PA Bill Number: HB335
Title: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons.
Description: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons. ...
Last Action: Re-committed to APPROPRIATIONS
Last Action Date: May 6, 2024
Lafferty's Blog: Dissenting Minorities :: 09/10/2015
The following quote appeared in the Wall St. Journal, Jan 12, 2015: From the draft paper “Political Diversity Will Improve Social Psychological Science” by José L. Duarte, Jarret T. Crawford, Charlotta Stern, Jonathan Haidt, Lee Jussim and Philip E. Tetlock, to be published by Behavioral and Brain Sciences:
Abstract: Psychologists have demonstrated the value of diversity—particularly diversity of viewpoints—for enhancing creativity, discovery, and problem solving. But one key type of viewpoint diversity is lacking in academic psychology in general and social psychology in particular: political diversity. This article reviews the available evidence and finds support for four claims: 1) Academic psychology once had considerable political diversity, but has lost nearly all of it in the last 50 years; 2) This lack of political diversity can undermine the validity of social psychological science via mechanisms such as the embedding of liberal values into research questions and methods, steering researchers away from important but politically unpalatable research topics, and producing conclusions that mischaracterize liberals and conservatives alike; 3) Increased political diversity would improve social psychological science by reducing the impact of bias mechanisms such as confirmation bias, and by empowering dissenting minorities to improve the quality of the majority’s thinking; and 4) The underrepresentation of non-liberals in social psychology is most likely due to a combination of self-selection, hostile climate, and discrimination.
I never thought I would see an admission by an academic group that conservatives and conservative thinking are underrepresented and scoffed at in academic circles. Having been in academic circles off and on during 35 years, I can confirm that conservatives are denigrated by most academics and by universities themselves, which are almost always run by liberals, No liberal academics I know will acknowledge this.
One of the important aspects of this research is contained in #3 above. To paraphrase: Social psychological science would be improved by allowing conservatives and other “dissenting minorities” to “improve the quality of liberal thinking.”
“Improve the quality of liberal thinking” does not mean that liberals should begin to think like conservatives or other dissenting minorities, but that liberals need to structure their positions to answer logical objections.
Example. Liberals would like gun ownership eliminated.
The rationale for this position might be that fewer guns means fewer shootings and no guns would mean no shootings. Lives would be saved.
A conservative response might be:
•The framers of the Constitution feared a central federal government might become so strong that it would become tyrannical. They had just escaped that in England. The Second Amendment was written to keep the central government from becoming dictatorial.
•Anyone can see that modern federal government has eclipsed the states in importance and power and use of power.
•There is no way to stop this progression toward dictatorship absent an armed public.
•If the contest in this debate is between a proposal to reduce criminal and accidental shootings and supporting a Constitutional form of government, there is no contest, for Constitutional provisions govern everything else.
•Finally, there is no evidence that eliminating gun ownership would result in fewer shootings or the savings of lives. Criminals would continue shooting and law abiding people would be even more tempting targets than before, for they would be disarmed.
The liberal rejoinder might be:
•There is no credible threat of the federal government becoming dictatorial
•Saving human lives trumps an outdated Constitution
•If there would be no fewer shootings, that would be conservatives’ fault for leading us to the point where millions of guns are in private hands and cannot realistically be controlled by government.
The important discoveries in this hypothetical are that liberals are forced to admit they do not hold the Constitution in high regard (elimination of private gun ownership is favored whether or not it is constitutional) and their stated goals are not genuine (elimination of private gun ownership is favored even if shootings are not reduced). Few liberals would admit either point, but revealing these points might be useful to those who are undecided in evaluating the liberal position on private gun ownership.
What is likely to be revealed is that after the liberal rationale for supporting gun confiscation is dissected, it is reduced to “I hate guns.”
The important thing here is not the defeat of liberal ideas or the promotion of gun ownership, but the insight that any idea, in order to be valid, must bring more to the table than personal preferences and moral posturing.
The ultimate problem for liberal thinkers is overcoming the likelihood that the consequences of what some conservatives have called their “mindless magnanimity” (James Burnham, Suicide of the West, 1964) will not actually result in our demise.
The liberal-conservative debate is all about consequences: what will happen if we do this? That’s the question conservatives routinely ask, but liberals don’t want to consider.
THIS BLOG is a discussion of government, its nature, its limitations, its duties, its dangers, its benefits, its proper goals, its improper goals, and its crimes.
