The Enlightenment Project: A Defense

I once again have a thought-web rumbling around in my head and it will necessitate my writing it out to clarify exactly what it involves. This set of thoughts is basically just more of my contemplating the issues of ideology and psychology. It might be helpful to think of this as a continuation of my [...]

Intuitive Conservatism & Analytical Liberalism

I had two related thoughts. First, I was considering the actual meaning of liberalism and conservatism. I noticed someone mention that conservatives rarely are interested in conserving and liberals are rarely interested in liberating. Actually, in the US, liberals are generally more interested in conserving than conservatives, but certainly conservatives aren’t more interested in liberating. [...]

Liberalism: Weaknesses & Failures

I often criticize conservatives for their tendency toward higher rates (relative to liberals) of motivated reasoning about political issues. It’s not that conservatives are generally less rational on all issues, rather primarily on political issues. It’s not even that conservatives are less informed, rather that they are more misinformed; in fact, the average conservative is [...]

Haidt & Mooney, Moral Foundations & Spiral Dynamics

This post is the third in my series about Haidt’s newest book, The Righteous Mind (here is the previous post, second in the series). I was watching a video of Jonathan Haidt speaking about compassion in respect to the moral values of liberals and conservatives. I’ve already criticized Haidt elsewhere in the first post in the series (basically, Haidt [...]

Haidt’s Moral Intuition (vs ethical reasoning)

This is part two in my series about Jonathan Haidt’s most recent book, The Righteous Mind. To read the first in the series, click on the link here. To see some of the discussion inspiring this post, check out the comment sections of the Amazon reviews of Haidt’s book. * * * I had a [...]

Is Psychological Research Liberally Biased?

http://www.polipsych.com/2011/02/10/liberal-academics-study-conservative-ideology/ I don’t know if reality has a liberal bias, but I can think of one factor that relates to liberalism and the ability to assess reality. One study I’ve seen showed that liberals were on average less susceptible to confirmation bias than conservatives. Maybe it is unsurprising that conservatives wouldn’t be attracted to a [...]

Conservatism & Liberalism: What is their relationship? What do they mean?

I have a basic question that connects to many related questions. Anyone who has an answer(s), please share. Does being illiberal or even anti-liberal inevitably mean being conservative? Or to reverse it: Does being conservative mean being illiberal or anti-liberal? Basically, the question is: Are liberal and conservative completely opposite categories, inherently oppositional even? Are they [...]

What is Fair? Who Decides? Why Should We Care?

What is Fair? DrAnthonysBlog “Funny thing is, for a word that most of us are very familiar with, many of us would be hard pressed to define fair in a way that others would readily agree with, though we can spot it in an instant when we see it!  Also, regardless of your definition, many [...]

Dominant Culture Denies Its Dominance

There is a certain kind of awareness that many, if not most, people seem to lack. It is a social awareness dealing with the dominant culture. I suppose this type of awareness is likely a learned ability that few ever learn for it probably offers few advantages, especially on the social level. People who question the dominant culture tend to [...]

Great Depression, Iowa, & Revolts

Last night, I was reading some of Nate Braden’s book about the Great Depression, State of Emergency: The Depression and the Plots to Create an American Dictatorship. It is a worthwile read about an era that most Americans know little about. Democracy was more threatened at that time than maybe during any other era since the founding [...]