Conservatives Live in a Different Moral Universe -- And Here's Why It Matters

[marmar]

via AlterNet:



Conservatives Live in a Different Moral Universe -- And Here's Why It Matters

By Tom Jacobs, Miller-McCune.com. Posted April 25, 2009.

Liberals and conservatives have highly different moral priorities. And we have to understand them if we want to accomplish anything.



Jonathan Haidt is hardly a road-rage kind of guy, but he does get irritated by self-righteous bumper stickers. The soft-spoken psychologist is acutely annoyed by certain smug slogans that adorn the cars of fellow liberals: "Support our troops: Bring them home" and "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism."

"No conservative reads those bumper stickers and thinks, 'Hmm -- so liberals are patriotic!'" he says, in a sarcastic tone of voice that jarringly contrasts with his usual subdued sincerity. "We liberals are universalists and humanists; it's not part of our morality to highly value nations. So to claim dissent is patriotic -- or that we're supporting the troops, when in fact we're opposing the war -- is disingenuous.

"It just pisses people off."

The University of Virginia scholar views such slogans as clumsy attempts to insist we all share the same values. In his view, these catch phrases are not only insincere -- they're also fundamentally wrong. Liberals and conservatives, he insists, inhabit different moral universes. There is some overlap in belief systems, but huge differences in emphasis.

In a creative attempt to move beyond red-state/blue-state clichés, Haidt has created a framework that codifies mankind's multiplicity of moralities. His outline is simultaneously startling and reassuring -- startling in its stark depiction of our differences, and reassuring in that it brings welcome clarity to an arena where murkiness of motivation often breeds contention. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/story/138303/conservatives_live_in_a_different_moral_universe_--_and_here%27s_why_it_matters/

[provis99]

1. nothing new here.

he basically concludes that conservatives are traditionalist in their morality. But we've known that since Edmund Burke, John Locke, and the Enlightenment. Haidt has re-invented the wheel, and claimed he discovered it.

[C_U_L8R]

2. Karl Jung had good insight...

“The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong”


Seems the republicans got their pendulum stuck.