The Independent Whig
The Rider and the Elephant,
Response to “Conservatives Good, Republican Party Bad”
NOTE: Haidt has published a follow-up to his “Conservatives Good, Republican Party Bad” post, here: I Retract My Republican-Party-Bad Post. ========================================================= On the blog section of the website for his new book “The Righteous Mind,” Jonathan Haidt posted a short essay entitled “Conservatives Good, Republican Party Bad.” I posted a comment to Dr. Haidt’s … 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
An Interpretation of Moral Foundations Theory: Introduction and Table of Contents
This post is an Introduction and Table of Contents (scroll down a little) for a series of posts. Each post in the series stands on its own, but together they form an alternate interpretation of Jonathan Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory. I live in the six-foundation moral matrix. In other words, I am conservative. Haidt grew up in the three-foundation … Continue reading
The Rider and the Elephant
We humans like to think we’re rational beings, choosing our path through life via dispassionate analysis of objective facts. But that’s really an illusion. The fact is, we’re driven mostly by instinct and intuition; by our “gut feel” and our innate visceral sense of like and dislike. Imagine that you are walking through a museum … Continue reading
Moral Foundations Help To Define the Elephant
Morality is our sense of right and wrong. It is the sets of behaviors that we, as a society and as individuals, consider to be acceptable and unacceptable. It is our collection of notions about how we should act and relate to one another. It is the instant, instinctual feeling of like or dislike that … 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
Introduction to The Fallacy of Reason
I think that a lot of the rancor in politics these days is attributable to several false presuppositions many of us hold about how we arrive at our beliefs, and about how we relate with one another. If there is to be any hope of improving not only civility across the political aisle but also … Continue reading
The Rider and The Elephant
Imagine that you are walking through a museum with a friend. You turn a corner, see a painting for the first time, and your immediate reaction is to say, “Oh I like that.” Your friend asks, “Really? Why? What is it about the painting that makes you like it?” Only then do you consciously come … Continue reading
About The Independent Whig
NOTE: This post shows the About page as it originally appered. The About page will be updated occasionally as this blog develops and matures. Introduction: This blog takes its name from a series of essays written in 1720 by John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, whose later work was serialized in The London Journal, and then … 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
The Independent Whig 