Pleas to tone down the heated political rhetoric in America tend to suffer the same fate as sensible-eating guidelines: endorsed in principle and ignored in practice. It’s clear enough why. The views of liberals and conservatives rest on fundamentally different foundations, making it difficult to locate common ground. Lacking a basic understanding of their opponents’ motivations, partisans view those on the other side of the ideological divide warily, often assuming the worst. In his essential new book, The Righteous Mind, psychologist Jonathan Haidt offers no easy way out of this ... Read More
Conservatives’ Politics of Fear a Biological Response
January 23, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
The tone of this year’s Republican presidential primary (which now seems destined to last much longer than Mitt Romney had been planning) seems sort of, well, fearful. One after the other, these would-be presidents have warned of looming threats — war with Iran, economic collapse, class warfare, social disintegration, illegal immigration — and have sought to position themselves as the best candidate for the job of protecting America. Their political advisers must understand a psychological phenomenon that researchers have been studying for some time now: conservatives appear to be ... Read More
Reintroducing Paul Goodman, the ‘Public Intellectual’
October 18, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Once upon a time, there was something called a "public intellectual," and writer/pacifist/political radical/bisexual Paul Goodman was practically its template. Brilliant and witty, a New Left guru and regular TV presence on shows like William F. Buckley's Firing Line, Goodman was particularly famous thanks to his enormously influential 1959 book, Growing Up Absurd, in which he argued that society was so morally corrupt, youthful rebellion and disaffection actually signified mental health. "He's a wonderful example of an intellectual who was active as a citizen, who cared about young people, ... Read More
America Not as Politically Conservative as You Think
January 14, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Among the many memes floating around in the wake of the 2010 election is that America has taken a rightward turn, and conservative pundits seem re-energized in calling America a center-right nation. After all, a plurality of American voters (42 percent) now call themselves “conservative” — as compared to just 35 percent who say they are “moderate” and 20 percent who say they are “liberal.” Two years ago, moderates and conservatives both were at 37 percent. But new research suggests that pundits ought to be cautious of overinterpreting the conservative label: It doesn’t ... Read More
Linking Uncivil Rhetoric With Violent Acts
January 11, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Partisans have been quick in the wake of Saturday's shooting in Tucson, Ariz., to point fingers, and to point fingers at pointed fingers, alternately deploring and defending the heated political rhetoric that somehow seems tied — in perception if not reality — to the attempted assassination of a U.S. congresswoman. Sarah Palin is to blame. Or maybe Sharron Angle is. Or it's the president himself, who must deeply regret now his intemperate pledge to "bring a gun" to the opponent's "knife fight." When the blame subsides, we'll be left with a national discussion about where most of us ... Read More
A New Take on Political Ideology
October 26, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
With another contentious U.S. election approaching, opinions predictably have hardened as voters gravitate toward candidates who best embody their particular political position. Partisans — that is, nearly everyone aside from the handful of genuine independents, who tend to be disengaged from the process — habitually divide the world between right-thinking, like-minded people and those fools who just don't get it. As much as we stake our identity on such core beliefs, it's unlikely we emerged from the womb as little liberals or libertarians. This raises a fundamental question: At what ... Read More
Four out of Five Experts Agree — With Me!
September 24, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
A clear consensus of opinion emerges within the scientific community on an important issue, such as climate change. But the public, and its elected leaders, remains unconvinced and unreceptive to well-founded warnings. With this phenomenon growing frustratingly familiar, researchers can be forgiven if they begin to feel like Rodney Dangerfields in lab coats. From their perspective, they don’t get no respect. Newly published research suggests that’s not entirely true: Americans do believe and trust researchers. But we focus our attention on those experts whose ideas conform ... Read More
Liberals Gone Wild
September 1, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
It's an ongoing mystery that "liberal" is still a swear word in vast parts of the United States and may even be synonymous with "Europe" — as in, "all those liberals in Europe" — while Europeans would hardly recognize themselves in the label. "Obama portrays himself as a moderate, but he's really much more liberal than he says," a Fox News talking head declared during the 2008 U.S. presidential election, hoping to ding the candidate's reputation. Two years on, most Europeans would only agree: Barack Obama has turned out to be a far more typical American president — far more liberal ... Read More
Waiting for the Train Wreck
May 11, 2010 • By • 2 Comments
Over the weekend, reliably conservative three-term Sen. Bob Bennett pretty much lost his job. Delegates to the nominating convention before Utah's Republican primary decided Bennett, after 18 years in Washington, was no longer conservative enough to be their party's candidate this fall. His transgression? He voted in 2008 for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the bank bailout that garnered 74 votes in the Senate (including that of GOP leader Mitch McConnell), as well as the support of numerous economists. And he attempted at one point last summer to work with Democrat Ron Wyden on a health ... Read More
The Morals of Our Story
June 15, 2009 • By • 2 Comments
I am glad to read about Jonathan Haidt's academic research into the moral values decisions made by cultural conservatives ("Morals Authority," May/June). The question in Haidt's article about closing Guantánamo Bay could also be seen in the opposite way, however, from an "in-group loyalty" point of view. "In-group" loyalty in the U.S. could also mean to the Constitution, the Founders and "habeas corpus" being a central tenet of U.S. law and culture from the founding of the Republic, rather than as a "proactive attitude to an outside threat." In fact, seeing it the way these cultural ... Read More
