The Independent Whig
Conventional Wisdom
Chris Matthews is Morally Dumbfounded
According to this article, apparently Chris Matthews believes that Republicans: “Never Say Their Problem With Obama Is That He Is Black.” As Jonathan Haidt describes in The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, moral dumbfounding is when a person is “rendered speechless by their inability to explain verbally what they … Continue reading
An Example of Liberal Bias in Academic Social Science
It is my opinion that “Compassionate Liberals and Polite Conservatives,” by Jacob B. Hirsh, Colin G. DeYoung, Xiaowen Xu, and Jordan B. Peterson, available on the Publications tab of the YourMorals.org web site, contains at least three examples of liberal bias in the way it characterizes liberals and conservatives. Two examples are in the first sentence of … Continue reading
Toward A More Accurate Political Spectrum
What is the fundamental problem all societies try to solve? The fundamental problem is the resolution of the natural tension that exists between human desire for individual autonomy and the limits that must necessarily be placed on that autonomy in order for cooperative society to exist. It is finding the proper balance between the individualizing foundations … Continue reading
The Conservative Conundrum, and a Possible Solution
Haidt’s work presents a conundrum for conservatives. On the one hand, in one context, everything he says is right. We should understand where both sides are coming from, realize that both sides offer valuable insights, give more benefit of the doubt, stop demonizing the other side, and build a door through the wall of the … Continue reading
Conservatism is not Resistance to Change, it is Respect for Experience.
Conventional wisdom holds that conservatism is about resistance to change, adherence to customs and traditions, preservation of institutions, and defense of the status quo. This is incorrect. Those things are merely the effects of a much deeper cause. The deeper cause is an inherent respect for experience – the collected wisdom of the ages – … Continue reading
Liberty, Equality, Justice, and Fairness Mean Different Things in Different Moral Matrices
The moral matrix we live in shapes our perceptions of the world, and even our understanding of the meanings of words. For example, Haidt introduced the Liberty/Oppression moral foundation in the talk he gave at the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education. He discussed how the six-foundation and three-foundation moralities attach different connotations … Continue reading
Protecting the Weak
Conventional wisdom says that liberalism protects the weak better than conservatism does. I submit that this conventional wisdom is unwise, and in fact, the wrong way around. Haidt explains in his TED talk that the most successful attempts at creating human societies have come when people used “all the tools in the toolbox.” I submit … Continue reading
Do Liberals Really “Care” More?
In Moral Psychology and the Misunderstanding of Religion Haidt makes the following observation about liberal morality: But if you try to apply this two-foundation [i.e., liberal] morality to the rest of the world, you either fail or you become Procrustes. Most traditional societies care about a lot more than harm/care and fairness/justice. Why do so … Continue reading
Recommendations
The real problem as I see it is that much of the squabbling between the left and the right over this or that policy or moral issue is based on a set of assumptions about what motivates us and how our minds work that is tilted decidedly to the left, and that we now know … Continue reading
Post Script
Each of the posts in this essay is really just an abstract for a potentially much longer exploration of the topic it contains, which could be supported by the latest findings of social science research as well as by history. I think that not only could this essay thus be expanded into a book-length report, I … Continue reading
I Support Viewpoint Diversity
A politically diverse group of social scientists, natural scientists, humanists, and other scholars who want to improve our academic disciplines and universities. We share a concern about a growing problem: the loss or lack of “viewpoint diversity.” When nearly everyone in a field shares the same political orientation, certain ideas become orthodoxy, dissent is discouraged, and errors can go unchallenged.
Venn Diagram of Liberal and Conservative Traits and Moral Foundations and
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