Pat Condell
 

What makes people vote Republican? Why in particular do working class and rural Americans usually vote for pro-business Republicans when their economic interests would seem better served by Democratic policies? We psychologists have been examining the origins of ideology ever since Hitler sent us Germany's best psychologists, and we long ago reported that strict parenting and a variety of personal insecurities work together to turn people against liberalism, diversity, and progress. But now that we can map the brains, genes, and unconscious attitudes of conservatives, we have refined our diagnosis: conservatism is a partially heritable personality trait that predisposes some people to be cognitively inflexible, fond of hierarchy, and inordinately afraid of uncertainty, change, and death. People vote Republican because Republicans offer "moral clarity"—a simple vision of good and evil that activates deep seated fears in much of the electorate. Democrats, in contrast, appeal to reason with their long-winded explorations of policy options for a complex world.
Read more: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/haidt08/haidt08_index.html
 

The Boundaries of Belief

"Marco Iacoboni has written a fascinating and wonderfully accessible account of one of the most exciting developments in recent neuroscience--the discovery of 'mirror neurons.' If you want to know more about the biological basis of empathy, morality, social cognition and self-awareness, read this book."
--Sam Harris, founder of The Reason Project and author of the New York Times best sellers, The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation
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Losing Our Spines to Save Our Necks
Geert Wilders, conservative Dutch politician and provocateur, has become the latest projectile in the world's most important culture war: the zero-sum conflict between civil society and traditional Islam. Wilders, who lives under perpetual armed guard due to death threats, recently released a 15 minute film entitled Fitna ("strife" in Arabic) over the internet. The film has been deemed offensive because it juxtaposes images of Muslim violence with passages from the Qur'an. Given that the perpetrators of such violence regularly cite these same passages as justification for their actions, merely depicting this connection in a film would seem uncontroversial. Controversial or not, one surely would expect politicians and journalists in every free society to strenuously defend Wilders' right to make such a film. But then one would be living on another planet, a planet where people do not happily repudiate their most basic freedoms in the name of "religious sensitivity."

Read more: sam-harris - losing our spines to save our necks
 

 Update: Protecting Ayaan Hirsi Ali

I am happy to announce that the costs of Ms. Hirsi Ali's security are now being met on an ongoing basis. If you have subscribed to make a monthly donation to the Security Trust through this website, please cancel your subscription through Paypal. I will be closing the Paypal account in the coming weeks.

I sincerely want to thank all of you for your extraordinary generosity. It was a great privilege to be able to help Ms. Hirsi Ali when she needed it. She is in the process of starting a charitable foundation to help support other activists in the Muslim world.
I will keep you all informed about its activities in the future.
Sam Harris