So I swing by Ace this morning and notice that this piece of dreck, Haidt/Graham 2007, has somehow resurfaced, on a conservative website, as an accurate representation of “the difference between liberals and conservatives.”

Well, at least as far as liberals are concerned. These researchers determined that “there are five psychological foundations of morality, which we label as harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity.” Conservative morality is based on some combination of all five of these moral foundations. There may not be an exact 20% input from each one, but they are all present. Liberal morality is based on only the harm/care and fairness/reciprocity foundations.

Poppycock. Liberals operate on all five of these foundations, they just define their foundational assumptions in a fashion so foreign to conservatives that we’re justified in believing them to be from another planet.

Harm/Care? Instead of actually looking at how their policies actually affect people, liberals do what looks and feels good in the short term. When the long-term consequences are bad, they dodge responsibility and recommend more of the same errors that caused the problem.

Fairness/Reciprocity? How is redistributionist economics any kind of fairness or reciprocity? I get to rob Peter to prop up Paul, and somehow most of the loot sticks to my fingers, but that’s “fairer” than free association and free exchange. Horseshit.

Ingroup/Loyalty? This doesn’t even pass the laugh test. Liberals don’t care about in-group or loyalty? Have these morons even met a typical Obama groupie, or a Democrat activist? Liberals are terribly cliquish, excuse everything for their in-group, and are terribly vitriolic to those not in the group. It’s just that their in-group is not the whole of the citizenry of the USA - it’s only the liberals.

Authority/Respect? Given that the Liberals just elected their Messiah, the One, He Who Must Not Be Criticized, whom Only A Racist Would Not Fall Down and Worship… another howler. Liberals are slavishly respectful to their authority figures - just not to the duly elected ones.

Purity/Sanctity? Tell this one to the tree-huggers and snail-salvagers. Liberals believe in sanctity, all right, they just don’t believe that humans have any. They’d like to return the world to the pure state of nature, meaning no filthy humans.

Please stop circulating this pseudoscience masquerading as sociological research, people. The Left keeps trying to define conservatism as some sort of mental dysfunction. Don’t help them.

UPDATE: Reformatted due to confusion about who was speaking, and what was and was not a quote.

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