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…
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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.
“You don’t even have to have proof of citizenship” anymore.
Tory Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, quoted in the National Post, Feb. 13:
“I believe in personal liberty, even if I find some expressions of personal liberty a bit peculiar. I don’t think we should be regulating what people wear but when a citizen comes to deal with the government, particularly to exercise their right to vote, I think it’s entirely reasonable that we say we need to confirm who you are and a facial identification is a reasonable way of doing that,”
…Outbursts of public condemnation overturned a similar initiative earlier this year by Quebec’s Election Commission. The Commission was forced to reverse its consent to “burqa voting” when offended Quebec citizens and public interest groups threatened civil disobedience at election time. Highlighting the problem of double standards and arbitrariness, voters promised to attend polls with their faces covered by paper bags, sheets, hockey masks and other head coverings, and to assert “sensitivity” and special religious privilege as their justification for doing so.
“Elections Canada’s initiative violates the basic premise of public voting in Canada and the principle of equality of all Canadians before the ballot box. It is an invitation to fraud, misrepresentation and the debasing of our democratic electoral system,” said David Harris, CCD Senior Fellow for National Security.
Beyond the ballot box, religious face coverings have at times been misused in Canada and around the world to facilitate fraud and other criminal acts. Veiling has been used abroad to advance terrorist operations, including suicide bombings. Such risks compelled France to ban the burqa in certain public spheres, and the Netherlands’ government among others is considering doing the same. And last fall in Quebec, ADQ leader Mario Dumont went beyond the ballot box issue, stating that he did not “rule out the possibility of laws to make illegal the wearing of the burqa.” Yet some of Canada’s elites, apparently unfazed by the threat to electoral integrity and public safety, appear helpless in the face of radical lobbying in the name of “accommodation”.
Chronicle editor Ward Bushee called the press office on its fib:
Sadly, we expected the White House to respond in this manner based on our experiences yesterday. It is not a truthful response. It follows a day of off-the-record exchanges with key people in the White House communications office who told us they would remove our reporter, then threatened retaliation to Chronicle and Hearst reporters if we reported on the ban, and then recanted to say our reporter might not be removed after all.
The Chronicle’s report is accurate.
If the White House has indeed decided not to ban our reporter, we would like an on-the-record notice that she will remain the San Francisco print pool reporter.
I was on some of those calls and can confirm Ward’s statement… Messy ball now firmly in White House court.
….“The strategy that we had had toward Fox was basically a strategy of containment,” said Brock, Media Matters’ chairman and founder and a former conservative journalist, adding that the group’s main aim had been to challenge the factual claims of the channel and to attempt to prevent them from reaching the mainstream media.
The new strategy, he said, is a “war on Fox.”
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Update: Brandon Kiser argues that this should change MMFA’s tax status.
Finally! NPR is showing its true colors again at the very top with the embedded liberalism (see firing of Juan Williams) of its “news” organization. This from NewsBusters:
In the wake of a video sting showing NPR executives making disparaging comments towards conservatives, National Public Radio announced Wednesday morning that it had accepted the resignation of its president Vivian Schiller. “The Board accepted Vivian’s resignation with understanding, genuine regret and great respect for her leadership of NPR these past 2 years,” said Board Chairman Dave Edwards.
The hidden-camera video, released Tuesday, showed NPR exec Ron Schiller, no relation to Vivian, calling the Tea Party “racist” and “xenophobic” and insisting that NPR would be “better off in the long-run” without the federal dollars that congressional Republicans have been seeking to rescind. A pair of NPR statements disavowed Ron Schiller’s comments, and specifically rejected his claims regarding NPR funding.
Vivian Schiller was also the target of criticism for her handling of the firing of Juan Williams from NPR for comments he made about Muslims that the station considered inappropriate. Schiller acknowledged in a speech at the National Press Club on Monday that the firing was not handled correctly.
Williams appeared on the Fox News Channel, where he is a contributor, on Tuesday night to denounce NPR for the revelations in the undercover video. “They prostitute themselves for money,” he had told Fox Nation earlier in the day.
…If you want to know why Michelle Litjens and other Republicans need a police escort around the Capitol, now you know. Click the image to watch.
After watching this video a few times, I think the union members were very near violence. This Democrat stepped in just in time. Either way this tactic the unions are using are the same one’s the Democrat Socialists used to install some unmentionables into power. Here is a section from an old post that I imported from an even older post from my old site:
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For instance, a librarian at Ohio University recommended the book The Marketing of Evil: How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised as Freedom and was voted on by his fellow professors 21-0 [with nine abstentions, so kinda like 30-0] as being a sexual harasser for recommending a conservative book. Sounds somewhat fascist to me.
See blog for Friday, April 14, 2006 (political commentary):
The political commentators of the same political philosophy, when on campuses are shouted down and threatened with bodily harm (Ann Coulter), when opposing viewpoints are not shouted down on university campuses, and the guests dont need bodyguards (Cindy Sheehan).
Libertarian Republican has a post that got me thinking.Since liberal Democrats (progressives) got these radical chieftains voted in by “poo-pooing” the Republicans concerns about Hamasd and the Palestinians, you get to see how illiberal these “liberals” really are:
According to the Telegraph, “Gaza’s elected Islamist rulers crack down on secular community” the List of some activities now banned by Hamas in Gaza, include:
1. Novels it deems offensive to Islam 2. Bars 3. Cinemas 4. Women walking outside in Western clothes 5. Male hairdressersFrom the Telegraph: In recent years, hardliners have burned down the cinemas. Their charred remains are still visible in Gaza City. Militants blew up the last bar in 2005.
Gaza women, whose attire once varied from Western pants and skirts to colourful traditional embroidered robes, began donning ankle-length loose robes.And don’t even dare walking outside with your wife without the correct documentation.
Continuing:
Today, plainclothes officers sometimes halt couples in the streets, demanding to see marriage licenses.
…After all the furor over alleged racist signs or words at Tea Party rallies, the media is ignoring the shocking fact that 12 of the 25 groups endorsing Delaware Democrat Chris Coons for the United States Senate over Republican Christine O’Donnell have turned up on the quite official list of the “One Nation Working Together” rally — as formal co-sponsors with supporters of the terrorist groups Hezbollah and Hamas. And, no kidding, the Communist Party.
Did I mention the Coons 12 are also holding hands with the International Socialist Organization? Plus the Democratic Socialists of America?
You read that right.
And Chris Coons is not the only Democrat receiving this same election support either.
Which groups is Coons accepting endorsements from, knowing full well the same groups have deliberately and quite publicly tied themselves to supporters of terrorism, Communism and socialism?
That would be these groups:
The UAW SEIU Communications Workers of America AFL-CIO Planned Parenthood People for the American Way International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers Stonewall Democrats United Food and Commercial Workers International Union National Education Association Human Rights Campaign AFSCME
All to be found hidden in plain sight on both the official listing of sponsors provided by the One Nation Working Together rally organizers listed here and then over here as part of the 25 groups endorsing Chris Coons supplied by the official Coons for Senate website. Twelve of Coons endorsers — that would be one shy of half — signed onto the recent rally that listed the Communist Party USA as a co-sponsor. And ANSWER, the radical supporters of Hezbollah and Hamas. And the International Socialists. And the Democratic Socialists.
All of this — and not a peep, not one peep — from the media. CNN’s Howard Kurtz still maintains that Coons’ “Bearded Marxist” self-description was some sort of college prank that Sean Hannity somehow got wrong? Hello? Earth to Howard.
Let’s take a look at these groups the Coons campaign supporters have linked themselves to and which the media simply isn’t reporting. Let’s see what they believe and what others have said about them.
• ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism): Here’s what the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has to say about the charming folks at ANSWER who have been holding hands with The Coons 12. ANSWER has “repeatedly expressed support for terrorist groups determined to dismantle the state of Israel, including Hamas and Hezbollah.“
Got that? Hamas and Hezbollah. Groups sworn to the destruction of Israel. Terrorists responsible for who knows how many repeated and extraordinarily violent and murderous attacks killing Israeli men, women and children.
House Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn (SC) recently accused Republicans of “aiding and abetting terrorism” because of their support for the Tea Party movement. With all due respect, Rep. Clyburn needs to clean out his own party first before he has standing to say anything on the subject.
Top Democrat Party activists Jodie Evans and Medea Benjamin, through their group Code Pink, have spent the past eight years terrorizing soldiers, their families and public officials on the homefront while working with terrorists and state sponsors of terrorism abroad. Rather than being condemned and disowned, Code Pink is embraced by President Barack Obama and leading Democrats while being celebrated by the media.
The Code Pink Democrats have harassed wounded soldiers and their families at military hospitals in Washington, D.C. and San Diego; they have repeatedly targeted military recruiting centers for abuse; they cruelly taunted the children of military families at a White House Halloween party; they have terrorized government officials at their homes and they have led a campaign for the kidnapping of former President Bush and his wife Laura (for this they enlisted the support of the Muslim Brotherhood).
Abroad, the Code Pink Democrats have worked with state sponsors of terrorism including the governments of Saddam Hussein, Cuba’s Castro brothers, Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Syria’s Bashar Assad as well as the anti-American governments of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega and Bolivia’s Evo Morales.
In December 2008, the Code Pink Democrats led a shoe throwing protest in front of the White House to celebrate an incident in Baghdad when an Iraqi “journalist” threw his shoes at President George W. Bush. This encouragement of violence against Bush was a propaganda bouquet by the Code Pink Democrats to their terrorist allies aroud the world.
These Code Pink Democrats have also worked with terrorists including Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban, Sunni terrorists in Iraq and the father of Islamic terrorism: the Muslim Brotherhood. The Code Pink Democrats have bragged about giving cash and humanitarian aid to terrorists who target Americans, Israelis and free Iraqis.
