The other day, I wrote, beginning with a quote from a Mississippi conservative portrayed in Alexandra Pelosi’s short clip as a redneck:

“We would rather go broke and die hungry than to give up our moral beliefs. … I’m gonna stand up for what I believe in even if I go broke doing it.”

Isn’t that a noble sentiment? The idea that you would rather suffer materially to stand up for what you believe is right? Why is that evidence of backwardness? I think it’s heroic, actually. Now, depending on what this guy believes in, it may also be tragic. That is, if the beliefs for which he is willing to suffer are immoral. But if you ask me, this Mississippian who stands ready to endure privation for the sake of principle has more integrity than those who would mock him.

I thought of that guy just now when I read UVA social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s NYT essay about how if you really want to know what motivates voters, don’t follow the money — follow what they believe to be sacred. Excerpt:

Self-interest, political scientists have found, is a surprisingly weak predictor of people’s views on specific issues. Parents of children in public school are not more supportive of government aid to schools than other citizens. People without health insurance are not more likely to favor government-provided health insurance than are people who are fully insured.

Despite what you might have learned in Economics 101, people aren’t always selfish. In politics, they’re more often groupish. When people feel that a group they value — be it racial, religious, regional or ideological — is under attack, they rally to its defense, even at some cost to themselves. We evolved to be tribal, and politics is a competition among coalitions of tribes.

The key to understanding tribal behavior is not money, it’s sacredness. The great trick that humans developed at some point in the last few hundred thousand years is the ability to circle around a tree, rock, ancestor, flag, book or god, and then treat that thing as sacred. People who worship the same idol can trust one another, work as a team and prevail over less cohesive groups. So if you want to understand politics, and especially our divisive culture wars, you must follow the sacredness.

A good way to follow the sacredness is to listen to the stories that each tribe tells about itself and the larger nation.

Read the whole thing.  I like especially his analysis of how Reagan created a compelling conservative narrative that managed to unite social conservatives and libertarians against liberals. The important thing to take away from this essay is the idea that the culture war is not a pseudo-war, nor is it something waged only by one side. Both sides have their sacred objects and sacred principles. The Mississippi redneck perfectly articulated what Haidt is trying to explain. I am certain you could find on the left people who would rather go broke and die hungry than compromise on some belief that’s sacred to them. I find it a source of constant irritation to find people on the left who believe that the culture war is some kind of phony scheme cooked up to bamboozle right-wing yokels out of voting their interest. They fail to see that people on the right who vote on “values” rather than economics have direct counterparts on the left, some of whom were the object of the quip that Jews live like Episcopalians but vote like Puerto Ricans. Nowadays, in much of the country, Episcopalians live like Episcopalians but vote like Puerto Ricans.