I don't see much happening until we can get a president who believes in bi-partisanship and can reach across aisles, ... and who works in whatever way possible to reform the universities and k-12.

I hope Haidt is right, I think we're in a death spiral.

I have to say this 'unearned power' line doesn't mean anything to me. I've seen a number of libertarians use it but it looks pretty problematic to me. For one there is an assumption we all share the same moral code. To have an earned/unearned duality there must be a metric to measure how 'earned' it is. I'm going to jump out on a limb here an assume Amy doesn't consider getting some guys and some guns together and telling people do what I say or I'll kill you as 'earned'. By all means correct me if I'm wrong. But if that is the case then all I can see 'earned/unearned' as is a synonym for 'moral/immoral'. And if you are judging things based on that you assume you have the same moral code. But the problem is we don't share the same moral code. There is no inherent morality.

The reality is that people have power. They can create power. They can even destroy power. Power can be traded and concentrated. But earning is not part of it. SJW are trying to convince people to give up their power. To hand it over to them. They certainly aren't the only people doing this. But it is up to the individual how they react to this advertising job.

Jerry,

That doesn't depend on the president. Unfortunately until the Democrats have suffered enough to change their ways things will continue as they are. Essentially you've got a modified two prisoners problem. So far the Democrats can refuse to compromise and blame the Republicans at the same time. A - they get their way. B - their opponents get punished. Hence there is no reason for them to compromise. Bipartisanship requires both sides to compromise. Unless things change that won't happen.

who believes in bi-partisanship and can reach across aisles

Wake me when bi-partisanship means something other than you dirty conservatives must give up your policy and agree to ours or we'll call you names.

That's the way Democrats practice bi-partisanship, so fuck them.

So much of the Social Justice Warrior credo is formulated in (or calculated to take advantage of) the certainty of youth. In youth, we are so very, very certain of things.

It's why Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman made the anti-Christ about to destroy the world to make a new and better one in their Good Omens a 12-year-old boy.

It's why child soldiers make the most ruthless killers and young people the most violent and committed revolutionaries. It's not the intellectualism of the professors that starts most revolutions on college campuses, it's the absolute certainty of the students.

Most, but not all, of us, as we get older and have broader experiences, tire of the certainty of youth. We grow to accept that the world is not always absolute. We learn to be wary of the excesses of absolute certainty. Compromise becomes possible.

Politics and culture today are driven by a need to attract and appeal to a large generational cohort (the Millennials). Older, and presumably cooler, heads talking about restraint and compromise will not do that.

That youthful certainty is why so many young people are convinced that society can ban "hate speech" and still have free speech; that society can have virtue without morality. That Utopia is possible, even desirable.

" Utopia was here at last: its novelty had not yet been assailed by the supreme enemy of all Utopia — boredom." ~ Arthur C. Clarke (Childhood’s End)

"There is nothing more stupid than a fourteen year old boy. All that testosterone and no brakes. It’s like having a Formula One car without a driver’s license." ~ D. P. Lyle

"The attitude is that when you change when you get older there’s something wrong with that, but the world is stupid enough as it is; if the young were running it, it would be really dumb. Whatever changes I’m going through because I’m 40 I’m thankful for, because they give me some insight into the madness I’ve been living all my life." ~ John Lennon

"The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life." ~ Muhammed Ali

So much of the Social Justice Warrior credo is formulated in (or calculated to take advantage of) the certainty of youth. In youth, we are so very, very certain of things.

Truth. But the reason Fox has such a lock on the geezer market is because old people are just as sure. It must be nice to be so young or old that you know everything.

"There is no inherent morality."

Not sure I buy that. Reason why: Ultimately, everything in life reduces to physics, and the basic laws that it imposes on the universe. Physics doesn't care about anyone's social justice. Physics, and its handmaidens chemistry and biology, ultimately impose some constraints on any species that hopes to survive. For instance, a species where individuals go around indiscriminately killing other individuals won't last very long, because pretty soon everyone will be dead (or close enough to everyone that reproduction drops below the sustainment level). Hence, we have laws against murder.

Basic morality evolves from this type of logic. It gets a bit more subtle once psychology gets involved, but psychology ultimately reduces to biology, which reduces to chemistry, which reduces to physics. And physics doesn't care about anyone's social justice.

Truth. But the reason Fox has such a lock on the geezer market is because old people are just as sure. It must be nice to be so young or old that you know everything.

MonicaP at November 26, 2017 6:12 PM

A lot of us old people have a much better foundation for our beliefs about what we know, and what we dont know.

At least history started for me in 1955 and not 1990.

If we were still the idealistic blank slates we were when we were 20, we would either have to be a lifer in solitary confinement, or basically brain dead.

If you think you are getting any enlightenment about how the world actually works by watching Fox news (or any other network broadcast manned by poorly educated talking heads) I think you need to get out more.

Learn a couple of foreign languages. Immerse yourself in a totally foreign culture, and live there long enough so that you have to deal with the same inane government bureacuracy that the average citizen does.
Ive lived in two of those. You?

Heck if you were raised on the coasts, go to Kansas. You might find out that even the US doesnt fit your stereotypical liberal notions.

"There is no inherent morality"--Cousin Dave seeks to derive morality from what works. What the earlier poster is referring to however is an agreed-to morality. If some people think hitting is always wrong but some are saying it is ok to punch a nazi, then they do not agree on what is moral. Religious people have a mostly agreed-among-themselves (within a religion) moral code. SJWs seem to see right and wrong only in terms of how it makes them feel and everyone feels differently about things. This leads to contradictions because some people are simply crazy and see racism even in accounting terms ("in the black") and would apparently like to erase even positive depictions of native americans from all public places because any depiction isn't sufficiently woke --not sure what depiction would suffice.
Cousin Dave is correct in that nature is ultimately self-correcting. An economy based on fraud (Venezuela) will eventually collapse. That does not mean that people will ever accept why it collapsed.

A lot of us old people have a much better foundation for our beliefs about what we know, and what we dont know.

You seem defensive. You don't really know anything about my experiences, my age or where I live. I don't know much about yours, either. But if we're going to make broad generalizations about age groups, old people are fair game.

The median age of a FOX viewer is 68. Fox is as successful as they are because they know how to capitalize on fear, fuzzy nostalgia, and a false sense of wisdom particular to a large segment of that demographic. I've had more than a few conversations with older, "wiser" people convinced that they understand the world better than young people because they are channeling a version of 1960 that lives in their heads.

One of the advantages of middle age is realizing everyone is full of shit.

One of the advantages of middle age is realizing everyone is full of shit.

MonicaP at November 27, 2017 9:15 AM

No, the biggest advantage of middle age, is having the widom to discern the difference between those that are *full of shit* as you say, and the very small minority who are not pulling things out of their ass, or repeating the latest claims made by some 28 year old journalist in the New York times.

I used to believe most of what I read. Now it is down to about 15 percent and much of that with a lot of caveats.

"You seem defensive. You don't really know anything about my experiences, my age or where I live. I don't know much about yours, either. But if we're going to make broad generalizations about age groups, old people are fair gam"

I dont really need to. The fact that you seem to consider some kind of bias on Fox news to be responsible for brainwasing people to be a real problem, tells me all I need to know.

Let me state this unequivocally. Regardless of what channel you have your boob tube tuned to, you are not getting enough real information to form a valid opinion about anything. Everything you see and hear has been dumbed down and filtered through someone's belief system.

It is quite possible to disagree with Sean Hannity for all the right reasons, and agree with him for all the wrong ones. But he really isnt influencing people's opinions much. He is preaching to the choir. Attracting an audience that already agrees with him.

You have missed the cause and effect.

re: "unearned power". The use of this term was questioned above. Earned power is what one gets by having good arguments, logic, facts. You convince your listener that a particular species is or is not in danger of extinction, that a pollutant is harmful or not, that a tax cut will or will not stimulate the economy. Unearned power is to simply cry "racist" as soon as someone is not totally on board with your program. You didn't convince anyone or win the argument, you just silenced your opponent.

...old people are just as sure. ~ MonicaP at November 26, 2017 6:12 PM

Remember, Monica, it wasn't oldsters who joined the Manson Family or rushed off to Guyana to join Jim Jones. It wasn't oldsters storming the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979.

That absolute certainty of youth, unrestrained by experience or fear, easily sees simple solutions to complex problems and readily implements ruthless fixes, sometimes to the betterment of society, sometimes to its ruin.

"That does not mean that people will ever accept why it collapsed."

True. We say that people learn from experience, but it isn't always true. A mob or herd mentality can prevent learning from happening. I wish I knew enough about neurobiology to understand why that happens.

"...old people are just as sure."

I was young once. I haven't forgotten it. Yeah, I was pretty cocksure about some things, like my peers. But it was also a cover: it was an effort to disguise from the world my inner voice which telling me that I didn't know shit.

I'm older and wiser now. But one of the things I learned along the way was that even the most solid beliefs need to be challenged now and then; otherwise, progress is impeded. I'm trying not to turn into one of those geezers with absolutely fixed beliefs. One axiom of geometry is that parallel lines don't touch. One day someone asked the question: "What if they did?" The result was non-Euclidean geometry, which turned out to be good at describing the behavior of things in curved and non-linear spaces. But I've also seen a lot of things that don't work, and I've seen that people keep trying them repeatedly despite the fact that they fail every time. I would like to address the Millennial generation like this: "Hi, I'm Generation X. I came equipped from the factory with a finely tuned bullshit detector. I've built a space station and tore down the Berlin Wall, and I once wrote some music that was pretty cool. I think we can help each other."

"Social Justice" Is Just A Workable Name For Bullying People Who Think "Wrong"

It should be about educating people who ACT in a way that negatively impacts others. And socializing folks so that they do not have those beliefs to begin with. Or in the case of some of the more negative aspects of human nature, socialize people to TRY to rise above some of their negative instincts.

Of course, when someone is upset at another persons beliefs or actions, they may themselves respond in a way that is counter-productive.

"Earned power is what one gets by having good arguments, logic, facts."

Ok. You disagreed with me. So I shot you in the head. Now you are dead and I am alive. This is a classic form of power. Is this earned or unearned? By your definition it appears to be unearned. But in that case most of the power is unearned. This 'unearned' thing looks like an attempt to make a moral statement without referencing religion. Instead it wants to pretend it is an economic statement. Which is bullshit. Even your definition is morality and not economics.

Cousin Dave, if morality (especially at this level) was inherent then why does anyone disagree on right and wrong? Even your argument made the assumption that the perpetuation of the species was a desirable outcome. Many people in your own nation disagree with that.

As for Fox News, as Isab pointed out TV news is about preaching to the choir. Less about information that reassurance. Fox gets it's dominance by selling to a different market segment. 'Right wing' consists of somewhere between 30%-50% of the US population. And Fox is the only game in town. CBS, NBC, CNN, ABC, et al, all have to compete for the other half of the market. No wonder Fox has so many more viewers. They have no competition.