[Paleopsych] Meme 034: The Coming Reorientation of the Principle Left-Right Political Axis

[Premise Checker]

I was not aware of any such persecution, and I follow the news rather 
closely.

On 2004-10-18, Steve Hovland opined [message unchanged below]:

> For a number of years the Evangelicals have been using
> state power to persecute the rest of us, so in the next
> turn of the screw we should use state power to persecute
> them, starting with their tax exemptions :-)
>
> Steve Hovland
> www.stevehovland.net
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Premise Checker [SMTP:checker at panix.com]
> Sent:	Monday, October 18, 2004 12:49 PM
> To:	The new improved paleopsych list
> Subject:	RE: [Paleopsych] Meme 034: The Coming Reorientation of the Principle	Left-Right Political Axis
>
> I keep wanting to talk about the 21st century issue of pluralism and you
> keep wanting to talk about the 20th century issue of equality.
>
> On 2004-10-18, Steve Hovland opined [message unchanged below]:
>
>> A lot of people would say that opportunity
>> is badly distributed as well.  Many good
>> jobs are going overseas and the "new"
>> jobs are often poor-paying service jobs.
>>
>> Steve Hovland
>> www.stevehovland.net
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From:	Premise Checker [SMTP:checker at panix.com]
>> Sent:	Monday, October 18, 2004 12:24 PM
>> To:	The new improved paleopsych list
>> Cc:	Richard McClintock; Robert Morrison
>> Subject:	RE: [Paleopsych] Meme 034: The Coming Reorientation of the
>> Principle	Left-Right Political Axis
>>
>> You're missing my whole point, Steve, and that is that equality-inequality
>> is no longer the major left-right political axis. Besides, the
>> concentration of income is not as important as the concentration of
>> opportunity. But that demands greatly on innate intelligence, in fact more
>> and more so. It gets worse as businessmen and (20th) century leftists bawl
>> for more low IQ immigrants.
>>
>> But that's NOT the big issue. Much bigger is pluralism and its largest
>> flashpoint: will the state leave the Evangelicals alone? If you are a
>> typical secularist or liberal Christian who believes in a Bible full of
>> holes rather than the whole Bible, you probably think the issue is whether
>> the Evangelicals will leave YOU alone. You probably never think that the
>> public schools propagandize secular humanism and will not leave the
>> Evangelicals alone. This is because you do not question the merits of
>> public education. Libertarians do, since they do not believe in taxes, but
>> even they think that, if there are to be schools, they should indoctrinate
>> kids in secular humanism.
>>
>> P.S. I am a devout atheist. I perform the Rite of Insubstantiation five
>> times a day and give thanks to no-god when god fails to be conjured.
>>
>> On 2004-10-18, Steve Hovland opined [message unchanged below]:
>>
>>> With half of the personal income in the US going to
>>> the top 20%, one supposes that distribution of income
>>> will be an important cause of polarization.
>>>
>>> Steve Hovland
>>> www.stevehovland.net
>>>
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From:	Premise Checker [SMTP:checker at panix.com]
>>> Sent:	Monday, October 18, 2004 10:04 AM
>>> To:	paleopsych at paleopsych.org; WTA-Politics
>>> Subject:	[Paleopsych] Meme 034: The Coming Reorientation of the Principle
>> Left-Right Political Axis
>>>
>>> Meme 034: The Coming Reorientation of the Principle Left-Right Political
>>> Axis
>>> sent 4.10.18
>>>
>>> The principal left-right political axis is going to change from central
>>> planning vs. free market in the earlier part of the twentieth century and
>>> equality vs. inequality in the later part to pluralism vs. universalism
>> in
>>> the current century. There are several minor axes, to wit, secular vs.
>>> sacred, self-expression vs. self-restraint, change vs. tradition,
>>> cooperation vs. competition, tender-minded vs. tough-minded, relativism
>>> vs. absolutism, and many more, some perhaps subsumed by others. (The left
>>> tends to be less interested in virtue and moral education generally than
>>> the right, and we should reconceptualize how children should be brought
>> up
>>> in a world of mass unemployment, how moral education will instill other
>>> habits besides those of being a productive member of society. Here's
>>> hoping that his next book will address the matter.)
>>>
>>> There is a general clustering, not at the level of any high theory that
>>> reduces political preferences to a single dimension, but a clustering in
>>> fact. Left-wingers tend, albeit often quite incompletely, to be on the
>>> left side of each axis, not always because they have thought out each
>>> opinion, but because their co-left-wing friends also have them.
>>> Right-wingers do likewise. For myself, I am a left-wing secularist,
>>> moderately to the right as far as self-restraint goes, much to the left
>> in
>>> favoring change, mixed on cooperation, tough-minded more in rhetoric than
>>> in practice, and fairly much an absolutist (evolution limits the feasible
>>> *pace of change* quite a bit). For the major axes, I am a
>>> twentieth-century rightist for both the free market and inequality.
>> What's
>>> more important is that I am decidedly a *twenty-first* century leftist in
>>> favor of pluralism. Indeed let us hope that there has been so much
>>> culture-gene coevolution, even along racial lines, that there will be
>>> major *internal* resistance to a universal culture, thus keeping the
>> world
>>> safe for pluralism.
>>>
>>> To recapitulate, and I leave it to each one of you to say where you lie
>>> on the left-right continuum. Again, we badly need a factor analysis study
>>> to group these dimensions and, better still, a grounding in evolutionary
>>> psychology, such as Steve Reiss has done with his 16 Basic Desires.
>>>
>>> Major Axes
>>>
>>> pluralism vs. universalism (emerging)
>>> equality vs. inequality (dying)
>>> central planning vs. free market (dead)
>>>
>>> Minor Axes (several others added)
>>>
>>> secular vs. sacred
>>> international vs. national (left was nationalistic during the first
>>> half of the 19th century, though)
>>> self-expression vs. self-restraint
>>> relativists vs. absolutists in morals
>>> tender-minded vs. tough-minded
>>>
>>> great vs. small concern over the physical environment (each with its own
>>> studies to support his view)
>>> state vs. individual
>>> change vs. tradition
>>> centralized state vs. decentralized state
>>> dependence vs. self-reliance
>>>
>>> small vs. great concern over character and virtue
>>> small vs. great concern over chastity, divorce, family
>>> outs vs. ins
>>> cooperation vs. competition
>>> regulation vs. freedom
>>>
>>> labor vs. capital
>>> populist vs. elitist
>>> rural vs. urban
>>> essentialism vs. nominalism
>>>
>>> [I am sending forth these memes, not because I agree wholeheartedly with
>>> all of them, but to impregnate females of both sexes. Ponder them and
>>> spread them.]