But there is a problem with feminism which Pinker sets out very well. He distinguishes between equity feminism (good) and gender feminism (bad). The former is all about equality of opportunity, the later is more of a radical Marxist inspired belief system. The fact remains that men and women are very different and I’m not just talking about the plumbing!

But since I wrote this, Palin’s star has waned and I think Obama now has it quite easily. The economic crisis seems to be hurting the political right far more than the left.

Really? Depends how you define feminism. According to some the of the “feminist” blogs I’ve read, they think that the only qualification a “feminist” needs is to be female, so they’ve switched their support from Clinton to Palin without a moment’s hesitation.

and at Centre Right

The point is that, while this may not be such a great positive message to proclaim at Conference, it actually serves to underpin a jaundiced view of the world which probably leads to better governance. I mean if Nick thinks everyone is so nice, he should lighten up over ID cards and surveillance cameras! Just trust the vast majority of good people not to misuse the technology. There’s quite an irony here when you think about it. How many people ought to understand the fundamental cynicism of evolutionary competition better than a leading politician? Few I would say!

As for Oliver James, I’m a bit biased – I really don’t like him at all. But I would appreciate, Andy, some pointers towards what exactly you think is wrong with evolutionary psychology. It strikes me that there is something of the evolution v creationism debate here – with creationists, in the absence of the complete body plan of every organism that ever lived, claiming a total lack of evidence. Of course the theory of evolution operates at a higher level than that.

Likewise with James. At one point he ridiculously complains of, “a complete lack of f***ing evidence.” There’s absolutely loads of evidence but, depending of your starting point, you might see it as either compelling or wholly inadequate. I see it as blindingly obvious that the genes fashion behaviour as well as bodies. James sees this as something that should require a detailed proof based upon molecular genetics (which we’re not going to have for ages, so he’s safe). But surely we don’t need to have every last detail nailed down to see an overall picture emerging clearly?

As for Oliver James’s video, he does indeed supply most of the relevant scientific arguments against evolutionary psychology, indeed some of them are the reasons I have never thought of it as a very useful school of psychology myself. As for what he then goes on to claim about its relation to capitalism, I can’t volunteer as much enthusiasm!

My basic view of human nature is that people are born with goodness in them. Of course, people can be selfish, cruel or violent, but I believe no-one starts that way.

Not quite your hypothesis then. Although I suppose he said “with goodness in them” rather than simply “good”.

The gun business is an example of where the right go wrong, as it were. “It’s not guns that kill people, it’s people that kill people.” This kind of slogan places huge emphasis upon freedom or “free-will,” a concept required by both religionists and libertarians alike. Essentially, if you end up at the bottom of the social pile (or in the everlasting fires of Hell) it’s your own stupid fault. In fact this is very shaky from a scientific standpoint, and Pinker goes a long way towards debunking the “ghost in the machine” as he calls it.

Recently, I was researching the religious thinking of Margaret Thatcher (for some reason) and I came across the following striking manifesto from an address to the Church of Scotland in 1988. According to Thatcher, these are the beliefs that ought to distinguish the Christian in social and political life:

First, that from the beginning man has been endowed by God with the fundamental right to choose between good and evil.

And third, that Our Lord Jesus Christ The Son of God, when faced with His terrible choice and lonely vigil, chose to lay down His life that our sins may be forgiven. I remember very well a sermon on an Armistice Sunday when our Preacher said, “No one took away the life of Jesus, He chose to lay it down.”

I got this from a book by Jonathan Raban, who comments on the passage as follows:

The Three Articles of Mrs Thatcher are remorselessly reductive. They boil down Christianity to provide a theological legitimation for the doctrine of the individual’s right to choose. The word choice is hammered into each Article, and by Article 3 the meaning of the Crucifixion itself turns out to be that Christ was exercising His right to choose.

That phrase! It has been used by Margaret Thatcher so often before, in contexts so far removed from the theological, that an unseemly bathos attaches itself to it here. Christ dying on the Cross joins those folk who have exercised their right to choose – to buy their own council houses, to send their children to private schools, to occupy “paybeds” in NHS-funded hospitals.

But I’m not really suggesting we can beat McCain/Palin now by deploying Pinker. It’s too late for that. It’s been more of a long term failure. At the end of the day, the science doesn’t belong to the left or right – it belongs to everybody. It’s just that at present it seems to me that the right are closer to the truth, but more by luck than judgement.

Well, I fancy Audrey Hepburn but I’m not sure that she’d make a good VP/President. Especially in her current condition.

In comparison with John McCain, however…

I think you’re may be right in that there are going to be lots of sore heads in November. Even if Obama wins, Palin presents a serious problem in that the world’s most powerful democracy is always on the verge of electing complete religious nutjobs.

But that’s a problem with liberals as well as lefties. And that is a problem in that Democrats haven’t traditionally done the ‘culture wars’ too successfully. Hell, even Labour is crap at them (let’s not get started on the Libdems). We not only fail miserably to convince conservatives, but fail to develop a language that appeals to people’s innate emotions and feelings when thinking about politics.

Thankfull the Tories are much more incompetent than the Republicans in this regard.

But all this is rather irrelevant to your article really. The problem with Palin isn’t that we’re not taking genetic determinism seriously… but we’re not taking her emotional appeal seriously.

Sunny, it’s mainly just me! You’ll always be very welcome! But the point is that following on from paragraph two, I could easily have turned this into an article bashing the religious right. A year ago, that is the article I would have written. But it’s too easy, too self-indulgent, everyone else is doing it, and I can’t help thinking that there are going to be a hell of a lot of liberal sore heads come November.

Yes, I casually refer to “the left” in what is a broad brush theory about something subtle which I think is going on here. I’m more chiding “the left” rather than bashing them. (OK, I am bashing them as well.) But the point is that there’s a really useful weapon available here, but “the left” just can’t seem to grasp it because of all the fears that you allude to. So Palin gets away with a half-baked theory of human nature which beats none at all.

If you want an example of what I mean about “the left,” check out Pinker’s leading critic, Oliver James. It’s a fairly lengthy video I’m afraid, in which James manages to combine endless crimes against reason with incurable vanity and no small amount of spite. The audience absolutely love it!

But I admit, Sunny, that my overall idea is a bit strained. The main point of the article (indeed all my articles) is just to have a really big argument!

“Do you know there is a part of me that actually wants Sarah Palin to win in November? Frankly she hasn’t got a clue, but she is in possession of a simple childlike honesty that is really quite endearing.”

Slightly off-kilter comment considering the thread, but I had to pop in and say that this an awful reason for supporting Palin. The sole reason for her selection – and I don’t say this in order to demean her own skills as a politician – is her symbolic value. She’s very useful in promoting a) an image of a ‘reformed’ Republican Party and b) the ideas and ambitions of John McCain’s predominantly neoconservative advisers.

Somewhat ironically, one official has called her “a blank sheet“.