Conservatives and Liberals, Culture and Politics, US and Iraq

An excerpt from a note I recently wrote to Dr. Jonathan Haidt, author of "What Makes People Vote Republican?":

Your article on on "What Makes People Vote Republican?" should be read at every dinner party here on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. I quoted you extensively on my blog and, in conjunction with the Palin selection, much discussion was stimulated.

An interesting connection might be drawn between (simply put), on the one hand, the liberal focus on politics and conservative focus on culture and, on the other hand, the neoconservative (at least) focus on reforming Iraqi political arrangements and the liberal tendency to focus on, so to speak, "the long, careful evolution of culture that prepares the ground for democracy." I would argue that conservative sensitivity to cultural development leads to the supposition that cultural arrangements are the crowning achievement of political development, and that the inverted (no connotation intended here) liberal relationship to culture and politics, leads to the opposite conclusion.

Palin and the Cultural Divide

My Palin post has generated the first inklings of "A Musing?" debate so allow me to harness that horse . . .

A few thoughts on the cultural divide that has been highlighted by reactions to Palin (If this issue interests you, do not miss the Haidt piece discussed below.):

+I believe that the 60's student movement brought many important issues to the fore. I do also believe that it announced the 'divorce' of the elite student from the "ho-hum conventions of American life" (as many of the students saw it) and accordingly helped to lay the groundwork for the deep misunderstandings that we read about today.

+The elites, in my opinion, were taking advantage of their class privileges and have become accordingly self-involved. Judith Warner, in the New York Times:

[University of Virginia associate professor of moral psychology Jonathan] Haidt has conducted research in which liberals and conservatives were asked to project themselves into the minds of their opponents and answer questions about their moral reasoning. Conservatives, he said, prove quite adept at thinking like liberals, but liberals are consistently incapable of understanding the conservative point of view. “Liberals feel contempt for the conservative moral view, and that is very, very angering. Republicans are good at exploiting that anger,” he told me in a phone interview.

+Haidt writes a highly fascinating piece on "The Edge" website, called "What Makes People Vote Repulican?" It is only a few pages long and is one of the best analyses of political-cultural connections in America that I have ever read.

+Despite my disapproval of Palin as a candidate, I think that it is important that we recognize that non-Ivy league, non-Davos summit folks can be excellent leaders. Truman, for instance, never attended college.