@67. David S: – European societies are not dying – they are evolving.
Heh. Heheh. Willfully blind to the end, aren’t you Zippy. Yes… they’re “evolving” alright – into a cross between Eurabia and a rerun of the Soviet Union. I’ve seen both those movies. I only needed to see them once to remember that they don’t end well.
- Your definition of a successful, sustainable, exceptional society is a joke.
Obviously you either (1) failed to follow the link or (2) covered your eyes when faced with the truth. Keep running into the wall, Zippy.
- not only are you entertaining the fantasy that Reaganomics were the answer to all of our troubles,
Straw man fallacy.
- but you are trying to avoid the obvious role of the New Deal, Great Society and Labor in crafting what you call the “best example of a successful, sustainable, exceptional society in history”.
Not at all – I described in lots of detail what the welfare state has brought to America: ruin.
- Haidt indicates no such thing.
Refusing to hear it doesn’t mean he hasn’t said it and written it, in multiple forums. Sticking fingers in ears and shouting “LALALALALA” like you are – that’s what adolescents do.
In case you haven’t noticed, BHO was elected democratically, by a rather large margin.
30% of the voting-eligible public isn’t a “large margin”, Zippy. And as has already been demonstrated by Bill Whittle – using the words of BHO’s lying, entrenched, Fifth Column media shills – BHO was elected by a sycophant press that showered his every utterance and swagger with adulation and attacked his opponents like rabid ferrets on meth…. for over a year.
- His policies and legislative experience, and his knowledge of the Constitution, are the perfect antidote to the truly authoritarian regime that he replaced. Warrantless wiretaps, extra-judicial detention, and illegal torture are all elements of authoritarianism that came from the GOP
Most or all of which he has been continuing. Good plan.
- The question itself is silly …
Of course you think it’s silly – it’s the only important question. You have to dismiss it because you can’t address it.
- Ah, but your own moral intuitions put the lie to this. Despite the selection for self-interest, there has been a parallel selection occurring based on collective interests.
Where? Oh yeah – at the point of a gun… like I said.
- You defend a stone-age morality,
Straw man fallacy.
- – but those of us on the left have managed to abandon these failed intuitions,
Right. Soros and Moore and all the celebrities who jealously guard what they believe to be the moral high ground in Hollywood have abandoned capitalism, and given away all their money because they don’t deserve to have more than others. Dream on.
- You apparently don’t appreciate that an economy can combine elements of socialism and capitalism,
Of course it can, Zippy. Ours already does. That’s why it’s in so much trouble. A capitalist economy doesn’t function when it’s distorted by overweening government to reward sloth, corruption or even mere existence.
- From Haidt:
…contractual societies such as those of Western Europe offer the best hope for living peacefully together in our increasingly diverse modern nations
This is it for you, Zippy – did you think NO ONE would go look up that quote??? Your cherry-picked snippet constitutes a COMPLETE LIE. You’ve intentionally misrepresented Haidt’s intent here – exactly like Mofo did a few days ago by crypoquoting Madison. HERE is what Haidt wrote, with the necessary context restored (my emphasis):
…as a secular liberal I agree that contractual societies such as those of Western Europe offer the best hope for living peacefully together in our increasingly diverse modern nations (although it remains to be seen if Europe can solve its current diversity problems).
I just want to make one point, however, that should give contractualists pause: surveys have long shown that religious believers in the United States are happier, healthier, longer-lived, and more generous to charity and to each other than are secular people.
You’re now a proven liar, Zippy. And to boot, here’s the meat that you missed when you seized on the first string of words that matched the ones tattooed on the inside of your forehead (same cite, my emph.):
4) Morality is about more than harm and fairness. In moral psychology and moral philosophy, morality is almost always about how people treat each other. Here’s an influential definition from the Berkeley psychologist Elliot Turiel: morality refers to “prescriptive judgments of justice, rights, and welfare pertaining to how people ought to relate to each other.”
Kohlberg thought that all of morality, including concerns about the welfare of others, could be derived from the psychology of justice. Carol Gilligan convinced the field that an ethic of “care” had a separate developmental trajectory, and was not derived from concerns about justice.
OK, so there are two psychological systems, one about fairness/justice, and one about care and protection of the vulnerable. And if you look at the many books on the evolution of morality, most of them focus exclusively on those two systems, with long discussions of Robert Trivers’ reciprocal altruism (to explain fairness) and of kin altruism and/or attachment theory to explain why we don’t like to see suffering and often care for people who are not our children.
But if you try to apply this two-foundation morality to the rest of the world, you either fail or you become Procrustes [read: Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Mussolini, Hitler, et al., Zippy]. Most traditional societies care about a lot more than harm/care and fairness/justice. Why do so many societies care deeply and morally about menstruation, food taboos, sexuality, and respect for elders and the Gods? You can’t just dismiss this stuff as social convention. If you want to describe human morality, rather than the morality of educated Western academics, you’ve got to include the Durkheimian view that morality is in large part about binding people together.
You lied. You got caught. You got pwned.
Game. Set. Match.
