The Intolerance of those Supposedly Upset over It

[Philip]

http://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2017/feb ... jesus-name

Make sure to watch the video on the page!

[edwardmurphy]

I was thinking that I could find some crazy left-wing equivalents of the sites you guys regularly cite and make a bunch of posts like this one, but I couldn't find any. Go figure...

[RickD]

I'm sure that even Mr. Ed with his blinders on, can see the irony.

[Philip]

Ed: I could find some crazy left-wing equivalents of the sites you guys regularly cite and make a bunch of posts like this one

It's not that there aren't examples of right-wing loonies similarly foaming at the mouth and being rude and obnoxious. The point is that such behavior is wrong and hypocritical by ANYONE displaying such obnoxious mob-like behavior. But it is interesting that so many get deeply offended over the name of "Jesus." Wonder if the fellow had prayed in the name of Allah, what the reaction would have been? If someone prays for me a positive prayer in the name of Allah, I would take that as a person who cares about my well-being, who is seeking good things as he sees a power to do so - even though I don't recognize his false deity, I realize he doesn't have my understandings or beliefs. If the deity doesn't exist, it's as if the prayer were offered to a stone wall.

[edwardmurphy]

Some people, correctly, think that it's inappropriate to open a public hearing with a Christian prayer. I can't say I care personally, but others do.

And as long as we're hypothesizing about the non-existent possibility of such a meeting opening with a Muslim prayer, my guess is that the Christians who are freaking out about the protesters would freak out about that instead. Furthermore, their freakout would be represented as appropriate by the conservative punditry.

And Rick, i have no blinders and there is no irony. The claim that there's an equivalency between the mainstream media and the conservative punditry is a false one. The Post, Times, and so forth might make mistakes, but they at least TRY to get the facts and report them accurately. Organizations like Breitbart have a different agenda. They have a narrative that they're looking to advance and they look high and low for stories that support it while ignoring anything that doesn't. I don't know that they overtly lie that often, but they lie by omission constantly. If you can't see the difference then you're the one with the blinders.

[RickD]

Of course there's irony!

The left is supposed to be the "tolerant" side of the political spectrum, except when tolerance would mean letting those who disagree with them, have their say.

[PaulSacramento]

Well, moral outrage is self serving so....
https://reason.com/blog/2017/03/01/mora ... lf-serving

To test this guilt-to-outrage-to-moral-reaffirmation premise, Rothschild and Keefer conducted five separate studies assessing the relationships between anger, empathy, identity, individual and collective guilt, self perception, and the expression of moral outrage.

For each study, a new group of respondents (solicited through Amazon's Mechanical Turk program) were presented with a fabricated news article about either labor exploitation in developing countries or climate change. For studies using the climate-change article, half of participants read that the biggest driver of man-made climate change was American consumers, while the others read that Chinese consumers were most to blame. With the labor exploitation article, participants in one study were primed to think about small ways in which they might be contributing to child labor, labor trafficking, and poor working conditions in "sweatshops"; in another, they learned about poor conditions in factories making Apple products and the company's failure to stop this. After exposure to their respective articles, study participants were given a series of short surveys and exercises to assess their levels of things like personal guilt, collective guilt, anger at third parties ("multinational corporations," "international oil companies") involved in the environmental destruction/labor exploitation, desire to see someone punished, and belief in personal moral standing, as well as baseline beliefs about the topics in question and positive or negative affect. Here's the gist of Rothschild and Keefer's findings:

Triggering feelings of personal culpability for a problem increases moral outrage at a third-party target. For instance, respondents who read that Americans are the biggest consumer drivers of climate change "reported significantly higher levels of outrage at the environmental destruction" caused by "multinational oil corporations" than did the respondents who read that Chinese consumers were most to blame.
The more guilt over one's own potential complicity, the more desire "to punish a third-party through increased moral outrage at that target." For instance, participants in study one read about sweatshop labor exploitation, rated their own identification with common consumer practices that allegedly contribute, then rated their level of anger at "international corporations" who perpetuate the exploitative system and desire to punish these entities. The results showed that increased guilt "predicted increased punitiveness toward a third-party harm-doer due to increased moral outrage at the target."
Having the opportunity to express outrage at a third-party decreased guilt in people threatened through "ingroup immorality." Study participants who read that Americans were the biggest drivers of man-made climate change showed significantly higher guilt scores than those who read the blame-China article when they weren't given an opportunity to express anger at or assign blame to a third-party. However, having this opportunity to rage against hypothetical corporations led respondents who read the blame-America story to express significantly lower levels of guilt than the China group. Respondents who read that Chinese consumers were to blame had similar guilt levels regardless of whether they had the opportunity to express moral outrage.
"The opportunity to express moral outrage at corporate harm-doers" inflated participants perception of personal morality. Asked to rate their own moral character after reading the article blaming Americans for climate change, respondents saw themselves as having "significantly lower personal moral character" than those who read the blame-China article—that is, when they weren't given an out in the form of third-party blame. Respondents in the America-shaming group wound up with similar levels of moral pride as the China control group when they were first asked to rate the level of blame deserved by various corporate actors and their personal level of anger at these groups. In both this and a similar study using the labor-exploitation article, "the opportunity to express moral outrage at corporate harm-doing (vs. not) led to significantly higher personal moral character ratings," the authors found.
Guilt-induced moral outrage was lessened when people could assert their goodness through alternative means, "even in an unrelated context." Study five used the labor exploitation article, asked all participants questions to assess their level of "collective guilt" (i.e., "feelings of guilt for the harm caused by one's own group") about the situation, then gave them an article about horrific conditions at Apple product factories. After that, a control group was given a neutral exercise, while others were asked to briefly describe what made them a good and decent person; both exercises were followed by an assessment of empathy and moral outrage. The researchers found that for those with high collective-guilt levels, having the chance to assert their moral goodness first led to less moral outrage at corporations. But when the high-collective-guilt folks were given the neutral exercise and couldn't assert they were good people, they wound up with more moral outrage at third parties. Meanwhile, for those low in collective guilt, affirming their own moral goodness first led to marginally more moral outrage at corporations.
These findings held true even accounting for things such as respondents political ideology, general affect, and background feelings about the issues.

Ultimately, the results of Rothschild and Keefer's five studies were "consistent with recent research showing that outgroup-directed moral outrage can be elicited in response to perceived threats to the ingroup's moral status," write the authors. The findings also suggest that "outrage driven by moral identity concerns serves to compensate for the threat of personal or collective immorality" and the cognitive dissonance that it might elicit, and expose a "link between guilt and self-serving expressions of outrage that reflect a kind of 'moral hypocrisy,' or at least a non-moral form of anger with a moral facade."

[edwardmurphy]

Great article, Paul. Just remember to apply the findings all the way across the political spectrum.

[PaulSacramento]

Great article, Paul. Just remember to apply the findings all the way across the political spectrum.

Of course, the double edged sword cuts both ways.

[Stu]

Some people, correctly, think that it's inappropriate to open a public hearing with a Christian prayer. I can't say I care personally, but others do.

And as long as we're hypothesizing about the non-existent possibility of such a meeting opening with a Muslim prayer, my guess is that the Christians who are freaking out about the protesters would freak out about that instead. Furthermore, their freakout would be represented as appropriate by the conservative punditry.

And Rick, i have no blinders and there is no irony. The claim that there's an equivalency between the mainstream media and the conservative punditry is a false one. The Post, Times, and so forth might make mistakes, but they at least TRY to get the facts and report them accurately. Organizations like Breitbart have a different agenda. They have a narrative that they're looking to advance and they look high and low for stories that support it while ignoring anything that doesn't. I don't know that they overtly lie that often, but they lie by omission constantly. If you can't see the difference then you're the one with the blinders.

LOL Narrative you say, you mean like most leftist-leaning media houses. Yes, yes they do.

Former editor reveals how the NYT pushes an agenda, "the narrative," instead of doing journalism

[edwardmurphy]

Wow, look at you. You found a story that seems to support your previously-held position and over-applied it in an attempt to deligitimize all media that isn't right wing punditry. How thoughtful and honest. I respect you more and more each time you post, Stu. You're a deep thinker.

Anyway, that article was garbage, but the one that it took it's information from was interesting. I'm sure that there's a lot of post-election soul searching going on in the media in general right now. They missed the ball in a big way. But that still doesn't make them fake or the enemies of the American people, and there's still not an equivalency between legitimate news outlets and pundits.

[Stu]

If you say so
There are other stories but I'm sure with your blinkers on you'll just come up with more excuses to excuse away such behaviour, because after all the left don't have narratives or bias they just report on the news

[RickD]

If you say so
There are other stories but I'm sure with your blinkers on you'll just come up with more excuses to excuse away such behaviour, because after all the left don't have narratives or bias they just report on the news

"Blinkers on"?

Is ed one of those old people, that drives for miles on the highway, with his blinker on?

Gawd, that's more annoying than anything!!!

[edwardmurphy]

Can't, my car turns them off after a while. Sometimes I'm the guy with a cup of coffee on his roof, though. Cut me some slack already. I've had 3 decent nights of sleep since September 22nd, 2015 and I only got those because I was doped up and recovering from knee surgery.

[RickD]

Can't, my car turns them off after a while. Sometimes I'm the guy with a cup of coffee on his roof, though. Cut me some slack already. I've had 3 decent nights of sleep since September 22nd, 2015 and I only got those because I was doped up and recovering from knee surgery.

Do I dare ask why you haven't slept well in a year and a half?