“OUR POLITICAL NATURE”: PAPER MACHE INTELLECTUALISM. (book review) (criticism) =

“OUR POLITICAL NATURE”: PAPER MACHE INTELLECTUALISM.

(book review) (criticism)

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This review is from: Our Political Nature: The Evolutionary Origins of What Divides Us

Trivial, biased regurgitation of Haidt’s work without credit.,

October 29, 2013

Amazon Verified Purchase

1.0 out of 5 stars

I understand the business of writing money-making books by regurgitating the works of others for fun and profit. And I understand the need to simplify works for less academic readers. But I also understand not giving credit to the people who you’re copying. Especially when it’s by attempting to avoid references to them. I also understand the use of obscurant language, bias as propaganda, and oversimplification via analogy as a means of inserting deception.

This is a weak attempt by an also-ran author to insert his political bias into the political discourse as a substitute for scholarship. It’s not plagiarism per se. Because that would add insult to the prior work.

Read Haidt instead. It is a balanced work by the leading academic in the field. If you read “The Righteous Mind”, “Explanation of Ideology: Family Structure & Social System”, “The Red Queen”, and “Demonic Males” you will know pretty much the moral origins of human beings. If you read Andrew Heywood’s “Political Ideologies : An Introduction” that will explain political discourse.

The fact is, that moral codes are largely genetic. What isn’t genetic is determined by the structure of the family (absolute nuclear, nuclear, traditional, extended or tribal). What isn’t determined by family structure is determined by economics. However, this is all misleading because MORAL sensibilities are different from VOTING PATTERNS.

American voting patterns can be reduced to this single statement, and nothing else matters:

—“93% of blacks, 70% of Latinos, 60% of those under 30, and 62% of single people, voted for Obama. And white married couples over 30 years of age voted for Romney. Not much else matters.”—

-Dick Morris”

NOTHING ELSE MATTERS – WE ARE TRIBAL CREATURES.

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