Psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues in The Righteous Mind that people of the Left suffer from a psychological deficiency, an anemia in a key dimension of moral sensibility. They don’t experience the same concerns for “sanctity” that people across cultures do, he claims. Let’s call it, “Sanctity Deficiency Disorder.”
Sanctity has to do with the sacred, so the accusation plays into a temptation on the Right to dismiss people on the Left as holding nothing sacred. The SDD diagnosis, I argue, is profoundly wrong—the sacred and the desire for sanctity drive contemporary Left politics. Seeing how will help us understand the “social justice cleavage,” which exists not only between Left and Right, but also within the Left.
Read Full Article »