More thorts

[dreamer_easy]

Another important point: the withdrawal by Rush's sponsors is not a First Amendment / free speech issue, but the free market at work.

Here's a snippet of that New Scientist (3 March) interview about politics and morality: "... I think the Tea Party is driven in large part by concerns about fairness. It's not fairness as equality of outcomes, it's

Comments

[strangedave]

The 'collectivism vs individualism' thing goes a lot deeper into the psyche of conservative vs liberal than most people consciously think about. That whole Thatcher 'there is no such thing as society' idea isn't just a rejection of welfare, but a statement of how the whole thing is conceptualised. It is weird to get the head around - there seems to be something deep there. I'm so used to the mindset of thinking in the whole of society aggregate effects, statistically verified results, appeal to data to support your assertions, etc that it is hard to make myself even see the opposing form of analysis, and harder still not to just scoff at it as stupid. The right wing analysis, whether is be dry economics or conservative religious, so often seems to be to see things rather as individual moral stories - in fact, I'd go so far as to say the big shift in conservativism over the last few decades shifting from nationalism and protectionism etc to dry economic theory has been the selling of dry right economic message as a moral story about rewarding 'good' individual responsibility.

[dreamer_easy]

It's always been tough for me to grasp that facts aren't enough to settle debates - often the debate is really about something else entirely, and I'm just not seeing it.

The interview is with Jonathan Haidt, whose new book is "The Righteous Mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion", which I will have to get hold of.

[ext_409846]

I would say it's about *values* - the principles of right and wrong that ultimately allow what we call society to survive. No society is going to be able to survive if it has a right vs. wrong schism to the point of more-or-less irreconcilable differences. (e. g. those who believe that abortion is a right vs. those who believe that abortion is murder). And when it comes to arguing values, facts are only of limited use, because values arguments usually wind up involving things outside of the realm of facts.

Jack Beven