Image: Matt Collins
Humans are, by nature, tribal and never more so than in politics. In the culture wars we all know the tribal stereotypes of what liberals think of conservatives: Conservatives are a bunch of Hummer-driving, meat-eating, gun-toting, hard-drinking, Bible-thumping, black-and-white-thinking, fist-pounding, shoe-stomping, morally hypocritical blowhards. And what conservatives think of liberals: Liberals are a bunch of hybrid-driving, tofu-eating, tree-hugging, whale-saving, sandal-wearing, bottled-water-drinking, ACLU-supporting, flip-flopping, wishy-washy, namby-pamby bed wetters.
Like many other stereotypes, each of these contains an element of truth that reflects an emphasis on different moral values. Jonathan Haidt, who is a psychologist at the University of Virginia, explains such stereotypes in terms of his Moral Foundations Theory (see www.moralfoundations.org), which he developed “to understand why morality varies so much across cultures yet still shows so many similarities and recurrent themes.” Haidt proposes that the foundations of our sense of right and wrong rest within “five innate and universally available psychological systems” that might be summarized as follows:
- Harm/care: Evolved mammalian attachment systems mean we can feel the pain of others, giving rise to the virtues of kindness, gentleness and nurturance.
- Fairness/reciprocity: Evolved reciprocal altruism generates a sense of justice.
- Ingroup/loyalty: Evolved in-group tribalism leads to patriotism.
- Authority/respect: Evolved hierarchical social structures translate to respect for authority and tradition.
- Purity/sanctity: Evolved emotion of disgust related to disease and contamination underlies our sense of bodily purity.
Over the years Haidt and his University of Virginia colleague Jesse Graham have surveyed the moral opinions of more than 110,000 people from dozens of countries and have found this consistent difference: self-reported liberals are high on 1 and 2 (harm/care and fairness/reciprocity) but are low on 3, 4 and 5 (ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect and purity/sanctity), whereas self-reported conservatives are roughly equal on all five dimensions, although they place slightly less emphasis on 1 and 2 than liberals do. (Take the survey yourself at www.yourmorals.org.)
Instead of viewing the left and the right as either inherently correct or wrong, a more scientific approach is to recognize that liberals and conservatives emphasize different moral values. My favorite example of these differences is dramatized in the 1992 film A Few Good Men. In the courtroom ending, Jack Nicholson’s conservative marine Colonel Nathan R. Jessup is being cross-examined by Tom Cruise’s liberal navy Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee, who is defending two marines accused of accidentally killing a fellow soldier. Kaffee thinks that Jessup ordered a “code red,” an off-the-books command to rough up a disloyal marine trainee in need of discipline and that matters got tragically out of hand. Kaffee wants individual justice for his clients. Jessup wants freedom and security for the nation even at the cost of individual liberty, as he explains:
“Son, we live in a world that has walls. And those walls have to be guarded by men with guns.... You don’t want the truth because deep down, in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that wall. You need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone to a life spent defending something. You use ’em as a punch line. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it.”
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50 Comments
Add CommentThis study indicates clearly how little actually separates "us rabid" liberals from the staunch conservatives - and that instead of arguing our differences, we might (should?) spend more time building on our agreements!
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Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor years I have been reading youre mostly well thought out interpretations of the world of ideas and our perceived reality.
The last paragraph of your essay on political science in the Scientific American I actually had to read several times, not believing that you came up with a conclusion borrowed from the likes of Pravda or some right wing American propaganda paper.
Explain to me the correlation of our soldiers fighting in distant lands and our ability to sleep under a blanket of freedom.
Ever since 9/11 the freedom in America has been eroding faster than the ice sheets in Greenland. Being raised and educated in East Germany a d�j� vu, a constant recognition surrounds me of all the propaganda slogans, the shift of the meaning of words like peace, freedom, security, national interest, interrogation and countless others, unauthorized spying, disregard for Habeas Corpus voting for different parties but always getting the same politicians, potential strip searches at airports or border crossings, secret prisons, flag waving, hate and fear mongering in most news media and snooping into private phone conversations and Internet communications oversees.
In every political system there are those, who are in line with the political apparatus and who feel perfectly free in the system they frequently are serving. Imagine, in America you can go to the church of your choice, as long it is a Christian denomination. You are also free to join an Islamic Religion, but you can be reasonably sure that one of our 16 snooping agencies that keep track of our freedom will pepper your communications with more bugs than a beetle infestation.
Before our latest fear there were union organizers, communists or even gays and lesbians.
So freedom is certainly there, as long as you swim with the stream and one more thought, those unfortunate millions who try to eke out a living somewhere in America, unemployed, frequently homeless or one step away, or hungry or sick, what meaning has the word freedom for them.
Hence bleeding heart liberals!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's nice to be able to give my radical leftist neighbor some logical reasons for our differences. I loaned him my book "Makers and Takers" which goes a long way toward describing our differences, not necessarily explaining them. He returned it to me after 6 months, unread.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAn interesting extension of Kohlberg's theory of moral development.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAn interesting extension of Kohlberg's theory of moral development. However, by suggesting we "lock into" a moral level, Kohlberg's model appears to better explain why "liberals" and "conservatives" don't and won't communicate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe use of a movie metaphor (A Few Good Men) also suggests that myths are more important to us than rigorous intellectual analysis.
The oldest definition of Liberals and conservatives is their respective desired bank balance.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't know... Don't flame me on this, I'm just trying to put this in historical perspective. If we work the list from bottom to top:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this5. Jews are racially impure
4. A strong Authority must find a solution to this ethnic disease
3. The Aryan tribe must maintain its racial purity
2. The Jews must pay for their crimes against Germany
1. We must nurture the Aryan bloodline to maintain its purity.
I think using these criteria would allow Adolph Hitler to win a Nobel Peace Prize for the Holocaust. There's definitely something missing in this theory.
Another example might be "Right to Life" advocates blowing up an abortion clinic. That qualifies under this definition of morality, regardless of how many people are killed in the explosion.
I am going to agree with montarapete, and I strongly suspect that if our Founding Fathers were still alive, that they would agree with him too.
I wanted to read more about the "science" behind Kohlberg's work. Darn.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've found the contemporary anthropology's maturity/consciousness levels much more empirically verifiable, although these moral foundations may be useful. In the 1990's however, the anthropological consensus seemed to suggest that "universals" are an invalid conclusion. I'd like to see the data about these "x-cultural" universals.
One thing I notice about them, is that so-called liberals (the false binary excludes progressives by default who often share commonalities with liberals but also with conservatives, with re-definitions) often redefine some of those five/interpret them differently than conservatives... and this surely is the explanation (inexplicably ignored by Kohlberg) for liberals falling heavily in foundations 1 & 2. The personal survey is blatantly skewed to filter out the distinctive re-definition factor.
It's important to do the science from an empirical POV not with a basis in false social Darwinist-esque presumptions. I suspect most anthropologists would take Kohlberg's work to task with data he's ignoring.
I agree with JustJack. This theory may adequately explain why someone BELIEVES their actions are moral, but that doesn't make it so.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBy SUBJECTIVELY dehumanizing the Tutsis, the Hutus were entirely moral in their genocide in Rwanda. The International Criminal Tribunal of Rwanda, being free from this subjective view of the Tutsis, is prosecuting the perpetrators for genocide and crimes against humanity.
This model of morality fails to be cross cultural within the same country.
I don't buy for a second that you grew up in East Germany, or you would have been stating things like Nationalization of industry, school children singing songs to Dear Leader, institutionalized voter fraud (Acorn), restriction of mundane freedoms (what light bulb you can buy), etc. You know, the things Communists actually do.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe author could have saved himself some column space. Liberalism ideology can be summed up as follows: Individualism is morally evil.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisConservative ideology can be summed up as follows: Collectivism is morally evil.
The question then becomes, which position actually is morally evil? Because, news flash for you, not all moral positions are equivalent.
It's also hilarious that the author claims that the liberal ideology is about individual liberty and fairness when it can be empirically shown to be the exact opposite. Political Correctness, a foundational tenet of liberalism is nothing more than an effort to enforce group think through application of peer pressure.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe five inate systems are better explained here:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html
Each is a continuum - not binary switches. For a large population arguing the extreme of the distribution (and racking up Godwin's Rule points) for Gaydolf Titler is mostly pointless.
Gotta love Godwin's Law violations...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe five innate systems are (mostly) linear relationships that taken together represent a continuum. See here:
http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html
It's really psychology.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn dealing with interpersonal relations one group thinks others are self interested and the only way for me to survive is to fully utilize my capabilities in my own self interest.
The other group believes in the general goodness of relationships and that helping other will bring about help when they need it. Cooperation is their model.
You can surely place these in the appropriate bins.
George Washington warned us all in his farewell speech and I wish we listened. Political parties in general are bad for government. It tends to leave politicians focusing on their own agendas or their party's agenda instead of focusing on issues of who they represent. Being in public office should be a sacrifice; the sacrifice is one's vote. If I ran for office, I would be sacrificing my vote for that of my constituents. For example, although I am against abortion, I would still vote that it was okay if the majority of my constituents wanted it. However, do we see this happening today? NO. Those in office run off whatever their party wants and relies on name recognition and money to get reelected rather than being judged on what they have actually done.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think a major difference between liberals and conservatives revolves around the definition of #3, the in-group. Extreme conservatives seem to exclude over 99% of the population from their in-group. (Think Nazis or KKK). Extreme liberals' in-group include over 99% of the people as well as most animals, some vegetables and a few minerals.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe underlying difference between liberal/progressive and conservative/traditional values is "In what do you place your FAITH?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf reason or historical proof were the cause of liberal and conservative thought, one side would eventually convince the other. This never happens for extended periods of time in a democracy, because the liberal/conservative divide is held apart by persons faith. What do you truly believe, despite no evidence, or despite evidence to the contrary?
Conservatives have faith in an outer, given, standard morality. Sometimes this means belief in God, sometimes it exists in atheists. Regardless, its a personal inner faith in a universal morality. This outer morality must overrule the individuals faulty personal preferences. Conservatives (as with the founding fathers) placed their faith in God and in Judeo-Christian morality not in man. Man's job is to stay subservient, and make sure his government stays subservient, to a universal morality. This requires personal freedom to resist government or social dictates. So, freedom trumps peace.
Liberals have faith in mans judgment and reject universal morality. Liberals place their faith in mankind and their communal sense of justice. That allows progressive movement away from the Constitutional balance of powers (judicial activism instead of legislative deliberation). It places nature (not God) above poisonous, intrusive man. The lack of universal morality allows abortion on demand. The lack of universal morality means faith in government and societal control, rather than in personal freedom. This allows peace at any cost, including the peace at the cost of personal freedom.
This dichotomy is why liberals score well only on the first two of the authors list of five moral compasses, and why conservatives score nearly equally on the five. BTW, the author has an excellent video discussing his thoughts on TED.com to a liberal audience.
Hah! Good one. Of course, the serious discourse must center on the non-extremists, but I love your humor.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMeasurement of the five categories of morality is incomplete.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAdherence to the professed faith in one's morality is a more significant measure. True belief is not indicated by what people say so much as what they do. Of course, this is a much more difficult quality to measure because the subjects must be stress tested to see how deeply they believe in their own professed moral judgment.
As has been noted, (3) in-group morality can translate into the diametric opposite of morality when taken to extremes. This is especially true in combination with (4) respect for authority where the authority is bent on the destruction of others for their own selfish purposes.
Supporting a murderous tyrant is an example of (3) and (4) turning any assumption of morality into a delusion. Let history be our guide in such cases.
Very apt these five points, but in No 2 the word "altruism" reveals that the author is a liberal. I mean, "an eye for an eye" is that altruistic? Yet it is a form of perceived fairness and justice, though I would not recommend it personally. I think the point is that these are behavioral patterns which have evolved. They explain why and how we may 'feel' in certain ways. So they are not in themselves moral rules. The normative issue concerns how moral reactions and sentiments are to be formulated, applied and expanded to meet the challenges of life. By the way, the harm/care principle should include such things as sympathy, including the ability to rejoice when others are successful, compassion and in general respect for life as a value human life first. The example of the Hutus from shadocat illustrates this. The Hutus had to dehumanize the Tutsis in order to commit genocide. Why? Because as humans they were sacrosanct. This in no way makes their act moral their immorality lay, besides in killing, in denying their own close genetic relatives their humanity. Conceptual issues are also moral ones.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Regardless, its a personal inner faith in a universal morality. This outer morality must overrule the individuals faulty personal preferences. "
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAbsolutely wrong. Universal morality, as defined by Judeo-Christian heritage states in no uncertain terms, "Thou Shall Not Kill."
I could choke this web site with historical examples of "Godly" men justifying murder, including America's own history of lynching at the turn of the 20th century.
A contemporary example of religious hypocrisy is the conservative fondness for the death penalty, which is in direct contempt of the God they claim to worship.
Read Matthew 7 in the Bible before responding to me.
I would like to add that the group of five is obviously not complete in another way. One important dimension concerns freedom vs. obedience. The five items do concern themselves with loyalty and authority, but freedom as a value is not mentioned. This really strange – humans are not just designed to live in groups, but also to care for themselves, and more or less desire to do so. This also breaks the facile distinction between liberals and conservatives, for there are liberals who like freedom and liberals who like the welfare state, and there are neoliberal conservatives and highly authoritarian ones. One winds up with a rather complex matrix if one develops these ideas.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOuch. We pity the hateful.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFirst, Judeo-Christian teaching does NOT fault all deadly force. A second-grade intentional misrepresentation of the Bible can fool not even its own author. Biblical scholars agree the best translation of the 6th commandment is about murder, not about capital punishment or self defense or war. This ethical distinction is consistent throughout. If one uses the Bible to make a point, but in ignorance of its most basic meaning, one should move on. We're reminded of reading science fiction authors who can't understand the basics of Einstein's relativity. Humorous at best. Sad at worst.
Second, it is Judeo-Christian and founding fathers' faith in a universal morality that is undeniably reflected in the Federalist papers, Paine's Common Sense, Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Not many are ready to "progress" away from those thoughts.
Third, yes, anyone can point to atrocities committed in the name of Judeo-Christian religions or pseudo-Christian cults. Of course, it would be intellectually dishonest to not simultaneously point to the even greater atrocities committed by pagans, communism, and fascism. Explicit evidence of man's (and governments') inability to rely solely on self-restraint. You'll find no intellectual dishonesty here. Nor any irrational hate. Mankind needs help.
Imbalance in Haidt's and Graham's five moral compass points leads to trouble. Balance between them leads to civilization.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWinston Churchill: "A young man who is not a liberal has no heart. A grown man who is not conservative has no brain."
No one with an unbalanced (e.g. 1 & 2 only, or 3 & 4 & 5 only) moral baseplate has ever been a widely respected, influential, positive influence. Powerful, perhaps for a short while, but in the long run irrelevant. In the end, reasonable grown-ups win, not the pure conservatives nor the pure liberals.
I think the closest things between the two groups is that,they will not admit when they are wrong,and that each blames the other for their own mistakes,while taking credit for the other's success as their own.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Explain to me the correlation of our soldiers fighting in distant lands and our ability to sleep under a blanket of freedom."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've always thought most of my views would be regarded as liberal, but if you cannot see the correlation between our soldiers fighting in distant lands and our ability to sleep under a blanket of freedom you are not naive but ignorant. If you were to play chess you would fall for the fools mate time and time again, because apparently you cannot see beyond the next likely move even when it has been demonstrated to you by your opponent. 9/11 was not the first attempt by basically the same organized group of international activists it was simply the most successful to date. Would you have us do nothing and wish them away?
Life is so simple to the simple-minded.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou didn't read Matthew 7, and you're wrong again.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would consider the Pope a reliable Biblical Scholar, and the Vatican's position is that the death penalty "is not only a refusal of the right to life, but it also is an affront to human dignity,"
If you'll read the Bill of Rights you cited, you'll see that, per the First Amendment, religion is irrelevant. If you go down that path, you'll also have to explain gross violations of other amendments, and the disregard for the law that conservatives also display.
Morally, if society executes just 1 innocent man, it has committed murder. The Columbia Law School, "Leibman Study," states:
"Nationally, during the 23-year study period, the overall rate of prejudicial error in the American capital punishment system was 68%. In other words, courts found serious, reversible error in nearly 7 of every 10 of the thousands of capital sentences that were fully reviewed during the period."
The ACLU Claims that "In the U.S., as of June 2002, 108 people including 12 death row inmates, have been exonerated by use of DNA tests. "
Do the math. The American legal system has murdered innocent men.
That leads back to the Authoritarian question: When is it moral for a society to perform an action that is immoral for all of its members?
In Nazi Germany, we see the answer. An authoritarian manipulated a population, using lies, fear, and hatred, and we see the result.
In America, in the aftermath of 9/11, authoritarians are manipulating the population through lies, fear, and hatred, and torture committed by the Authority is business as usual.
I suppose it might be acceptable if we limited our torture to terrorists, but google the names Maher Arar and Khaled al-Masri, and explain how it is moral for American Authority to torture innocent men?
I have worked most of my life in criminal justice and have written two books on why innocent people still get convicted in America at an alarming rate, despite the fact that the common man still thinks "We have the best criminal justice system in the world." Google Why the Innocent Plead Guilty and the Guilty Go Free" if you are interested.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am what you would call liberal on many criminal justice issues, although on everything else I am a bit to the right of John McCain. When I was young I campaigned for Lyndon Baines Johnson and my first vote cast was for Jimmy Carter. Well, back then I did a lot of other stupid things as well.
Both conservatives and "progressives" are herd-instinct creatures. Only about 5% of either group are really well informed on the issues they argue about. The conservatives are perhaps more inclined to be personally generous when it comes to charities, but can also be more easily duped when a miscreant feigns "coming to Jesus" in order to escape punishment.
British soldiers inAfghanistan face criticism because they called in an airstrike that killed 60+ Taliban but also killed 30-something innocent villagers. Without the airstrike the Brit unit may have lost 5-10 of their own soldiers trying to clean out the enemy. What do you tell the families of those soldiers back in Great Britain?
It is always a bad thing when you inadvertently kill a bystander or convict an innocent person while engaged in trying to make the world a better and safer place. However, as the Christian bumper sticker advises, "LIFE HAPPENS."
Michael...since you are liberal from a criminal justice viewpoint, who do you blame for the fact that innocents are proven guilty (witch hunts, prejudice) or that the guilty are exonerated (technicalities, O.J.)? Would you rather see the former or the latter occur more often? I would tend to lay the blame on conservatives for the former and liberals for the latter. Our system IS the best in the world because the latter is possible. If you must place blame, then place it on imperfect juries, judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys, not the system in general.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso, what would you say to the families of the 30-something innocent victims in your example? You label them as innocent and then treat them as somehow guilty and deserving the death penalty! Soldiers know their risks and take the job anyway (this is different from when I was drafted). Therefore, no soldiers are innocent. Better to protect our borders than try to implement our will through ideological war around the world.
Liberals tell you how to feel, conservatives tell you what to think. Therefore, liberals are more pathetic and conservatives are more dangerous. Libertarians are the only ones who just want us to live our lives as we see fit.
You have an interesting mix of liberal and conservative views, which shows me that you actually think about it!
Cheers.
"Third, yes, anyone can point to atrocities committed in the name of Judeo-Christian religions or pseudo-Christian cults. Of course, it would be intellectually dishonest to not simultaneously point to the even greater atrocities committed by pagans, communism, and fascism."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would like to point out that a major difference between these two groups is that when Christians kill people, it's sanctioned by God, while when fascists kill people, it's a crime. Guess which one scares me more.
By the way, that's a cute trick, saying these horrible acts were perpetrated by "pseudo-Christians". Unless you think the Catholic church, the southern Baptists, and the original Protestants were pseudo-Christian, I'd be fascinated to know just who you're referring to. Also, go back to your Bible and read the first five books of the Old Testament, and then read Revelation. Your God is a blood drinker.
Furthermore, the founding fathers were not true Christians at all, they were Deists. The principles that they wrote down in the Constitution were ideas that they believed were universal and non-denominational. Nothing annoys me more than the argument that the Constitution was written with purely Christian values. What part of 'a nation whose people may practice any and all religions' do people not understand???
The biggest differenct between liberals and conservatives is that conservative's actions are based on Christian values. Thus, they are against abortion, gay marriage, would rather help people directly than have the government bail them out, going to church, etc. Liberals are their own God, and aren't subject to the constraints of faith. Makers and Takers shows this, as do many other books. Liberal radio doesn't work because it is based on lies. That is why mainstream media is losing viewship, while Fox News and talk radio gain market share. There will be another civil war in this country, red and blue, hopefully bloodless, and we will see who prospers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, Kenneth, "Gott Mit Uns." I'm an ethically challenged Liberal. Would you please review my comments below and explain how the Death Penalty is a Christian Value?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd I'm also getting a mixed message from Christian conservatives about abortion. Here is a partial list of Infant Mortality rates by country, high numbers are bad. The full list is at https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2091rank.html
180 United States 6.26
181 Cuba 5.82
182 European Union 5.72
189 Canada 5.04
192 New Zealand 4.92
193 United Kingdom 4.85
196 Australia 4.75
207 Israel 4.22
220 Hong Kong 2.92
221 Japan 2.79
222 Sweden 2.75
223 Bermuda 2.46
224 Singapore 2.31
Every country in that excerpt, including Cuba, has Universal health care AND a lower infant mortality rate.
It seems to me that if Christian conservatives really valued life, they would endorse Universal health care so that the children who were saved from abortion survived through infancy.
So, why is it Christian to save a fetus and kill an infant?
Kenneth Hausmann...You once again prove where idiot conservatives get their information...FROM ACTORS WHO PLAY JOURNALISTS ON TV. You share your name with a respected attorney from San Francisco. If he saw this I bet he would be embarrassed that he might be mistaken for you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCivil wars, by definition, are NEVER bloodless. However, the world would support the liberals (witness the world-wide hatred of Bush) and you would get your sorry ass whupped. And maybe then you would wonder why your god has forsaken you.
Dear Notslic, I am in Mensa, so the odds are 50 to 1 that you are as smart as I am. (actually, I scored well above Mensa standards, so your odds are less!) My guess is you are young, underemployed or unemployed, some college, but in a degree which is not useful, you are single, male, and your parents are not very proud of you. You also overestimate your intellect, and you are obviously bitter due to your lack of success. Get used to it! Also, I live in Texas, a very prosperous, growing red state, as most of them are. Where do you live? California? What a great example of blue state prosperity! Chill, this is just for fun!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisP.S. I am against the death penalty as well as abortion. All life is precious. Our health care system is the best in the world, like it or not. If you include abortion, our infant mortality is about 35%. Don't try to hide the truth with misleading statistics. Sophmoric
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"P.S. I am against the death penalty as well as abortion. All life is precious. Our health care system is the best in the world, like it or not. If you include abortion, our infant mortality is about 35%. Don't try to hide the truth with misleading statistics. Sophmoric"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThose statistics are facts, which is why I can include a link to the source with confidence. Can you provide any documentation for your claim that this figure would rise to 35% with abortion?
By the way, if you had checked my source, you would have read that:
"This entry gives the number of deaths of infants under one year old in a given year per 1,000 live births in the same year; included is the total death rate, and deaths by sex, male and female. This rate is often used as an indicator of the level of health in a country."
Can you give any reason WHY abortions should be included in statistics about LIVE births?
Can you please explain why it's 2.7 times more likely for an American baby to die than for a baby born in Singapore?
Your statement about America having the best health care system in the world implies that you actually have access to America's health care system. Intelligence and knowledge are two different things. Do you actually KNOW how many Americans do not have access to health care?
Mr. Mensa, your disparaging remarks towards someone you feel is your intellectual inferior also suggests a bigotry toward those who are not as smart as you, which means virtually everyone else on the planet. Is that why you can dismiss any fact that differs from your preconceived world view?
Is it because everyone who disagrees with you is an "idiot?"
No, I am just having fun with Notslic, you are a different person. All Americans have access to health care. All they do is go to the emergency room for free. I have taken my kids there and seen them lined up for free care. I went to pay the $3,000 bill for a broken collarbone, and she took my credit card and looked at it like it was a bug. After being gone for 15 minutes, she said they would send me a bill, and I would still get my discount for paying right away. I asked her what took so long- she said nobody had ever paid before, but she had only been there 3 weeks. My point with abortions is that stillbirths and abortions have the same effect. There is no baby when they would be celebrating their 1 month birthday. I don't know why Singapore has a lower mortality rate, but people with means come to the US for health emergencies, they don't go to Singapore. Let's fix the problem, not scrap the best system in the world. Stop the trial lawyers' abuse, make generic drugs easier to get, increase use of Medical Savings Accounts, teach people to live healthier lifestyles, try to get rid of smoking, alcohol, unhealthy foods through education, etc. Letting the government run it will not make it better. Look what they have done with Social Security, the budget, Medicare, Medicaid, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, RTC, postal service, and every other thing they run.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnyway, please don't take it seriously, this is just a blog. Merry Christmas! Kenneth
A response to why I believe that a startling number of innocent people are proven guilty (or confess as part of a plea bargain.)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this(1) In the USA we have an entirely unwarranted confidence in the ability of strangers to identify strangers whom they only met for a few seconds under terrifying circumstances.
(2) In many states we no longer have an effective speedy trial rule. People unable to make bail before their trials tend to lose their jobs, their place of residence, all their belongings, even their pets (who end up getting a death sentence at the pound.) My state has a theoretical rule requiring trial in 90 days but it is so full of holes that even average-serious trials take a year to convene and serious felonies usually two years. People plead guilty when they are not because eventually they have served the length of time that they would have served if convicted, so by simply confessing they can get out immediately, albeit they will now have a "conviction" on their record. It has always been true that the setting of bail favors the well-off.
(3) In the USA we have an awful lot of laws anymore, which enable prosecutors to really load up on all the charges they can threaten you with to make you confess. Suppose you get into an argument with an ex-girlfriend at a New Year's Eve party and end up exchanging slaps. You are arrested for Assault 4 on the basis of what her friends said. The prosecutor threatens that if you don't plead guilty he will amend the charge to make it domestic violence, add a hate crime enhancement because the victim is now a lesbian, and also charge you with Burg 1, because the other felonies happened in a house, regardless of the fact that you took nothing. Consecutive, the prosecutor threatens, consecutive!
(4) He said/she said. All it takes is one person who can get on the stand and lie convincingly and you are toast. Children are even worse because they can allege that something happened one night in 2004 or 2005 and you can't possibly have an alibi defense as to that night because it doesn't matter what specific night it was. Worse yet, children can be coached to lie very readily and the child comes to believe it.
(5) the historic prohibition against hear-say evidence is also all but dead. The excited utterance rule used to be at most an hour now stretches to six hours or more and in one case it stretched to three months!
(6) lie detectors can be used as an interrogation technique by cops who by lyingconvince a man that he will never be believed
The obvious explanation for lower infant mortality rates in countries with universal health care, is that all the babies in these countries RECEIVE health care.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBy the time an American baby makes it to an emergency room, it is often too late.
Fortunately, more and more Americans are shortening the waits in emergency rooms with good old American ingenuity:
"They borrow leftover prescription drugs from friends, attempt to self-diagnose ailments online, stretch their diabetes and asthma medicines for as long as possible and set their own broken bones. When emergencies strike, they rarely can afford the bills that follow."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/nyregion/18insure.html
They are right about being able to afford the bills. A study of bankruptcies for 2007 found that:
"Using a conservative definition, 62.1% of all bankruptcies in 2007 were medical; 92% of these medical debtors had medical debts over $5000, or 10% of pretax family income. The rest met criteria for medical bankruptcy because they had lost significant income due to illness or mortgaged a home to pay medical bills. Most medical debtors were well educated, owned homes, and had middle-class occupations."
Now here's the punch line: "Three quarters had health insurance."
This study is at: http://www.pnhp.org/new_bankruptcy_study/Bankruptcy-2009.pdf
If you think this source is biased, here is some more recent reporting of the same:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/25/health/policy/25bankruptcy.html
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2009/09/cancer_health_insurance_bankru
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/06/05/bankruptcy.medical.bills/index.html
Bringing the subject back to morality, my hypothesis is that conservatives, although well meaning and sincere, take a simplistic view to issues and are deaf to any challenges.
Prove that my hypothesis is wrong by documenting your claims about the American health care system.
Shadocat...Thanks. I believe that the fact that Kenneth lives in Texas proves my point.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisKenneth...Nice. I've done the same before and been proven wrong. Actually I'm a retired (at 43) attorney who has been published in two states. I live on the Western slope of the Rockies and own all the land that I see in every direction. I grow fruit, veggies and angus beef. I have 5 degrees and your little mensa test is fodder for my 11 year old. I kayak fish the high Rockies 90 days a year and hunt, ski and shoot another 50. Thanks for making me giggle with your image of a non-believer of the Fox spin. What I did was comment on your statement about Fox. You, on the other hand, created a fantasy about who YOU think doesn't believe in Mr. H and Mr. O. Further proof that what I said was true.
Michael, thank you for your response. When in law school I interned for a man who was accused of multiple homicides and was representing himself. A combination of my certainty that he was guilty and the glares of the victims' families during hearings convinced me that civil law was the area that I would practice in. He is presently STILL on death row and I am comfortable with my decision.
Considering the recent Amanda Knox decision in Italy, I must repeat my assertion that our system IS the best, despite its flaws. The facts that you state concern flawed humans, not a flawed system. Excited utterance and statement against interest are interesting exceptions to the hearsay rule. But a jury is instructed regarding the degree of veracity they should attach to such admissable hearsay (indirect evidence), and it is still up to flawed humans to make the decision.
Plea bargaining is (along with wealth), as you state, the most compelling factor in the wrongful administration of justice in our criminal system.
I have jury duty on the 17th. I'll probably be skiing on the 18th since we're getting a big storn right now!!!
Cheers and happy holidays to all!
What is this sopposed to be, a justification for Guant�namo?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI just read eco-steve's Dec.2 comment during my weekly library visit yesterday and wondered how, using his definition, that most anti-tort reform, ambulance-chasing, $400 haircut lawyers like John Edwards (of recent presidential candidate fame) are known liberals.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGobluekuz...and skirt chasing, lying members of Congress from South Carolina are always conservatives. You forgot to mention that Edwards is also a skirt chaser! The only famous thing about Libertarians is that they eat cheese made from Borat's wife's breastmilk. Go Bob Barr!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGreed follows no party lines. However, I would think that most people consider conservatives to be more greedy. Or at least if a liberal stole your money he might give some to PETA.
I wish people would actually read the bible before quoting it. The commandment is in point of fact "Thou shall not commit murder" not "Thou shall not kill"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Reason I try not to get heavily involved in party politics is, in this climate many politicians are appealing to what I believe are the two most dangerous emotions in mankind. FEAR and ENVY
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe left says look what they have lets go take it.
The right says we have to stop them in the most aggressive and drastic way possible or all is lost.
I could not disagree more that virtue is a product of evolution. That implies the less virtuous are less evolved.
The greatest political statement ever made was "ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL (Men meaning all humans .In that era It was used in that way . If meant anything else it would have included except for. And there are plenty of examples from that era where " except for " was brutally used.
That simple statement freed slaves, gave women the right to vote and stopped Hitler.
I would like to add to my previous post
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSome say virtue differs from culture to culture. True but only in quantity . If you disagree go to any country in the world and act in a less than a virtuous way towards someone's wife,children and parents and you will quickly be enlightened.
I don't see the need for sure a division, they should try to work together with more openness.
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