In  his book The Righteous Mind Jonathan Haidt  calls the liberal intelligentia WEIRD, that is, Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic. They are universalists, suspicious of nationalist loyalties;   individualists, committed to autonomy and self-realisation;  derogatory about religion and the way it cements and reinforces groups, regardless of the content of the religion.

He says that from way back traditional societies have been “sociocentric”, placing the needs of the group over the needs of the individual. Group psychology was formed over thousands of years of evolution and is deeply instilled in most humans.

Moreover, most humans tend to respect authority (which is why Putin gets away with it), and have a sense of the sacred .  Thus, when the liberals  allow what seems to be unrestricted immigration it offends the majority.  When as individualists, they denigrate authority they cause offense to some, and when they pooh-pooh religion they offend even more.  Modern liberalism has done much to fragment society and remove the glue that binds it.

Haight is a liberal who is trying to get fellow liberals to be less hoity-toity and to soften what he thinks are arrogant attitudes.  Without this, he says, liberals will lose the cultural argument and be at a loss to understand how reactionary and selfish people can attract so much support.  He asks us to “accommodate the anxieties ” of the social conservatives.

Intelligent stuff.  The implications of all this should be debated in this forum.

The Righteous Mind  by Jonathan Haidt