"The Tea Party is driven in large part by concerns about fairness. . . . fairness as karma"

--- Jonathan Haidt, in an interview with Alison George in New Scientist, "What righteousness really means" (pay wall) 8 March 2012, issue 2854, on the occasion of his new book The Righteous Mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion.

Excerpt:

Liberals have difficulty understanding the Tea Party because they think it is a bunch of selfish racists. But I think the Tea Party is driven in large part by concerns about fairness. It's not fairness as equality of outcomes, it's fairness as karma - the idea that good deeds will lead to good outcomes and bad deeds will lead to suffering.