Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Mainstream Politics and Economics -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (18743)	6/27/2012 4:11:17 PM
From: Brian Sullivan	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 85487

Actually that transcript doesn't do it fulll justice, because Bill Moyer's didn't even grasp the moral of Aesop tale. I added the extra stuff they was said in the video... JONATHAN HAIDT: So I got sent this video by a lot of people because, oh, my God, these Republicans are so heartless. They're so evil and cruel and terrible. But it's exactly Aesop's ant and the grasshopper. The grasshopper fiddles away all the summer while the ants are working and working and working, preparing for the winter. The grasshopper says, "Oh, you're being silly, working so hard." And then winter comes. The grasshopper comes, knocks on the ants' door and he's starving to death, he's freezing. He says, "Take me in. Feed me." And as some liberals see it, the point of the ant and the grasshopper and that the ants are supposed to feed the grasshopper. But that's not what Aesop meant. BILL MOYERS: What did Aesop mean? Aesop doesn't mean that the ant should feed the poor grasshopper?... JONATHAN HAIDT: No, Aesop meant, that you better take care of yourself because if you don't, if you're lazy and you expect others to take care of you, you deserve to die. You deserve to be left out in the cold.

To: Brumar89 who wrote (18743)	6/27/2012 6:33:48 PM
From: Brumar89	1 Recommendation Respond to of 85487

Moyers isn't the only liberal who doesn't get it. I did a search on Haidt and see they're discussing him on the View from the Left thread. The primary person pushing Haidt doesn't seem to understand him: I have to keep citing Haidt's book when this question comes up. Apart from a strong group identification where individual economic interests are secondary, he found that conservatives place a strong weight on "fair outcomes" which to them means that those who don't win are supposed to lose and suffer as a result. Programs that interrupt that "justice" become the enemy for them. Message 28231638 Wrong. Going back to the ant and grasshopper story, the poster above would characterize the grasshopper as just someone who lost a contest or game or something and therefore conservatives with their mean old concern for justice think he needs to be 'punished' for losing. But the grasshopper didn't just 'not win' or 'lose.' Despite being warned, he deliberately spurned the virtues of work, thrift, and responsibility to plan for the future. Thus he brought the suffering on himself by his own choice. And the point isn't that he should have to suffer for an abstract notion, but that he has no right to ask the ant to sacrifice to provide for the grasshopper's improvidence. Furthermore, programs that encourage people to live unproductively, like the grasshopper, are damaging to society because they corrode productive values that society needs. . I'm thinking understanding what Haidt is saying is beyond liberals.