Haidt's framework often makes sense to me. But I have my doubts on a couple of points:
* His category of "purity" includes sexual purity, but does not include valuing food purity, or the environment, which tend to be more leftist causes at present, but which seem to grow out of the same underlying mode of thought.
* He added "liberty" to his basic categories, but my experience has been that libertarians very often emphasize property, or even define liberty in terms of property (as when Rothbard bases life and liberty on "self-ownership"). And property is a moral category and a very ancient one, and is of concern even to people who think it has to be balanced against the other moral categories. If I were going to revise his system I would make "property" one of its base categories of moral thought.
Part of the trouble is that we have at least two different terminologies. In a large historical sense, conservatives are those who want the law, the government, or other authorities to compel the preservation of old values and customs; progressives are those who want them to do away with old values and customs and impose something better; liberals are those who want to let people choose for themselves. In the more specific context of European political culture, conservatives are those who favor the monarchy (which we don't have), the landed aristocracy (which we have traces of, especially in the southern states, but land ownership isn't the dominant form of wealth in the United States), the armed forces, and the established church (which we don't have); progressives are socialists of various stripes (which the United States doesn't really quite have); and liberals favor some role for the market, though not necessarily the "free market" that American "conservatives" often refer to and American libertarians actually support—in point of fact, American "progressives" often look a lot like what Europeans think of as "liberals." And neither of those is a good guide to American categories.
no subject
* His category of "purity" includes sexual purity, but does not include valuing food purity, or the environment, which tend to be more leftist causes at present, but which seem to grow out of the same underlying mode of thought.
* He added "liberty" to his basic categories, but my experience has been that libertarians very often emphasize property, or even define liberty in terms of property (as when Rothbard bases life and liberty on "self-ownership"). And property is a moral category and a very ancient one, and is of concern even to people who think it has to be balanced against the other moral categories. If I were going to revise his system I would make "property" one of its base categories of moral thought.
Part of the trouble is that we have at least two different terminologies. In a large historical sense, conservatives are those who want the law, the government, or other authorities to compel the preservation of old values and customs; progressives are those who want them to do away with old values and customs and impose something better; liberals are those who want to let people choose for themselves. In the more specific context of European political culture, conservatives are those who favor the monarchy (which we don't have), the landed aristocracy (which we have traces of, especially in the southern states, but land ownership isn't the dominant form of wealth in the United States), the armed forces, and the established church (which we don't have); progressives are socialists of various stripes (which the United States doesn't really quite have); and liberals favor some role for the market, though not necessarily the "free market" that American "conservatives" often refer to and American libertarians actually support—in point of fact, American "progressives" often look a lot like what Europeans think of as "liberals." And neither of those is a good guide to American categories.