The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Religion and Politics

The latest from Jonathan Haidt, and it is a great one. Extreme recommendation.

For people with a conservative bent, a lot of this book will be "didn't everyone know this already"? But for folks of the liberal bent -- like Haidt, although his research for this book migrated him to what he sees as "moderate", it will be something of a struggle.

Sadly, I'm sure that Haidt is due to discover that his observations about human nature may be hyper proven as the liberal establishment punishes him for his heresy of using actual science to point out some fairly obvious things about human nature that would seem to indicate that conservatives are not exclusively just "stupid and evil".

First, we are not rational beings, we are RATIONALIZING beings. The book carries on  the excellent rider/elephant analogy from "The Happiness Hypothesis" and builds off it. The Rider is best seen as the Press Secretary for the elephant -- the elephant does something or "leans" in some direction and the rider dutifully develops a case for the elephant. Humans developed into "hive creatures" (like bees) that could specialize labor and cooperate without all having to be related. Morality is the "wetware" that we use to create and enforce the rules to do that -- our "rider" (consciousness) was created so that our "elephants" (subconscious) could operate this way.

The Six Moral Senses:

1. Care/Harm
2. Liberty/Oppression
3. Fairness/Cheating
4. Loyalty/Betrayal
5. Authority/Subversion
6. Sanctity/Degradation

Liberals tend to be very heavily focused on #1 ... although interestingly, conservatives seem to "care" almost as much, they just don't "care" to the exclusion of all other moral senses. On #2, liberals and libertarians are somewhat close -- although liberals see corporate power as much worse and "oppressive" than government power, which they have a hard time even equating with oppression.

On #3, liberals think of "equality" and completely forget about proportionality -- or Karma. One of the huge problems in cooperation is the "free rider problem". Haidt covers this and why it is impossible to have cooperation without "punishment" (sanctions) against free riders.

Liberals are nearly blind (or claim to be) on 4,5 and 6. It turns out that when tested, the "moral modules" for even Sanctity are there and working in the liberal brain just fine -- they just don't want to admit it because in their view it seems "less enlightened" to admit that degrading things are degrading.

I believe that this book is an EXCELLENT base to at least attempt to open some lines of communication between liberals and conservatives, but I suspect that Haidt is in for a shock -- maybe somewhat equivalent to the shock that Edward O Wilson wrote "Sociobiology" back in the '70s.

The "divine faith" of liberals is that there is no God and man is an infinitely malleable blank slate. While proving that there is no god (or that there is) is not going to happen, it is scientifically known that man is NOT a blank slate, and at least in the "next few millennia" not likely to be improved upon much. Wilson was trashed for stating the basic outline of what a "human nature" was likely to be, now here comes Haidt with some fairly solid research showing what it actually is.

As Wilson outlined in "Consilience", the more science moves forward, the more we begin to see the fact of an intricate and complex human that is no less difficult to mold to our desires than ecologists are realizing the ecology of the planet is. We are each little ecosystems honed by selection (or created by God) to interact within the the planetary and social constructs that we are born with and into.

Reality has never been very much of interest to the Progressive Project -- now about 100 years in, with all of the progressive nations facing economic demise, even the social sciences start to point out that reality is not in line with the progressive vision. My guess is that the response is not likely to be very reasoned, but rather very emotional.

Property Taxes Drop in WI

Review & Outlook: A Wisconsin Vindication - WSJ.com:

Seems like a great idea to recall a Governor that enabled property taxes to go down and the WI economy to improve in order to replace him with? A union marionette I guess.

Drinking Makes You Conservative!

Study: Dumb drunk people are more conservative | Campaign 2012 | Washington Examiner:

Here is some science you can believe in, getting drunk makes you more "conservative" -- uh, well, from a liberal viewpoint I guess, where "conservative = stupid".

But for those of a slightly less prejudice nature, the next time you see the drunk college girl on spring break dancing, think "drinking makes you conservative".

The next time you see a drunken frat boy come up to your door canvasing for Mitt, think "drinking makes people conservative".

When you are watching football and see a set of guys out in freezing temps with their teams colors and or symbols painted on their bodies while they hold up massive mugs of their favorite adult beverage, think "conservatives".

No doubt government grants paid for this study. We must ALL be "conservative" to be surprised at all that the government blew 500 BILLION on Solyndra.

If BO was drunk when he did that, at least he would have an excuse!

Axelrod Screws Up and Tells Truth!!

Axelrod Commits Gaffe of the Year - David Axelrod - Fox Nation

One would have a lot of respect for the guy -- except I'm sure it is just a screw up. This election is EXACTLY about changing course to opportunity vs trundling on down the road of European style decline!

It is Axelrod's guy that set the current course and wants to maintain it, so he better learn to cast it in a better light!!

Liberal Humor Training

Come Back, Sarah Palin! - NYTimes.com

Being dominant media means you never really have to think of what you are saying. The fact that Maureen has let us in on the fact that her family is actually conservative -- including a brother that writes at least as well, adds just a tiny more proof that there is indeed a God in Heaven!

I loved this little insight:

The five Romney sons have also taken a ribbing. The hilarious Bill Hader, playing an Anthony Perkins in “Psycho” version of the Fox News anchor Shepard Smith, interviewed the “S.N.L.” sons, noting: “I like creepy things and I love these guys. ... Our thanks to Stephen King for creating those boys.”

and this one is just too much!

“S.N.L.” has always struggled with its Obama impersonation because Obama is “smooth without big handles,” as Downey puts it.

Yea, right. The reason that the Osmonds and the Jacksons were on television is the "creepiness factor" of a lot of seemingly perfect good looking boys in a family.

But no "handles" on Obama?? Wow, here we have a guy that writes two autobiographies before he is 50, accomplishes nothing in life but is suddenly President of the US, is a "known closet smoker" (I can't even IMAGINE how funny that would be if he were Republican), has a wife who makes Marie Antoinette seem like a populist, has step/half/etc this and that relations being deported and throwing out quotes about him being from Kenya, and the list just goes on and on.

He golfs constantly, and in the midst of all sorts crisis. ANY normal President, doing ANY recreation is ALWAYS food for humor -- Reagan at the Ranch, W at the Ranch, HW at Kennebunkport, Clinton at the Hampton's or Hyannis Port; all of the above were useful laughs. We Americans love to laugh at the person with the biggest job on the planet kicking back and taking it easy.

The media is GREAT at the creation of "handles" -- shockingly, there is very little evidence of any appreciable intellectual difference between  Reagan, Carter, Clinton, either Bush, Palin or Obama. But the media is certainly under no obligation to not make any of them out to be stupid whenever they like! If they can find ANY "evidence", that is just sauce for the goose. BO has provided plenty of "evidence".

Some of Palin's letters from when she was governor were academically analyzed and put her on the writing level of Lincoln and MLK http://thespeechatimeforchoosing.wordpress.com/2011/06/15/expert-analysis-sarah-palins-writing-scores-higher-than-that-of-most-educated-americans/. 

Obama however seems to be very numerically challenged "57 states so far, 1 more to go ... uh, plus AK and HW" 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTNqRreTwt4

and "10K people killed by a tornado in a small town in Kansas"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jc_WKBymCEY&feature=player_embedded.

Again, there is NO need to have any truth in order to create a "handle". Reagan never slept in a meeting for the simple reason that in the rare event he was sleepy, he cancelled it -- he was in charge, why sit there with your head nodding when you are the boss? Of course, that didn't mean that the media couldn't have skit after skit as if it was true!

Humor is in the eye of the beholder -- put EXACTLY the same speech, ears, cadence, etc in a black Republican President as BO has, and Ellen and the SNL writers would find the guy to be an absolute hoot!!

Because He's a Democrat, FOOLS!

Barack Obama, Tax Avoider | Power Line

I do like the Power Line guys, and they are WAY smarter than I am -- but on this one I think they let their intelligence get ahead of reality.

 How on Earth does Obama think he can demonize Mitt Romney because Romney doesn’t pay ordinary income tax rates, when Obama himself paid only 20.5% in federal income taxes on an adjusted gross income of nearly $800,000? Lots of luck explaining that to the voters. 

THE WHOLE POINT of the sad state we are in ala the MSM is that 90% of people will ONLY hear from the MSM and when you only hear a single side, that side seems like truth. Besides, BO voters don't REALLY care about taxing the rich. They know that things like the Buffett rule are completely symbolic -- they just hope that the symbolism works and their guy gets elected. 

BO won't need any help demonizing Mitt -- Jay Leno, Jon Stewart, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, NPR, etc will do that just fine. BO can be "above the issues" running a "clean campaign".

414-0, B ZERO Strikes Again

Obama budget defeated 414-0 - Washington Times

"Radical" these days is proposing a budget that ANYONE votes for!!! The Democrats have proposed NO BUDGET AT ALL in the last 4 years, and the last two years, NONE OF THEM have voted for B0's proposal.

From the MSM POV, this is "Double Secret Confidential"  ... no story here, move along. Were a Republican president not able to get A SINGLE vote from his OWN PARTY, I'm completely certain the press would be ever bit as quiet!

Rational Optimist Summary

www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/reader's-digest.aspx

I loved Ridley's "Rational Optimist" book. Here is a nice short summary of some of his points.

It is a good day to be optimistic. Christ is Risen! Alleluia!
He is Risen Indeed! Alleluia!

BO's Wizard of Oz Strategy

Morning Jay: A Sorry Spectacle | The Weekly Standard

What we have seen in the past few weeks is BO testing his re-election strategy. He can't run on his record, so he is going to run on the Wizard of Oz strategy "Pay no attention to that man in the WH" ... see flying monkeys, wicked witch, SCOTUS, Paul Ryan, etc.

Sadly, it appears that it is working.

This strategy explicitly divides the country mostly into hating different fake bogeymen, but what difference does that make to BO if it gets him elected? None, he is an anti-colonialist Luo tribesman (by his own words, "Dreams From My Father").

If people can't get it  after the guy wrote TWO autobiographies before 50 and after 3+ LONG years of listening the narcissist in chief, then they plainly are never going to get it.

BO Attacks SCOTUS

Obama v. SCOTUS - The Washington Post

A good one from Charles. The obvious question of BOcare is if the government can force you to buy health insurance, what is the meaning of limited government?

The simple answer is the right answer -- there is no limit remaining. If BOcare is Constitutional, then our nation has has abandoned the principle that make us once an exceptional nation -- limited government.

Child Immunizations Unsafe

The Sliming of "Pink Slime" - Derek Hunter - Townhall Conservative Columnists - Page 1

Most of us know someone that has a child with some handicap that they blame on immunizations. All the science we have says that the immunizations are not the cause, yet these people fervently believe and do everything they can to get others to not immunize their children.

Many of the rest of us harbor or have harbored similar types of thoughts. "Wait an hour after eating before you swim" was the rule when I was young. So and so had a cousin that had died gotten a cramp and died ...

I listen to NPR, so I know "all about Pink Slime". They had a lot of coverage of it, how bad it made the meat, who used it, who didn't, when they were going to stop using it, etc. As with a lot of emotionally driven bandwagons, there wasn't a lot of concern for any "other side" --- reasons for it's use, positives of it being used, reasons it could be bad to do away with it. It was the typical NPR type of "no slant" journalism -- the story only had one real side, the NPR side -- the meat industry is flat out evil, everyone the listens to NPR knows that.

Turns out there IS a downside -- the whole article is short and worth the read. We have turned into SHEEP folks -- the MSM is FAR worse than "Pink Slime".

 Already, 3,000 jobs are lost, and more are on the way. Experts say we’ll need 150,000 more head of cattle per year to make up for the lost filler and that ground beef could go up 20 percent or more. All because a food snob from England whose kids are legally named – and I couldn’t possibly make this up – Poppy Honey, Daisy Boo, Petal Blossom and Buddy Bear, decided to bump the ratings with a misleading stunt.

Don't Compromise!!!

The Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs - Harvard Business Review

When Jobs and his small team designed the original Macintosh, in the early 1980s, his injunction was to make it “insanely great.” He never spoke of profit maximization or cost trade-offs. “Don’t worry about price, just specify the computer’s abilities,” he told the original team leader. At his first retreat with the Macintosh team, he began by writing a maxim on his whiteboard: “Don’t compromise.” The machine that resulted cost too much and led to Jobs’s ouster from Apple. But the Macintosh also “put a dent in the universe,” as he said, by accelerating the home computer revolution. And in the long run he got the balance right: Focus on making the product great and the profits will follow.

DON'T compromise? Do we really look at our homes, cars, devices, faith, values, jobs, vacation selections, etc and say "compromise"?

I don't think so. It is very true that in the real world, there are "trade-offs" -- size, weight, power consumption, cost, complexity, time, distance, etc, but the essence of things we care about is that the sum of all those elements is creatively a whole that is greater than it's parts. It isn't "a compromise", it is perfect, righteous, lovely, etc.

We all understand this, we just forget we do. In '09, when the Democrats had both houses of congress, 60 votes in the Senate, and the Presidency, their and the MSM view was "We won!!". Now, having recently discovered that the SCOTUS exists and having to deal with evil Republicans in the House and less than 60 votes in the Senate, the holy writ of the day is COMPROMISE!!!

We are instinctively drawn to personalities like Steve Jobs, and to exceptional nations like the US was when we wrote that Constitution. It wasn't a blueprint for compromise, it was a blueprint for the greatest nation that the world had ever seen.

The US once "put a dent in the universe". Let's stop choosing safety over excellence before we have neither!

NBC Yells Fire on Trayvon

Trayvon Martin Tape Editing Prompts Internal Probe at NBC (Report) - Yahoo! TV

NBC edited the 911 tape to remove the 911 Dispatcher ASKING Zimmerman the race of the guy he was reporting so it sounded like Zimmerman was volunteering the race of the subject on his own.

Dispatcher: "OK, and this guy — is he black, white or Hispanic?"


To which Zimmerman replies:


Zimmerman: "He looks black."


Just when I thought I understood media bias, I get a shock. They apparently WANT to incite racial violence? or they at least believe that getting rid of "Stand your ground" or even Concealed Carry is worth some "collateral damage". 


These are the people that claim that a Republican congress has "divided our country"?


My opinion is that this is criminal on the part of NBC. This is "yelling fire in a crowded theatre". It is NOT "free speech", it is creating a fabrication simply to get the populace inflamed for whatever reason is running through their ideological addled brains. 

New RElease on Life

Day 1 of post IBM career. First off, thanks to for all the nice FB and other congratulations. It was a Gold Wing day after I walked out of the plant yesterday.

Did this loop:


View Home / Local in a larger map

In year 1 ('78) at IBM I lived in an old place in the space that is now the Government Center. Sheila and Dick Kiscaden (she to become a State Senator, he to have a long marketing type career with IBM), were the "slum lords". Another story.

'79-spring of '83 I was out in a little farm house by Pleasant Grove.

View Home / Local in a larger map

In April of '83, I moved here.

View Home / Local in a larger map

In those days I had a CX 500 Honda and hung out people from Spring Valley and Chatfield, so the Wing was a great way to get the mental Way Back Machine into gear.

Biggest thought of the day was that single days, hours, even minutes and seconds really define our lives for the purposes of our brains and emotions. Christmas, early pets, learning to ride a bike, first kiss, HS graduation, starting college, graduating college, job(s), marriage, kids --- retirement. It would be great if all of those were positive, but they never are -- death, accident, illness... those all fit in there.

The orders and the specifics vary,  but we all recognize them. The emotions of the "milestone" wire the memory into our brains along with the feelings. Walking out of IBM was one of those. I'm thankful I didn't "die at my desk" -- whatever comes, that event of walking out after nearly 34 years "hits the list".

For me it was "all good" to be leaving. No "bittersweet". But then, for me, so was graduating HS, so was graduating college -- I was always more interested in what was ahead than behind, and while I've started to re-establish a few connections from those old days on FB, mostly, it has just been "ever onward" relative to old connections.

Hopefully it is a good time in life to change that. Maybe even to re-establish some of those from time gone by. I could probably even consider making a class reunion in a decade or so after I get my "to do list" honed down just a bit. I didn't say that dumping the old relationships was "good",  I just said "that was me" ... for reasons that I don't really have a clue about.

I'm afraid it was due to WAY too much focus on "getting out and making money", but I've promised myself that I will work on my verbosity, so that topic is not for today!

Trevon Martin, Zimmerman, Civilization

Geraldo's Point - Thomas Sowell - Townhall Conservative Columnists - Page 1

First off, the death of ANY 17 year old for any reason is a TRAGEDY -- guilty, innocent, unlucky, self-inflicted, illness, etc.

Second, unless Obama is White, Zimmerman is Hispanic. He looks Hispanic. One of his parents being White doesn't make him "White" any more than Obama's mom being White has the same effect on him.

Jesse and Al are the US chiefs of the Dept of Race Shakedown. They make their living shaking down people, industries, etc for kickbacks because of their alleged umbrage -- and make a tidy living doing so.

Other than those minor points and maybe being a little too subdued, Sowell says it all and very well. We have law enforcement, prosecutors and courts to deal with incidents like this. Being 17 and unarmed doesn't mean you can't be a threat -- people are physically beaten to death or knifed by youths 17 and less with way too much frequency in this country and others.

Was that the properly perceived threat here? I have no idea -- apparently Zimmerman has a broken nose and a head injury, and it sounds like at least one witness saw "the hoodie person" on top of "the other person" wailing on him and went in to call the cops. If true, and if you were Zimmerman, perhaps you would have defended yourself as well? Independent of the sense or non-sense of how you managed to get in the predicament?

Even the lifetime smoker often fights when they get cancer -- and most humans have an innate understanding of why.

What does that mean? It means that the officers, prosecutors and maybe the courts need to be involved. OJ was declared innocent and the officers involved in the Rodney King incident were found not guilty.  What I think about those verdicts ought to be as immaterial as what anyone else thinks about them. There really isn't much point in having a legal system if we don't make use of it.

W was wrong about WMD, BO was wrong about $800B keeping unemployment below 8%, and I was wrong about selling Apple at $140. Humans are fallible and our wrong decisions are often expensive in suffering, treasure and even loss of life. Just look at the highway death stats.

Common sense, reason, proportion, etc. Those are the most expensive casualties of our time.