http://www.opinionjournal.com/federation/feature/?id=110007966

If I were to make sweeping generalizations about the differences between conservatives and liberals, it would be that conservatives tend to believe in individual responsibility and some variation of a sin-nature while liberals tend to believe in more social responsibility and in some variation of the perfectability of man through improved socio-economic factors.

Neither philosophy is a result of a moral, intellectual, cultural, mental, etc. defect. They are simply separate and distinct philosophical stances.

By polarization I mean something else: an intense commitment to a candidate, a culture, or an ideology that sets people in one group definitively apart from people in another, rival group. Such a condition is revealed when a candidate for public office is regarded by a competitor and his supporters not simply as wrong but as corrupt or wicked; when one way of thinking about the world is assumed to be morally superior to any other way; when one set of political beliefs is considered to be entirely correct and a rival set wholly wrong. In extreme form, as defined by Richard Hofstadter in “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” (1965), polarization can entail the belief that the other side is in thrall to a secret conspiracy that is using devious means to obtain control over society. Today’s versions might go like this: “Liberals employ their dominance of the media, the universities, and Hollywood to enforce a radically secular agenda”; or, “conservatives, working through the religious Right and the big corporations, conspired with their hired neocon advisers to invade Iraq for the sake of oil.”

He supports the war in Iraq and would like to see a more united front which seems to be the motivation for the speech, but I think his analysis of the political situation is quite accurate and at least reflects my observations.

It is also here, in a flawed research study at UCLA. Especially in the interpretation everyone seemed so inclined to jump on…that conservatives just can’t handle new ideas. But a more scientific analysis of the research methods is available here.

Thomas Frank, in his book “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” accuses us of failing to make “certain mental connections about the world.”

After the last election, a headline in a British paper read “How can 59 million people be so dumb?” And, as Denis Boyle’s describes in “Superior, Nebraska,”

Over the next days and weeks, the 2004 election would be “analyzed”–to put it gently–by journalists, pundits, and ordinary left-wing types. Their incredulity blended with hysteria and spread until it was everywhere: cartoon maps of America with big inland seas of dumbness; Internet rants; sociological studies. I was on the phone again, this time talking to a New Yorker toiling in the sweatshops of the global lit biz. I mentioned the 59-million-dumb-people headline.

“Yes,” she enthusiastically agreed, “that’s what I’d like to know. Really, the only reason I can think of that all those people out there vote like they do is that they’re dumb. Can there be another reason? Isn’t what it comes down to is that they’re just stupid?”

(p. 15)

Ye Olde Deluder Satan Wants Our Kids

<a href=”"Ye Olde Deluder Satan Wants Our Kids”
. . .PUBLIC schooling 350 years ago was about driving away demons too, and mostly still is, or should be.

Here are the five home education demons Christian Blogger Dad lists, last to first.
Arrogance.
Lack of commitment.
Denial of reality
Lack of accountability
Not enough structure

Compare to the six public education demons listed in the [public education honors journal] PDK February 07 issue, by professor James H. Nehring:

Unfairness
Lack of commitment (saying yes too much)
Denial of innovations
Top down controls
Too much fear
Too much structure and factory thinking

Sounds to me like Satan and his demons make use of whatever they find lying around, so there’s little hope of salvation in switching places. . .

In several threads we’re discussing cognitive science and how the “framing” of political ideas can literally change our minds and our brains, what we’re able to think and see or not. This applies to home education framing too, in our own minds and in the public mind.

I’ve almost finished this new book in which we learn that “empathy” is a physical, neuron-based reality inside human brains that is inseparably wired to our rational “reasoning” — yet because we didn’t discover that until the last decade or so, human empathy is framed out of our political ideas and analysis in favor of facts, numbers, budget and balance sheets, etc.

The author’s main point, I think, is that we each need to take charge of our own thinking by learning about how it really works, make frames explicit so we can learn to avoid falling into various frame traps that otherwise will subconsciously drive our political opinions without license.

Last night I read that the One Big Frame subconsciously interfering with our clear thinking on every issue is “obedience to authority” and respect for the immutable moral pecking order, or what he calls “strict father” framing.

He explains that politically conservative brains generally, tend to connect every issue to the narrative of making people work hard, submit unquestioningly not just to “discipline” but even to suffering and painful punishment that’s “good for them” so they can be righteously taught and trained, and eventually earn some freedom and prosperity for their obedience to authority and dutiful service.

Even the Constitution itself requires “strictness” in this frame of mind!
Also, doesn’t it explain a whole lot about Historical School?? . . .and it probably explains most of the muddle about homeschool history. It seems pretty clear that there were competing frames of thought about everything that happened!

“Obedience to authority” was the mainframe when we started homeschooling in Florida — there was only one statewide group you were told to join and it “governed” homeschool parents like the PTA only worse, almost as if it were a state agency, rule-based with elected officers and a handbook, imposing penalties and rewards to shape behavior, judging and recording relative compliance so the “bad apples” could be weeded out before they hurt the rest of us, etc. Heck, they weren’t bravely standing up to the system, they WERE the system!

I questioned everything and everyone (becoming the skunk at plenty of park days and legislative strategy planning sessions) and kept thinking about it myself. It still seems literally crazy to me, to work this hard for each family’s unfettered diverse choices, and then to replace the school board with the homeschool board, so to speak . . .maybe framing really does explain a lot?