Am I liberal or conservative?

I dunno. I guess he is. My contacts have been very wrong about this stuff before -- and I haven't been in touch with them for a long time.

4.6 harm (higher than the average liberal, no surprise)

4.5 fairness (higher than the average liberal, no surprise)

3.0 loyalty (the same as the average CONSERVATIVE, higher than the average liberal ... hmmm ...)

2.8 authority (between the average liberal and conservative, slightly closer to conservative ... hmmm ... )

1.9 purity (between the average liberal and conservative, slightly closer to liberal ... no surprise)

Except for "loyalty" my score was almost identical to yours. Well, Rod, maybe that is why I am a fan of your blog...

Thanks for posting this Rod, and for the explanation of how your psychology affected the way you viewed the Catholic church. I've been looking for a good political quiz since I am pretty much equally split on issues, I primarily identify myself as a Crunchy Con.

I scored as hyper-conservative in everything. Ah, self-knowledge, how sad it can be sometimes.

Harm: 3.3
Fairness: 1.3
Loyalty: 2.9
Authority: 4.0
Purity: 3.8

Is anyone really surprised?

Haidt elsewhere speculates that liberal values predominate in large urban populations because business pressures, social mobility, and the lack of religious/cultural unity help reduce ethics to utilitarian, contractual concerns.

This dovetails with political theorists' take, who see the rise of Liberalism as a consequence of the Reformation and the capitalist explosion.

Arguably the conservative approach is capable of more nuance since its ethical vocabulary is greater, but this nuance is lost when ethical standards try to bind as many people as possible with as little controversy as possible.

Brad, I prefer to think that there are 10 types of people--those who know binary and those who don't. ; )

What Lucius said.

Besides, Rod, my loyalty score is even lower than yours; by your analysis I should be *less* likely to remain Catholic than you, right?

Fair enough, Lucius and Erin. Let me say simply that this test revealed to me that the very high Authority and Sanctity scores I had indicated a profound belief in the necessity of Authority and Sanctity as part of my general moral outlook. That I scored so low on Loyalty indicates to me that when Authority and Sanctity were deeply challenged, I didn't have a natural psychological disposition to Loyalty to fall back on. I don't think Loyalty is a bad thing; normally it's a good thing. Y'all are loyal to the Catholic church because of intellectual conviction, clearly, and I don't mean to disparage your commitment. But is it really the case that your loyalty to Catholicism is only an intellectual decision?

Look, I wouldn't say that all people who have such low Loyalty ratings are destined to leave their church, Catholic or otherwise, if their high Authority and Sanctity/Purity ratings are challenged severely. Obviously, Erin, you didn't. I fought hard for years to hang on because of my intellectual conviction, and finally I just lost my Catholic faith. I really did. This test -- which is just an Internet quiz, so I don't know how valid it is -- gave me some possible insight as to why what happened to me happened to me. Thomas Merton showed keen psychological insight in "The Seven Storey Mountain" when he talked about how important the will is in determining belief. We fool ourselves when we think that our decisions are purely matters of intellect.

Oh, man.

Harm: 4.1
Fairness: 3.8
Loyalty: 1.4
Authority: 1.1
Purity: 1.1

In every category except Fairness, where I'm equal to liberal, I'm what you get if you take the difference between liberal and conservative, and double it in the direction of liberal. It's a bunch of staircases, me, then liberal, and then an equal step up or down to conservative.

Here's a question: Has anyone gotten largely varying scores on Harm and Fairness? Or Authority and Purity?

It is slightly interesting to see several people with low loyalty and high authority and purity.

I'm not sure how you're have a high authority score and a low loyalty, that seem somewhat paradoxical. I tend to regard authority as a subset of loyalty...a leader is simply a member of the group they (and you) are in, and, moreover, has no specific rights simply because they're in charge. (Hence you can be loyal to the group, but not loyal to the leader.)

So I'm not entirely sure how the opposite works, but it's clear that other people think about this in a different manner. Any respect for authority I have comes from loyalty to the principles of that group.

It is interesting to note both groups have high harm and fairness scores. When you think about it, most political arguments are made based on harm and fairness grounds, on both sides! (We can't let poor people starve to death.//You're stealing money from working people and giving it to the lazy.)

Harm 1.3
Fairness 1.9
Loyalty 3.5
Authority 3.5
Purity 4.0

Who was it that said being right-wing entailed the acceptance of cruelty? Which I think is very much true. As someone who sees sentimentality as the bane of 21st-century America, I'm not at all surprised by these results.

I found it very interesting to compare my scores to others on this list.

M_Dav (Rod) DavTC (Erin) MZ (Larry) Watsy

Harm: 2.5 (3.4) 4.1 (1.8) 3.3 (4.6) 4.1 (closest to Erin)
Fair: 3.4 (3.0) 3.8 (1.9) 1.3 (4.5) 3.4 (exactly like Watsy)
Loya: 2.6 (1.9) 1.4 (1.0) 2.9 (3.0) 2.8 (closest to Watsy)
Auth: 3.1 (3.6) 1.1 (3.3) 4.0 (2.8) 2.9 (closest to Erin & Watsy)
Pure: 3.8 (4.0) 1.1 (3.8) 3.8 (1.9) 2.8 (exactly like Erin)

But if I look at overall scores, I'm closest in general to Rod; we are apart by a average of 0.5, Watsy and I by 0.6, Erin and I by 0.8.

These results scare me, but not nearly as much as I'm sure it scares y'all. :-)

I have actually theorized for years that the main difference between liberals and conservatives was that liberals are willing to see the larger society suffer as long as individual desires and liberties are not curtailed beyond a "do no direct harm" ethos while conservatives are willing to live with some level of unfairness and even oppression for a few individuals in order to preserve the larger society for the benefit of the vast majority of people. I would say that the reason I consider myself conservative is that I see the damage done to individuals as the result of run-away slavish devotion to not interfering with individual desires as being just as immoral as harm inflicted directly against someone through oppression or lack of tolerance. Since the damage done indirectly is far, far more widespread than direct oppression, for me that's where the moral weight is most compelling. That is not to say that we should not seek to ameliorate oppressive and intolerant forces, just that whatever corrective action we take needs to be done with the idea of protecting the larger culture as a central priority.

"Who was it that said being right-wing entailed the acceptance of cruelty? Which I think is very much true. As someone who sees sentimentality as the bane of 21st-century America, I'm not at all surprised by these results."

Savage by name, savage by nature, huh?

LOL :-P

Sorry, I couldn't resist, given that we got opposite scores (and obviously look at the world in opposite ways -- we could use more sentiment, IMHO).

Here's the quote I was referring to about cruelty, from Austin Bramwell:

"Burke mastered, in short, what Max Weber called the “ethic of responsibility,” namely, the demand that no matter how noble our aims, we always give an account of the foreseeable results of our actions.

This ethic does not flinch from the possibility that evil may come from good and good from evil. Its adherents accept, indeed often embrace, the cruelties of the world. It is precisely this embrace of cruelty—yes, cruelty!—that unites all those that we call “right-wing.” The free-marketeer with his warnings against perverse incentives, the Romantic reactionary with his fulminations against “modernity,” the moral traditionalist with his fear of unfettered appetite, the charismatic nationalist with his call for iron-fisted rule, the cold-blooded diplomat with his distrust of humanitarian motives: all reject the Left’s intuition that, with just a little more effort, the world can be cured of its ills. In facing the melancholy truths of our condition, the Right enjoys a freedom of thought that the Left cannot imagine and, perhaps, utterly dreads."

I think that's a rather good summary of what I consider it means that I'm a right-winger.

Extreme liberals, Dr. Haidt argues, attach almost no importance to the moral systems that protect the group.

And yet in reality, collectivists always find their home in the left. Communists, socialists, communitarians can only find a home in the right when it becomes corrupt beyond recognition, as in the current Republican party. One common thread among all these efforts by liberal to assign some sort of metric that attributes left or right affiliation to predispositions, in their studies they always assign themselves the most noble predispostions and those they disagree with the least.

Jim,
re #1 I think that this is why conservatives tend to get caught up in hypocrisy more readily than liberals do. Their opinions don't leave as much room for acting out selfishly, so their own tendencies towards selfishness and self-seeking tend to be more spectacularly out of line with what they believe to be right. I also don't think liberals think of their opinions as being shaped by a desire to be selfish and self-serving; they just place a much higher premium on avoiding individual suffering than conservatives do. Since both self-denial and societal imposed restrictions tend to result in suffering, liberals are more willing to set those aside for the sake of avoiding suffering.
re #2 I think we need only look to 70% of african american kids born out of wedlock as evidence of how widespread the damage of our anything goes ethos. However, moving past issues of sex and marriage, I think that the liberal tendency to focus primarily on individual liberties and suffering also explains why their policies for issues which they care about tend to do more harm than good. One of the problems with focusing on suffering to individuals is that it can easily force us into making rules which fit the exception to the detriment of the majority. As they say in legal circles, hard cases make bad law. For example, it really was awful when a young, naive woman who was taken advantage of by some creep who abandoned her when she got pregnant and left her a pariah with limited means to care for herself. However, by utterly changing society's rules and expectations to avoid causing such a young woman excessive pain and suffering, we've also created a situation where 70% of black kids are born without a committed, involved father. We changed the rules tro accomodate the relatively worthy exception and created a nightmare.
To take it out of the sphere of sexual issues, let's look at violence/bullying. The liberal tends to look at instances of violence and bullying, see the suffering of the individual who suffers from it and want to eliminate the source of it in order to prevent such suffering. The conservative will often look at the same issue and while not necessarily indifferent to the suffering of the individual victem, have a greater concern for the effect on society of the expectation that a person can and should be protected from ever having to deal with difficult people and situations. For example, I have kids who are very smart and will probably be able to get into almost any school they want. I would never want them to go to Harvard because they are so commited to making sure that no one ever feels offended, slighted, threatened in any way or otherwise discomforted by the possibility of mere disapproval that they encourage students to be whiney, entitled brats. It's all done in the name of peace and love, but the end result is a bunch of idiots I wouldn't trust to stand up to a mosquito bite, much less the challenges which are just part of life in the real world.
So anyways, I don't really see it as an issue of being selfish vs egalitarian so much as a matter of a difference of perspective on what needs come first in the pecking order - society's or individuals.

For example, it really was awful when a young, naive woman who was taken advantage of by some creep who abandoned her...However...we've also created a situation where 70% of black kids are born without a committed, involved father.

Of course, the problem is that the "village" (represented by law and custom) is trying and failing to replace the family.

The "awful" situation of a woman being taken advantage of used to be the problem of her parents, not a situation the rest of us had to worry about. Yet with the breakdown of the family, we look for society to do the job. But to do this properly would require some kind of Muslim-type culture with punitive punishments for violaters, and who wants to live there?

IMO family is the real division between liberals and conservatives. Libs think the village should take responsiblity for bad things, while cons say no, the family (with extensions) has this job. Hungry? Look to your own. Sick? Same thing. Boy, it would pay to raise good kids then, eh? It's funny a capitalistic society cannot see the cause-effect here.

In this view, Social Security, the ultimate liberal project, has ruined everything. Parents no longer have to suffer their failed families, and families have fell apart as a consequence. Back in the day, not having children, or raising a brat, or getting a divorce = a very painful, inpoverished aging and was a public warning to others that your life was a failure.

Today, those very parents who raised brats who end up in jail can easily enjoy golf in the sun as they wait their eternal reward. Everyone else has to clean up their mess. So it now pays to invest your time and money in yourself, not your family.

DavidTC,

A government program that provides money for poor people is NOT the only solution here.

In your view, the entire history of the world was "spitting on poor widows". Grow up. There are: extended families, churches, and other possibilities to provide for the poor.

My point stands: take away the need for parents to raise quality children, families fall apart. And this is what we see.

Harm -- 4.6; Fairness -- 3.5; Loyalty -- 2.6; Authority -- 2.8; Purity -- 2.6

I'm a vegetarian, a death penalty opponent and in favor of restrictions on abortion. The idea of killing an animal or physically hurting another person makes me physically sick. That's probably why my "harm" score skewed so high compared with the other scores. I'm also Catholic. I'm not terribly surprised by the other scores. I am a Democrat. I believe gay marriage should be legalized; I believe that the law should, above all else, care for the poor and the defenseless. That fits well with other Democrats. I also had a conservative, religious rural upbringing, am conservative when it comes to my personal life, and I have some views that don't entirely match with the mainstream Democratic party.

Jim, the cultural factors are not helpful, to be sure, but I think we under estimate how common these forces were in ages past as well. I actually know as an absolute fact that a lessening of the stigma against being a single mother has played a HUGE role (I would say the primary role) in the increase in out of wedlock births. The effect of all the advertising isn't to increase people's sex drives - people have always had strong sex drives, so much as it has normalized a very cavalere attitude about sex. In the past, the fear of an unwanted pregnancy or std was enough to keep people's sex drive largely in check. Today, such things are generally seen as no big deal. I was actually a single mom in my early 20's. Thankfully, my husband and I pulled it together and eventually got married. However, I know for a fact, that if I knew I would have faced strong disapproval from society which would have made me a pariah, I would never have taken the chance to begin with. I would have insisted that my then boyfriend marry me if he wanted any of the goods and he would have had to take that demand seriously since in such a society, his opportunity for getting any without agreeing to a real committment would be pretty limite. When I did get pregnant, it was those who looked at me with disapproval who were seen by me, most of my friends and society in general as morally out of line. Really and truely, without this enabling ethos, it is very, very unlikely that I would have wound up pregnant and unmarried. And just for the record, at the time this happened, I hadn't owned a TV for about 4 years, had seen maybe 6 movies in the previous 4 years and listened to music that I would feel quite comfortable having my own young children run around the house singing.
As for acceptance of single parenthood preventing abortion; no doubt in some individual cases, this is true. However, the ease with which a woman can obtain an abortion has a perverse effect on male-female relationship and the sense of responsibility that men in particular have towards any potential pregnancy he may cause. I was an RA in college and it was quite common for young woman to find out when they got pregnant that their boyfriend expected them to get an abortion. Most often they did because without the support of their boyfriend, they felt that they had no other choice (it goes the other way too, but in my experience, this scenario is more common). Child support courts are filled with young men who are really peeved at being held responsible for a child because he really thought that his girlfriend would just get an abortion if she did get pregnant. Many (I'm not saying all, but I would guess a strong pluirality) young men take the prospect of an unwanted pregnancy less seriously than they otherwise would because they view abortion as a "get out of jail free card". Not only that, but even if they get someone pregnant and she doesn't abort, they do not feel responsible for either that woman or the child because the descision to have the child was hers alone. It's really a very ugly, vicious circle.
Anyways, I got way off topic, but there ya go. The bottom line for me is that there's no free lunch. No matter what rules we set up life by, someone's going to suffer and pay. The trick is avoiding what is unneccessary or excessive and not being mindless about the reality of the pain the choices we as a society are creating. Conservatives have a history of treating the pain caused for the good of society too cavalerely. However, it is my strong opinion that liberals are every bit as guilty, if not more so, of treating the pain caused by the break down of society and family for the benefit of avoiding individual suffering very cavalerely.

M_David
A government program that provides money for poor people is NOT the only solution here.

Well then, let's look at your solution.

In your view, the entire history of the world was "spitting on poor widows". Grow up.

I'm pretty certain I didn't say that.

There are: extended families, churches, and other possibilities to provide for the poor.

I believe I just pointed out that some people don't have families. Yes, I technically pointed out they don't have kids, but I think a logical extrapolation would be they might not have any nieces or nephews either. (And, obviously, their parents and siblings can't support them in their old age.)

And I'm really sure that you think it's a good idea to have churches decide what old person deserves to eat this month, I'm not quite there yet. Maybe you can get back to me when they start letting the homeless sleep in their sanctuary again.

And I like the always implied conservative assumption that, as taxes and social services ramp down, charity will magically ramp up the same amount or more, when I can't think of any logical reason that would be so. (Logically, there'd be slightly less, as people would get less of a tax deduction for it.)

But this 'other possibilities' sounds quite promising. I'm certainly willing to risk old people's lives on that!

My point stands: take away the need for parents to raise quality children, families fall apart. And this is what we see.

I almost forgot. Taking your view, the entire Amish community is spits on their elders!

I'm pretty certain I didn't say anyone spit on their elders. Or even their widows.

They don't pay in to or take SS, lucky dogs. And somehow...their families remain intact and they support their elders...it's a mystery how they do it.

They do it via societal collectivism. They tithe a certain percentage of their food, and it goes towards people who are needy. You fail to tithe, you get shunned, aka, removed from society.

If you think it's done by everyone acting randomly, you're a little confused.

Of course, we all know about the masses of Amish who end up living in slums and dying when they couldn't pay their heating bill because they didn't have SS. Heck, I step over them every day on my way to work :-).

Oh, I totally agree, we don't need social security, you've convince me we need to adopt the Amish method. From now on, everyone will be required to tithe a certain percentage of their income, although as we have so many churches we're probably going to just have to use the government.

Failure to participate...well, we don't have shunning so we'll have to arrest them or just dock their wages or something.

We'll be sure to only give the money if they paid money into the system when they were younger, (Just like, I presume, the eldarly can't move into an Amish community and magically be supported by them.) which, as we already have to track them, shouldn't be that hard. We can computerize the system if we assign them all a number.

I shall petition my government for this system immediately!

They do not promise help for deadbeats or have a collective view; they (with their bishops as the final authority) decide who deserves charity. No work no eat and all that.

No work no social security either. You do have to pay into the system to get money out of it, you know.

This is NOT social security, where we take money from the group and give it back to the same group. They take a tithe, and that tithe is spent as is fits the moral values of the community.

Taking money from the group is the same as taking a tithe. We may call it taxes and they may call it a tithe, but it is both mandatory. You can't remind in Amish society and not tithe, you can't remain in America and not pay social security. We punish people differently, but that's all.

So, basically, the only difference between us and the Amish is that the Amish, in addition to basing their social security on how productive a member of society you used to be, and based on need, just like us, they also base it on...morality. That's it, the whole difference.

It's exactly the same system except that they can deny people social security if they think that old man is getting a little too friendly with the widow down the road.

Although I seriously doubt they'd refuse to support someone who raised a 'bad kid' unless it was obviously their fault. So I don't know exactly what that has to do with 'society is in trouble because we collectively support old people even if they don't raise their children right', because the Amish also do that.

In fact, all societies that have some manner to care for the old besides their children (Which is almost literally every modern and even medieval and classical society that's ever existed. Including ones where the support was from religious institutions.) hasn't cared at all if you raised good children or any at all before you get the support. Yeah, they might not help you if you boozed it all away or whatever, they might have judged you, but your kids? I think, normally, no they didn't.

But more the point, what you actually appear to be arguing is that society is in trouble because financial aid doesn't come with some sort of moral judgment of the worth of the person. (Including the worth of their children.)

Which is certainly an argument you can make, but don't try to cloak it in 'The government shouldn't take my money and help people with it, private charity could handle all the charity we need', when you actually mean 'The government shouldn't take my money and help people with it whom I think are immoral.'.

And while you're welcome to advance that argument, if you're trying to base such an argument in Christianity...

It's exactly the same system except that they can deny people social security if they think that old man is getting a little too friendly with the widow down the road.

What? No, my point is that there is no "right" to SS at all among the Amish. The group may help you, or may not. This creates a powerful incentive to prepare for your own future through your family. Under our system, we plan for SS checks and demand it. It's our right. We demand labor from our children we aren't even having.

To receive aid among the Amish is a sign that your family has dropped the ball.

And, as anyone could have guessed, SS will have to be changed, because cannot be sustained. The Amish plan works and SS is doomed to fail. Proposals have already been talked about where women who bear children get funding to encourage to creation of more workers. Something must change.

So DavidTC, you don't understand my argument at all, or are deliberately twisting it.

And your comment And while you're welcome to advance that argument, if you're trying to base such an argument in Christianity..., makes the nasty accuation that if I don't support your view or the current SS system, I am not Christian. Pah. Think about your arguing style. First, twist what I'm saying, and then accuse me of being anti-Christian. Not very Christian.

No, my view is 100% Christian. Schemes like SS, that separate childrearing from production, are not.

I find it very strange that crunchies are always worrying about curtailed childbearing leading to fewer workers in the next generation, at the same time that they complain bitterly about profuse immigration, which is the obvious solution to the problem.