Worth Looking At

Dennis Prager has a series which opens with the sort of language that should sound familiar to readers of Locke, and which is of interest here given Greg’s specific reading of Locke’s work:

I grew up in a liberal world — New York, Jewish, and Ivy League graduate school. I was an eight-year-old when President Dwight Eisenhower ran for reelection against the Democratic nominee, Adlai Stevenson. I knew nothing about politics and had little interest in the subject. But I well recall knowing — knowing, not merely believing — that Democrats were “for the little guy” and Republicans were “for the rich guys.”

I voted Democrat through Jimmy Carter’s election in 1976. He was the last Democrat for whom I voted. Obviously, I underwent an intellectual change. And it wasn’t easy. Becoming a Republican was emotionally and psychologically like converting to another religion.

(source: To Defend a Position, You Must Understand Both Sides)

Prager’s first entry in a projected series of articles deals with the difference in basic moral calculus between what Americans denote as “conservative” and “liberal” tendencies.  Landing on the conservative side, Prager concludes as follows:

…the vast majority of equally poor people — black or white — do not riot or commit violent crimes.

Likewise, many liberals believe that most of the Muslims who engage in terror do so because of the poverty and especially because of the high unemployment rate for young men in the Arab world. Yet, it turns out that most terrorists come from middle-class homes. All the 9/11 terrorists came from middle- and upper-class homes. And of course Osama bin Laden was a billionaire.

Material poverty doesn’t cause murder, rape, or terror. Moral poverty does. That’s one of the great divides between Left and Right. And it largely emanates from their differing views about whether human nature is innately good.

(source: To Defend a Position, You Must Understand Both Sides)

I concur.

(I would divide the analysis slightly differently, but the difference is really subtle.)

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