Commentary

One Mind, One Community

Joe Henrich gave an interesting talk at the 2009 Emory University Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture Symposium on The Evolution of Brain, Mind and Culture. Professor Henrich studies the co-evolution of culture and the human species (I found the podcast on iTunes.) One point in his talk particularly gave me cause to ponder. In …

Secular Humanism, The Enemy

Michael Wolraich makes some interesting points in his article, Why evangelicals love Santorum, hated JFK. Wolraich notes that the political collaboration between evangelicals and Catholics began in the late 1970’s. Jerry Falwell said they found common ground in their opposition to abortion, but Paul Weyrich remembered differently. In Wolraich’s words, “What …

Rick Santorum, Lakoffian Conservative

Doesn’t it seem like Rick Santorum is merely a plant to prove George Lakoff’s theory of conservative moral politics? In Lakoff’s analysis, conservatives follow a “strict father model”, which has several aspects. Primary among these aspects is what Lakoff calls the “Principle of Self Defense: It is the moral duty …

Introverts and Presidential Candidates

I picked up Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, by Susan Cain, not because it would have any bearing on writing Mind&Politics, but simply because I’m an introvert and thought it would be interesting. She writes that sometime around the beginning of the 1900’s, we went …

Conservatives in the Third Dimension

After spending a couple of weeks with liberal George Lakoff and Corey Robin’s sometimes objective but definitively contrarian takes on the conservative mind, it was refreshing to get a more positive perspective, even one from yet another liberal, Jonathan Haidt, in The Happiness Hypothesis. “A society without liberals,” he writes, “would …

Bored With Muddling Through

David Brooks was disappointed in President Obama’s State of the Union Address. I heard him talk about it on Shields&Brooks on the News Hour. In Sunday’s column, Hope, but Not Much Change, he describes the policies that Obama presented as “mere appetizers,” and wishes to see something big to match the …

Bored With Muddling Through

The Left Side of Conservative

David Brooks, as usual, writes an interesting column, this one on Free Market Socialism.It’s clear why true conservatives look somewhat askance at Mr. Brooks. Viewing it in Lakoffian terms, we see Mr. Brooks straddling the divide between the conservative strict father methaphor and the liberal nurturant parent one. The column praises …

Wealth over Wages: Tax Fairness and the Romney Return

David Brooks writes an interesting article on Mitt Romney’s heritage in a recent column, The Wealth Issue. He writes that Mitt Romney’s qualities come, in part, from his heritage, including not just his family upbringing, but his grandparentage as well. Good parenting engenders good human beings. I am reminded of George …