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Apparently, many liberals were disappointed in the administration’s performance before the Supreme Court. They felt that the government’s lawyer, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, did not respond effectively to the challenges of some of the conservative justices.

The editor of Commentary, John Podhoretz, offered an explanation on his magazine’s blog. “American liberals,” he wrote, “know their own language, but they don’t know the language of their ideological and partisan opposite numbers. ... Conservatives speak liberal, but for liberals in the United States, conservatism might as well be Esperanto.”

I have argued this point for many years. In my book to be published later this month ("Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph"), I argue that the left is a victim of its own brainwash. How could they not be? All they hear, see and read from childhood on, from elementary school through graduate school, on TV and in the movies, are leftist ideas.

Yet this is not true for conservatives. One would have to grow up in a silent monastery not to be regularly exposed to liberal and leftist ideas.

For 30 years, I have had leading left-wing thinkers on my radio show, and I continue to be shocked at their lack of awareness of conservative arguments. About two years ago, for example, I asked one of the most powerful Democratic members of Congress -- a major force behind every tax increase -- what tax rate he thought might be too high. He replied that he had not given it thought. I asked a leading liberal writer who maintained that all American wars since World War II had been imperialist if he thought the Korean War was also imperialistic. He replied that he didn’t know enough about that war to respond.

After interviewing leftists, liberal listeners frequently ask me why I don’t invite the best liberals on to my show.

The answer is that I have had some of the best liberals on my show. They just don’t tend to do well when challenged by thoughtful conservatives.

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In regard to your post conservatives are also for the most part indoctrinated from birth. The vast majority of people tend to align politically or religiously with their parents and how they were raised. That is why we so often see southern states vote conservative and northern states vote liberally.

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Liberals just aren’t as good as conservatives and libertarians at understanding how their opponents think. Haidt helped conduct research that asked respondents to fill out questionnaires about political narratives—first responding based on their own beliefs, but then responding as if trying to mimic the beliefs of their political opponents. “The results,” he writes in the May issue of Reason, “were clear and consistent.” Moderates and conservatives were the most able to think like their liberal political opponents. “Liberals,” he reports, “were the least accurate, especially those who describe themselves as ‘very liberal.’”

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CBS's Mark Knoller tweets the following paraphrase of a related remark: "Pres Obama confident health care law willl [sic] be upheld. Says that view shared by 'a whole lot' of law profs, academics and judges."

This may be the first-ever (if unwitting) presidential acknowledgment of the Taranto Principle, which holds that the liberal media work against the interests of liberal politicians by misleading them into thinking that "everybody" (or "all thinking people") sees the world the way they do. The principle was very much in evidence in the commentary late last week about the left's shocked reaction to the Supreme Court's taking the arguments against ObamaCare seriously:

Rand Simberg, PJMedia.com: "Having seen the transcripts of Tuesday's hearing before the Supreme Court of the United States, I can only conclude that such a concept--testing their arguments against those of their political opponents--not only never occurred to the solicitor general or his defenders in the media, but that the very notion that their arguments had any flaws never crossed their minds."

Peter Suderman, Reason.com: "What can explain liberals' widespread failure to anticipate the Court's wariness of the mandate? Research conducted by University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt suggests one possible answer: Liberals just aren't as good as conservatives and libertarians at understanding how their opponents think."

John Podhoretz, New York Post: "The panicked reception in the mainstream media of the three-day Supreme Court health-care marathon is a delightful reminder of the nearly impenetrable parochialism of American liberals. They're so convinced of their own correctness--and so determined to believe conservatives are either a) corrupt, b) stupid or c) deluded--that they find themselves repeatedly astonished to discover conservatives are in fact capable of a) advancing and defending their own powerful arguments, b) effectively countering weak liberal arguments and c) exposing the soft underbelly of liberal self-satisfaction as they do so."

Chris Matthews, NBC: "Were you surprised that this was even a prospect? I was totally unprepared because of the way people talked. I never heard it discussed politically as a prospect, that they actually might get his [Obama] major achievement just ripped off the books. I have a broad section of friends and colleagues and not one of them saw this coming. Not my co-workers like Rachel Maddow, Ed Schultz, and Lawrence O'Donnell. My old boss Jimmy Carter? Not one of them thought the individual mandate could be ruled as anything but constitutional. I'm flabbergasted!" (Update: This appears to be an April Fool's joke from the Media Research Center.)

And the justices haven't even made a decision about ObamaCare yet. The left is shocked that the justices are so much as taking the argument seriously. The chief response seems to be to attempt to intimidate them by way of a pre-emptive smear. Thus the New York Times editorializes:

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If the conservatives decide that they can sidestep the Constitution to negate Congress's choices on crucial national policies [i.e., if they decide the ObamaCare individual mandate is unconstitutional], the court's legitimacy ... will pay a very heavy price. Chief Justice Roberts has the opportunity to avoid this disastrous outcome by forging even a narrow ruling to uphold the mandate and the rest of the law. A split court striking down the act will be declaring itself virtually unfettered by the law. And if that happens along party lines, with five Republican-appointed justices supporting the challenge led by 26 Republican governors, the court will mark itself as driven by politics.

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There are two wonderful ironies here. ...

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More than 130,000 subjects (as of 2011) have provided answers, which have been categorized according to the "moral foundations" that Mr. Haidt and his collaborators consider the best candidates for "universal cognitive modules"—that is, the intuitive ideas that all cultures draw upon for their ethical norms. These moral foundations fall under six broad headings: care, fairness, liberty, loyalty, authority and sanctity.

What Mr. Haidt has found is that all Americans—left, right and center—are strongly (if not equally) moved by the first three moral foundations. Both liberals and conservatives "care" when they see harm, but liberals care more: They are more disturbed by suffering and violence. Conservatives are more concerned with fairness, defined as getting what you deserve. And both sides champion liberty, though they have very different notions of the likeliest oppressors.

Mr. Haidt's research points to sharp divisions only with the last three moral foundations: loyalty, authority and sanctity. As he writes, "liberals are ambivalent about these foundations at best, whereas social conservatives embrace them." In these moral precincts, family, country and tradition take precedence over the individual. Mr. Haidt illustrates them with photos of a "United We Stand" license plate and a church billboard declaring "God's in charge—so shut up!" Against such images he juxtaposes a promotional offer from the left-wing Nation magazine inviting readers to become members of "Insubordi(Nation)."

Mr. Haidt does not mean to suggest that American conservatives have gotten it right in their particular (and sometimes contradictory) mix of the six moral foundations. But he insists that liberals will never win the confidence of a broad cross section of Americans if they cannot develop their own vocabulary of loyalty, authority and sanctity.

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I watched some of the video you linked. I love the TED stuff btw. I am a conservative, but in everything the guy said in the video I am more like the liberals than conservatives. Every. Single. Thing. Know what that says to me? That the subject is more complicated than you, or Jonathan Haidt either realize or are admitting.

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I think the problem is Liberals never consider Conservative arguments because they dismiss them out of hand. They always think they are right and Conservatives are always wrong.

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the justices haven't even made a decision about ObamaCare yet. The left is shocked that the justices are so much as taking the argument seriously. The chief response seems to be to attempt to intimidate them by way of a pre-emptive smear.

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If the conservatives decide that they can sidestep the Constitution to negate Congress's choices on crucial national policies [i.e., if they decide the ObamaCare individual mandate is unconstitutional], the court's legitimacy ... will pay a very heavy price. Chief Justice Roberts has the opportunity to avoid this disastrous outcome by forging even a narrow ruling to uphold the mandate and the rest of the law. A split court striking down the act will be declaring itself virtually unfettered by the law. And if that happens along party lines, with five Republican-appointed justices supporting the challenge led by 26 Republican governors, the court will mark itself as driven by politics.

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A split court striking down the act will be declaring itself virtually unfettered by the law.

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Liberals just aren’t as good as conservatives and libertarians at understanding how their opponents think.

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A split court striking down the act will be declaring itself virtually unfettered by the law.

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its a mistake of the OP to make the claim that the right understands the left. they dont.

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Mr. Haidt does not mean to suggest that American conservatives have gotten it right in their particular (and sometimes contradictory) mix of the six moral foundations. But he insists that liberals will never win the confidence of a broad cross section of Americans if they cannot develop their own vocabulary of loyalty, authority and sanctity.

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Fenton's post...actual research says you're wrong otto...sorry.

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part of the reason why I understand them so well.

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