ideology
clock | July 24, 2006If you are in North Carolina you can listen to State Of Things on your local NPR station. Just about to start (12noon EDT):
What Your Vote Says About You: So you think you're a conservative? Or a liberal? New research shows that you may not know how you fall on the political spectrum after all, and you may be especially confused when you vote. Host Frank Stasio talks with James Stimson, a professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, about what your vote says about your real political leanings.
This is the second story (after Blakwater and before…
clock | July 22, 2006Apparently, it's not over until it's over. The removal of the cohabitation law I wrote about yesterday may apply only to a few people in NC, not the whole state: Cohabitation law ruling doesn't apply statewide:
Legal experts said Friday that a Superior Court judge declaring a law that makes it a crime for unmarried couples to live together unconstitutional doesn't apply statewide.
Judge Ben Alford's ruling affects only those involved in the litigation: the Pender County Sheriff's Office, Pender County Sheriff Carson Smith, Ben David, the district attorney in Pender and New Hanover counties,…
clock | July 21, 2006
I wrote this on September 21, 2004, as a reaction to the misunderstanding of Lakoff's term "Nurturant Parent". Slightly edited (eliminated bad links and such).
Discussions of Lakoff's theory are going on in several places in the blogosphere, including on DailyKos and many other places...just Google it and you'll be floored. Spend some times reading the comments - there is some good thinking there.
There is something happening in these discussions that really bothers me. There is a number of people, including some who claim to have read "Moral Politics", who object to the use of family-based…
clock | July 20, 2006
I wrote this first in February 2005, then republished in December 2005. After War Churchill got fired last month, I think that this post is still relevant.
I was asked the other day what I thought about the Ward Churchill affair. Frankly, I had not followed it at all (but you can) . Apparently, Wingers want to kill him, or at least get him fired, while Progressives are divided: some distance themselves from "an obscure nobody that Right-wing pulled out to push their agenda", while others assert that he is telling the truths that are unpalatable to those whose emotional health depends on…
clock | July 6, 2006George Lakoff has a new book out - Whose Freedom?: The Battle Over America's Most Important Idea. You can read short blurbs and reviews on Rockridge Isntisute site, Salon and Washington Post. I have placed it on my wish list as well.
clock | July 6, 2006I just finished listening to Fresh Air on NPR. Terry Gross had an interview with Geoffrey Nunberg whose book, Talking Right: How Conservatives Turned Liberalism into a Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show just came out. As you know, I am interested in the way the Right has appropriated English language in the US so I listened carefully. You can also hear the podcast (a little later today, I assume) and read a little excerpt from the book on the link above.
While most of what he said is pretty…
clock | July 6, 2006OK, today I'd like you to superimpose a couple of very different articles that all look at the difference between patriotism and nationalism, but each from a different angle and see if, and how, they inform each other. First, I'd like you to read one of my old posts (which I may decide to re-post here one day, but for now, check it out on my old blog) - Nationalism is not Patriotism. That would be a bare-bone introduction to political psychology of patriotism and nationalism:
Why is there a widespread belief that the difference between patriotism and nationalism is one of degree: loving one…
clock | July 6, 2006When I posted this originally (here and here) I quoted a much longer excerpt from the cited Chronicle article than what is deemed appropriate, so this time I urge you to actually go and read it first and then come back to read my response.
From Dr.Munger's blog, an interesting article: Liberal Groupthink Is Anti-Intellectual By MARK BAUERLEIN, The Chronicle Review Volume 51, Issue 12, Page B6 (that link is now dead, but you can find a copy here):
Hmmmm, why was the poll conducted only in social science departments (e.g., sociology, psychology, philosophy, history, anthropology, perhaps…
clock | July 6, 2006Again, an article echoing Lakoff's argument, with which I agree:
Why Conservatives Can't Govern:
If leaders consistently depart in disastrous ways from their underlying political ideology, there comes a point where one has to stop just blaming the leaders and start questioning the ideology.
The collapse of the Bush presidency, in other words, is not just due to Bush's incompetence (although his administration has been incompetent beyond belief). Nor is it a response to the president's principled lack of intellectual curiosity and pitbull refusal to admit mistakes (although those character…
clock | June 30, 2006
This post was initially published on September 16, 2004. It takes a critical look at some UCLA studies on brain responses of partisan voters exposed to images of Bush and Kerry:
Using M.R.I.'s to See Politics on the Brain
The researchers do not claim to have figured out either party's brain yet, since they have not finished this experiment. But they have already noticed intriguing patterns in how Democrats and Republicans look at candidates. They have tested 11 subjects and say they need to test twice that many to confirm the trend.
The Political Brain
Do liberals ''think'' with their…
clock | June 28, 2006
This is one a couple of posts about Creationism, written originally on May 1st, 2005.
Creationism Is Just One Symptom Of Conservative Pathology
I am not an "evolutionist". I am not a "Darwinist". I am a biologist. Thus, by definition, I am an evolutionary biologist. Although my research is in physiology and behavior, I would never be able to make any sense of my data (or even know what questions to ask in the first place) without evolutionary thinking.
As I am also interested in history and philosophy of biology, I consider myself a Darwinian. But not a "Darwinist" or "evolutionist" - those…
clock | June 26, 2006There is a whole slew of responses to this silly post by Comissar/
It is a typical effort to make "balance" between Left and Right in order to make the Right appear more palatable, ...or palatable at all. The typical He-said-She-said approach that tries to equalize the enormously dangerous policies of the Right (see my previous post below) with follies of some powerless, silly people on the fringes that nominally belong to the Left (and vote Nader when it really matters!).
But, since when was Astrology part of the Democratic Party platform, even at state level, like Creationism and Global…
clock | June 26, 2006Bush Is Not Incompetent by George Lakoff:
Progressives have fallen into a trap. Emboldened by President Bush's plummeting approval ratings, progressives increasingly point to Bush's "failures" and label him and his administration as incompetent. Self-satisfying as this criticism may be, it misses the bigger point. Bush's disasters -- Katrina, the Iraq War, the budget deficit -- are not so much a testament to his incompetence or a failure of execution. Rather, they are the natural, even inevitable result of his conservative governing philosophy. It is conservatism itself, carried out according…
clock | June 23, 2006 This was an early post of mine building upon George Lakoff analysis of the psychology underlying political ideology. It was first published on September 04, 2004 (mildly edited):
I keep going back to George Lakoff's "Moral Politics", as I did "here"
and "here", because I believe this book provides very important insights into the psychological sources of ideology, or worldview, from which all political stances logically follow. As I stated "before", it is not a perfect book. First, it is written in a pretty dry academic style. Long lists, in my opinion, should be taken out of the main body…
clock | June 19, 2006The July issue of Discover Magazine has an excellent article on The Future of Terrorism. You should readthe whole thing, online or in hardcopy. Here are some choice quotes by people interviewed for the article:
"The war on terrorism is really a proxy for saying what is really a war on militant Islam. If we can't confront the ideology, if you're not willing to take on the ideology and try to develop a reformist, moderate Islam that makes militant Islam a fringe element, we haven't much hope to stamp it out."
Andrew C. McCarthy, former federal prosecutor who led the case against Sheik Omar…