Letters to the Editor
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Ethical Development
m.b.f.--
Kohlberg's work was based on earlier work by Piaget, focused on reasoning about the physical world. In turn, a student of Kohlberg's, Robert Kegan, extended this further to deal with therapy and education. On the latter count, he became particularly engrossed by how higher education seemed to produce continued development beyond the third level.
The upshot of all this, was that Kegan developed a general theory of cognitive development--also accounting for the stage-development theories of Erickson, Maslow and others--which has five levels to it. The fullest description of this is his book, In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life.
The meaning of the title is simple: the complexity of modern life is such that level three cognition cannot deal with it. Level four, and even level five problems confront us on a fairly regular basis, and which tends to overwhelm level three people--who were fully functioning adults in traditional societies, where the rate of social change was much more gradual than we experience today.
Level three is the natural level of true "traditional values" and social stability. It is what conservatives pretend to stand for. But first off, it is insufficient for the challenges of the modern (much less post-modern) world. Second off, it's too much to ask of movement conservatives. It is the level of adulthood in traditional societies. And while plenty of everyday conservative voters function on this level, the conservative movement as a whole does not. It functions on an adolescent level--and adolescence is the period of transition from level two to level three.
All of which is a long-winded way of agreeing with you when you say:
Coulter has not made it past step 4.
But it's also to put it into a larger context.
Alas, I must go off to work, so I won't be participating again for at least 6 hours or so. Have fun.
While Kegan barely talks about anything
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Paul
I;m gone for hours, too. But this is it. This is the frame.
This is what let's me do the impersonations, I didn't understand why I needed to do them, i did them when I was frustrated
Doing them, I walked in their shoes, and I could understand, understanding is the road to tolerance
democracy only works when other can see other minds and tolerate it
The Master could only tolerate the Slave if the slave was silent and demonstrated he had another mind. When the slave spoke, when he learned, he was "uppity."
Shut and sing, slave! ask laura ingraham, she understands the dynamic
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Your Civil Rights ARE Protected!
AP had this on Monday.
A White House privacy board is giving its stamp of approval to two of the Bush administration's controversial surveillance programs - electronic eavesdropping and financial tracking - and says they do not violate citizens' civil liberties.
I'm so heartened that the White House has investigated their own illegal activities and found them to be NOT illegal. Whew!
Who needs the courts when you have a privacy board?
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The Weapon
That is not news to many people, but it is always encouraging when the exploitation of the terrorist threat -- one of the principal weapons used by those who have sought to radically alter our country -- is discussed in mainstream venues.
How true. Reminds me of the Canadian rock band Rush's song "The Weapon" (http://www.lyricsdomain.com/18/rush/the_weapon.html)
With an iron fist in a velvet glove
We are sheltered under the gun
In the glory game on the power train
Thy kingdom's will be done
And the things that we fear are a weapon to be held against us...
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Agitating for War?
Glenn,
In the last days of Unclaimed Territory, you accused AIPAC and other "Jewish donor groups" of "agitating for a U.S. war against Iran." When I asked you for specific examples of such agitation, you refused to provide any. Your latest post links to a news article stating that AIPAC is expected to lobby Congress to impose economic sanctions against Iran. Is this what you meant by "agitating for a U.S. war"?
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WaPo
If the Post stuck to a more liberal editorial policy, it would lose tens of thousands of subscribers to the Washington Times
There's a difference between having a Conservative editorial policy and publishing an entire page of back-to-back lies. Todays offering sets a new low.
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Mona
Just wanted to be clear: I have no problem with Stossel’s crusading and contrariness per se – he has done some good work over the years challenging, as you state it, “media-facilitated fear-mongering,” and should be commended. That’s why his sudden about-face in the mid-90s from being pro-consumer advocate to an attack mode on lawyers and civil justice (e.g., “lawsuits make us less safe!”) was puzzling – he was buying into and overreacting with the fear-mongering being pushed by corporations, and parroting their talking points. Whether there are too may frivolous lawsuits and what the courts and judges can do to control things is of course open to debate, but when the media advocates restricting consumers’ access to the courts and our basic rights to redress and compensation, as he has done, that’s where I draw my line. That being said, my impression is that Stossel is for the most part a muckraker at heart and tries his best to hold deserving folks accountable - more than I can say for many journalists out there.
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I beg to differ
"There's a difference between having a Conservative editorial policy and publishing an entire page of back-to-back lies. Todays offering sets a new low."
I think this is what conservatism means these days. Telling lots of big lies. They have been reduced to that. It's all they have left.
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Speaking of the Post
Rush Limbaugh, on his radio show, just called Joe Wilson a "sick psychopathic liar". He told his listeners to read about it in The Washington Post.
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innumeracy
Glenn Greenwald quotes with favor an article by John Stossel from Real Clear Politics which in turn quotes with favor Ohio State Universty politial science professor John Mueller who (finally) says:
"Your chances of being killed, at present rates, by an international terrorist outside of a war zone is something like 1 in 80,000," he says. "It's about the same as being killed by an asteroid."
Really? Don't political science professors have to know basic math? Sounds like for Mueller, he might as well be talking the way a kid might say "gazillion". At 80000 to 1 we should expect daily terrorist carnage on the streets of every major American city, not to mention constant fatal bombardments of asteroids. And what are we measuring here anyhow: one terrorist attack or asteroid blast every 80000 years? months? days? hours? seconds, what? These "odds" are meaningless.
I think I'm agreeing with the point Mueller, Stossel and Greenwald are trying to make, but can't they do it better than this?