[QUOTE] Those conservative impulses are nearly universal across world religions and cultures. Secular liberals are the anomaly

Published by Papa Giorgio

A great insight and challenge to Liberal ideology (Townhall h/t):

(FT) ….I recently watched an overwhelmingly liberal audience at the Aspen Ideas Festival shift uncomfortably in its seats as Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia, offered his own explanation. For several years Professor Haidt has probed what he calls the moral intuitions of liberals and conservatives. I find his conclusions compelling. It has come to this: you need a psychologist to make sense of US fiscal policy.

Prof Haidt finds that liberals are driven mainly by intuitions about fairness (who gets what) and harm to victims. Conservatives are guided by those intuitions too, but also by intuitions about loyalty, authority, and purity (including bodily purity). These are not views so much as deeply embedded moral impulses. They are often wrapped up in religion, or lack of it. Transgressing them is a kind of sacrilege.

In the US, differences in these moral-psychological foundations are very marked. The more progressive you are, the harder you find it to understand the claims of loyalty, authority and purity. The more conservative you are, the more indispensable those claims appear to be. This matters because US politics, especially at the conservative end, is powered by the energy at the extremes.

Why did the Aspen audience squirm? Because Prof Haidt also notes that the wider conservative spectrum of moral intuitions is the global norm. Those conservative impulses are nearly universal across world religions and cultures. Secular liberals are the anomaly…

[….]

These need to start flowing in both directions, but since I write from progressive Aspen I will press the point on liberals. You express elaborate respect for foreign cultures and religions, despite the exalted place they give to loyalty, authority, and purity. You do not despise Muslims. You do not laugh at Buddhists. Difficult as it may be, try extending a little of that courtesy to your neighbours, even if they are evangelical Christians.

…(read more)…