Todd Suomela's Library tagged liberal →  View Popular, Search in Google

"But this does not mean that it is wrong to push the question even further, asking how we can be encouraged to care more about the well-being and suffering of those who happened not to be born within the same borders as us. Haidt thinks liberals ignore concepts like authority and the sacred. But really, liberalism’s power consists in challenging the moral relevance of such concepts. Since liberals dispute that authority really is of fundamental moral importance, it is circular reasoning to argue that this is a form of “moral blindness.”"

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"So, is the future post-liberal? The WEIRD liberalism of the baby boomer generation was perhaps condemned to a dogmatic universalism as a result of emerging in the shadow of two world wars, the Holocaust and the anti-colonial and civil rights struggles. There was a lot to react against and it is perhaps understandable that in eagerly embracing the moral equality of all humans, some boomers slipped into a carelessness towards national borders and identities and a rigidity towards many forms of equality. The next generation of politics need not make the same mistake."

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"But contrary to conservative rhetoric, studies show that going to college does not make students substantially more liberal. "

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"Indeed, the growing science of politics has uncovered a variety of interventions that can shift liberal people temporarily to the political right. And notably, none of them seem to have anything substantive to do with policy, or with the widely understood political differences between Democrats and Republicans.

Here is a list of five things that can make a liberal change his or her stripes:"

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"We report evidence that individual-level variation in people's physiological and attentional responses to aversive and appetitive stimuli are correlated with broad political orientations. Specifically, we find that greater orientation to aversive stimuli tends to be associated with right-of-centre and greater orientation to appetitive (pleasing) stimuli with left-of-centre political inclinations. These findings are consistent with recent evidence that political views are connected to physiological predispositions but are unique in incorporating findings on variation in directed attention that make it possible to understand additional aspects of the link between the physiological and the political. "

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"Our root problem today is not obdurate denialism coming from the right. That insanity is part of Culture War and can only be treated as a mental illness. Blue America must do what it did in every previous phase of the U.S. Civil War. Simply win. Answer the Tea Party's tricorner hat nonsense with the Union volunteer's kepi. We will stop resurgent feudalism and know-nothingism. Tell the troglodytes and oligarchs they cannot have our renaissance. Our enlightenment. Our proudly scientific civilization.

No. What I find far more worrisome is the left's mania to confuse ALL optimism with complacency, proclaiming any zealous, can-do enthusiasm to be part and parcel of the right's madness."

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"What I want to write about here, though, is the connection between political views and attitudes toward economic foundations."

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"American Dreamers provides a welcome corrective to this tendency. Perfect for use with undergrads, it is a compact, readable overview of the history of the American left. Perhaps the book’s greatest achievement lies in imposing order on an otherwise unruly subject. Its seven chapters do not merely move forward in time, but instead concentrate on the movements that most clearly embodied leftist aspirations at a given moment. In successive chapters, Kazin explains, analyzes and criticizes abolitionism, suffragism, the trade union movement, Populism, socialism, communism and the New Left, concluding with the fragments of a contemporary left represented by such disparate figures as Naomi Klein, Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky."

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"After a hard look, I realized that they had bombed on the questions that challenged their position. A full tabulation of all 17 questions showed that no group clearly out-stupids the others. They appear about equally stupid when faced with proper challenges to their position. "

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" A study from the National Bureau for Economic Research says that the income gains from specifically vocational majors (as opposed to liberal arts majors) peter out relatively early in life. By midlife, the liberal arts majors are actually out-earning the vocational majors, on average. The most dramatic fades occur in apprenticeship programs."

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"Do you really want the bar set this high?  Do you really want to live in a society where just getting by requires a person to hold down two jobs and work 60 to 70 hours a week?  Is that your idea of the American Dream?"

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"But the modern Democratic Party is not likely to embrace left-wing populism the way the GOP has embraced – or, more accurately, been forced to embrace – right-wing populism. Just follow the money, and remember history."

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What has the left really accomplished over the past two centuries? FDR's New Deal remains one of the great American success stories. In the '60s, leftist politics created a massive countercultural movement -- and sexual and feminist revolutions. The civil rights movement transformed both American society and the American soul. But, if you compare the accomplishments of the American left to those of other parts of the world, like Western Europe, its record is remarkably dismal, with a surprising lack of real political and social impact.

At least, that's the main takeaway from "American Dreamers," a new book by Michael Kazin, professor of history at Georgetown University, which covers nearly 200 years of struggle for civil rights, sexual equality and radical rebellion.

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By Noam Chomsky. - compare and contrast to Andrew Sullivan

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"But let me propose instead a metaphor that I find more congenial for understanding the architecture of the political moment.

Let’s say you’re a player for a perpetually losing sports team in a league where there’s two or three teams that always dominate the competition year after year. Everyone but the die-hard fans have deserted you. Some of your former fans have just given up watching the sport altogether, some watch the winning teams diffidently from afar.

It’s a familiar scenario from a zillion sports films and even occasionally resembles the real-life narratives that emerge out of sports and games.

As a member of the always-losing team, you have a few explanatory options, which then suggest a few possible ways to act:"

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