How much of the culture is your responsibility?

Since you're not American, maybe you're not familiar with this example. But I would cite, in support of Haidt's point about liberals concern with equality of outcome, affirmative action, of which liberals in this country are very supportive of. African American students are often accepted into colleges ahead of white, Asian and Jewish counterparts with much better resumes.

There are two sides to this story (just like in talking about welfare).

Liberals generally take the position that African Americans go to, on average, far worse school than do whites, live in much more disadvantaged neighborhoods, and from the very start are playing catchup with their counterparts of other races. Even if they don't meet the traditional standerds, affirmative action allows students of the most disadvantaged ethnicity to have a great education and possibly, after they're done, go back and improve their own disadvantaged neighborhoods.

Conservatives point out that treating African Americans as unable to compete with others on merit, won't prepare them for the real world where merit is all that matters and ingrains in their culture a victim mentality. They also point out that for every person who is given a spot due to affirmative action, one is taken away from someone with a better resume (more often than not, it's not taken away from white students, but Asian students who are academically the most successful ethnic group) and who is more deserving from an academic standpoint. Last, but perhaps most importantly, conservatives would argue that the poor educational standereds within many African American neighborhoods are just a symptom of the lack of cohesive families and communities that support one another.

This isn't Haidt's example. It's mine. But one of the points Haidt makes (based on experimental observation) is that conservatives are better able to understand liberal moral reasoning than vice versa. Like, for instance, you puport that conservatives are attempting "to utterly decimate the system of support in the first place." I'll assume, by the way you phrased it, you meant that conservatives are deliberately hurting people, rather than it just being an unintended consequence of policies in which they meant well.

Haidt would say that's a falicy that liberals are more likely to fall in to (although obviously both fall into it) because they focus almost entirely on the care/harm foundation of morality, while conservatives value the care/harm foundation (although not as much as liberals) but they also value moral foundations like loyalty, authority and sanctity - often dismissed as nonsense by liberals.

This is only backing up my point that Haidt buys in far too much to right-wing rhetoric. It sounds like he buys how they describe themselves, but is overly critical of left-wing concepts.

You're arguing against a strawman.

Haidt is a pretty articulate, thoughtful and concise guy, but it sounds like even he can't fit a vast, wide ranging coherent argument into an article without using generalizations that are easily misunderstood. And just as Haidt can't do an argument justice in a short article like he can in a book, I obviously then also wouldn't be able to do it.

Part of the problem is, I think, Haidt knows he's generally speaking (or writing) to a liberal audience and as someone who has found some value in conservative thought, he's attempting to get that part of his message accross (he doesn't need to express the great value he sees in liberal thought when he's speaking to a liberal audience - that's just preaching to the choir and they wouldn't be learning anything). In the book he's shows what he believes are the value of both conservative and liberal thought.

Another part of the problem is in the book Haidt goes into much more detail into showing the science of his hypothesis than he can possibly do in an article. He cites lots of studies, talks about methodology, and goes into detail on what the most recent research is on how the various moral foundations of both liberals and conservatives may have evolved. I'm sure in an article he's making an argument, but he's only got limited room to say what the scientific foundations of those arguments are.

Also, I'm not sure if you've caught this, but Haidt is a self described moderate who when he started the book considered himself as a liberal. Never in his life has he considered himself a conservative. Finally, he makes a huge deal of the distinction between finding value in conservative intellectuals, and modern day Republicans. The former he finds some agreement with, but the latter he intensely dislikes.

Anyway, it's really hard to talk about the validity of a book with someone who hasn't read it.