So, the G man as I like to call him (not really), posts today about the work of a psychologist called Haidt (that's really his name, and I don't know how to pronounce it, but yes, 'hate' works for me).
Haidt argues, says G, that folks make decisions based on 4 moral intuitions. Roughly, these are intuitions about, 1. suffering, 2. reciprocity, fairness, and equality, 3. hierarchy, 4. purity and pollution. He then claims that 'liberals' tend to draw from only the first two intuitions, while conservatives draw from all 4. G then goes on to say other interesting things.
But I want to stop right here and yell: the folks at Stonesthrow are being far too nice today.
And thus I ask rhetorically, liberals stop at the first two but conservatives have all four? Does Haidt mean genuine cultural conservatives? If so, fine. But there aren't any genuine conservatives running the country or taking up the far right side of this country's political spectrum. And the right in this country doesn't have much at all to say about fairness, equality, reciprocity and suffering.
I'd put it the other way around: conservatives stop at the last 2, while liberals have all 4. (I mean, Pat Robertson has asked God to strike down another Supreme Court justice and called for the US assasination of a world leader, all in the same week!)
Finally, those 4 moral intuitions should be weighted toward the first two, especially reciprocity and fairness - that's what the democratic revolutions of the last few centuries have been all about. If so-called 'conservatives' want hierarchy and purity, then they should sign up for a trip through time back to early 20th century totalitarianism. After all, Hitler and Mussolini...those guys knew purity and hierarchy.
Why on earth would we want to value purity and hierarchy on the same plane as we value fairness, justice, and a sense of duty toward other suffering human beings???? They are not, and should not, be equal values. And if they are equal 'moral intutions' then we need to do some work on our intutions'.
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I took Haidt's comment about conservatives having all four to be a point about their rhetoric, not their principles, and certainly conservatives do uses fairness rhetoric (the death tax) and equality rhetoric (against affirmative action), and if his point is limited to rhetorics, I also agree with him that the left has failed to use all of the rhetorical levers at its disposal, and to its detriment.
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