Obama on the Bitter Working Class Clinging to Guns and Religion
And:
Freedom Versus Nature, Human Rationality, and Some Drive-By Kant

This is obviously bad politically for Obama, though I'm less worried about that. I know that "gotcha" politics has been raise to a fine art in the age of the interwebs and YouTube. Who knows whether this will have legs?

But as for the content: I've heard some pundits flailing around trying to explain what's wrong with what Obama said. My initial take is that, by asserting that people are clinging to e.g. guns and religion because they're bitter about their economic situation, Obama is in essence asserting that their beliefs are irrational.

On the standard account, we give non-rationalistic, causal explanations (e.g. psychological or economic ones) when people are acting non-rationally. So, if Smith begins running around naked singing 'Pop Goes the Weasel," or asserting that demons are attacking him, we will generally look for some causal explanation--e.g. a chemical imbalance. If, on the other hand, Smith thinks that 2+2=4, or that wood comes from trees, we don't look for a non-rational causal explanation. In such cases we suppose that Smith's beliefs are brought about by the facts in a rational (note: this usually means something like: free and non-causal) manner. Smith believes that wood comes from trees because he's rational, and because wood does come from trees. He recognizes the fact. No appeal to his economic situation or any chemical imbalance is needed.

So, by giving a causal, non-rationalistic explanation for some subset of people's religious beliefs, Obama is in danger of suggesting that that's the way all religious beliefs should be explained. And that's tantamount to saying that those beliefs and the believers are irrational.

That's probably not what he thinks, but that's what he suggested.

Interestingly it's characteristic of the fairly far intellectual and political left to give explanations of beliefs that make all or almost all beliefs irrational and subject to causal explanation--especially of the social variety. Whatever Marx thought, many of his intellectual descendants seemed to believe that all beliefs--with the possible exception of beliefs like Marxism is true--have to be explained economically or in terms of other social causes. This is what adherents to the so-called Strong Program in the sociology of "knowledge" believe. The view is almost certainly false, and possibly self-refuting, but it's all the rage on the intellectual left.

Anyway, there are all sorts of interesting issue here, but I'm supposed to be working. I will say that at the core of this issue is a dispute about the fundamental nature of humans and the world. And also Kant's fundamental distinction between freedom and nature. The standard view lurking in the background here has it that our rational beliefs are, roughly, freely and rationally adopted, whereas our irrational beliefs are forced on us by things like chemistry and peer pressure. Lots of obvious problems and questions pop up immediately, but, hey, it's back to work for me...