The science of how liberals differ from conservatives

Chris Mooney has presented "seven recent scientific studies showing that liberals and conservatives differ in ways that go far beyond their philosophies or views on politics. We're talking about things like physiological responses when shown different kinds of words or images, and performance in neuroscience tests." I applaud these efforts. I hope we will see many more studies to come, and that they will shed substantial additional light on why liberals and conservatives see the world so differently. Mooney aptly sums up the promise of this scientific effort:

[T]he next time a Republican denies global warming, liberals ought to be better able to check the impulse to say "what an idiot!" and instead say something like, "I can understand why they have that kind of a response."
Amen to that, based on the long sad track record of what happens when one group of people barks that out group members are "idiots." We've been intensely doing that for at least the past decade, and that strategy only gets us increasingly pissed off at each other. It doesn't lead to any fruitful understanding. It doesn't allow us to work with each other to achieve the many common goals we can agree on. Here is an earlier post I had written on this topic of applying science to understand differences between conservatives and liberals, concerning a study by Jay Dixit, Frank Sulloway et al.

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Cause of the economic collapse: Bank fraud versus bank incompetence?

In this 2009 interview with Bill Moyers, William Black, a former bank examiner and now a professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, discusses the cause of economic collapse. Some have suggested that the banks were merely incompetent. Black argues that many players in the financial industry purposely engaged in a Ponzi scheme that was so big as to make Bernie Madoff look like a "piker." He argues that the banks and the loan raters purposely refused to engage in responsible lending practices. Government officials (under the Clinton administration) destroyed Glass-Steagall. Congress intentionally circumvented the warnings of regulator Brooksely Born in deciding the make CDS derivatives legal. Congress refused to fund adequate staff staffing of law enforcement so as to prosecute ongoing bank fraud beginning in 2001. Under this set of doomed-to-fail policies, a single financial enterprise, IndyMac made more bad loans than were made during the entire Savings and Loan Crisis. The game now is to maintain a coverup--Black points fingers at Timothy Geithner and others.

Bill Moyers Journal: William K. Black from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

Bill Moyers conducted this interview on his PBS show. He is now active as a journalist at his own website.

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SOPA quote

Gary Shapiro, President of the Consumer Electronics Association, gave the keynote of the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show, which included the following:

Alluding to the upcoming Orwellian "Stop Online Piracy Act" (SOPA) (H.R. 3261), a visibly furious Mr. Shapiro commented, "[SOPA is championed by] politicians who are proudly unfamiliar with how the internet works, but who are well familiar with favors from well-heeled copyright extremists."

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Same and different people

A friend of mine sometimes mentioned a thought that he considered disturbing: If you could rise up high enough into the air, human beings would all started looking the same, like a bunch of ants. One consequence of this perspective is that particular humans would seem expendable and replaceable. Personally, I vacillated between thinking that human animals are exquisitely different from each other or disturbingly the same. Along came Donald Brown to convince me that we are deluded to think that people are meaningfully different from each other. Last night my wife and I watched an unusual video that, to me, reinforced this idea that humans everywhere are largely the same. The video is title "Life in a Day," and it was produced by National Geographic. Imagine 4,500 hours of video all all shot on the same day, edited down to 94 minutes. Here is a description of the project at the site where you can view the entire video:

Director Kevin Macdonald (The Last King of Scotland) and producer Ridley Scott (Alien, Gladiator) team up to offer this candid snapshot of a single day on planet Earth. Compiled from over 80,000 YouTube submissions by contributors in 192 countries, Life in a Day presents a microcosmic view of our daily experiences as a global society. From the mundane to the profound, everything has its place as we spend 90 minutes gaining greater insight into the lives of people who may be more like us than we ever suspected, despite the fact that we're separated by incredible distances.
This is a compelling video that I recommend. It reminded me that most of what I think of as "happening" are the images and sounds I personally experience. For the most part, I don't know what in the world is going on. While I live my life, and it seem important to me, 7 billion other people are living lives that they consider equally important. The video is a terrific reminder that we are each only a tiny part of a much bigger whole.

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Why Americans are at war in the Middle East

Glenn Greenwald keeps unveiling stunning information about U.S. foreign policy. The following video by General Wesley Clark is jaw dropping, especially in light of the events that have unfolded since the conversations he reveals. The bottom line is that a pro-war U.S. foreign policy is repeatedly enacted without any national debate. The U.S. considers the Middle East to be U.S. property. How else can you explain that we are operating armed drones in six Muslim countries, and that politicians are actively discussing the "need" to invade Iran?

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