Comments on: Political Science

By: MJ

MJ — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 02:03:14 +0000

Libertarians are for maximum personal and enomomic freedom. There are conservative religous libertarians and atheist libertarians. Remember languague fails-Libertarianism could be described as “classical liberalism” or “tolerant conservativism” One of the hardest things to do is think of the individual and not the group. Check out the World’s Smallest Political Quiz and prepare to be suprised!

http://www.theadvocates.org/quizp/index.html

“The World’s Smallest Political Quiz is savvy and willing to tell you the truth.”
- YAHOO! Magazine

The World’s Smallest Political Quiz stands ready to help you determine your political identity. Quick and relatively painless.
– USA Today

By: Dean

Dean — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 18:44:15 +0000

I’m not so sure liberals have lower sanctity/purity values than conservatives, they may just be different. Anecdotally there seems to be a conservation of taboos.

I say this because of attitudes anecdotally observed concerning smoking, eating meat, recycling, etc. Not that these are good things, but the response frequently goes beyond sensibleness into disgust and even outrage.

By: Mike Duquette

Mike Duquette — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 20:12:56 +0000

A person that believes in life after death is probably more likely to put themselves in such a war situation as the military does. The military makes no choice in the reasons for the fight they may fight. The civilian goverment does.
An atheist may have the same altruistic caricteristics for a fight they percieve is just and nessisary for the greater good of society. Knowing how our system unjustly has involved itself in unnessesary war, The Atheist likely would not join such an organizatition.
I am just assuming here that Atheists are more likely to be liberal. The Christian conservatives have vast power in the civilian goverment. The muslim conservatives have vast power in our percieved enimies goverment. Both believe in the afterlife and reward in heaven for dieing for thier gods values.I would assume based on these facts that conservatives would likely be the military jihad types.
I would also like to point out that breaking military laws like torturing the enemy is not productive to protecting the wall of freedom but is more likely to break the wall down. That is why we made these laws in the first place.A conservative, I would think should embrace our laws until the said law has been proven by the government to be inefective and then overturned.

By: Stephen E. Fowler

Stephen E. Fowler — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:34:36 +0000

I love Dr. Shermer’s quotable (assuming it’s original) caricature of liberal vs. conservative. We have seen previously in SciAm the report on Jonathan Haidt’s study proposing five moral foundations, that identifies the three particular traits of loyalty, authority, and sanctity as being the main ones that differentiate individuals and subsequently place a person on a spectrum of liberal versus conservative.

Expressed in this way, it follows that there is some moral connection between the above cited values and one’s political outlook (and certainly to one’s worldview of values).

I have long been impressed by the clarity imparted to me by means of a concept about moral development which I believe should be attributed to Carol Gilligan: “circle of care”. It is my belief that, at least generally, one can attribute smaller circles of care to conservatives, and larger circles of care to liberals. I won’t make the argument here, but I’m confident that it can be reasonably shown that all five of Haidt’s foundational moral traits provide each person with criteria by which they may narrow or shrink their own circle of care. Each of Haidt’s “five innate and universally available psychological systems” provide to each of us personally decisive factors by which we would seek alternatively to protect another from harm, not care about whether another becomes harmed, or seek to cause harm to another. Hopefully it won’t seem too disingenuous to leave the evaluation of whether smaller or larger circles of care are more or less morally advanced, to each individual interpreter.

By: Adam

Adam — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 06:02:54 +0000

When I read Michael, I often feel like I’m reading an article from Psychology Today, which to the uninitiated, is not a compliment.

By: opinionated old fart

opinionated old fart — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 19:08:07 +0000

Nit pickey point of fact: The Marines were accused of killing a fellow Marine not a soldier. Soldiers are in the Army.
As far as the military being generally conservative, it is. Sure, I’ve seen a Marine driving a Prius, and at least two Marines have been self described Communists. One I know personally and then there was Lee Harvey Oswald. No one is saying that all military are conservative.
Remember the 2000 Presidential election? When the overseas military vote came in it was heavily for Bush. This was overwhelmingly expected, and apparently is usually the case.
Military recruiters have also stated that my city (Fort Worth, Texas) is a very good recruiting region as are other conservative areas. Also I’ve read that it is well established that conservative Midwest and Southern States are over represented in the military and liberal areas tend to be underrepresented. Whatever point people want to make with it, there really is no doubt that conservatives are more likely to join the military.

By: Serafin from Spain

Serafin from Spain — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 17:18:27 +0000

I think the article oversimplifies the diferences between liberals and conservatives and uncritically accepts some clichés about these differences. For example, the idea that conservatives rate higher in “Authority respect”. I don´t see why this should be the case. If a person has been raised in a family where left-wing ideas are dominant, becoming conservative can be a sign of assertiveness and independence. The same happens with the label “Ingroup loyalty”. The author of the study seems to think that patriotism is the main expression of this trait. In fact, “loyalty” can be felt towards any kind of group, no matter the kind of ideas this group holds. The closed and clannish liberal groups you find in the academia are as good examples of loyalty carried to the point of conformism as any form of national patriotism or chauvinism.
At bottom, the problem is how the author of the study obtained his rankings. This is not explained in the article. Has he asked his subjects to rate themselves in a 1-10 scale in “Authority respect”, for example? If that is the case, what he has researched is the self-image of these individuals, which may or may not reflect their actual behaviour.

By: richard benton

richard benton — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 22:00:18 +0000

First let me clear the air.I have considered myself a “liberal” for a long time.But over the last few years I keep repeating a mantra to myself.There is in reality no such thing as liberal or conservative.I keep trying to refer to myself as a realist.Be that as it may there are a list of things about which conservatives are consistently wrong,although I will admit there are certain areas where they have good talking points.Guns-they are wrong here,although it is true that there are cases where guns have saved lives.These instances are far outweighed by the instances where they have taken lives.After all,isnt that what they are designed to do?Evolution-they are always no wrong here-no if,ands,or butts.Biblical innerancy-ditto.Overpopulation ,abortion,contraceptives-I feel they are generally wrong here,but there are some good talking points to be hashed out.I take my stand with legal abortion with the proviso that we reduce unwanted pregnancies.But then along come the anti-contraception C atholic church,and their fellow travelers.They are just flatout WRONG.Hard as I try to repeat my mantra of realist,realist,realist I keep coming back to the idea that the “liberal” position is more realistic.But this is by no means the last word on anything.As far as only conservatives in the military-BULLSHIT.George Mcgovern,that humble,sissy liberal flew dangerous bombing missions over Germany.I rest my case.

By: Shenonymous

Shenonymous — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 20:35:56 +0000

Not ever being in the military, and my father was the last in my family to serve, in WWII, I take a little different track on the search for moral values.

It doesn’t seem true that we can feel the pain of another unless there was some magical way of being that other who experiences pain. Having the virtues of kindness, gentleness and nurturance must come by means of a different passage than mammalian attachment. How exactly can the pain of another be felt by oneself? One would have to recall one’s own pain and attempt to compare what is assumed of the other with that former pain. And how, then, can one be sure that the assumed degree of pain of another is the same as what was remembered of oneself?

While the rest of his Moral Foundations Theory seems right, Haight’s idea that we can feel the pain of others borders on a preposterous crisscrossing of a physical/psychological, subjective/objective barrier. We might be able to approximate another’s physical/psychological pain, but never to actually feel it. Nor can they feel ours. The cold hard fact is that acts of kindness, sympathy, gentleness, and nurturance must arise from an innate, genetic, and true, a mammalian, organic, realization that as a organism, it is in one’s own built-in best interest for survival. Love and care for others and a gentle disposition promotes that care and survival of the species. Nurturance as well because it and all those other benevolent behaviors advance the society and it is within a society one usually will find the best chance for survival of the individual and its species. Sentimentality is constructed to provide a buffer against the cold hard facts. Yes, I do realize how mechanical that all sounds. But there is that irrational side to emotional attachment that cannot be ignored if real understanding is desired. It is only through detachment that a thing may be seen for what it is. So how is it then that we can feel another’s pain?

Knowing forestalls deception and without deception real choices are possible. Real choices give rise for a real morality to be aroused. That development seems to be in the best direction for advancement of evolution for humankind. Perhaps if we can discover how it happens that one can feel another’s pain, the animosity between liberals and conservatives could be
neutralized.

By: Jorg Fleige

Jorg Fleige — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 15:03:52 +0000

Having been first Democrat, then Republican, I’m disgusted with both realizing they are simply coalitions of self serving interest groups. The ‘innate’ principals are interesting. The problem historically has often been when No. 3 In group/Loyalty, has been used to overpower No. 2 Fairness/reciprocity.