The Making of Homo Financius and Neoliberal Morality Oleg Komlik

In their paper Maman and Rosenhek made an insightful contribution in shedding light on how the state agencies, institutional actors and mechanisms concoct the neoliberal morality and conduct the moralization of the economic field within particular macro-institutional context. This important research direction should be amplified more in our field. One thing is certain: in (neoliberal) capitalism moral sentiments play a key role in the extraction of economic value.

Maman, Daniel and Zeev Rosenhek. 2019. “Responsibility, Planning and Risk Management: Moralizing Everyday Finance through Financial Education.” The British Journal of Sociology https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.12698

Economic Sociology and Political Economy
The Making of Homo Financius and Neoliberal Morality
Oleg Komlik | founder and editor-in-chief of the ES/PE, Chairman of the Junior Sociologists Network at the International Sociological Association, a PhD Candidate in Economic Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Ben-Gurion University, and a Lecturer in the School of Behavioral Sciences at the College of Management Academic Studies

Andrew Gelman — A quick rule of thumb is that when someone seems to be acting like a jerk, an economist will defend the behavior as being the essence of morality, but when someone seems to be doing something nice, an economist will raise the bar and argue that he’s not being nice at all.

A statistics professor looks at the economics profession.

This is an awkward topic to write about. I’m not saying I think economists are mean people; they just seem to have a default mode of thought which is a little perverse.

In the traditional view of Freudian psychiatrists, which no behavior can be taken at face value, and it takes a Freudian analyst to decode the true meaning. Similarly, in the world of pop economics, or neoclassical economics, any behavior that might seem good, or generous (for example, not maxing out your prices at a popular restaurant) is seen to be damaging of the public good—“unintended consequences” and all that—, while any behavior that might seem mean, or selfish, is actually for the greater good.

Let’s unpack this in five directions, from the perspective of the philosophy of science, the sociology of scientific professions, politics, the logic of rhetoric, and the logic of statistics....

Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science
A quick rule of thumb is that when someone seems to be acting like a jerk, an economist will defend the behavior as being the essence of morality, but when someone seems to be doing something nice, an economist will raise the bar and argue that he’s not being nice at all.
Andrew Gelman | Professor of Statistics and Political Science and Director of the Applied Statistics Center, Columbia University

Sputnik — Society Should 'Filter' Information Based on Moral Principles - Putin

Putin puts his finger on a key issue without naming explicitly.

This is the classical question about what it means to be a good person in a good society.

Under Anglo-American liberalism, this question is not to be asked because the market is the arbiter of truth and value equates to prices. In this view, culture is based on utilitarianism, with its stimulus-response model of human behavior, and law exists chiefly to provide security and protect private property.

Traditionalism disagrees. In this view, human behavior involves moral responsibility and genuine freedom is impossible without moral responsibility.

Morality is about how people should behave, and law is about how people must and must not behave.

Morality and ethics are evolved culturally, and law is decided institutionally.

Classical conservatism is traditionalist. It looks to tradition for guidance in such matters.

Classical liberalism is rationally based. It looks to reason and evidence for justification.

Classical conservatives generally favor government taking a moral role and exerting moral authority where the need arises owing to conflict of views.

Classical liberals generally hold that this is is not a question for government to answer, although law makers must deal with it in legislating. Reason and evidence should be the guide rather than tradition and custom.

Putin is taking a liberal position for Russia, albeit traditionalist in Western liberal eyes. However, traditionalism and classical conservatism predominate strongly in Russian culture and politics.

Sputnik International
Society Should 'Filter' Information Based on Moral Principles - Putin

Also

It’s up to the creative community to filter tele-and internet content as the government’s influence in this sphere should be reduced to minimum, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday at a meeting with participants in the Tavrida educational youth forum, commenting on an idea of establishing a kind of a filter for television and internet content to reduce aggressive and crime-related information that is adversely impacting the younger generation.

"What is prohibited by law must be outlawed everywhere - both in the internet and in television, and in other mass media," he stressed. "But everything else must be done only by one way - through filtering by the creative community. If the community elaborates a system of moral and ethical filters it would be right. The government’s say in this process should be if not excluded, then minimized. But better excluded."

The president called to "think together on the establishment of such mechanisms." He said he is in contacts with the CEOs of Russia’s leading television channels and with those "who influence this or that way what is going on in the internet" and these people, in his words, understand the situation and "are trying to change it for the better." "It is difficult to do it - to filter information torrents - in the present-day world. There are grounds to fear that such filtration could be ideologized and society would be stripped of the possibility to receive reliable, open and direct information," Putin added.

TASS
Putin says government’s say in filtering info content should be reduced to minimum

David Z. Morris — Mercedes-Benz's Self-Driving Cars Will Choose Passengers’ Lives over Bystanders’

A simple answer to a complex moral question.

In comments published last week by Car and Driver, Mercedes-Benz executive Christoph von Hugo said that the carmaker’s future autonomous cars will save the car’s driver and passengers, even if that means sacrificing the lives of pedestrians, in a situation where those are the only two options.

“If you know you can save at least one person, at least save that one,” von Hugo said at the Paris Motor Show. “Save the one in the car. If all you know for sure is that one death can be prevented, then that’s your first priority.”

Another liberal paradox: There are no pesky moral questions.

Fortune
Mercedes-Benz's Self-Driving Cars Will Choose Passengers’ Lives over Bystanders’
David Z. Morris

Paul Robinson — Double Standards

Another paradox of liberalism.

When do so-called liberals become illiberal and hypocritical in their purported defense of liberalism.

This cuts to the heart of the matter, showing how the liberal West is treading on dangerous ground based on illiberal assumptions and specious argumentation about liberalism and its scope.

Irrussianality
Double Standards (short)
Paul Robinson | Professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa

Compare the editorial page of the Washington Post (under the editorship of neocon Fred Hiatt).

Russian provocations led to the downing of its fighter jet by Turkey

See also Anne Applebaum, How Turkey confounded Putin’s favorite narratives, Washington Post Op Ed.

When nuclear powers see the world oppositely, each viewing itself as occupying the moral high ground, it's only a matter of time until.…

See also

What Paul Robinson is talking about.

Counterpunch

The Ideology of Humanitarian Imperialism

Àngel Ferrero interviews Jean Bricmont, Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Université catholique de Louvain

Sandwichman — The Moral Center of Capitalism and the Cornerstone of the Confederacy

The "measuring rod" of historical "correctness" for school textbooks in the Southern States instructed school boards and libraries to "Reject a book that says the South fought to hold her slaves." These criteria, enforced by state textbook selection committees in the South, became the de facto national norm for the U.S. due to commercial expediency.

So, Reich's question, "what happened to the moral core of capitalism?" can only be answered with a question: "what moral core?"

Econospeak
The Moral Center of Capitalism and the Cornerstone of the Confederacy

Sandwichman

Paul Krugman — Money Makes Crazy

You see, in the conservative worldview, markets aren’t just a useful way to organize the economy; they’re a moral structure: People get paid what they deserve, and what goods cost is what they are truly worth to society.… 

Modern money — consisting of pieces of paper or their digital equivalent that are issued by the Fed, not created by the heroic efforts of entrepreneurs — is an affront to that worldview. Mr. Ryan is on record declaring that his views on monetary policy come from a speech given by one of Ayn Rand’s fictional characters. And what the speaker declares is that money is “the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. ... Paper is a check drawn by legal looters.” 

Once you understand that this is how many conservatives really think, it all falls into place. Of course they predict disaster from monetary expansion, no matter the circumstances. Of course they are undaunted in their views no matter how wrong their predictions have been in the past. Of course they are quick to accuse the Fed of vile motives. From their point of view, monetary policy isn’t really a technical issue, a question of what works; it’s a matter of theology: Printing money is evil.

And the corollary is the gold and silver are virtue.

Paul Krugman gets this very right. It's a moral issue with some people since money and morality are joined at the hip if not synonymous. Which the basis for the double standard that allows those with wealth to follow different rules than those that don't have wealth, moral worth being equated with financial worth.

BTW, notice that Krugman uses the term "modern money."

Economist’s View
Paul Krugman: Money Makes Crazy
Mark Thoma | Professor of Economics, University of Oregon

Kimball Corson — China's Developing Thoughts on Statecraft

A short summary of the Chinese history of statecraft and governance from ancient times to Xi Jinping. This is a should-read unless you are up to date on it already. It's short. I think that Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin are pretty close on this. The US leadership not so much.

 Having studied Chinese martial arts and strategy for some time, I believe that Kimball gets it basically right. Kimball observes that the Chinese integrate various traditions into an ideology and worldview suitable for the contemporary context. Understanding this gives insight into their way of thinking.

Western people tend to adopt a single ideology based on a preferred historical view that they then interpret in contemporary terms. 

This makes Westerners seem simple to the Chinese, and the Chinese "inscrutable" to Westerners. A basic rule of strategy in the martial arts is to understand the opponent so that one knows what he is likely to do, whereas one should be invisible to the opponent, so that he does not know what you are likely to do. Hence, the Chinese have an advantage over Westerners in this regard, since Westerners send signals whereas Chinese don't.

While I am less familiar with Russian strategy, people who are familiar with it say that it is more similar to the Chinese than the Western. Additionally, Vladimir Putin has been a judoka for many years, so he presumably understands this very well.

Wandering the Oceans
China's Developing Thoughts on Statecraft
Kimball Corson

Pew Research Center — About Half See CIA Interrogation Methods as Justified

Following the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on CIA interrogation practices in the period following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, 51% of the public says they think the CIA methods were justified, compared with just 29% who say they were not justified; 20% do not express an opinion. 

The new national survey by the Pew Research Center, conducted Dec. 11-14 among 1,001 adults, finds that amid competing claims over the effectiveness of CIA interrogation methods, 56% believe they provided intelligence that helped prevent terrorist attacks, while just half as many (28%) say they did not provide this type of intelligence.…

Overall, the public expresses the most doubt not about the CIA methods and program itself, but about the Senate committee’s decision to release its report: as many call the decision to publicly release the findings the wrong decision (43%) as the right decision (42%).

Pew Research Center

About Half See CIA Interrogation Methods as Justified

Sectoral Balances In Culture, Not Just Currency. Cheney on Torture, Shame, Disgrace & National Ruin: "I Would Do It Again in a Minute"

(Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

Cheney channels his inner Nero, and Ariel Sharon.

Dick Cheney Promotes Torture As An American Principle (video)

Text version here.

How did we get to this point? Are NeoLiberals the ONLY humans that think that Sectoral Balances apply only to currency - and even then, only when they want them to, for personal gain?
My own son asked me a question about the culture that we want for the USA. As answer, I have to tell him that I am ashamed of Dick Cheney, not proud.

Jerrit: "The short version is that he was questioned about the innocent victims of the CIA rendition program, some of whom died, and said he was more concerned with the guilty ones who we mistakenly let free. 

I was stunned. Isn't there an opposite quote from either Jefferson or Franklin? I was thinking it's one thing to have such a thought if you're a bitter, spiteful person, but another level of brazen, insensitive sociopathy to say it on national TV."

An honest answer isn't long in coming, if we actually are honest.

"Yup."

People that knew Cheney personally have said that he was always that way.

There's an immediate, follow-up question. What has gone horribly wrong with our policy-staff selection process, that sociopaths like Cheney even get into politics, let alone promoted to the highest levels of our government?

Yes, we do have a few countering quotes. Quotes that previously led our destiny in an adaptive direction which we could always build upon, and be proud of.

“It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished. 

But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, 'whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection,' and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.”
― John Adams, The Portable John Adams

...

“Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any [prisoner]. . . I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require. Should it extend to death itself, it will not be disproportional to its guilt at such a time and in such a cause… for by such conduct they bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country.” - George Washington, charge to the Northern Expeditionary Force, Sept. 14, 1775

Wasn't security what Dick Cheney SAID he wanted all along?

You have to wonder whose security he was really looking out for. Certainly not our security, in aggregate.

If we can't select people guiding us to a better/faster/leaner cultural Adaptive Rate than our recent policy actions, then there are some pieces missing from our culture's current adaptive processes. George Washington had it right.

Dick Cheney can't procure security by practicing treason.

People like Cheney showing up in our history are a sure sign of cultural decline and cultural death. He'll be linked in our history the same way Nero & the fall of Rome were.

When it comes to an argument between Dick Cheney, versus George Washington AND John Adams, I'll go with the Founders, every time.

While Cheney pontificates on his personal, faux morality, his own immorality is plain to see.

Would YOU elect Cheney again, in a minute?

Robert Skidelsky — The Moral Economy of Debt

The moral of the tale is not, as Polonius instructed his son Laertes, “neither a borrower nor a lender be.” Without both, humanity might still be living in caves. Rather, we need to limit the supply of and demand for credit to what the economy is capable of producing. How to do this and maintain freedom of enterprise is one of the great unsettled questions of political economy.

Project Syndicate
The Moral Economy of Debt
Robert Skidelsky, Professor Emeritus of Political Economy at Warwick University and a fellow of the British Academy in history and economics, is a member of the British House of Lords

Bill Black — Gary Becker’s Imperialistic Blunders about Crime

This is the fourth installment of my series of articles about the absurdity of the Swedish Central Bank’s selection of Gary Becker for its Prize in 1992 on the basis of his embarrassing imperialistic forays into other disciplines.  One of the forays the Swedish Central Bank cited was Becker’s work on crime.  Becker was a terrible criminologist, just as he embarrassed himself in his related work on families, “human capital,” and discrimination.  He may have done the most damage in the field of criminology because he, and his disciples, influenced harmful policy changes.  As I have explained in earlier articles in this series, parents were far smarter than Swedish Central Bankers.  American parents ignored his advice that it was “optimal” not to educate girls.  Conservative politicians involved in setting our policies about crime, sadly, loved Becker’s ideas.

New Economic Perspectives
Gary Becker’s Imperialistic Blunders about Crime
William K. Black | Associate Professor of Economics and Law, UMKC

Chris Mooney — Surprise: Liberals Are Just as Morally Righteous as Conservatives

Like George Lakoff has been saying. Liberals need to lead with moral arguments as conservative do, instead of leading with reasoned argument. The heart trumps the head in persuasion. Save reasoning for justification of moral argument.

...much research has suggested that the basic moral systems of the left and the right are very different. If you follow George Lakoff, liberals have a "nurturant parent" morality, centered on caring and empathy, as opposed to conservatives' "strict father" morality, centered on rules and obedience. If you follow Jonathan Haidt, meanwhile, then liberals feel strong moral convictions about issues involving harm and fairness, whereas conservatives root their morality in authority, tribalism, and even emotions of disgust.

There's no reason to doubt that these differences are real. But the new study suggests that in spite of them, both the left and the right can get very fired up about politics. And when they let their deep-seated moral emotions drive their political views, they may do so with equal zeal.

Mother Jones
Surprise: Liberals Are Just as Morally Righteous as Conservatives
Chris Mooney

Video: "Christian Debate?" About the Morality of Nominal Sophistry

(Commentary by Roger Erickson)

Data is meaningless without context. So before viewing the video below, please consider it's context, and the parameters which allow us to assess REAL vs only nominal success in a given context.

Many have heard of the origins of the phenomenon named "sophistry" by the Greeks.

2300 years ago, Greeks noting and naming the structure of language, immediately also noticed the fluidity and gradual change of what they named grammar, vocabulary, semantics and sophistry.

Semantic plasticity - the function of letting the same word imply different things in different contexts or usage patterns - allows a relatively small number of words to describe an unlimited set of concepts, when specified by context, word order, or many other linguistic tools (prefixes, suffixes, and noun/verb/other variants).

Sophistry was one, early form of humor noted, used and abused by various people. It use is described in the dialogues of Socrates.

"Is that YOUR dog?" 'Yes.'
"And is YOUR dog a mother?" 'Yes, she has puppies.'
"Then that dog is YOUR mother!" :)     Socrates noted two general classes of responses.
      Intelligent people: '[Greek equivalent of "bug off."]'
      Naive youth: "Oh my gosh. My dog is my mother!" Fear. Panic.

This brings up a moral dilemma. Or does it?

Maybe not in the same way for all people. The early sophists were soon reviled, for their irritating habit of practicing and refining ancient methods for confusing, dividing and 'conquering' naive targets, so that they could be more easily tricking into being the object of ridicule. Worse, sophists were soon followed by others who refined their methods of cheating at wagers, or even robbing people. Sophistry has long been associated with subterfuge, propaganda, and looting.

So, is it immoral for a person to have a dog as "their" mother? What if they own multiple dogs with puppies? How immoral is it to have multiple mothers, and that they are all dogs? :(

Or is this all a lot of data, and semantic descriptors, uselessly applied completely out of context, and therefore contravening a basic, hierarchical rule of language utilization ... i.e., that it be applied to orient to REAL, not just imaginary, nominal or nonexistent scenarios?


Let's take another example.

"Is that YOUR fiat currency?" 'Yes.'
"And in purely nominal, double-entry accounting ... fiat currency creation has to be balanced with an equal entry labeled, purely for form, a 'deficit' or 'debt?' " 'Yes.'
"Then that nominal metric is YOUR real debt!" :)

Just like with Socrates, we're seeing two general classes of responses.
   Intelligent people: '[Get lost.]'
   Naive people unaware of basic banking operations: "Oh my gosh! Our nation is in DEBT!!!' Fear. Panic

Is it only nominally immoral for a population to have a purely semantic 'debt' to itself? What if that population grows AND the transaction rate of each resident increases! Is it immoral to allow increasing use of nominal or fiat measuring units for our growing populace to denominate necessary transactions with - i.e., an increasing volume of fiat currency?

Or is the only functional immorality that of an electorate leaving itself unaware of basic operations, unable to discriminate sophistry from functional semantics, and flat out unaware of actual context?

Now, please watch this video and the 2nd link, to see how it is promoted. Then please comment below.

"Christian" Debate About the Morality of Nominal Sophistry

Government Debt is 'Idolatry,' Hurts the Poor, Future Generations, Christian Panelists Argue

The immediate issue here is confusion over the dual roles of any currency system, and conflating two separate needs.

1) denominating any and all, unpredictably needed transactions, WHENEVER they need to be denominated (tempo is paramount for group agility)

2) short term vs long term stable store of value. (Value is ultimately dictated by context, not by denominating units.)

The deeper issue is basic need to maintain situational awareness, as the threshold for survival of a functioning democracy.

Since tempo is critically important, we really need to address our electorate's situational awareness, ASAP - before we're robbed again, or confused and divided enough to be conquered? What else could be more important for National Security?

Chris Mooney — 6 Surprising Scientific Findings About Good and Evil

Harvard's Joshua Greene on the evolution of morality—and why humanity may, objectively, be getting better in the long run.

AlterNet
6 Surprising Scientific Findings About Good and Evil
Chris Mooney | Mother Jones

Chris Dillow — Building Character

The fact that we are discussing this itself shows the depth of the problem. Aristotle decided this issue in the Nichomachean Ethics, summarizing the classical education of Aristotle's day. It's the staple of virtue ethics based on the progressive unfolding of excellence (Ancient Greek: ἀρετή). 

Virtue ethics was not only the key classical teaching about development in the West but also in China and India, and judging from what we know of tribal cultures, there as well. 

In tribal cultures the hero is the great distributor rather than the great accumulator. Recall the scene in Lawrence of Arabia where the shaykh says to Lawrence, "I am a river unto my people," and the tribe cheers wildly.

Virtue ethics and deontological (rule-based) ethics overlap in many cases, since cultural institutions make arrangements though rules, customs, and conventions for education based on building character. 

Since the Golden Rule (reciprocity) is the most predominant deontological principle historically, the overlap with virtue ethics should be evident. Human beings are social animals. Hence, reciprocity, fairness and justice are key elements in character. All parents — or almost all parents anyway — teach their children sharing as part of the socialization process.

Consequentialism was considered to follow from developing excellence since a person of character would act in accord with the good of all and not chiefly out of self-interest. However, some versions of consequentialism are based on pursuit of self-interest. Classical authors like Aristotle addressed and rejected such arguments, showing why the pursuit of fame, fortune, power or pleasure cannot be considered the summum bonum.

BTW, without understanding this debate over approaches to ethics it is difficult to critique the contemporary assumption of utility maximization based on so-called rationality fully. It has been dismissed by the wise for ages as puerile and leading to bad character.

“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question.”
― John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism

Stumbling and Mumbling
Building Character
Chris Dillow | Investors Chronicle

Greg Mankiw — The Pope's Rhetoric

Greg Mankiw weighs in on Evangelii Guadium — quite predictably, of course. You don't need to read it to know how he feels: "Capitalism" has raised global GDP more than any alternative ever did, so this alone excuses anything else that happened. Even Karl Marx attributed that positive attribute to capitalism, while documenting its excesses. Mankiw argues to the contrary that free market capitalism has led to economic growth and economic growth has resulted in a more moral society.

Greg Mankiw's Blog

The Pope's Rhetoric

N. Gregory Mankiw | Professor of Economics at Harvard University

George Lakoff — The New York Times Uncovers Conservative Attacks and Then Prints One; Both Are on the Front Page

As the great linguist Charles Fillmore discovered in 1975, all words are cognitively defined relative to conceptual "frames" -- structures we all use to think all the time. Frames don't float in the air; they are neural circuits in our brains. Frames in politics are not neutral; they reflect an underlying value system. That means that language in politics is not neutral. Political words do not just pick out something in the world. They reflect value-based frames. If you successfully frame public discourse, you win the debate. 

A common neuroscience estimate is that about 98 percent of thought is unconscious and automatic, carried out by the neural system. Daniel Kahneman has since brought frame-based unconscious thought into the public arena in what he has called "System 1 thinking." Since frames carry value-based inferences with them, successfully framing public discourse means getting the public to adopt your values, and hence winning over the public by unconscious brain change, not by open discussion of the values inherent in the frames and the values that undergird the frames....

The reason that those of us in the cognitive and brain sciences write so passionately about framing issues is that unconscious thought and framing are not generally understood -- especially in progressive circles. Most progressives who went to college studied what is called Enlightenment reason, a theory of reason coming from Descartes around 1650 -- and which was historically important in 1650. The Cartesian theory of how reason works has since been largely disproved in the cognitive and brain sciences.

The Cartesian theory assumes that all thought is conscious, that it is literal (that is, it fits the world directly and uses no frame-based or metaphorical thought), that reason uses a form of mathematical logic (not frame-based logic or metaphorical logic), and that words are neutral and fit the world directly. Many liberal economists have been trained in this mode of thought and assume that the language used in economic theory is neutral and just fits the world as it is. They are usually not trained in frame semantics, cognitive linguistics, and related fields. The same is often true of liberal journalists as well. Both often miss the fact that conservatives have successfully reframed economic terms to fit their values, and that the economic terms in public discourse no longer mean what they do in economics classes.

Part of what the Cartesian theory of reason misses is the real brain mechanism that allows the conservative communication theory to be effective. By framing language to fit conservative values and by getting their framing of the language to dominate public debate, conservatives change the public's brains by the following mechanism. When a frame circuit is activated in the brain, its synapses are strengthened. This means that the probability of future activation is raised and probability of the frame becoming permanent in the brain is raised. Whenever a word defined by that frame is used, the frame is activated and strengthened. When conservatives successfully reframe a word in public discourse, that word activates conservative frames and with those frames, the conservative value system on which the frames are based. When progressives naively use conservatively reframed words, they help the conservative cause by strengthening the conservative value system in the brains of the public.

Liberals, in adhering to the old Cartesian theory of reason, will not be aware of their own unconscious values, will take then for granted, and will think that all they have to do is state the facts and the public will be convinced rationally. The facts are crucial, but they need to framed in moral terms to make moral sense and a moral impact....

The word at issue is "redistribution." The subject matter is the flow of wealth in the society and what it should be. This is a fundamentally moral issue, and the major political framings reflect two different moral views of democracy itself....

The Huffington Post
The New York Times Uncovers Conservative Attacks and Then Prints One; Both Are on the Front Page
George Lakoff | Goldman Distinguished Professor Of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at UC Berkeley

It used to be called "brainwashing" in the Fifties. Now it is called public relations and marketing & advertising.

Meredith Bennett-Smith — Can Exposure To Science Boost Morality? Maybe So, New Study Suggests

The researchers found that while there was no relationship between the students' religious affiliation and their answers, “those who reported greater belief in science rated the date rape as more wrong," according to the study....

"Across studies, we found that believing in science and thinking about science led to more morally normative outcomes," Ma-Kellams told HuffPost Science....

"Many like to think of science as a neutral, purely objective force," she said. "But in reality, the things what we study and investigate and think about influence our very conceptions of right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable, without us necessarily realizing it."

The Huffington Post
Can Exposure To Science Boost Morality? Maybe So, New Study Suggests
Meredith Bennett-Smith

Robert Jensen — American Intellectuals' Widespread Failure to Stand Up to Billionaires and Authoritarian Power

The majority of intellectual work in the U.S. is actually helping to prop up our unjust distribution of wealth and power....

My argument is that if we take seriously the basic moral principles at the core of modern philosophical and theological systems we claim to believe in, in light of the data on social injustice and the serious threats to ecological sustainability, these questions should be central in the work of intellectuals. Based on my experience as a journalist, professor, and political activist—a life in which I have always worked in intellectual professions and interacted with many other intellectuals in various settings—I have learned that the story is complicated but that a sharp critique of intellectuals as a social formation is warranted.

AlterNet
American Intellectuals' Widespread Failure to Stand Up to Billionaires and Authoritarian Power
Robert Jensen | Associate Professor in the School of Journalism and Director of the Senior Fellows Honors Program of the College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin

I'm not sure that the problem is with the lack of public intellectuals speaking out but rather of their opportunity to be heard in a propagandistic media environment that biases the debate by excluding or marginalizing opposing views. Without the Internet most of these voices would go almost completely unheard. But owing to the selective structure of the Internet, most political communication is preaching to the choir in stead of public debate. Public debate in national media is largely controlled by vested interests where "fair and balanced" is a meaningless slogan at best and for the most part is double-speak.

See also Andrew Leonard, Would We Be Better Off Without the Internet? at Alternet and Robert J. Samuelson, Beware the Internet and the danger of cyberattacks, at the Washington Post.

Samuelson:

If I could, I would repeal the Internet. It is the technological marvel of the age, but it is not — as most people imagine — a symbol of progress. Just the opposite. We would be better off without it. I grant its astonishing capabilities.... But the Internet’s benefits are relatively modest compared with previous transformative technologies, and it brings with it a terrifying danger: cyberwar....

By cyberwarfare, I mean the capacity of groups — whether nations or not — to attack, disrupt and possibly destroy the institutions and networks that underpin everyday life.... So much depends on the Internet that its vulnerability to sabotage invites doomsday visions of the breakdown of order and trust.