The results were striking. As Kristof puts it: “Moderates and conservatives were adept at guessing how liberals would answer questions. Liberals, especially those who described themselves as ‘very liberal,’ were least able to put themselves in the minds of their adversaries and guess how conservatives would answer.” Tom Chivers at the Telegraph goes on to say that the “very liberal” were “especially bad at guessing what conservatives would say about issues of care or fairness. For example, most thought that conservatives would disagree with statements like ‘One of the worst things a person could do is hurt a defenceless animal’ or ‘Justice is the most important requirement for a society.’”
Further, Haidt (a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, and a former liberal who became a centrist in the process of conducting this research) finds that liberals and conservatives alike form their political beliefs according to three values: caring for the weak, fairness, and liberty. Yet conservatives also hold to three other values: loyalty, respect for authority, and sanctity. This accounts in part for the liberal failure to understand conservative viewpoints. As Chivers puts it, “Conservatives can understand the morality of liberals, but much of conservative morality is alien to their opponents.”
This corresponds exactly with my own observations of the educated liberals among whom I lived and worked in academia for many years. Precisely the social institution that is supposed to encourage Americans to understand both sides of the argument, and precisely those individuals who repeatedly teach that we should enter sympathetically into the worldviews of those who differ from us, have by and large failed to encourage a charitable understanding of conservative beliefs and motives and have conferred a flat, exaggerated sense of what conservatives think.
When the Archbishop Met the President - James Taranto
Archbishop Dolan explains that the "accommodation" solves nothing, since most church-affiliated organizations either are self-insured or purchase coverage from Catholic insurance companies like Christian Brothers Investment Services and Catholic Mutual Group, which also see the mandate as "morally toxic." He argues that the mandate also infringes on the religious liberty of nonministerial organizations like the Knights of Columbus and Catholic-oriented businesses such as publishing houses, not to mention individuals, Catholic or not, who conscientiously object.
"We've grown hoarse saying this is not about contraception, this is about religious freedom," he says. What rankles him the most is the government's narrow definition of a religious institution. Your local Catholic parish, for instance, is exempt from the birth-control mandate. Not exempt are institutions such as hospitals, grade schools, universities and soup kitchens that employ or serve significant numbers of people from other faiths and whose main purpose is something other than proselytization.
"We find it completely unswallowable, both as Catholics and mostly as Americans, that a bureau of the American government would take it upon itself to define 'ministry,'" Archbishop Dolan says. "We would find that to be—we've used the words 'radical,' 'unprecedented' and 'dramatically intrusive.'"
