Difference between revisions of "2008-09-09 What Makes People Vote Republican/woozle"
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So Haidt is, presumably, going to give us some good advice for how to better market liberalism, which he has just stated is more honest than conservatism, right? Let's read on... | So Haidt is, presumably, going to give us some good advice for how to better market liberalism, which he has just stated is more honest than conservatism, right? Let's read on... | ||
| − | "Diagnosis is a pleasure," continues Haidt, "...but with pleasure comes seduction, and with righteous pleasure comes seduction wearing a halo. Our diagnosis explains away Republican successes while convincing us and our fellow liberals that we hold the moral high ground. Our diagnosis tells us that we have nothing to learn from other ideologies..." | + | ''"Diagnosis is a pleasure,"'' continues Haidt, ''"...but with pleasure comes seduction, and with righteous pleasure comes seduction wearing a halo. Our diagnosis explains away Republican successes while convincing us and our fellow liberals that we hold the moral high ground. Our diagnosis tells us that we have nothing to learn from other ideologies..."'' |
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| + | Now hold on a minute, buckaroos. A core part of liberalism is the idea that ''other ways and traditions may have value''. Liberalism embraces the idea of diversity. You can't tell me, who has spent the past 6 months as a "rational liberal" [[En Tequila Es Verdad/progressive conservatism|debating political philosophy with a "progressive conservative"]], that I'm not trying to see the good in conservatism. | ||
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| + | If anyone is rejecting the idea of learning from other ideologies, it would be conservatives. If conservatism chooses to shoot itself in the foot by insisting on an [[2009-03-07 Limbaugh defines bipartisanship|all-or-nothing, dominate-or-be-dominated]] view of the political spectrum, that is a choice made by conservatives -- not liberals. Conservatism clearly ''cannot'' win on those terms, and conservatives must learn to accept -- permanently -- the liberal ideas of [[diversity]] and [[tolerance]] if their philosophy is going to survive. This isn't a matter of liberalism "winning" on some "liberal talking point"; it's a matter of getting along peacefully. | ||
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| + | Haidt loses 2 points: one for the [[straw man]] attack on liberalism, and one for using [[appeal to guilt]] based on that fallacy. | ||
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| + | Haidt concludes this thought by continuing: | ||
| + | <blockquote>...and it blinds us to what I think is one of the main reasons that so many Americans voted Republican over the last 30 years: they honestly prefer the Republican vision of a moral order to the one offered by Democrats. To see what Democrats have been missing, it helps to take off the halo, step back for a moment, and think about what morality really is."</blockquote> | ||
| + | Aside from the "halo" swipe, he seems to be getting back on firmer ground: where have Democrats gone wrong in being persuasive to those more inclined to vote Republican? Republicans, says Haidt, want their argument [[interpretive framing|framed]] in terms of ''[[morality]]'' -- so we need to have a better understanding of what that is. | ||
| + | ===Haidt: morality=== | ||
| + | First, Haidt rejects the idea that morality is solely about "how we treat each other", citing as examples ancient "rules about menstruation, who can eat what, and who can have sex with whom". This makes some rather questionable assumptions: | ||
| + | * That these laws were considered "morals" at the time, rather than just "laws" -- rules which people felt compelled to obey, rather than rules which most people agreed were right | ||
| + | * That morality worked the same way in ancient times as it does now (I don't think so; many of those laws seem pretty bizarre and often downright immoral to me, so if they accurately represent the morality of the time, we must have matured a lot since then) | ||
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| + | Haidt adds that "There is no rational or health-related way to explain these laws.". Okay, so what is the reason for them? Oh, wait, he said there ''is no rational way'' to explain them. So they were totally arbitrary. Got it. Moving on... | ||
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| + | Haidt then advances the hypothesis that these laws were drawn up on the basis of what an ancient cleric might have found to be "disgusting". (Hmm, I thought he said there was no rational way to explain them. Surely if you're a powerful priest, and something disgusts you, you would quite reasonably want to outlaw it, being ancient and everything, and not really knowing any better or having any reason to question one's ideas, since liberalism hadn't been invented yet. So is Haidt excluding emotion as a possible motivator for rational action, here?) | ||
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| + | Haidt then tested this hypothesis for his dissertation, where he "made up stories about people who did things that were disgusting or disrespectful yet perfectly harmless." What he found was that most people agreed that the actions were wrong even though nobody was harmed -- which, he argues, supports his hypothesis that morality is not (or not entirely) based on avoidance of harm to others. | ||
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| + | What it suggests to me is that most people don't think these things through very carefully. Let's take a look at some of his examples: | ||
| + | * "a woman ... can't find any rags in her house so she cuts up an old American flag and uses the pieces to clean her toilet, in private": Knowing that many people are very attached to the flag, especially soldiers who may have believed they were fighting for it (rather than for the constitution or civil society or something more reasonable -- but that's a [[patriotism|different discussion]]) | ||
{{editing}} | {{editing}} | ||