Let me add just one more comment when I compare Jonathan Haidt to Robert Altemeyer in their comparisons of liberals and conservatives. I said in my last post that Altemeyer embodies exactly the sort of tendency Haidt condemns in liberal academics -- an extraordinary blindness to deep seated conservative concerns and treating conservatism as pathology.
Nonetheless in my research for that post I came across this gem that convinced me Altemeyer has some points too. The article is explaining the Tea Party. He agrees that its claims to be a movement on behalf of liberty are questionable because, on the whole, social conservatives are less absolutist on behalf of liberty than liberals or libertarians. But neither does he accept various sinister explanations of the Tea Party. Rather, he believes it is about justice, in the sense of karma -- that whatever your fate, it is morally deserved. Tea Partiers, he argues, hate government, not because it interferes with liberty, but because it interferes with karma as enforced by the free market.
Thus, he argues, Tea Partiers see karma nullified. Contraception and abortion remove the consequences of premarital sex. Social welfare programs remove the consequences of bad decisions. Warren Court decisions removed the consequences of crime. But the final straw occurred with the Bush Administration's bank bailouts, Obama's stimulus plan, and proposals for mortgage refinancing, which protected people from the consequences of bad decisions.
There's just one little flaw in this analysis. It would be more credible if the Tea Party's anger were directed mostly at the banks that were bailed out, and toward calling for more punitive measures toward crooked banks. Instead, they seem primarily directed against the unemployed and people who are underwater on their mortgages, and towards ensuring that no government money goes to people harmed by the economic downturn. Haidt goes on to say that liberals see justice mostly in terms of equality while conservatives see it mostly in terms of karma. At least as much to the point the Tea Party crowd sees to see justice and karma almost exclusively in punitive terms. They also assume that misfortunes are never just misfortunes but the result of irresponsibility.
The trouble is that in the midst of a severe economic downturn, there is a huge upsurge in the number of misfortunes that does not correspond with any increase in irresponsibility. Government bailed out the banks because it feared the consequences of letting the financial system crash. We have a safety net in place, not just as a matter of compassion, but because when large numbers of people hit complete financial ruin at once, the result is to shrink the economy even further. Somehow I am guessing that Tea Partiers, confronted with these problems, would simply dismiss them, not seeing how doing the right thing could possibly have bad consequences. To suggest that it could would violate the laws of karma!
Haidt says that liberals see justice in terms of equality, while conservatives see it in terms of karma. But what does that mean, in concrete terms. Well, by his account Tea Partiers want harsher penalties for crime, harsher penalties (in the form of unwanted pregnancies) for sex outside of marriage, harsher consequences for losing one's job, harsher consequences for falling behind on one's mortgage. In short, they see justice almost entirely in punitive terms. They are not greatly worried about collateral damage to the innocent because, as a matter of karma, that just couldn't happen. So Altemeyer's judgment that authoritarians are aggressive and hostile may have some truth to it.
PS: On a separate note, see this article trying to make the case that our political differences are immutable and genetic. I am unconvinced. Overall attitudes have changed greatly over time, and ideas that were once radical and outrageous have become widely accepted. And more people than the author acknowledged change their minds. But it did have one fascinating insight on attraction and repulsion. Liberals, on the whole, found images either attractive or repulsive, but not both. (Neutral images were not used in the study). Conservatives had a lower disgust threshold, but were also strangely attracted to things that repulsed them. That may go a long way toward explaining the appeal of the politics of hate and resentment.
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