Civil Politics | Data Science & Psychology

8Nov/12

Bill O’Reilly, Sarah Palin and Paul Krugman need to get out of Maslow’s Basement.

Losing an election is tough and I have immense empathy for those who have a heartfelt vision for their country that was not fulfilled on election day. Most people who care deeply about the election, Democrats and Republicans, do so out of a real desire for the country to do better and it’s unfortunate that [...]

Tagged as: bill o reilly, billionaires, bipartisanship, conservatives, election day, free stuff, liberals, maslow, obama, paul krugman, romney, sarah palin Comments Off

19Oct/12

Be the Bipartisanship you want to see in the World by Supporting our next President

The point of politics is to make people’s lives better. Liberals and conservatives may disagree about how to do that, but despite the heated rhetoric, there are a number of broad goals that most anyone would agree upon. Consider a survey we recently conducted concerning liberal and conservative preferences about the kind of place they [...]

Tagged as: bipartisanship, debt ceiling, demonization, incivility, liberals and conservatives, next presidential election, partisanship Comments Off

22Feb/11

Reagan was a Union Member – Visiting his Library as an exercise in Civil Politics

Yesterday, in a strangely appropriate thing to do for President’s Day weekend, I visited the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. When I first got there, I had this idea that I might need to keep a low profile considering my liberal leanings and when I told a docent there that I was from Venice Beach, I [...]

Tagged as: civility, ronald reagan 1 Comment

17Jan/11

Rush Limbaugh says Civility is the New Censorship

Rush Limbaugh recently talked explicitly about calls for civility in the media, saying that “civility is the new censorship”. In a sense, he is correct, in that when liberals (myself included) talk about civility, we specifically mean people like Limbaugh, whose livelihood is based on demonization of the opposing political viewpoint. I have to admit [...]

Tagged as: civility, incivility, rush limbaugh 6 Comments

11Jan/11

You can’t put out a Fire with Gasoline – A Reaction to reactions to the Giffords Shooting

For the past few months, I have been working with Matt Motyl and Jon Haidt on a website that promotes research based methods for increasing civility in politics. The desire to increase civility in politics is not new, having been parodied as the cliche-d dream of PhD Poli Sci students and recently promoted by Jon [...]

Tagged as: civility, gabriel giffords, incivility, jon stewart 2 Comments

23Nov/10

Does conflict avoidance underlie disproportionate liberal support of civility?

I recently attended a lecture by Vivian Schiller, the CEO of NPR, where an audience member asked her insights about Roger Ailes’ recent assertion (Ailes is CEO of Fox News) that NPR executives “are, of course, Nazis. They have a kind of Nazi attitude. They are the left wing of Nazism. These guys don’t want [...]

Tagged as: civility, jon stewart, partisanship 4 Comments

14Nov/10

Link:Jon Stewart – Rachel Maddow Video on new CivilPolitics.org

I just watched the Jon Stewart-Rachel Maddow interview on MSNBC and here is a link to my commentary on how it relates to some of the academic research on moralistic politics on CivilPolitics.org (plus the embedded video).
http://www.civilpolitics.org/content/jon-stewart-rachel-maddow-show-its-become-tribal
Also, consider joining the new Civil Politics facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Civil-Politicsorg/141092085942360
- Ravi Iyer

Filed under: Links, civil politics No Comments

11Nov/10

Separating Attitudes Toward War from Attitudes Toward Soldiers on Veteran’s Day

Today is Veteran’s Day and I would like to express my profound thanks for the sacrifices that soldier’s make in service to our nation. I may not agree with the decision to go to war in some cases or with the utility of war in general, but soldiers do not make those decisions. Politicians do. [...]

Tagged as: liberals, soldiers, veterans day, war 3 Comments

7Nov/10

The Uncivil Reporting of Civil Elections

I voted on Tuesday. Like many people on this day, one of the highlights was the opportunity to be part of something bigger than myself and cast my vote, in the hopes that whomever is elected, we’ll work together to solve problems and make the world a better place. I actually had a mail ballot, [...]

Tagged as: civility, election day, jon stewart No Comments

21Sep/10

Stewart/Colbert’s Rally to Restore Sanity and the Psychology of Moderates

As someone who is interested in promoting civility and reason in politics, I have been really excited over the past few days by Jon Stewart’s announcement of a Rally to Restore Sanity (“Million Moderate March”), coupled with Stephen Colbert’s satirical “March to Keep Fear Alive”. The below video, where the announcement is made, is well [...]

Tagged as: civility, jon stewart, moral absolutism, partisanship, stephen colbert 4 Comments

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