I think the explanantion for conservative party views, is just as overly simplified as assuming the other party to be just plain stupid or evil. I consider myself to be a conservative in many ways and I don't place immense value on the "in-group" or have an overly harsh attitude towards forgiveness or second chances. I am sure that some conservatives do base thier choices on the descibed moral framework, but for many it is much more complex than that. The abortion issue, for example; I would argue that feelings towards that of an unborn child versus that of somone who has commited murder, better supports the the death penalty but no abortion connundrum, than a belief that people who get preganant need to pay the price. I for one am pro-choice, but I know many people who base thier pro-life belief on the desire to protect not punish. There is a greater urge to protect an innocent child than a hardened criminal. Liberals make this same choice only differently. They feel a need to protect a fully functioning human and less of a need to protect an unborn fetus. Both choices are made out of caring, not neccesarily the promotion of inflexible personal responsibility or never-ending second chances. And there are always exceptions. I am a conservative pro-choicer. Is that allowed?

I disagree; it is simplistic, but most good explanations of things are. I do think that calling someone stupid or evil and saying that they place greater importance on different things or have different moral values are completely different things. The abortion issue does go back to another principle that is mentioned here as favored by conservatives and that is the importance of authority; most pro-lifers are Christian and follow Christian laws and consider fetuses as full-blown human beings. Most liberals are a bit more modern and accept that scientifically, a fetus is not a human being, and will probably not be raised well by a mother who does not want it and is considering an abortion anyway.

Maybe because there is so much one could say.
For me moving from Public Radio to "Right wing" radio might have been age - seeing what seems like a consistent attack on the rights of the majority. The idea that one athiest can stop 99 babtist school children from praying, but that a devil worshiper in prison must be given a chicken to sacrafice.

Perhaps I'm not the only one that doesn't believe his side has any of the answers, he, or she, only feels that the other side also doesn't have the answers.

A very well thought out post, although it does still expose your bias quite a bit.

I think the June and Ward clever analogy is quite fitting, even if it goes over the head of many.

Liberals are like June Clever, they want to shelter their young and protect them from themselves. Conservatives are more Ward as they want to allow you to make mistakes and find your own way; accepting responsibility for your actions.

The irony with modern liberals is that they are the embodiment of what they fight against. The presumption, it would seem, is that everyone but them are too stupid to know right from wrong, or be trusted with choice. So we have Ideas like socialized medicine and governance of our retirements. How can one claim to be a part of the party of choice if they seek to strip those choices at every turn?

I studied political science in college. I have been very curious about the hostile relationship between liberals and conservatives. I always believed they were two different kinds of people. This article enlightened me. Thanks for the article!

This article should have included information about how the extremes on both sides tend to use their feelings as opposed to logic and common sense.

First of all let me appologize for speaking as if I could realy represent Conservative or liberal views.
I think that our values might be similar for most of us, we want to do good. It seems to me we should look at the old arguement. Do the means justify the ends. Or do the ends justify the means. I think both groups want to justify the ends, which to me is to do good. I think that liberals in their desire to do good, don't look at the eventual results of there "doing good". I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, that in their attempt to "do good" they created a welfare state, that conservatives believe, has destroyed the african-american family. By encouraging single motherhood, and dependency on the state. Conservatives believe that anything that the government subsidises, grows and increases. (government dependent, single motherhood).

To me "loyalty to the in group" is called Democracy. Oh and by the way, also "rule of law".

To me it seems that liberal politics are tuned to minority view should rule, and that the minority view should be adopted by the majority, which would make it the new majority view. Then would liberals have "loyalty to the ingroup" or would they say what white men (the new minority) want should be taught in schools?

You said in the article " Liberals will say 'As long as no one is harmed'". Conservatives believe that anything that a government does, eventually does harm to someone. Some have said, that a government should only do for one person what it would do for everyone.

In your article, in reference to liberal thought you said "we should not prohibit gay sex". In a society, we prohibit all kinds of things to limit individual behavior, for the benifit of the whole. It's called laws. All laws restrict the freedom of someone. If we didn't need to restrict someones freedom, we wouldn't need laws.

Well once again I can't speak very well for either side, but theses are just some of my interpretations. I desire rational, not emotional reaction to my views. Because it seems to me that for one thing, Conservatives believe their knowledge is limited, and they are open to constructive critisisum. But if you chalenge a liberals view, the war is on.

"Maybe you should work harder or get a better education. How about you create jobs and increase the quality of life for others. THAT would in fact make you rich, and you would deserve every penny."

The reality is that it is not always so easy to just get a better education or to create jobs. I think in a lot of cases it is hard enough trying to increase the quality of life for your self.

"A conservative might say that gay sex can be prohibited on the grounds that it is impure ("an unnatural act")"

I think what you have to look at here is that, as the article tries to explain, morality might be a common term for both conservatives and liberals however, where they derive the meaning of morality is based on different foundations. I see it as conservatives basing their morality from their religious upbringing while liberals have a more pragmatic foundation.

"In a society, we prohibit all kinds of things to limit individual behavior, for the benifit of the whole. It's called laws." Limit individual behavior for what? To assure the safety of others. To say the reason we have laws is to benefit the whole is ghastly. That is not the reason we have laws. The term 'whole' can change based on the perception of the topic or the subject. What if some one was to suggest that rape would be beneficial to the whole populous on the basis that there are more men in the world and that would elevate the mood of half the population, which would increase productivity etc.

How ridiculous does that sound?

If what the author says is true, it doesn’t seem to explain the mentality of the current republicans in power. Doesn't it seem that those conservatives often have a higher level of self-interest than the liberals? Liberals may not like or want higher taxes, but we understand that our great aunt won’t get her Medicare without it. Conservatives yell against welfare/disability pay-outs that cause their taxes to go up, but I often cynically wonder what they would say if they or one of their family members were disabled and couldn’t work. Wouldn’t they also be in line for their welfare check? And, what if their daughter was raped? Would they force her to bear the consequences of an unwanted pregnancy? I doubt it. If I have little regard for conservatives, it’s due to the realizing that their supposedly rock-solid morals and virtues often fall by the wayside when it’s convenient. The current administration certainly has proved that.

Really, this can be simplified quite easily. Liberals consistently move towards collectivism, even if they do not know they are doing it. Despite what a Liberal might think, the road to a totalitarian regime is the one paved by Liberals, not Conservatives. While recent history might frame it another way, history is makes a very clear case that collectivism rises from the Left. F.A. Hayek did some great work about this and has some very insightful information in The Road to Serfdom.

Conservatives as they are in this day in age, have their moral directives handed down via religion. Their faults lie in their social conservativism. They believe they have a god on their side, therefore advancing their god's agenda is not on right, but a necessity to save the world from itself. "Here are some morals for you to follow since we concluded long ago that we are all incapable of choosing our own morals and must follow "His" word." Equally dangerous and misguided as Liberals and their quest for collectivism.

What about Libertarians? Their stances are actually derived from certain political axioms. They state their base as individual rights, free markets and limited government. So long as what you do does not break a law or infringe on someone else's rights/sovereignty, then it is OK (as a general rule of thumb). There are far less opinions on the Libertarian side because what they believe in was logically derived from some base believes. They can view an issue and check it against their base believes and if it violates it, then they do not support it.

To conclude, I offer another way to look at the political parties. Democrats believe they are their bother's keeper and they will take from you in order to help someone else because of it. Conservatives believe that you should be responsible for yourself, but also that morals are not chosen, but prescribed by the Church and the Bible is infallible. Libertarians believe people should be responsible for themselves and society by using reason and logic to guide their policy making.

nicely put, I think it was well written. The liberal bias noticable in it is only a "bias" if you think the "truth" is somewhere in the middle of the spectrum of american politics, which it most certainly is not. I am one of those who does belive firmly in an objective truth. I don't think that two different morality sets necessarily have equal value- although they both may be valuable in their own way- to belive so is to adopt the silly belief in "balance" for its own sake. Our media clings to this kind of balance in the face of ridiculous hypocrisy. I am not an unrealsitc liberal- I understand power somewhat. I understand that we can't just pull out of Iraq, burn all our missles and retreat from the world. But I am dismayed that 1/2 of america has "values" that are incompatible with reality.

The thing about the conservative attributes/values is that these are some of the same values that are very important in the lives of lots of animals- primates, lions, dogs, etc (just for example) where loyalty to the ingroup really is paramount. Its closely tied with survival, and certainly has nothing to do with any higher human functioning. It has to do with our primordial origins, when the medula was the most important part of the brain.

Liberals (generally speaking) seem to be able to understand relatively more complex ideas that the conservative, things like the fact that although it might seem like the death penalty would reduce crime, it actually doesn't. Like it would seem that lashing out violently against other nations would make us safer, but it doesn't. Like it would seem to make sense that cutting taxes as much as possible would make our populace healthy and prosperous, but it doesn't. There isn't anything moral about opposing most liberal ideas, its simply a lack of being able to understand that the obvious, 4th grade answer isn't always correct.

I just finished watching one night of the republican convention, and I was truly amazed that the same kind of jingoistic nationalistic flag waving and chest beating that you see in all those grainy films of fascist dictatorships is evident in our republican party. Many times during the evening chants of "USA! USA!" would rise from the crowd. The speeches highlighted the truly limited understanding of history, of power, and of world politics of your average republican. Lowest common denominator was the theme of the evening.
As long our world is plagued by these kinds of people, in any country but especially in america, those who would trade 1000 foreigners lives for 1 american, we as a world are in trouble. We need to (slowly perhaps) evolve towards a world that can see peace for us humans. Nationalism is not a step in the right direction.

I'm sorry to say it, but the only thing conservatives are good for (aside from running companies) is filling the ranks of the military. They seem to love it, so why not let them? We just have to make sure they don't make any decisions on when to use it.

Amazing. Very good work here and interesting point about the philosophical implications of multiple moralities.

We are operating under the faulty assumption that Liberals and Conservatives have opposing morals (or, properly, ethics). Both are actually two sides of the same flawed coin. The two sides are both committed to the notion of "the greatest good to the greatest number", and apply their particular notion of that which is good. They ignore the fact that only an individual can determine that which is the good which can only be determined by the principle of rational self interest. Our founding fathers understood this and applied it consistently with the principles of individualism and property rights via that dying system, capitalism.

The Conservatives AND the Liberals have abandoned this idea with the notion of "collective responsibility". Take the issue of gay relationships and marriage. The Conservatives, eager to apply religion to politics (despite that pesky separation of Church and State), have declared open season on gay relationships, and cry "foul" when liberal gays run to the courts to overturn the will of the people. Liberal gays, not to be outdone, run to the courts, the legislators, and the media and demand that their notion of what is "the collective right of the people" : gay marriage, be shoved down the throats of those who consider sex primarily a means to bear children, rather than simply an expression of desire that may or may not result in children.

Both groups have corrupted that which is the "good" for their own purposes, and pretend they have opposing ethics. Both have abandoned the notion of "free choice", limited government, and individual repsonsibility; Conservatives wish to abandon Constitutional principles for a strong paternalistic government informed by their religious mores, and Liberals wish to abandon Constitutional principles for a nanny state informed by egalitarianism. Both groups have declared "we are your leader, we know what's best for you".

In 1776, a handfull of rebellious thinkers decided that that wasn't such a great idea, and had themselves a little revolution. I guess if we don't remember from history, it DOES repeat itself,

I agree with the philosphical analysis posited by Professor Prinz save for the comment that conservatives have the same intellectual level as liberals. That was a liberal view! In fact, there are more liberal post graduates than conservatives (are there any conservative post graduates?). There is also a correlation between intellectual ability and values. Conservative values have no basis in reason (i.e. invading Iraq to create a safer world). Although conservatives, generally, have a proclivity to be more malicious (i.e. Rumsfeld and some other neo-cons as they do have intelligence and know that liberal values are right but have their own personal agenda - i.e. power and megalomania). When I see neo-con American foreign policy I see conservative values in broad brush strokes all over the middle east (and South and Central America - the list goes on). Wouldn't it be good to have Harold Pinter's view on conservatives from this perspective?