This is a bit of a flippant piece. Steven Pinker has a much better analysis. He talks about the 5 realms of morality, and how they play into political life (ref

This is a bit of a flippant piece. Steven Pinker has a much better analysis. He talks about the 5 realms of morality, and how they play into political life (referenced in the blank slate, and our better angels, but i'll link to you here in an NYT article): http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/magazine/13Psychology-t.html http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/magazine/13Psychology-t.ht... >The exact number of themes depends on whether you’re a lumper or a splitter, but Haidt counts five — harm, fairness, community (or group loyalty), authority and purity — and suggests that they are the primary colors of our moral sense. Not only do they keep reappearing in cross-cultural surveys, but each one tugs on the moral intuitions of people in our own culture. The politics comes in here: >The ranking and placement of moral spheres also divides the cultures of liberals and conservatives in the United States. Many bones of contention, like homosexuality, atheism and one-parent families from the right, or racial imbalances, sweatshops and executive pay from the left, reflect different weightings of the spheres. In a large Web survey, Haidt found that liberals put a lopsided moral weight on harm and fairness while playing down group loyalty, authority and purity. Conservatives instead place a moderately high weight on all five. It’s not surprising that each side thinks it is driven by lofty ethical values and that the other side is base and unprincipled. I think this is a better illustration of how the topic should be approached then just talking about the politics.