I think most of us will find Haidt's narrative intuitively obvious. We are human, and nothing that is human is foreign to us. But the off-the-cuff policy prescriptions that you draw from it are highly dubious, and I'm choosing my words with care.

So let's see : caricaturing your argument only mildly : if only Merkel hadn't let the refugees in, the UK wouldn't have voted for Brexit.

Well, if she had to do it again, I hope and believe that she would do the same thing. No, with the urgency of millions of people on the move, and the prospect of seeing them machine-gunned on the Hungarian border or whatever, she was the conscience and the honour of Europe in opening the borders.

Sure, there are negative consequences, there is backlash, plenty of damage and plenty of things to patch up etc... but that was a once in a generation situation, and she did the right thing when others dithered, stonewalled or reached for the barbed wire.

And sure, the media treatment was/is simplistic. Morally, the choice is pretty binary : accept/reject. Deontologically, in times of crisis, one hopes journalists will prefer good to evil, and avoid fanning the flames. (This is, of course, debatable : others may prefer amoral journalism).

As for Brexit, personally I blame the English soccer team for being such a shower in the Euro. aka : shit happens.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}