The XX Factor: What women really think.

Liberal Self-Scrutiny

For those who want something other than dismal polls to pore over and need a dose of underisive pointy-headedness, check out the Web site Edge. Over there a so-called Reality Club of liberal social scientists and others is discussing a very interesting essay by University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt called "What Makes People Vote Republican." And the Republicans say elitists only sneer!

On the contrary, Haidt (author of The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom) argues that it's time liberals examined the self-righteous assumption that people vote Republican because they're narrow-minded and rigid. Perhaps there's something in the Republican moral vision that people prefer and that Democrats might learn from. "[M]orality is not just about how we treat each other (as most liberals think); it is also about binding groups together, supporting essential institutions, and living in a sanctified and noble way. When Republicans say that Democrats ‘just don't get it,' this is the ‘it' to which they refer." XX fans might check out the response of one club member in particular, Berkeley psychologist Alison Gopnik (author of The Scientist in the Crib), which is especially apt in the Palin era. Gopnik writes about how liberals don't really know how to talk about the moral intuitions of child-rearing—the ethics of family caretaking—because those don't rest on individualist or universalist ideas. She points out that conservatives are confused, too, and urges joint thinking and talking.

It's all fascinating—yet also frustrating. Here's a club displaying the opposite of elitist condescension, yet in the process, they can't help opening themselves up to anti-elitist condescension. It might sound something like this: If you have to think this hard, you'll never really get it.