The social intuitionist model offers an explanation of why moral and political arguments are so frustrating: because moral reasons are the tail wagged by the intuitive dog. A dogโs tail wags to communicate. You canโt make a dog happy by forcibly wagging its tail. And you canโt change peopleโs minds by utterly refuting their arguments.
Jonathan HaidtThe great conservative insight is that order is really hard to achieve. Itโs really precious, and itโs really easy to lose.
Jonathan HaidtWhat set us apart from most or all of the other hominid species was our ultrasociality, our ability to be highly cooperative, even with strangers, people who are not at all related to us.
Jonathan HaidtThe president is the high priest of what sociologist Robert Bellah calls the 'American civil religion.' The president must invoke the name of God (though not Jesus), glorify America's heroes and history,quote its sacred texts (the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution), and perform the transubstantiation of pluribus unum.
Jonathan Haidt