"The Road" - Emmylou Harris
Hauntingly beautiful song about Gram Parsons and what he meant to her.
- I am debating whether to read The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt, a book that has been getting a lot of buzz recently. Haidt, a professor of social psychology at the University of Virginia, writes about the mental processes by which people acquire their political views and highlights, in particular, what he sees as an overemphasis on reason by people on the liberal side of the ledger. Haidt stresses that reason tends to be something done retrospectively when it comes to politics -- in other words, we arrive at our political positions intuitively and then resort to reason to sell it to others (and ourselves). I pretty much buy that world view, although I think it sells short the reasoning process and how undertaking that exercise -- even in the interest of self-justification -- can lead us to interesting places and instill the habit of thinking seriously about things.
Haidt appears to hit on themes that have been a frequent subject of discussion around here and one that several of you I think have had particularly good insights about -- the frequent lack of compelling narrative in the liberal approach to politics, a failure to deal well with the tribal and the mythic, a certain comfort with our own rectitude, coupled with a tendency to overestimate our own numbers.
Of course I was bit put off the book by the fact that Will Saletan was chosen to review it by the Times. Saletan enjoys nothing so much as to castigate liberals while turning the flaws of the right into virtues. He is the ultimate totebagger -- smug and self-loathing all at once. Saletan's review is full of gems like this:
People accept God, authority and karma because these ideas suit their moral taste buds. Haidt points to research showing that people punish cheaters, accept many hierarchies and don’t support equal distribution of benefits when contributions are unequal.
You don’t have to go abroad to see these ideas. You can find them in the Republican Party. Social conservatives see welfare and feminism as threats to responsibility and family stability. The Tea Party hates redistribution because it interferes with letting people reap what they earn. Faith, patriotism, valor, chastity, law and order — these Republican themes touch all six moral foundations, whereas Democrats, in Haidt’s analysis, focus almost entirely on care and fighting oppression. This is Haidt’s startling message to the left: When it comes to morality, conservatives are more broad-minded than liberals. They serve a more varied diet.
So in other words, resorts to tribalism, religious primitivism, and reflexive nationalism are the equivalent of adding spinach, broccoli, and quinoa to your diet -- they make you -- huh? -- more broad-minded. It is all well and good to understand that these impulses animate the politics of many people and that communication strategies need to be designed to appeal to aspects of this world view. But having a broader array of reflexive prejudices does not make one more "broad-minded."
(I also find it interesting the Saletan stresses the left's electoral failures. It's worth noting that Democrats have won the popular vote in four of the last five presidential elections and came rather close in the fifth. Should Obama win in 2012, that will represent popular vote victories in five of the last six presidential elections, something that the Democrats have not done since winning five straight elections from 1932 through 1948. The Republicans accomplished the five out of six feat between 1968 and 1988, but although people like Saletan never quite notice, they haven't really dominated national politics since then. I am not suggesting that this has been a liberal golden age, but it's not 1994 in perpetuity either.)
Most annoyingly, Saletan, like his right wing doppelganger David Brooks, resorts frequently to glib suggestions that political attitudes are products of evolutionary biology. Really, can someone just make this crap stop. Political attitudes can transform over the course of a relatively few years -- see e.g. gay marriage -- they are not some sort of immutable biological fact.
Ultimately whatever its flaws, we should not forget the degree to which liberalism's narratives have often succeeded in our politics. Appeals to the universal nature of human equality have succeeded to a marked degree in the struggles of blacks, women, and the gay community over the last fifty years. There are powerful aspects of the American mythos that have been effectively harnessed in these causes -- and if you talk to young people you realize the degree to which they have taken root in the culture. The struggle it seems to me is to take the strengths that liberalism has shown in this arena and look to ways to make similar appeals in the economic arena, the place where I believe we have not made much progress in recent decades. These are in some respects more complicated arguments to make and ones that prompt fierce opposition by vested interests, but I think that they can be made in a way that is both respectful and persuasive.
(Wow, I am watching Colbert really take it to Charles Murray right now -- it's pretty interesting to see how steely Colbert can be -- one gets the sense that Murray gets under his skin in a way that the usual buffoons don't.)
Alright, I've got to catch an early flight to Louisville in the morning -- consider this an open thread.
I could never do what Colbert does. I have a fairly pronounced sense of humor, but it has an edge to it, and when it comes to politics I get angry too easily to even begin to think about doing what Colbert does so brilliantly.
Posted by: oddjob | March 28, 2012 at 09:30 AM
Russian President Dimitry Medvedev just destroyed Romney's attempt to take advantage of Obama's open-mic moment the other day:
"As for ideological cliches, I have already spoken on the subject. I always get very cautious when I see a country resort to phrasing such as 'Number one enemy.' It is very reminiscent of Hollywood and a certain period of history. I would advise two things to all U.S. presidential candidates, including the person [Romney] you just mentioned. My first advice is to listen to reason when they formulate their positions. Reason never harmed a presidential candidate. My other advice is to check their clocks from time to time: it is 2012, not the mid-1970s. No matter what party a candidate represents, he has to take the current state of affairs into account."
Posted by: low-tech cyclist | March 28, 2012 at 09:45 AM
Meant to include a link.
Posted by: low-tech cyclist | March 28, 2012 at 09:46 AM
Thought this was interesting in today's CSM:
"There isn't any doubt that [Santorum's] positions on cultural issues are at odds with the Republican voters in the Philadelphia suburbs," said Terry Madonna, a long-time Santorum observer and professor at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster.
"Republican voters in the Philadelphia suburbs are more liberal on gays, guns and abortions than the Democrats in any part of the state with the exception of inner-city Philadelphia," he said.
http://bit.ly/GVWPSt
re: Santorum losing support in his home state.
He should listen to Medvedev. When I heard Santorum's support was slipping in PA, all I could think of were the miles and miles of empty steel mills, coal mines, construction sites, farms and other PA workplaces for the men of yesteryear who might have supported him in 1975, as the kind president pointed out. On a recent border-to-border drive through PA, it was obvious to me that, like most NE states, this one relies heavily on service jobs (health care, education, social services, back office support, retail), hospitality and tourism, government and other industries generally filled with female employees. Did he really think women supporting many of the families of PA were going to jump on the bandwagon to give up their jobs in favor of more babies and home schooling?
He might as well have preached to guys working in the whaling industry, slave holders or those in the horse and buggy trade.
Posted by: Paula B | March 28, 2012 at 10:39 AM
No matter what party a candidate represents, he has to take the current state of affairs into account.
Not exactly the GOP base's strength, that.....
Posted by: oddjob | March 28, 2012 at 10:58 AM
"Republican voters in the Philadelphia suburbs are more liberal on gays, guns and abortions than the Democrats in any part of the state with the exception of inner-city Philadelphia,"
They've been switching parties because the GOP is getting so extreme, and switching parties is not lightly done in Pennsylvania because the primaries are closed primaries. You can only vote for candidates from the party you're registered with during primary elections. If you're not affiliated with a political party at all then in primary elections you can only vote on ballot questions (if there are any).
The Pennsylvania Republicans outside the Philadelphia & Pittsburgh suburbs are a much different sort of voter (and share similarities with evangelical Christian Republicans elsewhere in the USA), but the suburban Republicans are much akin to the classic "Yankee Republican" that once defined what the Republican Party was.
Posted by: oddjob | March 28, 2012 at 11:03 AM
TPM Reader PM checks in with a smart take on the HCR oral arguments [specifically regarding the matter of a "limiting principle"].
Posted by: oddjob | March 28, 2012 at 12:47 PM
If SCOTUS strikes down ACA, I predict things get very, very ugly in response. Citizens United will look like a birthday gift compared to the loss of health care reform, even for some on the right. After all, as someone said earlier, it was a Republican plan to begin with.
Posted by: Paula B | March 28, 2012 at 01:36 PM
Haidt makes a series of interesting theses, and his discussion of the bases of human morality is, at times, illuminating. However, I think that the lessons he draws and policy prescriptions he comes to are downright weird. First, he makes a series of points that human morality is guided by more than reason (as defined by Kantians or Rawlsians). That should be uncontroversial. Liberalism didn't exist before the 18th Century (Rousseau, Locke, Kant et al). Yet human civilization has gone back more than 5000 years.
What surprises me about Haidt is his rather strident insistence that these other forms of morality are equally valid, and should somehow coexist with one another. They can't. Haidt goes on ad nauseum about the widespread acceptance of hierarchy and authoritarian family structures throughout history and the world. I would say (and I think most people on the Left would say) that the Left in the modern period properly undermines those structures- and that as ideas of autonomy and equality are spread to people at the lower end of social hierarchies, that type of morality is overturned. That's the whole concept of dialectical change- which Haidt seems to ignore.
Posted by: Joe S | March 28, 2012 at 02:58 PM
Moreover, Haidt seems to put a great deal of emphasis on the fact that liberals don't take into account that people value "being rewarded according to their own merits and works." Haidt seems to think that the Tea Party types simply work along a different, equally valid, objective reality-- and that we on the Left simply refuse to accept the Tea Partiers' values.
However, the whole critique of the Tea Party and conservatives generally in this country (and worldwide) stems from the fact that conservatives wrongly attribute their wealth and success to their own merits and works. I'm well aware of what conservatives think and how they justify their privilege in the world. When I look at the evidence, I see something very different. I see conservatives being given a whole variety of privileges over generations (based upon race, gender and class) and assuming that their assent was based upon merit. The Left critiques of conservatism (from Marxism which discussed at length how the upper classes used "rents" to extract wealth from the working and lower classes; to feminism which is devoted to showing how men exploit the labor and lives of woment; to race critical theories which discuss how Whites extracted power and wealth from people of color) all have as their central critique that the assumed merit of privileged classes is actually wrong.
Posted by: Joe S | March 28, 2012 at 03:05 PM
Finally, Haidt doesn't take into account the narratives of nondominant members of a civilization. He goes on and on about how Indians in a patriarchal society valued patriarchal families and gender roles and family roles. He doesn't seem to take into account that the women and daughters in those families may have had muted criticisms of the arrangements they found themselves in (or would have had criticisms but for the brutal force of social and economic and sometimes physical force keeping their mouths shut.
I half expect the man to start researching the plantation system in 1840's South Carolina and start babbling on about how first hand accouts (written exclusively by Whites) seem to show how a hierarchical system was totally expected there.
Anyway, that's my thinking on Haidt. He just comes off as an apologist for conservatism in my mind-- and not a very good one. He needs to read Foucoult, Frederick Douglas, and Gloria Steinem, and maybe some Francois Fanon, and determine whether his nonjudgmental bullshit of conservative morality systems really accurately reflects the human experience.
Posted by: Joe S | March 28, 2012 at 03:12 PM
Joe,
All excellent points about Haidt, all of which I concur with.
If Haidt's worldview (and Saletan's) prevailed then we would have to accept racism, patriarchy, sexism, and homophobia as perfectly valid moral stances. They aren't. They simply aren't. And it is to liberalism's great credit that we haven't accepted these things.
Posted by: Sir Charles | March 28, 2012 at 04:13 PM
Joe,
Haidt's view of the tea party is just absurd. As we have discussed at length here, a huge amount of the tea party cohort are people collective various government benefits -- Social Security, Medicare, disability and unemployment among other things. The Tea Party critique of the world -- if one can call it that -- is that they are deserving of these things and others aren't, well, just because. And we know what the because usually is -- a question of skin color.
This is what I mean when I say that Saletan never takes a critical view of the right. He accepts their absurd claims at face value while always on the lookout for offenses by liberals.
Posted by: Sir Charles | March 28, 2012 at 04:16 PM
The once-upon-a-time dancer in me just couldn't resist dropping this in.
h/t Andrew
Posted by: nancy | March 28, 2012 at 05:28 PM
Wow, nancy, can you do that?
Posted by: Paula B | March 28, 2012 at 05:42 PM
cool, nancy! paula, no normal human can do that.
oddjob, thanks for the link about finding a limiting principle. i am way too swamped to be able to wade through everything on these arguments, but the views in that link make tremendous sense.
my other general impression from quick reviews of the arguments is that a lot of people, especially those looking for soundbites on the nightly news, are looking for a quick count of justices based on exchanges in oral argument, and not working through the complexity of some of these issues. the justices, i assure you, are not making their decisions on the same simple set of ideas held by reporters of the nightly news. in my quick glances, sure, i wish things had gone more smoothly for upholding the law -- but i'm also not resigned to a loss.
sidenote: it matters very much who will appoint the next justices to the high court. if nothing else gets you going for november, that should.
Posted by: kathy a. | March 28, 2012 at 07:14 PM
Alas no, Paula. However that is my plan for my next life. ;-)
As to SCOTUS, for people like me befuddled by the arguments, one might find Dahlia Lithwick helpful. I sure did. Also this by Jamelle Bouie at TAP where he suggests that single payer would be also be doomed if the mandate is struck down.
Posted by: nancy | March 28, 2012 at 07:54 PM
The sad thing about this spectacle (especially if the Supreme Court finds the ACA unconstitutional) from my perspective is really my disillusionment and loss of belief in the rule of law-- especially coupled with Bush v. Gore and Citizens United.
I have to say that, although I disagreed with Scalia in the 1980's and 1990's, I always admired his technical ability as a judge. Many of his administrative law opinions were well thought out and highly cogent. Although I disagreed with the Scalia view of economics, he seemed to understand economics and regulatory effects on economics fairly well. Now all of that seems to be gone.
With this case, Citizens United, and Bush v. Gore (if this case actually makes this law unconstitutional) it just seems like Constitutional law has been turned into an effort to take or keep power through control of the federal courts. There doesn't even seem to be subtlety about it. This Court seems hellbent on repeating the legacy of the Lochner era. It's just sad.
Posted by: Joe S | March 28, 2012 at 09:08 PM
And because sometimes things get too wonky around these parts . . .
The Decorah Eagles are back in their nest! Watch as mama feeds her 2 days old eaglet while sibling sleeps (third sib has not hatched yet).
Posted by: jeanne marie | March 28, 2012 at 09:29 PM
joe -- chin up. even if this is the crappiest opinion ever, it be no worse than 5-4, and will give us some things to litigate further. and ammunition on the political side. eyes on the prize.
still, i'm crossing fingers.
Posted by: kathy a. | March 28, 2012 at 09:33 PM
JM, love that!
Posted by: kathy a. | March 28, 2012 at 11:14 PM
With this case, Citizens United, and Bush v. Gore (if this case actually makes this law unconstitutional) it just seems like Constitutional law has been turned into an effort to take or keep power through control of the federal courts.
It's what the Federalist Society has been working for ever since it first came into existence.
Posted by: oddjob | March 29, 2012 at 09:16 AM
Another who thinks along Joe's lines:
...If SCOTUS ditches stare decisis here, sure their credibility will take a hit, but more importantly: we, as a polity and individuals, would have no reason to think we could pass any major regulatory legislation (unless, of course, we took the political commitments of the justices as our guide). SCOTUS would be potentially freezing the statutory law in place. What is Congress supposed to do with its time if everything it thought it knew about the law gets chucked out the window? How does it pass legislation? How does it change existing legislation? Are only Republican Congresses allowed to pass laws?...
Former Conn. Atty. Gen. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) also voiced similar thoughts in a press conference yesterday.
Posted by: oddjob | March 29, 2012 at 09:28 AM
In an appearance on The Tonight Show Mitt Romney reminds us that when all is said and done the Republicans' healthcare plan is, "Don't get sick. But if you do get sick, die quickly."
Posted by: oddjob | March 29, 2012 at 09:36 AM
Another good reason to fund campaigns by Warren and others attempting to unseat Senate Republicans: http://bo.st/HkSQOZ
Posted by: Paula B | March 29, 2012 at 11:02 AM
oddjob---what a chilling comment by Blumenthal. Thanks for posting. It ties into the link to the Globe story mentioned above. Both point to subtleties embedded in judicial decisions that often go unnoticed by those of us not trained in law.
Posted by: Paula B | March 29, 2012 at 11:09 AM
Reading through SCOTUS commentary is pretty damned depressing and frightening. Here's Pierce:
Here is the rest.
Posted by: nancy | March 29, 2012 at 01:53 PM
nancy -- i just have not had time to follow the arguments or commentary closely. but i also don't see a purpose in getting too worked up based on how arguments went. stare decisis is pretty darned powerful in how the court approaches issues, and i'm not ready to start running around yelling that the sky is falling. plus, nothing we mortals can do about it anyway, until we see what the opinions say.
nino scalia is well known as a loudmouthed smartass on the bench. always has been. he is a master at arguing the absurd, and appears to enjoy that a great deal. nothing has changed lately.
Posted by: kathy a. | March 29, 2012 at 03:45 PM
>>Is Scalia seriously making the case that a banal political compromise within the negotiations from which bill eventually is produced can affect its ultimate constitutionality? Good luck ever getting anything passed if that's the standard.<<
Nancy, that's exactly what the Globe piece was about. We've been hijacked by those judicial activists the GOP has warned us about.
Posted by: Paula B | March 29, 2012 at 04:18 PM
(Of course, they were always warning about liberal activists. They never seem to want to talk about the reactionary activists they're so fond of.....)
Posted by: oddjob | March 29, 2012 at 04:31 PM
House passes GOP buj: http://nyti.ms/H0fDgw
Posted by: Paula B | March 29, 2012 at 04:33 PM
kathy a -- Another sample. From E.J. Dionne:
Voiced by the Chief Justice of the Court of the land and from the bench. Your average high school senior could explain the principle for him. That's disturbing to say the least. The whole blatant exercise on display this week of searching for imaginary liberal horribles is ugly and unseemly. And Civics 101 rewritten.
Posted by: nancy | March 29, 2012 at 07:28 PM
et tu, roberts? that's a pretty awful example, nancy.
but i wonder if it was a rhetorical question?
Posted by: kathy a. | March 29, 2012 at 10:08 PM
Jesus, I hope so.
Because he can't be that fucking obtuse, can he?
Posted by: Sir Charles | March 29, 2012 at 11:09 PM
roberts is not a friend, although he's no scalia. his kids were quite young when he assumed the bench at SCOTUS, and his wife is a lawyer. don't know if it makes a difference in his world view that the kids are adopted, so they never had to worry about maternity services -- sure as hell hope it occurs to him that the production of healthy children is not as easy as ordering out.
Posted by: kathy a. | March 29, 2012 at 11:16 PM
A righteous response to Haidt from Freddie DeBoer:
Posted by: low-tech cyclist | March 30, 2012 at 02:31 PM
Thanks much for that link ltc. Coincidentally I had just finished reading his underlying post at l'hote when I saw your comment. Powerful and beautiful writing, that.
One gets the sense from Haidt and his fellows that they've managed to read no literature -- nor seen plays, read any poetry or given thought to the role of the fates, etc.
We all should just calm down, sort life out and agree on how best to proceed. Prescriptions and proscriptions. Good. That will work.
Driftglass recently posted a clip of an interview by Bill Moyers:
Professor D would have none of it as you might imagine.
Posted by: nancy | March 30, 2012 at 07:03 PM
I guess I'm with you, nancy and Sir Charles. I don't see any point in wringing hands or pointing fingers for what might have been. It is what it is. The best thing we can do now is look at what we've got and decide how to go forward. In a way, a nay from SCOTUS might still drive us to where we want to be, one state at a time. Or not. Some hard decisions are ahead, for each of us, but especially for our children.
Posted by: Paula B | March 30, 2012 at 07:20 PM
We all should just calm down, sort life out and agree on how best to proceed. Prescriptions and proscriptions. Good. That will work.
Sorry. I left off the ** irony quotes. Or, "sometimes I get all insular", to quote our host.
Posted by: nancy | March 30, 2012 at 07:40 PM
l-t c,
Good post by Freddie, who I either adore or find hopeless from post to post. He has a very large heart though, so I think slack must be cut for him. And I am always happier to agree with him than disagree.
Paula and nancy,
Haidt really does seem like a Friedman with a few extra IQ points.
Posted by: Sir Charles | March 30, 2012 at 08:42 PM
re: freddie de boer---Stunning!
Posted by: Paula B | March 31, 2012 at 09:36 AM
Man, I've just got to jump in and dissect that Haidt quote.
Liberals see some aspects of where the social system breaks down. And conservatives see others.
Yeah, and we've spent the last 30+ years largely taking care of the problems that conservatives see. And they never get to the point where they realize that a given problem is taken care of, and move on to the next one. And the past few years have shown that that's because they didn't give a shit about the stated problems in the first place: they simply want more power to accrue to the top 1/1000 or so of the population, even if it hurts the country.
For instance, maybe we did get to a point in the 1970s where the unions were the tail wagging the dog. That problem's been fixed for 30 years, but they've kept going, because they simply want to destroy all unions.
Similarly in the culture wars: as this past several months has imprinted on our brains, there's no Saletan wet dream where everyone agrees to try to minimize abortion by easy access to contraception and RU-486. They want to make it impossible for women to get abortions, and they're doing their level best to reduce women's access to contraception as well.
They're not into seeing problems with the way society works, and solving them: that itself is strictly a center-left thing. They simply want to win, and then win some more, and rub their domestic enemies' faces in it if at all possible.
You have to have consequences following bad behavior. That is as basic an aspect of system design as any. And that's one where conservatives see it much more clearly than liberals.
Yeah, that's why conservatives are so enraged that the people who nearly brought down our economy in 2008 haven't paid any price. And why they were so mad about Scooter Libby getting pardoned. And why they're upset that George Zimmerman hasn't been arrested.
Yeah.
Does this guy have his receiver tuned in to the right universe? Just wondering.
And I feel like I'm sort of, I sort of, like, stepped out of the game.
One of Stephen R. Donaldson's characters in The Mirror of Her Dreams admonishes the protagonist: "To you, it's just a game. To me, it's the difference between life and ruin."
And now that the game has gotten so deadly, I'm hoping that, in the coming year, I can be the guy saying, ‘Come on, people, just, here, understand the other side so you stop demonizing, and now you can argue more productively.
You know, I really wish our side was just demonizing, because then we could stop doing so, find common ground, solve some of our major problems, and hold hands and sing Kumbayah.
Unfortunately, the other side really doesn't want to deal with climate change, and wants to pretend the problem doesn't exist. The other side really does want to keep tens of millions of Americans uninsured. They really do want to destroy any right of working men and women to band together to negotiate collectively with their employers. They really do want to replace Medicare with a voucher that won't suffice to pay for health insurance for the elderly. They really do want to deny women their right to choose, and want to deprive them of access to contraception as well. They really do want to permanently cut taxes on America's richest people by trillions of dollars, but had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into giving working Americans a much smaller, one-year tax cut. They really did have to similarly be dragged into extending unemployment benefits, at a time when there simply aren't jobs for everyone. They really don't see the logic of spending on infrastructure at a time when borrowing money to do so is cheaper than it's ever been, or ever will be, and labor and materials costs will be lower than usual because there's no demand for either of these things.
This is not demonizing; it's truth.
Is there a hydroponic farm somewhere where they produce these "both sides do it" types in vats? It would explain their total obliviousness to the reality that the rest of us live in.
Posted by: low-tech cyclist | March 31, 2012 at 11:31 AM
l-t c,
There have been a couple more classics in the both sides do it genre in just the last week alone. I was thinking of doing a post on it, but then does it make any sense to plow that particularly fertile ground again.
Posted by: Sir Charles | March 31, 2012 at 12:26 PM