do know that most young american women have to earn a living AND raise their kids don't u?'

But Obama campaign realised immediately that Rosen’s comments were politically disastrous because they fuelled a narrative that elitist liberal women have disdain for mothers who choose to look after their children.

Jim Messina, Obama’s campaign manager, tweeted: ‘I could not disagree with Hilary Rosen any more strongly. Her comments were wrong and family should be off limits. She should apologize.’

David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist, also took to twitter to brand Rosen's comments 'inappropriate and offensive'.


Bruce Hall comments:

[The Romney family] represent old thinking as far as the left is concerned... the notion of a nuclear family where the father earns an income and the mother is present to guide the development of their children. Much too 1950s and earlier. And definitely racist.

Now a family is any two people plus children. Or maybe it is just any one unwed mother and children. And if they are not the traditional family, then that is even better because they will be tied to the left who is giving them protection and validation.

This has nothing to do with the people who join together and who have children through adoption or artificial insemination. They can be wonderful people, too. This has everything to do with the what constitutes a loyal party member... a loyal voting block of victims.

If the left-controlled government offers perceived social validation and even funding for those outside of the million or so year notion of a family, then there are loyal party voters created. On the other hand, the Ward and June Cleaver prototypical family represents the outdated conservative values and responsibilities of marriage that stand in the way of "the government will make it all better" philosophy.

So, the Romneys are especially to be vilified because they not only have a decades long strong marriage despite Ann's serious illnesses, children who have grown to be responsible and productive adults, a strong faith and morals with a commitment to charity, and the individualism to make their own way in life without looking to the government for a handout in return for fealty to the emperor.

Why do you suppose Ann Romney was so vilified as someone who supposedly didn't understand how Americans had to struggle because she stayed home to raise five children? Why isn't the unwed mother of five children born outside of marriage condemned for not understanding how taxpayers have to struggle to pay their taxes that go to support her irresponsibility? No, it is the traditional mother who is to blame for society's ills. She doesn't understand work. She doesn't understand struggle. She just sits around the house watching soap operas.




Rosen, by the way, happens to be a lesbian feminist who adopted two children with her former partner before they chose to go in opposite directions. Perhaps she simply feels threatened by what Ann Romney represents... everything Rosen isn't.

Why did Rosen treat her "partnership" so cavalierly? Did her career come first? Well, that's to be admired! Mitt and Ann's faithfulness? That's simply beyond understanding. It's unreasonable in today's world.

But that's the problem with generalizing the way Rosen did. Sure Ann Romney enjoys a financial lifestyle that most people don't have. So, does Michelle Obama. Golly, gosh, gee whiz... so does Hilary Rosen. Well, then they all can't understand, eh?



An Adult Fairy Tale

Here’s a letter to the Wall Street Journal by economist DON BOUDREAUX

Leon Mitrani believes that Canada’s recent sound economic performance is chiefly the result of that country’s “universal, single-payer, government-run health-care system” (Letters, April 12). According to Mr. Mitrani, that system “frees up Canadian corporations from paying that employee expense and boosts their profits and economy.”

Splendid! But if Canada’s economy is boosted by government relieving Canadian employers from having to pay a portion of their workers’ earnings (that is, the portion that would otherwise be paid as employer-provided health-insurance premiums), wouldn’t Canada’s economy be boosted even further if Ottawa relieved Canadian employers also from having to pay wages and salaries? With government picking up employers’ entire tab for hiring workers, the economic boost would be stupendous.

And why stop there? If Mr. Mitrani is correct, Canada’s economy would get a bigger boost yet if the government picked up not only the tab for hiring workers, but also the tab for any and all capital expenses. With government relieving Canadian companies of the need to pay for their own workers, factories, machines, IT, and all other costs of doing business, Canada’s economy would become the envy of the world!

Who knew that the secret of economic success is so simple?

And as my GMU colleague Tom Hazlett points out to me by e-mail,

And, of course, there seems to be about a 4-decade lag in Mr. Mitrani’s model. The Canadian economy underperformed the US regularly and substantially until the 1990s, when Conservative reforms were put in place. The correlations are interesting, including the lags.



President of the Twilight Zone















Widespread stimulus fraud? Say it ain’t so!: "I know this will likely come as a huge surprise, but it appears that the almost trillion dollar stimulus bill, passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama, has seen widespread fraud."

The cure for humanity’s natural state of abject poverty: "Humanity’s natural state is abject poverty. So how did some portion of the human race manage to escape this natural state? A remarkably insightful new book, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, by Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Daron Acemoglu and Harvard University economist James Robinson provides an answer to that pressing question."

Barack Obama is no centrist: "President Obama chastised the media last week. ... [He] also claimed that he holds positions that 20 or 15 years ago 'would have been considered squarely centrist positions. What's changed is the center of the Republican Party.' ... Yet many in the media don't ask: Where are the moderate Democrats?"

One bit of loony bureaucracy defeated: "One of the more absurd legal consequences of the new rules is that Virgin Galactic, Richard Branson’s space tourism venture, had to consider non-U.S. nationals who flew to the edge of space from the American west as exports requiring a license from the State Department for each and every foreign passenger (presumably including Sir Richard himself, who is a British). But recently, in a rare fit of regulatory sanity, Virgin Galactic’s U.S. flight operations were removed from ITAR control ..."

US Catholic bishops plea against obeying “unjust laws”: "A panel of the nation’s Catholic bishops said Thursday that their flock 'must have the courage not to obey unjust laws' and called for Catholic political leaders, clergy and laity to pray, fast and speak out for religious liberty during a two-week period that ends on Independence Day."

Jury selection begins in Edwards trial: "Two-time U.S. presidential candidate and former North Carolina Senator John Edwards is about to learn his fate on charges he violated campaign finance rules to hide a mistress as the process to select a jury begins. ... The process of choosing a 12-member jury and four alternates is scheduled to be completed on April 23 followed by opening arguments in the case, according to court documents"







Friday, April 13, 2012

The genetics of politics

After my broad-ranging comments on the psychology of politics yesterday, I thought I might focus in a little more on the major factor behind one's political stance: genetics. I saw the ground-breaking 1986 article by Martin & Jardine on the heritability of politics as soon as it came out (I had a chapter in the same book) so ever since then I have been pointing out how strong is the genetic influence on political stance. What is not yet clear is WHICH genes are involved and exactly what is inherited.

One fairly straightforward study from a couple of years ago is worth a mention. It ties in nicely with something I found in 1984 -- that Leftists tend to be sensation seekers. They are restless people in search of anything new and different. This can of course lead directly to a desire for change -- which is of course a central feature of Leftist thinking. They are always wanting to change something.
People with left wing views may have their political opinions controlled by a "liberal gene", according to scientists.

The research suggests that some people have an inherent bias against conservative thinking, that is independent of their education or upbringing.

The effect is caused by a neurotransmitter in the brain called DRD4 which could be stimulated by the novelty value of left of centre opinions, say US researchers.

In people who are naturally outgoing, the feature encourages them to seek out companions with unconventional views as they grow up.

This in turn means they tend to form less conventional political viewpoints as adults, according to the study by the University of California and Harvard.

The research, based on 2,000 Americans, is published in the Journal of Politics. It found those with a strain of the DRD4 gene seek out "novelty" - such as people and lifestyles which are different to the ones they are used to. This leads them to have more liberal political opinions, it found.

The person's age, ethnicity, gender or culture appeared to make no difference - it was the gene which counts.


UC Professor James Fowler said: "It is the crucial interaction of two factors - the genetic predisposition and the environmental condition of having many friends in adolescence - that is associated with being more liberal. "These findings suggest that political affiliation is not based solely on the kind of social environment people experience."


That study is of course far from the end of the story. There are indications of other genes being involved as well. But it clearly has some explanatory power.


Are conservatives lazy thinkers?

An article by Eidelman et al. claims that they are and it has predictably got a fair bit of attention from Left-leaning journalists.

I noted the article at the beginning of this month and dismissed it out of hand on the grounds that its taxonomy was wrong: Eidelman had no idea of what conservatives actually think.

Leftist psychologists generally seem to consider it beneath them to talk to such despised people as conservatives so form their impression of conservatism from some simplistic stereotype that has built up among them over the years, a stereotype which is almost wholly wrong. So when they think they are studying conservatism they are not.

I subsequently had a short correspondence with Eidelman but he simply stuck to his definition. I pointed him to my huge historical survey of what conservatism is but he offered no evidence for his view. Evidence is optional among Leftists.

And the more closely I look at his paper the more evident it becomes that my initial critique was correct. He relies, for instance, on the Kerlinger questionnaire about ideology. But what Kerlinger found was that Leftism and Rightism, far from being opposed, are actually unrelated to one-another. In other words, half of all conservatives are Leftists -- which makes no sense at all. Kerlinger had no idea of what conservatism is either.

To put my critique into psychometric terms the measures of conservatism used by Eidelman are simply not valid: They do not measure what they purport to measure.

I could go on with yet more swingeing criticisms (e.g. lack of sampling) but what's the point? Eidelman's work is clearly useless for proving anything.


Jonathan Haidt

I sent a link to my article yesterday under the heading "The psychology of politics" to Jonathan Haidt. The article was chiefly concerned with Haidt's understanding of ideology. Below is the gracious reply I received from him:
Dear Prof. Ray:

Thanks so much for appreciating that my motives are more honest. i fully agree with you on the unscientific partisan motives that sometimes distort research.

It is quite possible I've misunderstood leftists. But the love of imposing constraint that you mention is why I give them relatively low scores on liberty, in ch. 12 of my new book. It's not quite the same, psychologically, as deference to an authority, a boss, a leader. I think the left and right are still different here. But yes, the left is often anti-liberty, in service of other values, and I think this is a reason the American left does so poorly, and triggers such resentment.

With best wishes,
jon haidt

It would seem that he has not taken fully on board my contention that nothing Leftists say about themselves can be trusted but maybe his own experience will convince him of that in due course.


Media dishonesty and race hustlers













Van Jones: Dishonest, intolerant slavery advocate

Obviously, the tyranny advocates of the world, like Obama and his collectivist buddies, are getting a little scared that the philosophy of freedom has been growing by leaps and bounds recently. So the megalomaniac brigade has ratcheted up its Orwellian propaganda, trying to tell everyone that freedom is slavery, peaceful coexistence is hateful and intolerant, and massive extortion and violent domination is compassionate and noble.

Van Jones, a collectivist state-worshiper comrade of Obama's, recently referred to libertarianism as a "despicable ideology," claiming that libertarians "hate" various groups of minorities, and generally trying to paint people like Ron Paul as Satan. Now, if the average couch potato had said these things, I would guess that he was merely an unthinking parrot of the usual statist propaganda. But in the case of Van Jones, he can't plead ignorance. He says what he says because what he desires above all else is to violently force others to be whatever he thinks they should be, and the idea of freedom interferes with that agenda. He is not alone in his megalomania; almost everyone in "high" public office, of any color, religion, or party affiliation, is there because he wants to dominate his fellow man. Despite being black, Van Jones is, just like Obama, an aspiring slave-master. If you think I exaggerate, read on.

If Mr. Jones was merely stupid, I could believe that he really can't tell the difference between right-wing statist control freaks, and those who believe in the non-aggression principle (libertarians). But he's not that stupid. He is intentionally trying to make his audience accept the idiotic lie that believing that everyone should be allowed to run his own life, make his own decisions, and spend his own money (a.k.a. libertarianism), is the same as hating everyone who isn't like you, and wanting to oppress and enslave everyone else.

Mr. Jones seems to be doing quite a bit of psychological projecting in his accusations. If you want to see an intolerant, hateful, pack-mentality control freak, look no further than Van Jones. Or Obama, for that matter. It is really sad that anyone would believe, based on the color of Obama's skin, that he actually cares about black people. Obama doesn't care about the average American black any more than George Bush cares about me. Despite the patently idiotic tripe we're all taught to the contrary, people don't seek positions of power and control in order to help and serve those whom they seek to control. Do you think Van Jones, or Obama, wanted to be where they are so they could leave you alone? They wanted the "Ring of Power" so they could USE it. And the only way anyone can use the power of "government" is to violently control people. That's all "laws" are: threats of violence.

Let's take an example Van Jones brought up, which even makes many pro-freedom advocates tread softly, for fear of offending anyone. (Don't expect any soft-treading here.) Many of the so-called "anti-discrimination" laws are unjustified and evil. People who grasp the principles of liberty and self-ownership understand this. Take the example Van Jones used, of some racist restaurant owner who refuses to serve blacks, or some other minority group. This makes a fine example of why the belief in "government" is such a horribly dangerous and destructive superstition. If you accept the notion that "government" has the right to violently impose "fairness" and "rightness" upon everyone, then the tyrants (like Obama and his collectivist buddies) can always find a way to trick you into advocating thuggery and oppression.

Imagine, for example, that some white guy went up to Van Jones, and said, "I'm going to follow you around for a few days, to make sure that you're spending enough money at white-owned establishments." How do you suppose he would react? I'm guessing he would have a temporary fit of righteous indignation and moral clarity, and say, "You have no right to tell me how to spend my money!" And he'd be right.

And, for the exact same reason, no one has the right to force some Aryan Nation member to hire a black man. Incidentally, there's a word for forcing someone to serve someone else--which is what Van Jones is advocating. That word is "slavery." I realize that in a country governed mainly by meaningless, emotional, rhetorical mush, that might sound strange to most people. But it's called a principle. Each person owns himself, and owns the fruits of his labors. No one owns anyone else, and no one has the right to take what anyone else has earned without his consent. Freedom means freedom. If someone wants to spend his own money in a way that I think is racist, rude, or economically idiotic, I have no right whatsoever to interfere.

If, for example, some black store owner refuses to serve me because I'm white, or because I have reddish hair, or because I said nasty things about Fuhrer Obama, it is his absolute right to choose not to trade with me. And being someone who actually understands and abides by principles, if anyone tried to force the store owner to serve me--whether via the state violence of "legislation" or by any other means--I would be first in line to defend the store owner's right to be a rude, racist dumbass, by not allowing me in his store.

Why? Because I have moral principles, and I value peaceful coexistence. And peaceful coexistence doesn't mean a giant love-in where everyone is the same. It doesn't mean everyone will like everyone else, or everyone will agree on everything. It doesn't mean everyone will approve of each other's choices or lifestyles. It doesn't mean everyone will say nice things about each other. It means only that people--whatever religious, racial, economic, philosophical, or any other differences they may have--will tolerate the existence of each other, and not initiate violence against each other. That's what it means to be civilized.

Despite how the collectivists have mangled the term, that is what "tolerance" actually means. It doesn't mean you like something, or approve of it--it means that you allow it to be, you don't attempt to violently eradicate it just because you don't like it. It means that, whatever you might think of it, you tolerate its existence. Libertarians do that. Obama and Van Jones do not. Instead, they seek to use the power of the state to violently impose their ideas of fairness and politeness upon the rest of humanity.

The real reason Van Jones hates libertarians--and yes, I do mean "hates"--is because if they get their way, he will become as irrelevant and powerless as he should be. Of course those who crave dominion over their fellow man hate libertarianism, and find it "despicable," because in a world where the principles of self-ownership and non-aggression are understood and embraced, there will be nothing for tyrants like Van Jones to do, no way for them to trick people into giving them power. Libertarianism will always pose a threat to megalomaniacs like Van Jones, because megalomaniacs will always pose a threat to peaceful coexistence, i.e., rational and moral civilization.






Thursday, April 12, 2012

The psychology of politics

Psychologists have been trying to explain why people have the political opinions they do since the 1930s at least, and that industry is still going strong.

Because psychologists are mainly Left-leaning, however, most of the explanations have been ludicrous. The psychologists concerned mostly seem to have been governed by a manic desire to prove that conservatives are deranged, and in their desperate attempts to prove that, they have thrown all plausibility and scientific caution to the winds. See here for a short and rather hilarious history of the main effort in that direction.

There has recently emerged however one psychologist who really does seem to want to understand. Proving conservatives mad is clearly not his dominating ambition. He actually studies real conservative thought instead of constructing a straw-man caricature of it -- which is what most psychologists do. And his discoveries seem to have had some influence on him. He even says that they have led him from being a liberal to being a centrist.

And you can see why when you look at his findings. He finds that conservatives are the ones who make complex moral judgments while Leftists make very simple ones -- which is the diametric opposite of what Leftists usually say about conservatives.

He is still learning, however, so has in my view missed a major point in his research. Much of what he says is reasonable but he has one large blind spot. His name is Jonathan Haidt and I reproduce below a few excerpts from a large essay by him which has just gone online. After the excerpts I will point out what I think he has failed to consider. I have myself had over 200 articles on political psychology published in the academic journals so it is possible that I have come across some things that he has not.
In the last 10 years we psychologists have discovered a great deal about the origins of ideology and why ideology makes it so hard for people to understand, respect, and accept each other. This research partly confirms what Gilbert and Sullivan said in the light opera Iolanthe: “Nature always does contrive / That every boy and every gal / That’s born into the world alive / Is either a little Liberal / Or else a little Conservative!” But the story is more interesting than that.

Political theorists since Marx had long assumed that people chose ideologies to further their self-interest. The rich and powerful want to preserve and conserve; the peasants and workers want to change things (or at least they would if their consciousness could be raised and they could see their self-interest properly, said the Marxists). But while social class may once have been a good predictor of ideology, that link has been largely broken in modern times, when the rich go both ways (industrialists mostly right, tech billionaires mostly left), and so do the poor (rural poor mostly right, urban poor mostly left). And when political scientists looked into it, they found that self-interest does a remarkably poor job of predicting political attitudes.

So for most of the late 20th century, political scientists embraced blank-slate theories in which people soaked up the ideology of their parents or the TV programs they watched. Some political scientists even said that most people were so confused about political issues that they had no real ideology at all.

But then came the studies of twins. In the 1980s, when scientists began analyzing large databases that allowed them to compare identical twins (who share all of the same genes, plus, usually, their prenatal and childhood environments) to same-sex fraternal twins (who share half of their genes, plus their prenatal and childhood environments), they found that the identical twins were more similar on just about everything. What’s more, identical twins reared in separate households (because of adoption) usually turn out to be very similar, whereas unrelated children reared together (because of adoption) rarely turn out similar to each other, or to their adoptive parents; they tend to be more similar to their genetic parents. Genes contribute, somehow, to just about every aspect of our personalities.

We’re not just talking about IQ, mental illness, and basic personality traits such as shyness. We’re talking about the degree to which you like jazz, spicy foods, and abstract art; your likelihood of getting a divorce or dying in a car crash; your religiosity; and your political orientation as an adult. Whether you end up on the right or the left of the political spectrum turns out to be just as heritable as most other traits: Genetics explains between one-third and one-half of the variability among people in their political attitudes. Being raised in a liberal or conservative household accounts for much less.

How can that be? How can there be a genetic basis for attitudes about nuclear power, progressive taxation, and foreign aid when these issues emerged only in the last century or two? And how can there be a genetic basis for ideology when people sometimes change their political parties as adults?

After analyzing the DNA of 13,000 Australians, 15 researchers, led by Penn State political scientist Peter K. Hatemi, found several genes that differed between liberals and conservatives. Most of them related to the functioning of neurotransmitters, particularly glutamate and serotonin, both of which are involved in the brain’s response to threat and fear. This finding, published in The Journal of Politics last October, fits well with many studies showing that conservatives react more strongly than liberals to signs of danger, including the threat of germs and contamination, and even low-level threats such as sudden blasts of white noise. Other studies have focused on genes related to receptors for the neurotransmitter dopamine, which has long been tied to sensation seeking and openness to experience, among the best-established correlates of liberalism.

In the 2003 book Moral, Believing Animals, Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith writes about the moral webs or networks of meaning within which human life takes place. He agrees with French sociologist Emile Durkheim that every social order has at its core something sacred, and he shows how stories, particularly “grand narratives,” identify and reinforce the sacred core of each matrix. Smith is a master at extracting these grand narratives and condensing them into single paragraphs. Each narrative, he says, identifies a beginning (“once upon a time”), a middle (in which a threat or challenge arises), and an end (in which a resolution is achieved). Each narrative is designed to orient listeners morally—to draw their attention to a set of virtues and vices, or good and evil forces—and to impart lessons about what must be done now to protect, recover, or attain the sacred core of the vision.


In my own research, I have sought to describe the major elements of these narratives. With my colleagues at, I have developed Moral Foundations Theory, which outlines six clusters of moral concerns—care/harm, fairness/cheating, liberty/oppression, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation—upon which all political cultures and movements base their moral appeals. Political liberals tend to rely primarily on the moral foundation of care/harm, followed by fairness/cheating and liberty/oppression. Social conservatives, in contrast, use all six foundations. They are less concerned than liberals about harm to innocent victims, but they are much more concerned about the moral foundations that bind groups and nations together, i.e., loyalty (patriotism), authority (law and order, traditional families), and sanctity (the Bible, God, the flag as a sacred object).

Smith wrote the “liberal progress” narrative before Moral Foundations Theory existed, but you can see that the narrative derives its moral force primarily from the care/harm foundation (concern for the suffering of victims) and the liberty/oppression foundation (a celebration of liberty as freedom from oppression, as well as freedom to pursue self-defined happiness). In this narrative, fairness is political equality (which is part of opposing oppression); there are only oblique hints of fairness as proportionality. Authority is mentioned only as an evil, and there is no mention of loyalty or sanctity.

Contrast that narrative to one for modern conservatism. Emory University clinical psychologist Drew Westen is another master of narrative analysis, and in his 2007 book The Political Brain he extracts the master narrative that was implicit, and sometimes explicit, in the major speeches of Ronald Reagan.

Reagan defeated incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter in 1980, at a time when Americans were being held hostage in Iran, the inflation rate was over 10 percent, and America’s cities, industries, and self-confidence were declining. The Reagan narrative goes like this: “Once upon a time, America was a shining beacon. Then liberals came along and erected an enormous federal bureaucracy that handcuffed the invisible hand of the free market. They subverted our traditional American values and opposed God and faith at every step of the way.…Instead of requiring that people work for a living, they siphoned money from hardworking Americans and gave it to Cadillac-driving drug addicts and welfare queens. Instead of punishing criminals, they tried to ‘understand’ them. Instead of worrying about the victims of crime, they worried about the rights of criminals.…Instead of adhering to traditional American values of family, fidelity, and personal responsibility, they preached promiscuity, premarital sex, and the gay lifestyle…and they encouraged a feminist agenda that undermined traditional family roles.…Instead of projecting strength to those who would do evil around the world, they cut military budgets, disrespected our soldiers in uniform, burned our flag, and chose negotiation and multilateralism.…Then Americans decided to take their country back from those who sought to undermine it.”

The Reagan narrative is also visibly conservative in that it relies for its moral force on at least five of the six moral foundations. There’s only a hint of care (for the victims of crime), but there are very clear references to liberty (as freedom from government constraint), fairness (as proportionality, which means it’s wrong to take money from those who work hard and give it to welfare queens), loyalty (soldiers and the flag), authority (subversion of the family and of traditions), and sanctity (replacing God with the celebration of promiscuity).

The two narratives are as opposed as they could be. Can partisans even understand the story told by the other side? The obstacles to empathy are not symmetrical. There is no foundation used by the left that is not also used by the right. Even though conservatives score slightly lower on measures of empathy and may therefore be less moved by a story about suffering and oppression, they can still recognize that it is awful to be kept in chains. And even though many conservatives opposed some of the great liberations of the 20th century—of women, sweatshop workers, African Americans, and gay people—they have applauded others, such as the liberation of Eastern Europe from communist oppression.

But when liberals try to understand the Reagan narrative, they have a harder time. When I speak to liberal audiences about the three “binding” foundations—loyalty, authority, and sanctity—I find that many in the audience don’t just fail to resonate; they actively reject these concerns as immoral. Loyalty to a group shrinks the moral circle; it is the basis of racism and exclusion, they say. Authority is oppression. Sanctity is religious mumbo-jumbo whose only function is to suppress female sexuality and justify homophobia.



If you don’t see that Reagan is pursuing positive values of loyalty, authority, and sanctity, you almost have to conclude that Republicans see no positive value in care and fairness. You might even go as far as Michael Feingold, a theater critic for the liberal weekly The Village Voice, when he wrote in 2004: “Republicans don’t believe in the imagination, partly because so few of them have one, but mostly because it gets in the way of their chosen work, which is to destroy the human race and the planet.…Which is why I personally think they should be exterminated before they cause any more harm.” One of the many ironies in this quotation is that it shows the inability of a theater critic—who skillfully enters fantastical imaginary worlds for a living—to imagine that Republicans act within a moral matrix that differs from his own.


That is all pretty interesting stuff even though some Leftist bias is still evident in it. The finding that conservatives are the insightful ones must be REALLY toxic to those on the Left!

Where I think Haidt goes wrong is that he believes what the Left say about themselves. He accepts that they report their attitudes accurately. They do not.

A major focus of my own research was attitude to authority. And I always found that Leftists describe themselves as great enemies of authority and as being contemptuous of it. They answer questions about authority almost as libertarians would. Yet in practice, they are unremitting in their attempt to impose authority on others. They are the ultimate authoritarians. Extreme socialists such as Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Castro and Pol Pot are of course a byword for authoritarianism but even in America today, liberals never cease in their attempts to fashion chains of law and regulation around the necks of their fellow citizens. Even what we eat has now come under scrutiny and regulation under the guise of a war on "Obesity". We no longer even own our own bodies.

Environmentalism has also been a godsend to the Left, with the global warming scare being an hugely useful excuse for imposing immense regulatory burdens on the population, most notably in California. The most recent example being here.

And Warmism is now as politically polarized as it could be. Practically all conservatives ridicule it and practically all liberals embrace it tenaciously. And how the two sides talk about it is itself revealing. Conservative generally present scientific facts to refute warming -- such as the trivial warming we have in fact experienced over the last 150 years (only tenths of one degree Celsius over that whole period) while Warmists appeal to what? AUTHORITY! "The experts say" is the typical defense that Warmists give for their beliefs. They talk vaguely about "The science" but almost never mention any. So sometimes their real authoritarianism does break the surface in words as well as in deeds. I have documented that difference many times on GREENIE WATCH.

So I cannot avoid the conclusion that Leftists are systematically dishonest about their own attitudes and motivations. They presumably know what their own attitudes and motivations really are but those attitudes and motivations are too dismal to be acknowledged. Instead they present a facade that they think will make them look good.

So Haidt's analysis of Leftist motivation is built on sand. What I think really motivates Leftism, I present at length elsewhere. It is not a pretty picture but it explains a great amount.



Norway killer not insane: "The right-wing extremist who confessed to killing 77 people in a bomb and shooting rampage in Norway is not criminally insane, a psychiatric assessment found Tuesday, contradicting an earlier assessment. The new conclusion comes just six days before Anders Behring Breivik is scheduled to go on trial on terror charges for the massacre on July 22. It conflicts with an earlier examination that diagnosed Breivik as psychotic and prompted prosecutors to say he should be committed to a mental institution instead of prison if convicted. The new assessment was made by psychiatrists Terje Toerrissen and Agnar Aspaas on a request from the court after widespread criticism against the first diagnosis." "The main conclusion of the experts is that Anders Behring Breivik is found to be not psychotic during the time of his actions on July 22, 2011," the Oslo court said in a statement.





Wednesday, April 11, 2012

What Judicial Activism?

By Daniel Mandel













The Clash of Civilizations Has New Venues


Huntington recognized that the end of the Cold War did not mean the end of conflict in the world. The newest variety would be more difficult in some ways than that between the Soviets and the West, both of which were at least varieties of the same civilization. The rise of Islamic militarism, however, would be a different sort of war because such militants lived widely throughout the world, often embedded within other civilizations.

After the 9/11 attack on America, Huntington was given another look. He commented that everywhere Islam was and had been, the borders with other civilizations were bloody. We have focused on the hostilities between Palestinians and Israelis too much, whereas other border areas are in far more peril. We have also concentrated on the problems between Arabs and the West, whereas Islamists are just as hostile toward Buddhists and Hindus.

Thailand, a country known for its appeal to tourists, has been fighting Islamism for years in Muslim majority enclaves. Today, however, the conflict is escalating. On March 31, Muslim insurgents staged the most deadly coordinated attacks in years in Thailand's restive south (see Sumeth Panpetch, Associated Press), killing 134 people and injuring 340 with car bombs that targeted Saturday shoppers and a high-rise hotel frequented by foreign tourists.

Note what they are targeting: tourism, a mainstay industry for Thailand. The midday explosion at the 405-room Lee Gardens Plaza Hotel targeted Malaysian and Singaporean tourists enjoying their weekend getaway. This same hotel was targeted in 2006 as well. Last year, suspected militants staged coordinated attacks at more than 30 spots across Yala city, killing three people and injuring more than 50. A month earlier, a trio of bombs hidden in vehicles hit a busy section of Sungai Kolok, killing four people and wounding more than 60.

India has suffered from several appalling attacks such as the coordinated massacres in Mumbai, coordinated from Pakistan. The terrorists were going after not only secular Hindus, but secular Muslims as well, and even managed to find a lone Jewish family to murder.

Terrorists managed to explode a nightclub in Bali, Indonesia, a tourist mecca for Australians and other westerners. There have been more attacks in Indonesia, which, although primarily Muslim, is “too western” for the insurgents.

These places are obviously Islam's Bloody Borders. But what happens when the insurgents are embedded in the west? Do we have bloody bordered neighborhoods? Apparently so. In Sweden's city of Malmo (population of 300,000), Muslims now comprise between 20% and 25% and have a virulently anti-Semitic Muslim mayor. Much of the increase in anti-Jewish violence in recent years is being attributed to shiftless Muslim immigrant youth. In recent months, the only synagogue serving Malmö's 700-strong Jewish community has been the focus of repeated attacks. The synagogue, which has previously been set on fire and been the target of bomb threats, now has guards stationed around it, while the Jewish kindergarten can only be reached through reinforced steel security doors. This is but one of many such enclaves throughout Europe.

Huntington knew bloody borders when he saw them.



How (and Why) Obama has Impeded Recovery

Alan Caruba















The crooked TSA loses one


Here is my favorite quote:














NOTE: There are a couple of updates on my post of yesterday headed "What Jesus said about capitalism"





Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Was old Karl right?











What Jesus said about capitalism


























Comment from a reader:









Big government is the real extremism















Socialism and Social Darwinism

Posted by David Boaz





The Encyclopedia Britannica says that social Darwinism is"










