Rod Dreher's Blog, page 668

The Humorless Hillary Clinton

The New Yorker publishes a spot-on satire about the hopelessly humorless Hillary Clinton. In this scenario, based on a NYT report that the Clinton campaign is going to try to bring out the candidate’s alleged funny side, HRC sits around with staffers brainstorming. Here’s how it begins:

STAFFER 1: Here’s something. Lots of jokes start with the line “A guy walks into a barn.”

CLINTON: I like that. That’s funny.

STAFFER 2: Bar. I think it’s “A guy walks into a bar.”

CLINTON: Bar? Why is that funny? Are bars funny?

STAFFER 3: I thought it was barn, too.

STAFFER 4: What if a guy walks into a barn and sees a bar?

CLINTON: That makes no sense.

STAFFER 2: Is that funny, though? Walking into a barn?

CLINTON: Barns are hilarious. It depends on the barn, of course, as well as the time of year. Barns can also be sad. I’ve walked into barns in the heartland of this great country, where jobs have vanished and the American dream is dead.

(Long silence.)

The whole thing is hilarious, and captures an essential truth about Mrs. C.

Religious Liberalism = Spiritual Senescence

Continuing the discussion of American cultural imperialism, First Things (which has had some great stuff lately) publishes an essay by the Rev. John Azumah, a Presbyterian pastor from Ghana, who teaches at a PC(USA) seminary in the United States. He talks about how Americans — well, liberal Americans at least — are completely accepting of homosexuality, which is deeply rejected by Africans. Excerpts:

My first “welcome to America” moment occurred when I invited an imam to my Introduction to Islam class at Columbia Theological Seminary.The imam talked about the basic tenets of Islam for an hour and asserted, among other things, that Jesus is not the Son of God, denied that he was crucified, and maintained that the Bible has been falsified. My students listened respectfully throughout the lecture. When he paused and invited discussion, the students replied with rather timid and politically correct queries, at which point the imam said: “Why are you not asking me about jihad, about terrorism, women? I know you have all these questions. Why are you not asking me the hard questions?” So one student queried him about Islamic teaching on homosexuality. The imam answered by defining the practice as un-Islamic, not of God, unnatural. Suddenly, the faces of a good number of the students went red with shock and rage. I stepped in and gently steered the discussion away from the topic.

After the class ended, the few conservative students in the class approached and slyly suggested that I invite the imam again. Other students urged me to cancel a scheduled visit to the mosque the following Friday. I resisted those efforts and we all visited the mosque, after which the imam and his elders unexpectedly hosted the class for an Ethiopian feast. A lesbian student who had been most upset after the class confessed that she was glad she came, because she saw a hospitable and warm side of the imam.

As I look back upon the whole episode, I think I ended up more unsettled than my students. They were agitated by what the imam said about homosexuality, but seemed wholly at ease with his negation of fundamental Christian beliefs. If this were a seminary in Ghana, my home country, the reverse would have been the case.

Amazing, but unsurprising. Most of these students studying to be ordained Christian pastors didn’t have any particular reaction to the imam’s denial of basic Christian teaching (not that they should have been offended, but at least they should have engaged him). They didn’t even care enough to engage him critically on some disturbing aspects of contemporary Islam. But when the imam criticized homosexuality? Well, the imam defiled the high holy of American liberalism right there!

Pastor Azumah comes off as an irenic figure who is trying to mediate within his church between the liberal West and the “Global South.” Here he gets to the heart of the problem:

I have come to the conclusion that the doctrinal differences between American liberals and African traditionalists originate in deeper conflicts. We may argue about what the Bible says about sexuality, but there is a broader, unstated disagreement over the Bible itself. For mainstream Western society, the Bible is an ancient text that might arouse intellectual curiosity or become the subject of historical analysis, but it is hardly a sacred book. It has no more authority in American culture than the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, Gettysburg Address, Martin Luther King’s speeches, and other notable historic statements. Dropping the language of “obedience to Scripture” and “conformity to the historic confessional standards” from the PC(USA) Ordination Standards underscores this point.

The Bible has a very different status in African societies. Where Christianity has become dominant in the last century, the Bible remains a sacred text, relevant and living. The Bible is more than a compilation of historical documents. It is, in very significant ways, an African Testament. For large segments of African Christian societies, the world of the Bible is contemporary. Old and New Testament narratives of sacrifice, polygamy, plague, agriculture, dancing, shepherds, tensions between nomadic pastoralism and peasant dwellers, epidemics, and war have immediate relevance. Andrew Walls remarks, “You do not have to interpret Old Testament Christianity to Africans; they live in an Old Testament world.”

Azumah says that a basic difference between African Christians and liberal Christians in Europe and North America is the “enduring importance of traditional conceptions of family and morality.

This largely shields Africans from the cultural upheavals that America has suffered, including redefinitions of male-female roles, chastity, holiness, and, of course, the normalization of homosexual sex. Liberal American Christians judge the African position on homosexuality as cruel to one set of human beings. But Africans have no problem in naming homosexuality a sin and praying for the redemption of all sinners. We heed the parable of the wheat and the weeds in Matthew 13. We remember that the harvest and separation of the wheat from the weeds is none of our business and belongs to the not yet, the final consummation of the Kingdom of God. There should be no place for homophobia in the African church. But there is also no place for redefining the Word of God.

As a result, Africans still believe in marriage as the union of man and woman and view homosexuality as contrary to God’s design and will, a reflection of the broken sinfulness of humanity. To hear mainstream Western media and Western liberals dismiss African disapproval of same-sex relations as the work of right-wing American Evangelical groups brings to mind a long history of patronizing attitudes and contempt. The fact that the views of the vast majority of African society on issues of sex and marriage align with those of American Evangelicals does not mean Africans are mimicking or acting as proxies of American anti-gay groups. African views, which are shared by the overwhelming majority of non-Western societies, are based on sound biblical interpretation that reinforces and is reinforced by the traditional African view of life, family, community, and sexual ethics.

Agreed! Read the whole thing. It’s important — especially the part where the author talks about the effect Western liberalism on homosexuality has on African Christians having to face down militant Islam. Pastor Azumah speaks from a church and a cultural milieu that, for all its flaws, remains Christian. Unlike our own. Note the statistics on the liberal, post-Christian PC(USA). The church is in ongoing collapse. At its current rate of decline, the last PC(USA) member will turn out the lights around the middle of this century.

It’s hard to deny that Western liberalism, especially with its obsession on sex and sexuality, means spiritual sterility and ecclesial senescence. And not just senescence in the churches. It’s not enough that we’re slowly killing our own civilizations; we have to try to force Africans to kill theirs as well.

Benedict for Reformation People

As I write this, I’m on my way back to Baton Rouge from a couple of great days in western Tennessee. I spoke at UT-Martin on Wednesday about Dante, and spent yesterday at Union University in Jackson talking about The Little Way of Ruthie Leming, Dante, and the Benedict Option — a Dreher trifecta, for sure.

In the 1998 Robert Duvall film The Apostle, there’s a great scene in which Duvall, playing a Pentecostal preacher named Sonny, watches a Catholic priest blessing the shrimp fleet. Here’s Duvall, from an interview, talking about that scene:

Another thing I want to emphasize is the cultural contrast I saw between religions. By the time we were finished cutting, that was not obvious. Like Catholics have a lot of mediators, going through saints and Mary or whatever. But I love the directness of these people. They relate directly with God, not going through anything.

Protestants in general, but especially these people, say things to God directly, like I do in the film: ‘I always call you “Jesus”; you always call me “Sonny”.’ ‘I’m on the devil’s hit-list; I’m gonna get on Jesus’ mailing-list!’ ‘Holy Ghost explosion,’ ‘Short-circuit the devil!’ ‘I’m a genuine Holy Ghost Jesus-filled preaching machine here this morning!’ I use those phrases in the film. I heard them from the preachers and from the people. These were their terms. God is immediate to their lives.’

Sonny sees a Catholic priest blessing fishing boats as they leave the harbor. He says, ‘You do it your way, and we do it mine. But we get it done, don’t we.’ That’s the tension between religions. There are different forms and prejudices, but I wanted Sonny to show an acceptance of another religion because both were trying to achieve the same end.

That’s the feeling I had after my time at Union, talking with Evangelical professors and others about the Benedict Option. It’s astonishing to me how interested folks are in the Benedict Option. It’s really exploding. Yesterday I received an e-mail from an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, saying he had read about it, is excited about it, and would love to talk with me about what small-o orthodox Christians can learn from the Orthodox Jewish community about how to live faithfully, in community, in a culture that is alien to one’s religious values. I think this is fantastic.

Evangelicals, of course, have somewhat different concerns about the Ben Op than Catholics or Orthodox Christians would, and I learn so much from engaging with them, and thinking through these challenges. The big takeaway at this point is the strong sense I’m picking up among culturally aware orthodox Christians is that something big is happening, and we Christians cannot live as if these were normal times. I’m not talking about apocalypticism, but a sense that we really are in a profoundly post-Christian era, and the churches have to re-orient ourselves toward intense discipleship to endure in the long run — and not only to endure, but to thrive not in fear and rigidity, but in authentic Christian joy and liberty.

Hence the Benedict Option, which is going to be worked out in 10,000 conversations among Christians who can read the signs of the times, and who want to prepare themselves, their families, and their communities.

It’s so great to spend time among a community of Christians who are not my people in one way, but who in a more profound way, absolutely are. You do it your way and we do it mine, Evangelical friends, but we get it done, don’t we? We are going to get it done. St. Benedict belongs to all of us.

UPDATE: Hey Protestant readers, you might want to check out a good book I’m reading, on the recommendation of one of you. It’s called Monk Habits For Everyday People: Benedictine Spirituality for Protestants, by Dennis Okholm. It’s giving me good insights into how to translate Benedictine concepts into Protestant devotional and spiritual language.

American Cultural Imperialism

This just in:

The U.S. government said that it would adopt the term “sexual rights” in discussing issues about gender identities and sexual orientation.

The statement, originally made at a United Nations meeting, came after weeks of lobbying from LGBT groups calling for the U.S. to show leadership on the issue. The new term encompasses the “right to have control over and decide freely and responsibly on matters related to their sexuality, including sexual and reproductive health, free of coercion, discrimination, and violence,” the State Department said, in a statement.

Richard Erdman, deputy U.S. ambassador to the U.N., made the announcement earlier this week, saying that “sexual rights” would refer to ones that are not legally binding.

“Sexual rights are not human rights, and they are not enshrined in international human rights law; our use of this term does not reflect a view that they are part of customary international law,” Erdman said. “It is, however, a critical expression of our support for the rights and dignity of all individuals regardless of their sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity.”

This is incredibly disingenous. So let’s take the government at its word, that it does not include “sexual rights” among those considered legally binding in international law. This is a prelude to pushing for that very thing. Here’s why it matters: if the West can get “sexual rights” written into international law, it can strongarm religiously observant Third World countries into accepting “sexual rights” as a condition of receiving development aid. Want to eat, black and brown people? Want our help fighting poverty? Then bow towards this Western idol.

I am not surprised that a government led by Barack Obama would do this. Consider the in-your-face culture-warring the White House is waging on Pope Francis:

Guests at the White House reception for Pope Francis on September 23 will include several gay and transgender persons, a controversial nun, a radical preacher and a gay Episcopal bishop.

Several of the invitations to the event, which is part of the pope’s three-city tour of America September 22-27, were offered by Vivian Taylor. Taylor, 30, considers himself transgender, which means he identifies as a sex different from his biology. Taylor has male anatomy but dresses and presents himself as female. Until March of this year he was the Executive Director of Integrity USA, a homosexual and transgender activist wing of the Episcopal Church. Taylor lives in Boston and is now freelance writing.

“A few months ago I received an invitation from the White House to attend the reception for Pope Francis,” Taylor told CNS News. “I was told I could bring several friends with me.”

Among the five people Taylor chose:

Nicole Santamaria, the Secretary of Asociacion Colectivo Alejandria, “a collective of transgender and intersex people seeking to promote awareness, provide training and education, and advocate for their community.”

I’m sure Pope Francis will handle this with typical aplomb, but it’s remarkable, just remarkable, that the White House has chosen to get so in-your-face with the leader of the Roman Catholic Church. Would Obama invite Tibetan dissidents to meet the Chinese president? As a diplomatic matter, it’s unthinkable. Would he invite Ukrainian activists to a reception for Putin? In either case, the diplomatic row from the challenge would be huge. But hey, he can treat the Pope this way? Really?

These pieces of news are just another reminder of why so many religious and traditionalist people around the world resent the US government’s cultural imperialism. I don’t blame them one bit.

UPDATE: A Catholic reader sends in a typically useful John Allen article, this one about “decoding” Pope Francis for Americans. Note these items:

Ideological colonization

As history’s first pope from the developing world, Francis is keenly sensitive to perceived imbalances of power between the West and everyone else. One area he believes it shows up is efforts by Western governments and NGOs, as well as the U.N. and other global bodies, to force poor countries to abandon their traditional values as the price of receiving development assistance.

What Francis means by “ideological colonization,” for instance, would be an U.N. agency offering an African nation funding for anti-AIDS campaigns on the condition that they reduce population by a specific percentage, or allow distribution of condoms in their public clinics, or revise public school textbooks to promote family planning, or legalize same-sex marriage.

That’s what Francis had in mind when he said in the Philippines in January, for instance, that “there’s an ideological colonization we have to be careful of that tries to destroy the family.”

The phrase may come up in the States, perhaps when Francis addresses the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York on Sept. 25.

Gender theory

For most Americans, “gender theory” probably sounds like the name of a graduate seminar in a Women’s Studies program. Francis, however, uses it to mean efforts to eradicate the biological differences between men and women, or to treat those differences as culturally conditioned and therefore optional.

That’s what he had in mind during a General Audience in April, for instance, when he said, “I wonder if so-called gender theory may not also be an expression of frustration and resignation that aims to erase sexual differentiation because it no longer knows how to come to terms with it.”

“Getting rid of the difference is the problem, not the solution,” he said.

In an interview in February with two Italian journalists, Francis called gender theory a “sin” that fails to “recognize the order of creation.”

Given that background, if Francis talks about “gender theory” while he’s in the States, it probably will be a clue he’s about to say something that will appeal to the cultural right.

Bunga Bunga Is YUUUUGE!

The Browser dug up this 2011 City Journal column by economist Luigi Zingales, in which he said America is lucky Donald Trump (that year) decided against running for president. Excerpts:

The only thing more frightening than Trump’s running for president would be Trump’s getting elected president. From a party perspective, while losing an election is bad, winning one with the wrong candidate for the party and for the country is worse. I know something about this: I come from Italy, a country that has elected as prime minister the Trumplike Silvio Berlusconi.

Trump and Berlusconi are remarkably alike. They are both billionaire businessmen who claim that the government should be run like a business. They are both gifted salesmen, able to appeal to the emotions of their fellow citizens. They are both obsessed with their looks, with their hair (or what remains of it), and with sexy women. Their gross manners make them popular, perhaps because people think that if these guys could become billionaires, anyone could. Most important is that both Trump and Berlusconi made their initial fortunes in real estate, an industry where connections and corruption often matter as much as, or more than, talent and hard work. Indeed, while both pretend to stand for free markets, what they really believe in is what most of us would label crony capitalism.

Berlusconi’s policies have been devastating to Italy. He has been prime minister for eight of the last ten years, during which time the Italian per-capita GDP has dropped 4 percent, the debt-to-GDP ratio has increased from 109 percent to 120 percent, and taxes have increased from 41.2 percent to 43.4 percent. Italy’s score in the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom has dropped from 63 to 60.3, and in the World Economic Forum Index of Competitiveness from 4.9 to 4.37. Berlusconi’s tenure has also been devastating for free-market ideas, which now are identified with corruption.

Whole thing here.

I didn’t get to see the GOP debate the other night, but I’m very encouraged by the consensus that Trump didn’t do all that well, but Carly Fiorina did. Here in Tennessee, I’ve heard several people who did watch the debate say how frustrated they were by CNN’s questioning, which, according to them, seemed geared toward gigging the candidates to turn on each other in a personal clash rather than sussing out ideas.

Anyway, Zingales’s insight into how Berlusconi’s leadership corrupted the idealof the free market in Italy in the popular mind — a position that may be contestable, I dunno (Giuseppe? Carlo? What say you?) — reminds me of what several of us have been saying about how the Kim Davis case stands to corrupt the ideal of religious liberty in the American mind. People may say, if [the market/religious liberty] means that, then I’m against it.

Throwing Money Away

Did you see this? Good grief:

The Obama administration is moving toward major changes in its military train-and-equip program for the Syrian opposition after the acknowledged failure of efforts to create a new force of rebel fighters to combat the Islamic State there.

In comments that appeared to shock even many of those involved in Syria policy elsewhere in the government, Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, the head of the U.S. Central Command, told Congress on Wednesday that only “four or five” trainees from the program, a $500 million plan officially launched in December to prepare as many as 5,400 fighters this year, have ended up “in the fight” inside Syria.

I’m sorry, but what?! “Four or five” — at $100 million a pop? More:

Lawmakers responded to Austin’s description of overall progress against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq with near-universal skepticism, and they described the administration’s strategy of defeating the militants with air power, along with training and supplies for indigenous forces on the ground, as a failure.

Yeah, you know why they’re skeptical? Because the military has been lying about it.

Meanwhile, Sam M. sends in a jaw-dropping story about how Mark Zuckerberg’s gargantuan do-gooder grant to public schools in Newark, NJ, has been squandered:

Watching the $200 million iceberg (Mr. Zuckerberg’s $100 million donation was contingent on raising a matching amount) slowly melt into an ocean of recrimination over the course of 256 brisk pages can be a sometimes painful exercise. The union boss, Joe Del Grosso, demanded a ransom of $31 million to compensate for what he felt members should have received in previous years — before agreeing to discuss any labor reforms. The superintendent, Cami Anderson, demanded accountability from schools but set her own performance goals only after the academic year was largely over and relied on expensive consultants — whose total bill ultimately exceeded $20 million — without clear objectives long after she had promised to recruit a permanent leadership team.

The school reform movement’s focus on measurable results and “business-style management” is laudable. But it is downright chilling to watch the leadership team throw around buzz phrases from business best-sellers with minimal focus on the nuanced requirements of applying these principles to the education ecosystem generally or to the Newark public schools particularly.

Dang. We could have bought two more Syrian fighters for what Zuck wasted in Newark.

Are The Poor a Problem To Be Solved?

In First Things, Amy L. Wax reviews Robert Putnam’s most recent book, which examines the widening opportunity gap between the poor and the rest of America. She’s not buying Putnam’s explanation that it’s all about the economy. Excerpt:

In stressing the monetary and material roots of working-class collapse, Putnam relies chiefly on the observation that real earnings for male high school graduates and dropouts have stagnated or declined since the 1970s, with secure factory jobs dwindling. Yet he ignores significant fluctuations during the past fifty years, and fails to explain why social cohesion, and especially family structure, has deteriorated relentlessly despite significant economic ups and downs. Putnam himself states that the thirty-year drop in real earnings for male high school graduates has been only 11 percent without explaining how this alone can account for the accelerating pathologies that he recounts.

And although Putnam admits that life for the working class, and even the poor, used to be dramatically different, he has remarkably little to say about why parents in straitened circumstances were once far more effective in establishing orderly homes, socializing their children, and equipping them to exploit chances for self-improvement or, at least, to achieve a decent, satisfying life. And he devotes no attention to the significant number of less skilled Americans—including many recent immigrants—who effectively resist the social problems that bedevil others at the bottom of the economic ladder.

In fact, Putnam’s own anecdotes belie his tilt toward the economic roots of working-class distress, highlighting the dynamic, two-way relationship between material hardship and life choices. Joe, one of his working-class protagonists, is steadily employed at a decent job managing a pizza franchise. Yet he chronically overspends his earnings and forms tempestuous, unstable liaisons that produce children he can scarcely afford. Indeed, virtually all of ­Putnam’s working-class subjects seem to specialize in a familiar litany of self-­defeating behaviors. Short-lived broken relationships, random spawning and abandonment of children, squandered educational opportunities, repetitive law­breaking, and drug abuse are staples of their existence. Male incarceration is commonplace. Parenting is often harsh while also indifferent, erratic, and neglectful.

In short, the picture Putnam paints is too often that of people who repeatedly pass up the chance to steady or improve their own lives. The sociologist Isabel Sawhill, whom Putnam cites, has observed that a few simple choices—the so-called “success sequence”—can minimize poverty even for people with modest education and skills. The prescription is to graduate from high school, work steadily at any job available, get married before having children, and avoid crime. These basic prudential steps are within the reach of virtually everyone, regardless of means and background, and most people used to accept them as indispensable way stations to responsible adulthood. Yet these steps are no longer followed by most people without a college degree. Laying this at the feet of economic causes requires adopting a peculiar brand of causal materialism that now dominates the social sciences.

Note that Wax is not saying that the economy has nothing to do with it. She’s saying that the explanation is not only materialistic, that free will, family structure, and values have a lot to do with it too. She concludes by saying that Putnam has nothing to offer to help those who are going to be in the working class, period. Read the whole thing.

(Sorry I’m not more engaged in commentary today. I’m at Union University in Tennessee, and between classes and talks.)

How Can Evangelicals Embrace Trump?

Russell Moore can’t believe that some Evangelicals have fallen for Donald Trump. Excerpts:

We should not demand to see the long-form certificate for Mr. Trump’s second birth. We should, though, ask about his personal character and fitness for office. His personal morality is clear, not because of tabloid exposés but because of his own boasts. His attitude toward women is that of a Bronze Age warlord. He tells us in one of his books that he revels in the fact that he gets to sleep with some of the “top women in the world.” He has divorced two wives (so far) for other women.

This should not be surprising to social conservatives in a culture shaped by pornographic understandings of the meaning of love and sex. What is surprising is that some self-identified evangelicals are telling pollsters they’re for Mr. Trump. Worse, some social conservative leaders are praising Mr. Trump for “telling it like it is.”

In the 1990s, some of these social conservatives argued that “If Bill Clinton’s wife can’t trust him, neither can we.” If character matters, character matters. Today’s evangelicals should ask, “Whatever happened to our commitment to ‘traditional family values’?”

More:

Mr. Trump tells us “nothing beats the Bible,” and once said to an audience that he knows how Billy Graham feels. He says of evangelicals: “I love them. They love me.” And yet, he regularly ridicules evangelicals, with almost as much glee as he does Hispanics. This goes beyond his trivialization of communion with his recent comments about “my little cracker” as a way to ask forgiveness. In recent years, he has suggested that evangelical missionaries not be treated in the United States for Ebola, since they chose to go overseas in the first place.

Still, the problem is not just Mr. Trump’s personal lack of a moral compass. He is, after all, a casino and real estate mogul who has built his career off gambling, a moral vice and an economic swindle that oppresses the poorest and most desperate. When Mr. Trump’s casinos fail, he can simply file bankruptcy and move on. The lives and families destroyed by the casino industry cannot move on so easily.

Preach it, brother.

In their 2010 book American Grace, Harvard’s Bob Putnam and Notre Dame’s David Campbell reported that studies show Americans of all sorts — liberals and conservatives both — tend to first pick their politics, then organize their religious convictions around them. Evangelical Trumpitarianism is no surprise, I guess, but it’s still discouraging.

The Left’s Bad Social Science

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and several of his colleagues have published results a blockbuster four-year study of liberal bias within their own field, and how it hurts the quality of its science. One particularly notable thing about this report is neither Haidt nor any of his co-authors are conservative. Haidt, in fact, is a secular liberal. Here’s the introduction to what Haidt calls the “Cliffs Notes” version of the paper:

In the last few years, social psychology has faced a series of challenges to the validity of its research, including a few high-profile replication failures, a handful of fraud cases, and several articles on questionable research practices and inflated effect sizes… In this article, we suggest that one largely overlooked cause of failure is a lack of political diversity. We review evidence suggesting that political diversity and dissent would improve the reliability and validity of social psychological science…

We focus on conservatives as an underrepresented group because the data on the prevalence in psychology of different ideological groups is best for the liberal-conservative contrast – and the departure from the proportion of liberals and conservatives in the U.S. population is so dramatic. However, we argue that the field needs more non-liberals however they specifically self-identify (e.g., libertarian, moderate)…

The lack of political diversity is not a threat to the validity of specific studies in many and perhaps most areas of research in social psychology. The lack of diversity causes problems for the scientific process primarily in areas related to the political concerns of the Left – areas such as race, gender, stereotyping, environmentalism, power, and inequality – as well as in areas where conservatives themselves are studied, such as in moral and political psychology.

Even in this shortened version, the details are fascinating. The study’s authors produce data showing that the social psychology field is overwhelmingly liberal. They offer analysis and examples on how that fact can and does skew research, e.g., social scientists unwittingly embed liberal assumptions into their research, they suffer from confirmation bias, they focus on topics that validate the liberal progress narrative, and look away from scientifically valid topics that challenge it. For example:

Some group stereotypes are indeed hopelessly crude and untestable. But some may rest on valid empiricism—and represent subjective estimates of population characteristics (e.g. the proportion of people who drop out of high school, are victims of crime, or endorse policies that support women at work, see Jussim, 2012a, Ryan, 2002 for reviews). In this context, it is not surprising that the rigorous empirical study of the accuracy of factual stereotypes was initiated by one of the very few self-avowed conservatives in social psychology—Clark McCauley (McCauley & Stitt, 1978). Since then, dozens of studies by independent researchers have yielded evidence that stereotype accuracy (of all sorts of stereotypes) is one of the most robust effects in all of social psychology (Jussim, 2012a). Here is a clear example of the value of political diversity: a conservative social psychologist asked a question nobody else thought (or dared) to ask, and found results that continue to make many social psychologists uncomfortable. McCauley’s willingness to put the assumption of stereotype inaccuracy to an empirical test led to the correction of one of social psychology’s most longstanding errors.

Why are there so few conservatives in the field? Haidt et al. have discerned several reasons from their studies. Among them, outright discrimination against conservatives:

The literature on political prejudice demonstrates that strongly identified partisans show little compunction about expressing their overt hostility toward the other side (e.g., Chambers et al., 2013; Crawford & Pilanski, 2013; Haidt, 2012). Partisans routinely believe that their hostility towards opposing groups is justified because of the threat posed to their values by dissimilar others (see Brandt et al., 2014, for a review). Social psychologists are unlikely to be immune to such psychological processes. Indeed, ample evidence using multiple methods demonstrates that social psychologists do in fact act in discriminatory ways toward non-liberal colleagues and their research.

[Here we review experimental field research: if you change a research proposal so that its hypotheses sound conservative, but you leave the methods the same, then the manuscript is deemed less publishable, and is less likely to get IRB approval]

Inbar and Lammers (2012) found that most social psychologists who responded to their survey were willing to explicitly state that they would discriminate against conservatives. Their survey posed the question: “If two job candidates (with equal qualifications) were to apply for an opening in your department, and you knew that one was politically quite conservative, do you think you would be inclined to vote for the more liberal one?” Of the 237 liberals, only 42 (18%) chose the lowest scale point, “not at all.” In other words, 82% admitted that they would be at least a little bit prejudiced against a conservative candidate, and 43% chose the midpoint (“somewhat”) or above. In contrast, the majority of moderates (67%) and conservatives (83%) chose the lowest scale point (“not at all”)….

Conservative graduate students and assistant professors are behaving rationally when they keep their political identities hidden, and when they avoid voicing the dissenting opinions that could be of such great benefit to the field. Moderate and libertarian students may be suffering the same fate.

Read the whole summary. I have long said that “diversity” as it is practiced by many is not real diversity, and that in certain fields, like journalism, this really matters. The Haidt study is about how the lack of viewpoint diversity makes a big and meaningful difference in an entire scientific field. The same is true in journalism, of course. But in my experience, you will find very few leaders in the journalism field who see viewpoint diversity as important, and who care enough to make the effort to improve the newsroom numbers — even though viewpoint diversity would improve journalism for largely the same reasons Haidt et al. say it would improve social psychology.

Why the resistance? My theory is that many journalists, especially the Baby Boomers, got into the field because they believe its mission is, as the old chestnut says, “to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.” Well, no; the mission should be to tell the truth about the world as thoroughly as you can, but anyway, you can imagine how corrupting that principle can be when you consider how people define “the afflicted” and “the comfortable.” I suspect that the social psychology field is the same way: those within it see their work as missional.

I’ve often heard journalists in the past say quite sincerely that the pro-traditional marriage side in the gay marriage debate did not deserve to be treated fairly in news coverage, because they (we) are nothing but bigots. The issue was so clear to them that they didn’t think it was even up for debate — this, at a time when gay marriage was still only a minority cause. As I’ve said many times before, I have long believed that SSM was inevitable, but I have no doubt that its coming was accelerated by the propagandistic approach that the media took towards the issue.

Which is fine, I guess, if that’s how they want to roll. But let’s not pretend that objectivity is a meaningful value in the conduct of journalism. Similarly, from the Haidt report, it sounds like social science at times amounts to political activism of special pleading masquerading as objective science, and benefiting from the respect society gives to science, precisely because science is believed to be unbiased. If journalism had a few smart, principled liberals like Jon Haidt and his colleagues on the Heterodox Academy project, men and women who were willing to speak out against the biases in the field and how it damages the field, we would be much better off.

You know who esteems the Haidt et al. paper? This guy, who is not a conservative:

One of the most important papers in the recent history of the social sciences has just been published. http://t.co/aKXwJfu7rw

— Steven Pinker (@sapinker) September 16, 2015

UPDATE: Reader “Charles” writes:

I am a social psychologist who is politically conservative. Worse, I am that creature that is most feared and despised in academia, a conservative Evangelical. In graduate school, in the eyes of my colleagues and professors I might as well have been a visitor from another planet, and I have long since resigned myself to the fact that, unless something truly bizarre happens, my academic career is restricted to teaching at Christian colleges. It has been made clear to me by my secular liberal colleagues, in ways that are both subtle and not so subtle, that I am unwelcome at “their” schools, simply because I am a member of Team Evil. At a Christian college I am paid half (if that) what I would be making elsewhere, in exchange for the ability to pursue my studies and publish scholarly works in which I try to develop my understanding of the human condition from a perspective that is informed by multiple disciplines, including theology. Given the current state of the academic job market, I consider myself blessed to be in any kind of faculty position, but the injustice of the situation is not lost on me.

The liberal bias in social psychology is entirely about the people themselves, though, not about the field. The more that I learn as a psychologist, the firmer my conservative convictions have become. I find that the the things that conservatives value and advocate are more than amply supported by psychological research. People flourish when they have robust and mature faith, strong families, active engagement in cohesive groups, freedom balanced with restraint and responsibility, the support and encouragement to cultivate the virtues, and a mindset that there are far more meaningful things in life than one’s own subjective gratifications. I am surprised that more psychologists are not conservatives. When Martin Seligman and Christopher Peterson (both liberals) were writing Character Strengths and Virtues, a major reference volume in the positive psychology movement, they expressed concern that publishing what we know so far about the psychology of human flourishing was going to make them sound like evangelists or moralizers. But they struggled mightily and managed to maintain their liberalism even in the face of the empirical research literature. Jonathan Haidt (whom you correctly identified as a secular liberal) has faced fierce and vitriolic opposition for publicly telling people that his research shows conservatives (even religious conservatives) to not be stupid, crazy, or evil.

You are correct that many social psychologists see their jobs as “missional.” This is an attitude with deep roots, going back at least to Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1967 speech to the American Psychological Association, in which he called social scientists to take a prophetic stance, carrying out studies on racial and social issues and speaking out in the name of positive social change. I got into social psychology because I am fascinated by the study of human nature, and my ideas about “changing the world” have mostly focused on forming and informing my students, making a difference one on one instead of being a public voice.

The Ahmed Debacle

Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It’s what makes America great.

— President Obama (@POTUS) September 16, 2015

I have been away from the keys most of the day, and am just now learning about what happened to that poor kid Ahmed Mohamed in Texas. From the NYT:

Ahmed Mohamed’s homemade alarm clock got him suspended from his suburban Dallas high school and detained and handcuffed by police officers on Monday after school officials accused him of making a fake bomb. By Wednesday, it had brought him an invitation to the White House, support from Hillary Rodham Clinton and Mark Zuckerberg, and a moment of head-spinning attention as questions arose whether he had been targeted because of his name and his religion.

As a result, a 14-year-old freshman at MacArthur High School in Irving, Tex., who is partial to tinkering, technology and NASA T-shirts and wants to go to M.I.T., found himself in a social media whirlwind that reflected the nation’s charged debates on Islam, immigration and ethnicity.

“Cool clock, Ahmed,” President Obama said on Twitter. “Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It’s what makes America great.” Mr. Obama’s staff invited Ahmed to the White House for Astronomy Night on Oct. 19, an event bringing together scientists, engineers, astronauts, teachers and students to spend a night stargazing from the South Lawn.

Good for Obama. What kind of dumbasses call the cops on a kid who built a freaking clock?! More:

Ahmed’s father, Mohamed El Hassan, 54, was at turns humble, emotional, grateful and patriotic, making it a point to mention they lived in their house for more than 30 years and that his son had fixed his car, his phone, his electricity and his computer and had built, in true all-American fashion, a go-kart. “That is not America,” he said of Ahmed’s detainment. “That is not us. That is not like us.”

The Irving police chief, Larry Boyd, said at a news conference on Wednesday that the officers were justified in detaining the teenager based on the information they had at the time, when initially it was “not immediately evident that” Ahmed’s clock was a class experiment. He added, however, that the police had “no evidence to support that there was an intention to create an alarm.” Asked whether the police would have reacted differently if Ahmed had been white, Chief Boyd said they would have followed the same procedures.

“You can’t take things like that to school,” he said.

You know, I can believe that. I mean, I am sure the kid’s being Muslim had something to do with it, but we are so insane about Zero Tolerance that it’s easy to imagine this happening to an ordinary white geek.

If some nervous nellie who had no idea what they were looking at came to look at our homeschooled son’s chemistry lab, or saw his electronics tinkering, they would probably soil their drawers and call Homeland Security.

They fingerprinted this Ahmed kid and took a mug shot! Where is the common sense?! Yep, #IStandWithAhmed too.

UPDATE: Alan Jacobs nails it:

There are many, many things that could be said about Ahmed Mohamed’s experience, but the most important one, I think, is this: the staff at his school continue to believe that the most reasonable and appropriate thing they could have done when they saw Ahmed’s clock is to call the police and have the boy taken away in handcuffs and interrogated. Not talk to Ahmed, or ask him serious questions about the device he made, or warn him that such a thing could easily be misinterpreted, or contact his parents and get them involved … nope. Call the cops, cuff him, interrogate him.