If Liberals are so empathetic...

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It doesn't sound like empathy would be at all relevant here. That's their personal views on the subjects and has nothing to do with trying to get inside someone else's way of thinking. Were they actually being asked about why others had different political views from them? It sounds like they were having a debate. Why would you agree with others on the opposite side, during a debate? It certainly is not evidence for lack of empathy.

Furthermore, I don't know who was in the audience. Liberals would not necessarily find any of these things immoral. I, for one, believe in authority (so long as corruption is not involved) and obey the law of the land, although I'd change my tune if I felt the law was unjust. Thankfully, we don't have any ridiculous laws (none that I'd find an imposition anyway), so I've nothing to be rebellious about. If I stayed in some other places, I expect I'd be a law breaker. But, if anyone commits a crime, which has a negative effect on someone else, I expect them to be punished adequately. I speak out about financial injustice, but I wouldn't riot or anything like it. I'm more likely to write a letter to my MP or join a peaceful march. I also know some liberals who are very religious and would disagree with that audience about sanctity. I'm not religious, but I don't think that about sanctity. I do agree with them on loyalty - my personal view on that is that it has to be earned, not expected. Political/ moral identity is a spectrum, is it not?

Emathy doesnt equate to acceptance of a methodology. If I find someone whose worldview is based on lying, distortion and misrepresentation of simple events, I can empathize and see how they might have wound up like that. But they arent in a good place and I can't approve of it.

There is nothing wrong with many basic conservative ideas, when not taken to extremes and not supported by low brows who lie for fun or profit. In religion and politics there is always the lesser tradition and the higher tradition. They don't mix well.

I read that article before. I think there is a reason liberals react more emotionally to conservatives than conservatives react to liberals. It has to do with the fact that conservative ideology seems to be an affront to a liberal's sense of justice and fairness, which is an emotional topic to liberals. Conservatives, on the other hand, seem to think liberals are dangerous and are going to mess everything up by going against what they intuitively see as the "tried and true way".

Well, I think it's possible to have a cognitive understanding of a viewpoint, yet still not be able to empathize on an emotional level. The latter is a bit of a ridiculous expectation. I mean, I don't care how much I try to get inside the minds of followers of the Hitler and the Nazi movement. I just cannot not see what I see as evil.

It is also very worth noting that theocrat/social conservatives tend to be the ones trumpeting "good and evil", since these concepts are inherent to their religious doctrinal motivation. Those who are not with them are against God.

It's not the emotional reaction that was notable to me, it's that when tested against each other liberal partisans are much less accurate at imitating their conservative brethren than vise versa, and that the more liberal they identify as the less accurate they become. Haidt thinks it has to do with what moral building blocks the two ideologies use, with liberals tending to rely on two or three while conservatives use all 6:

What he noted in the section I quoted several posts above was that many liberals did not just fail to identify with the conservative moral building blocks but actively rejected them, making actual empathy almost impossible. Hence, the conservative partisans, when asked to imitate a "stereotype liberal" were able to more accurately put themselves in the shoes of such a person and predict their responses to questions than when the situation was reversed because the liberals lacked the moral building blocks to correctly consider the motivations of conservatives, and so just guessed (inaccurately). Remember, empathy is not agreement, just the ability to see things from another point of view, and IMHO many liberals do have a large empathy blind spot when it comes to what motivates conservatives.

To be honest, my way of looking at it is that for quite a long time Britain had very little in the way of religious strife simply because we exiled all of the religious crazies who were being a pain in the ass to the colonies to get rid of them.

While quite a good way of eliminating troublesome elements from society back home, I don't think someone thought through the logical consequences!

Anyway, the end result is that you have the descendants of all manner of religious crazies to deal with

Sorry.



I did home in on your statement about the tax break as an alternative to exchanging insults because we don't agree, yes. I could object to your views but personally I consider it best to simply agree to disagree with people with radically different opinions. Instead, I thought it would simply be more interesting to see what you actually thought about the issue.

I have absolutely no idea if changing the tax rates will help. My understanding is that setting the tax rate above a certain level causes a reduced tax income from that rate. Further, it's my understanding that the 50p tax rate caused a drop in the income collected so honestly it appears to be a sensible, common sense move to drop that rate based on simple pragmatism.

I take it that you don't agree from your post?

This may be correct, but the smug implication is not relevant. I mean, if I based my politics on what the first letter of the politician's last name is, and I like politicians more if the letter is further down the alphabet, could I be said to have a mysterious "seventh moral building block"? Would it be surprising if other people couldn't figure out the way my politics works?

The listed six "moral building blocks" are not all alike. The latter three, "sanctity", "loyalty" and "authority", have nothing to do with morality at all. Here is a good rule of thumb: imagine that I am an average German living in Nazi Germany. Which of the six listed building blocks would result in me seeing through the regime, and which would result in me supporting the regime?

Well, dang, there are more layers here than I was giving credit for from the first snipet, and more than I have time for ...

The one thing I do know is that "acceptance" of lifestyles where I live sometimes fails to extend to ultra-conservative ones, as if those shouldn't be as much a personal choice as something totally out of the norm. That is the lack of empathy I realize does often exist.

The other layers, I'm not convinced, but I'll have to come back with something better if I'm going to stake that territory.

Does have me thinking about how things might vary in my experience because I am more a Christian-social justice style liberal, as are most of my friends ... With church and Boy Scouts and my husband in Knights of Columbus I am close friends with ultra-conservatives as well as the social-justice Christian liberals I most identify with. Anyway, another day .... hopefully.

I was just trying to explain why liberals might be more likely to consider conservatives "evil" than the other way around. It has to do with conservative ideology being an affront to what liberals think of as justice and fairness. Liberals tend to be more emotional when it comes to those matters. They don't use the term "bleeding heart" for no reason.

As for the test, I wonder how sensitive the results are to the particular questions asked. It may also be that liberals are basing their analysis on what they think of vocal conservatives, such as what you'd hear from Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity or other pundits. If you look at real poll numbers there are a lot of people who self-identify as conservatives who are a lot more moderate on the actual issues than what you'd think if your idea of conservatives is what you hear coming from right-wing radio and Fox News, or even right-wing politicians for that matter. I think liberals in general pay more attention to media coming from the "other side" than conservatives do. Maybe they have more of a masochist tendency to seek out things that stir their ire.

I would think of that kid as someone who's thinking about where the best place would be to run a business, not some kind of greedy Scrooge McDuck wannabe. I'm having real trouble understanding what the objection is here.

'Sanctity', given the definition I would give it as a religious person, would influence me against the Nazis. The Nazis were not exactly big supporters of religion, nor of the things religion supports. 'Loyalty' might push people towards the Nazis, but only loyalty to the country. There are other objects of loyalty, such as family and religion, which could militate against them. 'Authority' might seem to be in the bag for the Nazis, but whose authority is to be respected? "God's law is higher than man's law" is an old sentiment that wouldn't help them.

The opposites of the blocks given are betrayal, subversion, and degradation. With the possible exception of authority/subversion, they're all clearly moral.


This I think both sides can agree on. Although maybe not much more...

So what you're saying is... libs can't understand the other side, but cons simply choose not to?

Who's the good guy here?

(judging by the G36 in your avatar, I'm assuming conservative?)

Mwah ha ha! Us evil liberals are lacking half of the moral building blocks. That's why we're so evil. You conservatives and your heroic, kind hearted nature are no match for our sheer evil! One day we shall rule the world, and all of you conservatives will be our slaves.

A patriot would wield an American gun

Who says I'm a patriot? Besides which, if I'm going to shoot American I'm going to build it myself. I've got to get a some picture up of some of my work, I've got a hand built .22-250 with pewter inlays that's just gorgeous, but the only picture I have of it is really old and doesn't show the detail.

But I digress.

To answer the previous question; not conservative, libertarian-ish. This forum trends center left, so I look further right than I actually am.