The Reactionary Mind

Check out these new books on the philosophy,  psychology, and neuroscience of political ideologies:

1. The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin

(Video from Conversations w/ Great Minds – Thom Hartmann interviews Corey Robin. Executive summary: conservatism is fundamentally authoritarian and anti-democratic.)

Youtube link: Corey Robin, The Reactionary Mind

2. The Republican Brain: Why Even Educated Conservatives Deny Science — and Reality

This essay is adapted from Chris Mooney’s forthcoming book.

Video: Thom Hartmann interviews Chris Mooney about The Republican Brain:

YouTube link

3. The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion

 Jonathan Haidt, C-SPAN BookTV:

“Jonathan Haidt, psychology professor at the University of Virginia, presents his thoughts on the current political and social divisions that he contends separate the Left and the Right. The social psychologist examines the origins of these fissures and explains that people’s moral intuition, the initial perceptions we have of others, propagates the idea that people who view the world differently from how we do are wrong.” (full video)

Video excerpt (10 min):

How do Conservatives and Liberals See the World? (



Check these out! They offer much-needed modern perspectives to help us scientifically unmask, re-frame, and re-brand the right-wing world-view for what it often is: counter-revolutionary (vis a vis the US Revolution and other democratic revolutions), anti-democratic, and anti-enlightenment.  Conservative approaches may have utility under certain socio-economic and cultural conditions, but in general they are increasingly pathological and self-defeating in modern, liberal, democratic  societies.

Please note, I’m not saying that so-called liberal and neoliberal approaches are necessarily better, especially those that actually encourage or provide cover for corruption, crony capitalism (corporatism), neo-feudalism, or other excessive concentrations of  state and/or private wealth and power at the top.

Perhaps the single most important principle adopted by the US Founders was the separation of powers with appropriate checks and balances.  All such schemes aim at some more-or-less ideal distribution of power (and sometimes wealth) across various segments and institutions of society. When that distribution departs too far from the ideal, then some kind of redistribution is wanted. The differences between most conservative and liberal ideologies may boil down to differences in the preferred ratios and mechanisms of that distribution. In my opinion the ideal ratios and mechanisms for the distribution of power (and insomuch as it is a proxy for power, wealth) should be determined by experimentation and empirical data rather than by ideology. Most conservatives and liberals alike are still more attached to ideologies than to science (i.e. empirical data).


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