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What separates conservatives from liberals? In the past decade, the most illuminating answers to this question have come from Jonathan Haidt, a New York University psychologist whose research bears directly on the emerging 2016 presidential campaign even if his answers might not be quite right.

Haidts basic finding is simple. Throughout history, human beings have operated under five sets of moral commitments: avoidance of harm, fairness, loyalty, authority and sanctity. Conservatives recognize all five, but liberals recognize only the first two.

Conservatives and liberals agree on the importance of avoiding harm. If someone assaults someone else, people of every political stripe object. The two sides also agree on the importance of fairness. People who cheat one another, or break promises, meet with bipartisan disapproval even if people often disagree over what fairness requires.

According to Haidts research, what separates conservatives from liberals is that they also care a great deal about loyalty, authority and sanctity. Suppose that people have betrayed their family, or that they have acted disrespectfully toward their parents or their bosses, or that they have engaged in a disgusting act. Conservatives are far more likely than liberals to feel moral outrage.

To test this claim, Haidt asked people in the U.S. and Britain this question: When you decide whether something is right or wrong, to what extent are the following considerations relevant to your thinking? Both liberals and conservatives emphasized whether someone was harmed and whether someone acted unfairly. But conservatives were much more inclined to think that it was also relevant whether people betrayed their group or did something disgusting and whether the people involved were of the same rank.

More dramatically, Haidt also asked thousands of people how much money they would have to be paid to engage in certain actions, such as kicking a dog in the head or shooting an animal (harm), cheating in a game of cards or throwing out a box of ballots to help their favorite candidate (unfairness), burning their countrys flag or breaking off relations with their family (disloyalty), cursing their parents to their face or making a disrespectful hand gesture to their boss or teacher (abuse of authority), and getting a blood transfusion from a disease-free child molester (violation of sanctity). Peoples answers could range from $0 (Id do it for free) up to $1 million or never for any amount of money.

On the harm and fairness questions, liberals and conservatives did not require substantially different amounts. But for questions that involved loyalty, authority and sanctity, conservatives required a lot more money strongly suggesting that for them, those values loomed especially large.

The difference even maps onto preferences for dog breeds. Conservatives are especially likely to want dogs that are loyal and obedient. (Everyone wants dogs that are clean.)

In his later work, Haidt has rightly emphasized a sixth moral foundation, one that conservatives and liberals both respect, but that they understand differently: liberty. He finds that conservatives are more likely to emphasize the right to be let alone, while liberals emphasize the rights of vulnerable groups, such as racial minorities, whose freedom requires (in their view) government support. Nonetheless, the biggest and most consistent partisan differences involve loyalty, authority and sanctity.

Haidts central claim is that across partisan lines, people often fail to understand one another, because a moral concern that strongly motivates one group may be obscure or unintelligible to another. Democrats are wrong to be puzzled when rural and working-class Americans turn out to favor Republicans. There is no puzzle here, because Republicans are more likely to speak to their deepest moral commitments.

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What conservatives care about that liberals dont

OTTAWA Former finance minister Ralph Goodale gave an impassioned defence of the Liberals economic record Tuesday after recent attacks by the Harper Conservatives suggested that the party would plunge Canada back into spiralling deficits like those of the 1970s.

He kept the door open, however, to a new Trudeau governments running future deficits.

Speaking at a Canada 2020 event, Goodale, Canadas finance minister from 2003 to 2006, said current Finance Minister Joe Olivers recent remarkably bitter comments about Pierre Elliott Trudeaus economic record ignored the Conservatives own history.

[Oliver] forgot the OPEC oil crisis of that decade. He forgot [Progressive Conservative prime minister] John Diefenbaker's six consecutive deficits a decade earlier. He forgot that only one Conservative prime minister in the entire 20th century actually managed to balance a budget. That was Robert Borden, the year was 1912, and it lasted for just one year, Goodale told the Liberal-friendly crowd, many of whom have been waiting months to hear a similar speech.

More importantly, Mr. Oliver forgot that more than two-thirds of all the federal debt outstanding in Canada today can be attributed to the deficits accumulated by Brian Mulroney and Stephen Harper, Goodale said. Mr. Harper alone has added $4,400 in new Harper-debt for every man, woman and child in Canada.

Compare that, he said, with the Liberal record.

Goodale said when the Liberals came to power in 1993 after defeating Brian Mulroney, they inherited a $40 billion annual deficit and a debt ratio that was 70 per cent of GDP. Just serving that debt was sucking up fully one-third of all government revenues.

Within three years, Goodale said, the Liberals had eliminated the deficit, ushered in a decade of surplus budgets, paid down the debt and slashed the debt-ratio in half, cut taxes and safeguarded the banking system. He also said the Liberals had increased transfers to the provinces, although he glanced over the part where the Grits first slashed them.

Times were great, Goodale suggested. The economy was growing, millions of new jobs were created.

Fast forward to 2006, he said, when Prime Minister Stephen Harper inherited a $13 billion annual surplus. In less than three years, the country is back on the verge of deficits once again, Goodale said. That was before not because of the recession, which arrived in the latter part of 2008.

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Ralph Goodale Fires Back At Joe Oliver Over 'Bitter' Attacks On Pierre Trudeau

One of the most ambitious public polls taken in Ontario in the runup to the federal election suggests Justin Trudeaus Liberals are ascendant in the countrys largest province but not yet enough to give them a good shot at winning government.

Surveying 3,000 Ontarians through a combination of land lines and cellphones, from late February through the end of March, Innovative Research Group found the Liberals with 39-per-cent support among decided voters. The Conservatives were at 37 per cent, the NDP at 17 per cent and the Green Party at 7 per cent.

Those numbers would represent a major turnaround for the Liberals after bottoming out in the 2011 election, when they received 25 per cent of Ontarios popular vote and won just 11 of its 106 seats. By the estimate of Greg Lyle, Innovative Researchs managing director, the Liberals would be on pace for between 49 and 62 of the 121 Ontario seats on the new federal map that will be used for this years vote.

Such results would likely be enough to deny Stephen Harpers Conservatives another majority government. But at the lower end of that spectrum they would need to be accompanied by significant gains elsewhere to even assure the Liberals of forming Official Opposition, let alone laying claim to the most seats nationally.

Owing to its large sample size, the survey offers a window into how the parties stack up in different regions of Ontario. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.8 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Within the city of Toronto, where a total of 646 voters were surveyed, the Liberals appear to be dominant, with the poll showing them supported by 50 per cent of decided voters next to 30 per cent for the Conservatives and just 15 per cent for the NDP. Further breakdowns show those gains coming primarily from the NDP in the citys core, and from both the Conservatives and the New Democrats closer to the city limits. With Liberal support seemingly consistent across the city, they appear well-positioned to win the vast majority of its 25 seats, although the margin of error is larger for the regional breakdowns.

In the Greater Toronto Area, widely considered to be the single most important electoral battleground in the country, the picture is more complex. In the western section of the GTA, which most notably includes the cities of Mississauga, Brampton and Oakville, the Conservatives appear to remain strong, polling at 44 per cent to the Liberals 34 per cent and the NDPs 15 per cent. But in the northern and eastern parts of the GTA which among other municipalities includes Vaughan, Richmond Hill, Markham and Ajax the Tories and Liberals are shown to be in a virtual tie with Conservatives slightly ahead 43 per cent and 40 per cent. (Sample sizes for the two areas were 377 and 365, respectively.)

Considering the unpopularity of the governing provincial Liberals in the economically hard-hit southwestern and south-central corners of the province, where there are 30 federal seats, Mr. Trudeaus party fared surprisingly well among the 791 Ontarians polled there running even with the Conservatives at 35 per cent each among decided voters. And the Liberals and Conservatives are in another virtual tie in eastern Ontario, at 43 per cent and 40 per cent, respectively.

In a poll with plenty of cause for concern for the NDP, responses in Northern Ontario provide more of it showing Thomas Mulcairs party sinking from 41 per cent in the past campaign to 25 per cent now, the Tories slipping less precipitously from 36 to 27 per cent and the Liberals rising from 19 to 34 per cent. There, though, a small sample size of 198 respondents means findings have a large margin of error.

Despite their improvements elsewhere in the province, though, its in the Toronto area where the Liberals have by far the most potential for gains something borne out by Innovative Research looking at groups of ridings that had similar results in the past election. The key change is that now most close races in Toronto and GTA are being won convincingly by the Liberals, Mr. Lyle said in an interview, and even some seats won by the Conservatives with wide majorities last election are now competitive.

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Federal Liberals poised to make great election gains in Ontario, poll finds

Media Lies: Liberals Are disgust of Miracles happening to Christians
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Media Lies: Liberals Are disgust of Miracles happening to Christians - Video

Critics, including liberals in her own party, say she has grown out of touch after decades as the wife of former president Bill Clinton, a US senator and secretary of state.

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON: Hillary Clinton promised to be a champion for everyday Americans on Sunday as she kicked off a long-awaited second run for the White House as the commanding Democratic front runner.

Everyday Americans need a champion. I want to be that champion, Clinton said in a video released on the internet that announced her run.

Americans have fought their way back from tough economic times, but the deck is still stacked in favor of those at the top, she said.

Clinton, who lost a bruising Democratic nominating battle to Barack Obama in 2008, was expected to travel soon to Iowa, the state that holds the kickoff nominating contest in early 2016.

Its official: Hillarys running for president, John Podesta, a top aide to Clinton, said in an email sent to supporters of her failed 2008 bid.

She is hitting the road to Iowa to start talking directly with voters. There will be a formal kickoff event next month.

Clintons campaign will emphasize her plans to address economic inequality and will tout the historic nature of her effort to become the first woman US president, aides said.

One of her biggest challenges will be to show a more down-to-earth side while connecting with ordinary voters. Critics, including liberals in her own party, say she has grown out of touch after decades as the wife of former president Bill Clinton, a US senator and secretary of state.

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Hillary Clinton announces her US presidential bid