Conn Carroll has a brief review of University of Virginia psychology professor Jonathan Haidt's new book, "The Righteous Mind." It pretty much confirms what conservatives have known all along -- liberals are basically immoralists and are incapable of having an appreciation for the "moral capital" that successful societies have built up over years of cultural evolution ... and lack the good common sense God gave a goose to recognize the often devastating consequences of their ideologically-based decisions and actions:

[...] "A liberal can talk coherently about what the conservative view is because people like me actually do listen," New York Times columnist Paul Krugman said in an interview last year. "We don't think it's right, but we pay enough attention to see what the other person is trying to get at. The reverse is not true. ... The other side has dogmatic views."

liberals like Krugman more open-minded than their conservative counterparts? Do they understand conservative views better than conservatives understand liberal views? University of Virginia psychology professor Jonathan Haidt has actually studied these questions, and the answers appear to be "no." In fact, the exact opposite seems to be the case.

In his new book, "The Righteous Mind," Haidt describes a study in which more than 2,000 Americans were asked to fill out questionnaires asking them how much they agreed with statements like this one: "I think it's morally wrong that rich children inherit a lot of money while poor children inherit nothing."

One-third of respondents were asked to fill out the questionnaire according to their own views. One-third were asked to fill it out as they thought a "typical liberal" would. And the last third were asked to fill out the survey as if they were a "typical conservative."

Haidt found that moderates and conservatives could accurately predict how liberals and conservatives would judge each statement. But liberals were far less capable of mirroring their ideological counterparts' thinking. Those describing themselves as "very liberal" did worst. Apparently, contra Krugman, the more liberal you are, the less able you are to understand other people's beliefs.

Haidt, who was raised by liberal Jewish parents near New York City and has voted as "a partisan liberal" in every presidential election, later explains how this moral blindness can affect us all.

Liberals, Haidt argues, fail to appreciate the "moral capital" that successful societies have built up over years of cultural evolution. "Moral capital" includes the values, virtues and institutions in a society that "enable the community to suppress or regulate selfishness and make cooperation possible."

passed the well-meaning welfare programs of President Johnson's Great Society, they failed to anticipate how the new system "increased out-of-wedlock births and weakened African American families." (Edit - emphasis added)

This blindness is not confined to American liberals like Krugman. Lord John Maynard Keynes, the intellectual father of liberal economics, said the following of himself and his college friends: "We claimed the right to judge every individual case on its merits, and the wisdom, experience, and self-control to do so successfully. ... We repudiated entirely customary morals, conventions, and traditional wisdom. We were, that is to say, in the strict sense of the term, immoralists."

And in case you thought Keynes might have gained some humility as he aged, he later added: "I remain, and always will remain, an immoralist."Sounds like a kind of illness to me ... and for good reason..

Professor Jonathan Haidt's assessment of liberals reminds of a a book I wrote a post on back in 2008. The book, "The Liberal Mind - the psychological causes of political madness," is written by Dr. Lyle Rossiter, Jr., M.D., and is about modern liberalism's irrationality being the product of psychopathology: a massive transference neurosis acted out in the world's political arenas, with devastating effects on the institutions of liberty:

"So extravagant are the patterns of thinking, emoting, behaving and relating that characterize the liberal mind that its relentless protests and demands become understandable only as disorders of the psyche." The Liberal Mind reveals the madness of the modern liberal for what it is: a massive transference neurosis acted out in the world's political arenas, with devastating effects on the institutions of liberty.

te sense and explains the Liberal thinking and behavior that defies any other explanation."Now that Professor Haidt and Dr. Rossiter have confirmed much about what conservatives have long ago already figured out -- that liberals are basically immoralists and not only incapable of having an appreciation for the "moral capital" that successful societies have built up over years of cultural evolution, they're essentially blind to the consequences of their actions and agenda ... consequences that conservatives easily recognize. In other words, liberals are really sick puppies but lack the common sense to recognize it. Unfortunately, none of this lessens the disastrous effects of liberalism's agenda ... and at least until 2013 we're stuck with them in control of the Senate and the White House.

In the meanwhile, our national debt stands today at $15.6 trillion (and continuing to increase an average of $3.97 billion per day - and this doesn't include over $17 trillion in unfunded liabilities from the out of control costs of unreformed Social Security, Medicare, etc.) and the threat to our civil liberties and religious freedom has never been higher -- thanks, for the most part, to the liberal-progressive in the White House and his fellow liberals in Congress.