Bloomberg reports that then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson quietly tipped off elite hedge fund managers about his plans regarding Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — this, hours after he told the public, via an interview with The New York Times, that Treasury would be doing something different. Bloomberg:

At the Eton Park meeting, he sent a different message, according to a fund manager who attended. Over sandwiches and pasta salad, he delivered that information to a group of men capable of profiting from any disclosure.

Around the conference room table were a dozen or so hedge- fund managers and other Wall Street executives — at least five of them alumni of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), of which Paulson was chief executive officer and chairman from 1999 to 2006. In addition to Eton Park founder Eric Mindich, they included such boldface names as Lone Pine Capital LLC founder Stephen Mandel, Dinakar Singh of TPG-Axon Capital Management LP and Daniel Och of Och-Ziff Capital Management Group LLC.

After a perfunctory discussion of the market turmoil, the fund manager says, the discussion turned to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Paulson said he had erred by not punishing Bear Stearns shareholders more severely. The secretary, then 62, went on to describe a possible scenario for placing Fannie and Freddie into “conservatorship” — a government seizure designed to allow the firms to continue operations despite heavy losses in the mortgage markets.

Bloomberg’s source, who was present, says he was “shocked” that Paulson would disclose such information, given that those fund managers present would have the opportunity to trade on insider information. More:

There’s no evidence that they did so after the meeting; tracking firm-specific short stock sales isn’t possible using public documents.

And law professors say that Paulson himself broke no law by disclosing what amounted to inside information.

Note that first graf: there is no publicly available evidence that they did. The lack of evidence does not mean they didn’t do so, or that they did; it only means that based on what is publicly available, there’s no evidence that it happened. Anyway, what Paulson allegedly did was legal. But was it moral? More:

William Black, associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, can’t understand why Paulson felt impelled to share the Treasury Department’s plan with the fund managers.

“You just never ever do that as a government regulator — transmit nonpublic market information to market participants,” says Black, who’s a former general counsel at the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco. “There were no legitimate reasons for those disclosures.”

Janet Tavakoli, founder of Chicago-based financial consulting firm Tavakoli Structured Finance Inc., says the meeting fits a pattern.

“What is this but crony capitalism?” she asks. “Most people have had their fill of it.”

Felix Salmon points out that this wasn’t the only time Paulson, ex-Goldman Sachs, helped out his buddies from his Treasury post:

When we found out about the Moscow meeting, I asked how on earth Paulson thought such behavior was OK. But now I think he was downright pathological in giving inside information to his old Wall Street buddies. And the crazy thing is that we have no idea how many of these meetings there were, or how long they went on for — the only way that we ever find out about them is when reporters like Sorkin or Bloomberg’s Richard Teitelbaum manage to find a source who was in the meeting and is willing to talk about what happened.

Given that it’s taken two years since the release of Sorkin’s book for the Eton Park meeting to be made public, it’s fair to assume that there were other meetings, too — possibly many others. Paulson was giving inside tips to Wall Street in general, and to Goldman types in particular: exactly the kind of behavior that “Government Sachs” conspiracy theorists have been speculating about for years. Turns out, they were right.

Congress should investigate this. Congress won’t investigate this, especially not if it reverts wholly to the GOP next year, as it probably will. If we didn’t have Pecora hearings in 2009, we’re not going to have them, alas. Unless something even more wicked this way comes, and pretty damn soon.

That’s the implication of an essay by philosopher Howard Kainz in First Things. Kainz discusses the work of several atheist academics whose work endorses, or at least respectfully entertains, arguments in favor of an intelligent designer of the universe. I had heard about Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini (authors of “What Darwin Got Wrong”), but not Bradley Monton. Kainz:

Bradley Monton, in Seeking God in Science: An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design, in contrast to Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini, is not so much concerned with deficiencies in neo-Darwinism, but rather in pointing out unfairness and invalid criticisms of arguments by proponents of ID. Monton maintains he is looking for thetruth, wherever it leads.

Monton’s starting point is the recent trial, Tammy Kitzmiller, et al. v. Dover Area School District, which ended with a decision against a school board in Pennsylvania. The school board wanted to require a disclaimer read to 9th grade biology students, informing students of the existence of ID as an alternative theory regarding evolution. Judge John Jones in 2005, however, ruled against the school board. After hearing expert witnesses on both sides, he concluded that ID is a religious view and not science, and thus cannot be taught in public schools.

The reason given for the “non-scientific” nature of ID was that science had to be restricted to a naturalist methodology, prohibiting any approach or evidence which could bring in the supernatural. Monton considers such a restriction as completely arbitrary, and even offers some thought experiments showing how a supernatural agent could be detected through scientific methods. He mentions with approval some examples of two conversions of atheists to theism, on the basis of scientific evidence: The physicist, Fred Hoyle, whose atheism was “shaken” when he came to the conclusion in 1982 that some “superintellect” had “monkeyed with physics, as well as chemistry and biology”; and the famous philosopher, Anthony Flew, who in 2004 announced that he could no longer remain an atheist, largely because of his study of “fine-tuning” arguments in physics and the resistance of DNA evidence to any naturalistic explanation.

The Monton book has been out for a couple of years, but this is the first I’ve heard of it. I’m intrigued. I confess that I hesitate to dive into any of this because, like 99 percent of the public, I lack the scientific expertise to fairly evaluate the arguments of either side. I am a theist who believes God created the universe. I don’t have a theological problem believing that He did so through natural selection, though if it were to be shown conclusively that there had to have been an element of design, I would simply say, “Of course,” and get on with it. I don’t see a bright line between the natural world and the supernatural world. Because I’m not committed to a fundamentalist, literal reading of Genesis, I don’t feel obliged, as a matter of logic and intellectual integrity, to say that either religion is correct or science is. Science and religion are not the same things, but I can see how, in this particular case, science helps me understand my religious beliefs better. I believe that Truth is One, and that science and religion are two different ways of knowing, but not necessarily contradictory ways of knowing. If you ask me which one is more trustworthy as a guide to answering a particular question, I would say that depends on the question — though it’s entirely possible that one way of knowing, while being less suitable as a guide to an answer, may still shed important light on the answer.

Now, on the ID controversy, I wish I had more confidence in my ability to parse through the arguments on either side, but I find that I’m reduced to the same condition that most of us are: having to take it on authority that this or that position is correct. It is very, very difficult as well to filter out confirmation bias, especially on such an emotionally charged topic. As neuroscience has shown, we are far more likely to credit authorities who confirm what we already believe, or wish to believe. To be clear, this doesn’t make the authority incorrect! I may wish to believe that chewing bubble gum cures cancer, but I would be a fool to believe the doctor who tells me that this is true over a doctor who says it’s nonsense. Still, we seem to be hard-wired for confirmation bias. Mercier & Sperber hypothesize (scientific paper here) that when we think we’re reasoning, we may actually be simply marshaling arguments to confirm our own biases — and that this is actually an evolutionary strategy for survival. As Jonathan Haidt put it in his discussion of the Mercier & Sperber paper:

Why is the confirmation bias, in particular— this is the most damaging one of all—why is the confirmation bias so ineradicable?  That is, why do people automatically search for evidence to support whatever they start off believing, and why is it impossible to train them to undo that?  It’s almost impossible. Nobody’s found a way to teach critical thinking that gets people to automatically reflect on, well, what’s wrong with my position?

And finally, why is reasoning so biased and motivated whenever self-interest or self-presentation are at stake?  Wouldn’t it be adaptive to know the truth in social situations, before you then try to manipulate?

The answer, according to Mercier and Sperber, is that reasoning was not designed to pursue the truth. Reasoning was designed by evolution to help us win arguments. That’s why they call it The Argumentative Theory of Reasoning. So, as they put it, and it’s here on your handout, “The evidence reviewed here shows not only that reasoning falls quite short of reliably delivering rational beliefs and rational decisions. It may even be, in a variety of cases, detrimental to rationality. Reasoning can lead to poor outcomes, not because humans are bad at it, but because they systematically strive for arguments that justify their beliefs or their actions. This explains the confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, and reason-based choice, among other things.”

Now, the authors point out that we can and do re-use our reasoning abilities. We’re sitting here at a conference. We’re reasoning together. We can re-use our argumentative reasoning for other purposes. But even there, it shows the marks of its heritage. Even there, our thought processes tend towards confirmation of our own ideas. Science works very well as a social process, when we can come together and find flaws in each other’s reasoning. We can’t find the problems in our own reasoning very well. But, that’s what other people are for, is to criticize us. And together, we hope the truth comes out.

But the private reasoning of any one scientist is often deeply flawed, because reasoning can be counted on to seek justification and not truth.

Anyway, my point is that the emotions are so strong around the issue of natural selection and intelligent design that it’s hard to know who, exactly, to trust. My default position is to go with the scientific consensus, which is against ID, but I have deep misgivings about that, because of the overwhelming hostility the scientific establishment has toward questioning the premises and conclusions of natural selection. The anger — the rage, really — of so many biologists at the thought of design in nature is so disproportionate that I cannot help but be skeptical about their conclusions. It doesn’t make them wrong, of course, but understanding how confirmation bias works, in part from understanding in retrospect how it has misshaped my own thinking, makes me doubtful that biologists are nearly as disinterested in the outcome of this discussion as they think they are. Remember what Harvard biologist Richard Lewontin said in the New York Review of Books:

It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

See? For Lewontin, the non-existence of God is assumed, and assumed absolutely. No evidence that points to an insufficiency of purely material explanations for physical reality can possibly be entertained. How is this any more honest than a theist who refuses to accept any evidence that would undermine the argument for God? I believe that many scientists, especially biologists, are so “religious” about the intelligent design issue because they want to believe God does not exist as much as a theist wants to believe the opposite. Mind you, the truth is the truth is the truth, and it doesn’t cease to be the truth because the “wrong” people believe it, or the truth challenges what we desperately want to believe. But the subjectivity of the investigator cannot be easily disentangled, if it can be disentangled at all, from the object of the investigation.

I find myself more willing to pay attention to the arguments of someone like Monton, who is committed to atheism, because at least that filters out a lot of the confirmation bias. That is, if someone like Monton sees reason to take design seriously, then attention must be paid. (Similarly, when theistic scientists, like Simon Conway-Morris, endorse natural selection, I’m more inclined to take them seriously). The astonishing thing about the discussion of intelligent design is how unrestrained the personal attacks on serious people who take ID the least bit seriously can be. On his blog, Monton discusses how raising questions, even from an atheistic standpoint, about the case against ID gets him personally savaged. For example, here. Excerpt:

Here’s another ad hominem charge against me: he accused me of ”self-serving career advancement”. I asked him how my taking a stand that leads to having to deal with criticisms like the ones he’s giving furthers my career, and he replied with something about increasing book sales. Well, it’s true that I want my ideas to be widely read, but there’s a difference between advancing one’s career and selling more books. One of my colleagues asked me just a couple days ago how I think my reputation will be affected once my book comes out, and I said that I’m pretty sure that my reputation will be negatively affected, because there’s so much animosity toward intelligent design, and yet I’m being more sympathetic to it than most atheists are. I’m not writing about intelligent design to further my career; I’m writing about intelligent design because I’ve seen a number of bad arguments on both sides, and I want to elevate the debate — that’s what will most further the cause of reason. I’m especially concerned, though, when I see bad arguments being given on the atheist side, because better arguments can and should be given. If the arguments that Klymkoswky gave represent the best arguments atheists can give against intelligent design, then the atheist position is in trouble.

Assuming Monton’s account of the Klymkoswky speech is accurate, then this is not disinterested scientific critique. This is personal invective. One sees this all the time. When preachers and religion apologists do it, you roll your eyes and move on. But when scientists do it, it’s far more disturbing, because they are, or ought to be, committed to dispassionate analysis. Here’s more of that kind of thing.

To be sure, Monton does not embrace intelligent design; how could he, as an atheist? Nor does he fully reject it. He only contends that the arguments against ID are not as strong as the anti-ID side thinks they are, and says in this lecture — if you listen, go past the garbled introduction, which lasts 4 minutes or so — that analyzing the arguments made him less committed to atheism than he was previously. Ah ha! He is less than a True Believer. Therefore, a threat.

Anyway, in the lecture, Monton says he is an atheist because he doesn’t believe the evidence for the existence of God is there. But ID argues that there is evidence in the natural world for the divine. That, Monton says, interests him, so he’s looking into it. He says if he could be shown plausible scientific evidence for the existence of God, he would cease to be an atheist. Because this is what ID claims — that the existence of God can be inferred from scientific evidence — he’s interested in examining the evidence.

What’s wrong with that? Seriously, what’s wrong with it? If this puts him in the camp of the impure, big deal. Says Monton: “Bad people can still give good arguments. … I don’t care if they’re bad people or not. I don’t care about whether they’re trying to promote theocracy, or not. I care if their arguments are good, or not.”

Which is as it should be. And by the way, Monton seems a lot more persuaded by the arguments from physics for the fine-tuned universe than from anything in biology. This blurb from UNC-Chapel Hill philosopher John Roberts is another reason I’m interested in Monton’s book, and will probably order it:

“This is a brave and important book. Monton does not defend ‘intelligent design’ as true — he thinks it is most likely false. Instead, he defends it as a hypothesis worth taking seriously. He argues convincingly that it can be formulated as a scientifically testable hypothesis, and that there is some important empirical evidence for it — not as much evidence as its supporters claim there is, but some evidence. Virtually all voices in this debate insist either that ID is not even worth taking seriously or else that it is manifestly the truth. It is refreshing to see a talented philosopher give the thesis its due and make a serious attempt to weigh the evidence for and against it, without the weight of the ‘culture wars’ hanging over every sentence.”

One more thing: another scientific area where science matters far less than emotion is the whole global warming debate. As with evolution, my default position is toward the scientific consensus, but the personal vehemence with which the mainstream treats dissenters — less as dissenters than as heretics — makes me more sympathetic to the doubters than I otherwise would be. Whenever people are so ferociously eager to extirpate dissent, I can’t help wondering if maybe the dissenters are trying to tell us something we need to hear. Noting that the post-Katrina predictions that global warming was going to give us a world of mega-hurricanes has not come true, Walter Russell Mead writes sarcastically:

For those of you who are confused, let me remind you: the only meteorological phenomena that count are the ones that confirm the climate alarmist case.  It doesn’t matter what it is — drought, flood, blizzard, heat wave — if it can be made to support fear about the climate, it matters and it needs to be thoroughly analyzed and widely publicized.

Meteorological phenomena that, to the unsophisticated, might appear to undermine the case that WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE if we don’t immediately pass a stringent carbon treaty, are meaningless and should be ignored.

A Tehran mob invaded the British embassy and ransacked it today. This is incredibly discouraging. I strongly believe war with Iran would be a total disaster for us and for the world, but there can be no doubt that Iran is not a normal country, and is in fact a thugocracy. One that may soon have nuclear weapons.

In the thread below about ugly churches, commentator Stef makes what strikes me as a profound point, related to the Catholic Church’s disastrous postconciliar attack on traditional church design:

It’s a typical mid-20th century mistake, and a mid-century obsession with theology (Ha, I blame German theologians, who cared more than anybody. Just half-kidding.)

What they forgot is the crucial point – bad theology does not make bad religion. Bad *ritual* makes bad religion. Then, when bad ritual rules the day, everybody gets obsessed with theology because there’s nothing else left.

It is easy to make an idol of the liturgy (and for this discussion, when I say “liturgy,” I mean not only the liturgy, but the things that go along with ritualized worship — church art, church music, church architecture. But as Stef alludes, it’s a lot more important than one may think. Many years ago, Doug LeBlanc gave me a book that I cherish: “Once A Catholic,” a collection of 1980s-era interview with fairly well known people (e.g., George Carlin, Martin Scorsese, Jimmy Breslin, Christopher Durang, Mary Gordon) who once were, and in some cases still are, Roman Catholics. It’s a wonderful book. The thing you notice about nearly everyone, liberals and conservatives, is how much they miss the preconciliar church. It’s not that they long for the strict formalism. It’s that they miss the poetry of the rituals, especially the Latin. As you know, I was a Catholic for 13 years, an adult convert. I think it’s impossible, truly impossible, for people who were born into or came into the postconciliar church to imagine the shattering that Vatican II’s reform of the liturgy and stripping of churches wrought on individual believers, and communities.

As a practicing Orthodox Christian, and as someone who is older now, and who has a deeper appreciation for the way aesthetics and ritual prepare one for encountering God, I am so, so grateful for the beauty of the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, which is the standard Orthodox liturgy, as well as for the icons, the candles, the deep bows. You step into an Orthodox church, and you really do feel you are at a mid-place between heaven and earth. Emphasis on “feel.” There is something enchanting, in the literal sense of the word, about having the reality of the Divine encompass one through one’s senses. It is possible, of course, to be present in such a place and to shut oneself off from the presence of the Holy Spirit. But for me, I find it much more difficult to resist entering into a state of openness when there are so many sensual reminders — the incense, the vivid icons, the ritual motions — of the unseen reality around us, and within us.

If you read Bellah’s book, “Religion in Human Evolution,” you understand why ritual is more important than theology. No doubt that ritual completely disconnected from theology is empty. But humans never outgrow the deep need for ritual. It’s built into the biological fabric of our being. You mess with that, you’re messing with things you ought not touch.

This is true, I think, even for churches and religious traditions that aren’t highly ritualized. In my hometown, the Methodist pastor who replaced the longtime pastor upon his retirement came in and upended most of the traditions of the congregation. He changed their hymn-singing, bringing in “praise choruses” and the like. These were small things, I guess, but they had an enormous effect. Most astonishingly, at least to me, he tossed out the Apostles Creed and substituted something he wrote. I never attended services under his leadership, but every time I would go home, all the Methodists I knew were up in arms about it. This went on for years, and many left that church. I’m quite sure that new pastor meant no harm. He really thought that his “updating” the rituals and practices of that congregation would bring people closer to God. In fact, it alienated a lot of folks (though to be fair, he did have his supporters).

My late sister was faithful to that congregation (in which she was raised) until, in the last year of her life decided she couldn’t take it anymore. Living with terminal illness, she concluded that she needed a strong spiritual home, and could no longer remain in a church where she felt alien. She moved to a Methodist congregation in Baton Rouge, and wrote her bishop about it, saying why she was abandoning the parish church where her family had been members for several generations. She also copied the then-pastor, with whom she had tried to discuss these things, to no avail. As infinitely patient as Ruthie was, I can only imagine the sense of brokenness and anger that compelled her to take that move. I well remember her telling me how much it meant to her and her children to be able to say the Apostles Creed again during services. You don’t think of Methodists as being highly liturgical, but that one prayer — a prayer that Ruthie and I were raised saying in the Methodist Church — meant the world to her and her kids.

Eventually that pastor was moved out, and now the Methodist church in St. Francisville has a pastor that, from what I hear from several sources, everybody seems to like. From what I’m told, the first thing she did that won people over — and won former congregants like my parents back — was to go to the people and ask them what they wanted, and needed. When I heard that that church was getting a female pastor, I wondered how people there would react. It’s a small town, and a tradition-minded church. Turns out they love her, because they feel that she respects them, and their traditions. It’s such a seemingly minor thing, especially in a low-church form of Christianity, which doesn’t emphasize ritual, but boy, is it ever important.

From the obituary of Stalin’s daughter, who died this week:

In her memoirs she told of how Stalin had sent her first love, a Jewish filmmaker, to Siberia for 10 years. … A year after her father broke up her first romance, she told him she wanted to marry another Jewish man, Grigory Morozov, a fellow student. Stalin slapped her and refused to meet him. This time, however, she had her way. She married Mr. Morozov in 1945. They had one child, Iosif, before divorcing in 1947.

I don’t know what’s more frightening, marrying Stalin’s daughter against his wishes, or divorcing her. There’s a novel in that story.

Another day, another Sexy Hermanator story. This one is not about sexual harassment, but about an actual affair. A 13-year-affair. With documentation. Yoink!

She says during the next 13 years, he would fly her to cities where he was speaking and he lavished her with gifts. She says they often stayed at the Ritz Carlton in Buckhead and dined at The Four Seasons restaurant. She says he never harassed her, never treated her poorly, and was the same man you see on the campaign trail.

“Very much the same, very much confident, very much sure of himself,” White said, describing Cain. “Very arrogant in a playful sometimes way. Very, ah — Herman Cain loves Herman Cain.”

You know he does! More:

She showed us some of her cell phone bills that included 61 phone calls or text messages to or from a number starting with 678. She says it is Herman Cain’s private cell phone. The calls were made during four different months– calls or texts made as early as 4:26 in the early morning, and as late as 7:52 at night. The latest were in September of this year.

“We’ve never worked together,” said White. “And I can’t imagine someone phoning or texting me for the last two and a half years, just because.”

We texted the number and Herman Cain called us back. He told us he “knew Ginger White” but said these are “more false allegations.” He said she had his number because he was “trying to help her financially.”

She says she planned on keeping the relationship a secret while Cain made his run for the White House until she and her family watched reports of different women who had accused Herman Cain of sexual harassment. She says she was not surprised by the allegations, but was bothered by the way Cain fought back, attacking the woman, including during an appearance on Late Show with David Letterman.

“It bothered me that they were being demonized, sort of, they were treated as if they were automatically lying, and the burden of proof was on them,” White said. “I felt bad for them.”

How’s the Hermanator going to get out of this one? Stay tuned. Unless he can prove she’s tried to blackmail him, I think he’s done. If he’s guilty, and he knew this was out there, why on earth would he run for president? Do these men really believe they’re not going to get caught, or be held to account? The egotism of these guys. Then again, if Cain’s sexual harassment accusers are telling the truth, the man has gotten away with caddish, possibly illegal behavior towards women for so long he probably believed he was invincible.

Mad scientists have crossed two of the world’s best vegetables: kale and Brussels sprouts.  It’s the best combination since the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup married two great tastes that taste great together. The only way this new vegetable could make me happier is if it would fix me a highball.

A new scholarly article by Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith and Furman sociologist Kyle Longest reveals that young adults (aged 18 to 29) don’t see the unbridgeable chasm between science and religion that many older Americans do. The paper is behind the paywall of the scholarly journal Sociological Forum (December 2011). The gist of the paper is to challenge the widely held view that the more religious one is, the more likely one is to believe that science and religion are in conflict. Previous studies have shown that, and it is still broadly true — but some interesting things are going on among 18 to 29 year olds today that undermine the old model. For example, this from the paper:

Most clearly, high religiousness, in the form of importance of faith, frequently reading scriptures, and committing to live one’s life for God, increases the likelihood that emerging adults agree that religion and science are compatible and not in conflict. Counter to the prevailing wisdom on highly religious youth, emerging adults who are more religious are not less but more likely to believe that religion and science can be integrated. Interestingly, attending a Protestant high school, often portrayed as being the training ground for religiously sectarian or militant youth (Peshkin, 1986; Rose, 1990), is one of the strongest predictors of the integration perspective, as these emerging adults are extremely likely to agree that religion and science are compatible and their faith has been strengthened by science, as well as being significantly unlikely to agree that the two are in conflict. This shared context appears to have created a cognitive norm of viewing religion and science as potentially symbiotic, rather than overtly hostile to each other. These emerging adults are able to maintain the authority of religion by finding a harmony between faith and science.

In fact, the authors say evidence suggests that it may be that the cultural hostility from non-religious or mildly religious students towards religion that keeps highly religious college students from going into science — this, and not a principled hostility to science itself. The researchers find that belonging to any religion at all, except for Judaism, makes you more likely to believe that science and religion have some degree of compatibility, than being non-religious. In other words, it is possible that the non-religious may be  effectively discouraging religious believers from choosing a vocation in the sciences, even though the believers see no reason why they can’t be religiously observant and good scientists.

Why the shift in belief among the faithful, toward a more integrative model of the science-and-religion question, as opposed to the strict conflict model? Smith and Longest hypothesize that a change in the way young adults think about religion could have a lot to do with it. In the past, they identified religious fidelity more with doctrinal agreement. Now, though, it’s more the case that they think of religious fidelity as measured by the strength of personal emotional commitment (Moralistic Therapeutic Deism makes the faithful more open to science? Sounds like it). Plus, it is possible that being exposed to non-Western and New Age perspectives have made them more comfortable with a “dialogue” perspective than one in conflict. Interestingly, those emergent adults who profess a belief in astrology and reincarnation are more likely to believe that science and religion conflict, and to believe that their religious views have been strengthened by science.

How can this be? You could say that they have lost the ability to reason, that they’re just going on what feels right, however incompatible. Or you could say, as the researchers suggest, that they have come to define “religion” and “science” in nontraditional ways that allow for the possibility that the two have something useful to say to each other.

Again, don’t fail to notice that the old model is still broadly true, but is breaking down in some really interesting ways among 18 to 29 year olds.

Thomas B. Edsall, in the NYT:

For decades, Democrats have suffered continuous and increasingly severe losses among white voters. But preparations by Democratic operatives for the 2012 election make it clear for the first time that the party will explicitly abandon the white working class.

All pretense of trying to win a majority of the white working class has been effectively jettisoned in favor of cementing a center-left coalition made up, on the one hand, of voters who have gotten ahead on the basis of educational attainment — professors, artists, designers, editors, human resources managers, lawyers, librarians, social workers, teachers and therapists — and a second, substantial constituency of lower-income voters who are disproportionately African-American and Hispanic.

Edsall quotes Democratic strategist Ruy Teixeira saying that the GOP “has become the party of the white working class.” True. The Democrats have become the party of welfare and the Sexual Revolution (Edsall’s phrasing is, of course, more neutral: “strengthening of the safety net” and “freedom from repressive norms”).

Steve Sailer snarks rightly:

The obvious question is whether Republicans will, in response, do anything to motivate working class whites to go to the polls other than to promise to cut taxes on billionaires?

What an important point. If the Democrats have become the party of welfare and the Sexual Revolution, what are the Republicans? The party of nationalism and plutocracy? At least it makes rational sense for the Dems’ constituencies to favor them. What do non-wealthy GOP voters get out of the deal? For example, it’s not the sons of the one percent who are volunteering to fight this country’s wars, which the GOP candidates — Ron Paul excepted, and possibly Jon Huntsman — are eager to continue, and even to expand.

Why should the Republicans do anything for their natural constituency aside from blustering nationalistically, calling the Democrats socialists, and acting like any attempt to curtail the maximum economic liberty for the wealthiest individuals, for corporations, and for investment banks, is the nose of the Marxist dragon? Seems to me that from the point of view of the white working class, the difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is only one of pretense.