the pooh had to go to honey rehab. my guest, social psychologist jonathan haidt is here to talk about the relationship between politics and morals. i believe it's money on the dresser, no kissing. a california treasure hunter says he has found bin laden's body. he has a very loose definition of the word "treasure." this is the "colbert report" captioning sponsored by comedy central ( theme song playing ) ( cheers and applause ) >> stephen: thank you! thank you very much. welcome to the report. good to have you with us. thank you so much.

>> stephen! stephen! stephen! stephen! stephen! ( cheers and applause ). >> stephen: thank you, ladies and gentlemen. you know i i would try to stop your cheering but i would never want to censor you. ( laughter ). ( cheers ) nation-- i'm sure the feeling is mutual. nation, over the years, i've had my disagreements with virgin c.e.o. and adult of the corn, richard branson. specifically, my lungs disagreed with the fire retardant he fired into them the last time he was here. on the plus side, i can now blow out birthday candils like nobody's business. i have to commend him for the latest egomaniacal move. >> in britain, passengers on virginiain atlantic airline will be able to chill out with

founder richard branson. take a look at this, a little richard branson ice cube shaped like richard branson's head. it will be available in the upper class only. >> stephen: that's right. upper class virgin atlantic passengers will be getting ice cubes in the shape of sir richard's head. i believe in coach they get ice molds of his ass. and bransom's frosty tributes to himself aren't your normal everyday displays of temporal narcissism. no. it took a team of four skilled designers six weeks to create the mold. one to make the mold while the other three cried in a corner wondering how their years came to this. ( laughter ) folks, being among the elite few who gets one of these cubes in your drink is the ultimate sign of success. i mean, imagine sitting in upper class on virgin atlantic, can

with a scotch in your hand. sure to make it up the ladder maybe did you some things you're not proud of. maybe you compromised who you'd hoped you'd be in order to reach for that brass ring. maybe that meant not spending time you should have with your wife and your children who are all grown and gone now. ( laughter ). but you made it to the top, and thethere at the bottom of your cocktail are the glassy, hollowize of the grinning gurks zman ( cheers and applause ) and you think to yourself, so this is what i was doing it for. ( laughter ) my professional achievements will surely be as permanent as this head of frozen water. ( laughter ) another round, please,

stewardess. and keep them coming. it's going to be a long flight. ( laughter ) nation, anyone who watched the supreme court hearings last month knows that obamacare is on life support, and justice scalia is about to put a pillow over its face. i'm so relieved that we're getting rid of universal health care before the unthinkable happens, like, it works. now, sure, once obamacare is dead, we'll still have over 50 million uninsured people, but republicans have a plan to eventually come up with a plan. should be any day now because john boehner was spotted at staples buying a dry erase board. fun fact-- huff enough of those markers and that's an anesthetic. besides-- ( applause ). ( cheers ) besides, folks, we know america already has a safety net for the

sick. >> you can walk into any emergency room in america and a doctor cannot turn around and say, "i'm not going to treat you." so you can get health care. >> stephen: yes, by law, emergency rooms can't turn anyone away. and they're great for all kind of care-- bring your child in with an ear ache, and by the time you're seen by a doctor he'll be a healthy 32-year-old. ( laughter ) of course, emergency care is particularly expensive. in 2010 alone, hospitals racked up $39.3 billion in unpaid emergency room care. that laestlesz hospitals holding the short end of the stick, and this being an emergency room, you don't want to know where the other end is lodged. luckily, there's a way to deal with this problem, and it brings us to tonight's word. ( cheers and applause ) debt panels. folks, i have a message for america's uninsured-- take some

personal responsibility. if you cannot afford health insurance, then move some place without bacteria. ( laughter ) you see, the good news is one company has stepped up to hold these nos-quite-dead-yet beats accountable. according to the "new york times," one of the nation's largest collectors of medical debt has start the embedding its employees into hospital emergency rooms without identifying themselves as debt collectors and demand patients pay before they get treatment. that's right, uninsured-- at the emergency room before they check your blood pressure they might just check your credit rating. now here's how it works. ( laughter ). these undercover debt collectors register incoming patients, then stall them until they've agreed to pay a previous balance and in some cases discourage them from seeking emergency care at all. it's win-win-- debt collectors

get their money, and if you stall a sick patient long enough, there will never be another medical bill. ( laughter ). accretive tracked whether patients paid their bills using a computer system nicknamed blue balls. incidentally, if a nurse offers to treat your blue because, you're not in a hospital. ( laughter ). nation-- i say-- ( applause ). i think you'll probably agree with me on this one-- i say it's about time we started squeeze, some health care dollars out of these people who cannot afford health care. and, look, if the patients don't have cash, they can pay with a credit card, maybe rack up some miles. and, folks, this solution is not limited to the emergency room. accretive also told employees to, "get cracking on labor and delivery since there is a good chunk to be collected there."

and, folks, there is nothing more beautiful than a mother's shining face during the miracle of being denied an epidural until she pushes out some dough. but, folks, don't just take my word for it. listen to one of accretive's satisfied customers. >> she developed a kidney stone and went straight to the e.r. >> i was in my little room waiting for the, to the to come, writhing in pain. >> instead of a doctor she was greeted by a high-pressure bill collector. >> stephen: of course you pay up front. from now anesthesia should be coin operated. plus if the money men can pretend to be e.r. receptivities why can't they pretend to be doctors? i mean, don't worry, they won't deny care. if you need emergency surgery they will open you up free of charge. they just won't sew up until you

swipe your capitol 1 card. and everyone will leave the hospital debt free because if you don't have money the surgeon will just take a kidney as collateral. the point is there are plenty of great, free-market alternatives to obamacare that will satisfy both the patients and the hospitals. so we'll never have to worry about a bureaucrat coming between and you your doctors. just a repo man. and that's the word. we'll be right back. ( cheers and applause )

>> stephen: welcome back, everybody, thank you very much. folks, i care about every guest who comes on my show. and because i care so much, i was sad to learn of some legal trouble for one of my recent guests mr. kermit t. frog, who hopped by last month to annualize the southern republican primaries while also analyzing how much children young and old would enjoy the muppets on dvd and blu ray. that's how this pundit game works-- you give and you get. that's why whenever karl rove drops by fox news he plugs

hy-line of home exercise videos, attack abs. a 10-minute workout to give you a body she'll want to rove. unfortunately, some foreign countries just don't get how tv works. because my friend kermit has been booked for illegal advertising on german tv. and not,aise first assumed, for his full frontal nudity. jimmy! jimmy, please, blur that out! okay. you see, back in november, kermit was over in germany doing a junket for his upcoming movie "the muppets." jim. wow, it is disturbing to hear kermit speak german. although, i suppose it shouldn't be surprising given how much he loves pork ?itser. pork schnitzel. the problem is during one guest

appearance on zeeben's "disney day," kermit plugged his movie in violation of german media law which bans product placement unless clearly identified as sump, unlike in america, where advertising calls attention to itself by being everything that exists. ( laughter ) ( applause ) ( cheers ) folks, this is an outrage. how could germany do this to a beloved children's icon? well, here to answer for his country, please welcome the german ambassador to the united nations, the honorable hans beinholtz. ( applause ) welcome, mr. ambassador. >> thank you, stephen. >> stephen: now, i see you've

brought your own whimsicle character. hey there, big, fella, what is your name? >> his name is kookoo mcbuttons. ( laughter ) but he does not speak. for he is alive with a piece of cloth. >> stephen: okay, then why does he have eyes and a mouth? >> that he might gaze into the naughtiness and scream silently at the horror of his nonexistence. ( laughter ) ( applause ) >> stephen: okay, uh, fine. but, your excellency, kermit is real. at least to the boys and girls who believe in him, and you are looking at one of those boys right now. >> li lies. all puppets are lies. with their smiling face that hides the deceitful heart. it has no soul. it has no dreams.

>> stephen: it's just a harmless product placement. kermit was there to promote his movie. >> kermit was manipulating the system for his own propaganda and putting on a happy face and singing silly songs. he pretends to enjoy want host and laugh at his japes and jests. in truth, it is a violent fraud. he loves only himself. gli don't accept that for a minute! when kermit office my show he had a great time. he laughed at all of my jooo... ( laughter ) ( applause ) oh, no.

>> who now is the puppet? ( laughter ) ( applause ) >> stephen: we'll be right back. -xy yg!6&wzí

>> stephen: welcome back, everybody. thank you so much. my guest tonight has written a new book "the righteous mind:why good people are divided by politics and religion."

it's the perfect passive aggressive give to the idiot across from you on thanksgiving. please welcome jonathan haidt. ( cheers and applause ) thanks so much for coming on. >> my pleasure, thank you. >> stephen: let's get right down to the heat of the meat. you're a professor of social psychologist at the university of virginia. all right, pretty impressive. you have a new book, "the righteous mind, why good people are divide by politics and religion." well, politics and religion are place where's we find out certainty. in religion you have your faith. you know your faith is the correct one. in politics -- you do. in politics you pick your side and you fight it out until election day, and then you fight it out forever after that. why should we not be divided in this way? >> well, what the book is about is where moralts comes from and what it does to us. it's kind of amazing we can cooperate with people who aren't

our kin and the way we do it is we form these teams, these tribes, these hives and circle around sacred objects and lose sieft truth. we're totally focused on being part of the team and fighting the other side. >> stephen: you say we make snap judgments about the other side. okay, that's called. called... intuition. it's called the gut. i make gut judgments about people and later i figure out a mental justification. ( laughter ). #-r for that judgment. you say that people do that all the time. so what are we saying about each other left and right? >> well, we use our reasoning just to basically figure out the worst possible story we can tell about the other side. and since now we can all watch cable news showed where conservatives can just watch conservatives and liberal accuse just watch liberals so we tell the most toxic, newscastef story we can. it might work great getting the team together but it is pretty bad for the nation is there don't we tell the truth as we

know it. i've got my truth and i insist it be your truth. ( laughter ) because if it wasn't-- if i wasn't doing that, how true could it be to me. because inherent in my belief is not just that i'm right. almost more importantly is that you are wrong. ( laughter ). and if i allow for a moment that you could possibly be right, i'm totally wrong. ( laughter ) >> that's right. so if you've seen the movie "the matrix," -- >> stephen: of course, of course. >> "the matrix" is a consensual hallucination, and people have to get together. they create this moral order in which they all live, and they have this absolute certainty, and, yeah, if they let in other people who violate the matrix it will also dissolve around them. >> stephen: are you sailing you know kung fu. >> well, social psychology is pretty powerful, yes. >> stephen: why do you want to-- why as a social psychologist do you want to

study the behavior of politics and religion? >> i don't study the politicians themselves but i do study why people vote one way or another, why they believe things that seems of seem to be contradictory. >> stephen: what do you mean, contradictory? >> whenever one side comes out and says something, people on the other side say, "oh, yeah, they say they want to cut tax thrlz but why do they want to raise taxes there? we're all very good at that. basically we all evolved to be lawyers. basic we we're good at argue a case and if we contradict ourselves so be it. >> stephen: we all evostled to be lawyers. so we evolved to hate ourselves? do you propose a solution here or are you merely identifying a disease? >> woman, i'm identifying a disease but in a sense it's the normal human condition -- >> stephen: wait, if it's normal, is it worse now than it's ever within? we've always been fighting in america. >> that's right. politics is always hardball. politics is always rough, but nowadays it's going gunn from

hardballing to a knife fight. >> stephen: has this ever been this bad? >> in the late 19th century there was a thing called the civil war and people did not get along very well then. >> stephen: right, right, right. that was a tough time in congress. ( laughter ). but here's my problem-- and this is why i made a snap judgment not to trust you-- ( laughter ) and i think i understand why. i've now come up with a mental reason why i didn't. is because i think that i have a moral compass, all right. and my pole star is my belief. and you are asking me to question my moral compass when passing judgment on other people. >> what i'm asking is for you to just recalbright it every now and then. >> stephen: well, that's not in my of whether system. ( laughter ). are you a liberal or conservative? >> i was a liberal my whole life until i started writing the book, and then while trying to explain conservatives to my fellow liberals-- i'm a professor-- while trying to

explain conservatives i realized actually conservatives see a lot of things that liberals can't see. they actually have a very good understanding of human nature. now, this is not to say that the republicans are right. actually, the republicans are the cause of the problem in washington, but if you step back, i actually think the conservatives have a more accurate view of human nature than do liberals. >> stephen: if you were a liberal and now you can sort of see a point of the conservative side, i'm here to tell you that's a liberal idea. ( laughter ). ( applause ) ( cheers ) >> stephen: well, jonathan haidt, thank you so much for joining me. the book is "the righteous mind." we'll be right back.

>> stephen: that's if for the report, everybody. before we go i have to announce that the stephen colbert 6,000-k norway walk-a-thon from bang or, maine, to oslo, norway, has been canceled. it has been canceled-- ( laughter ) due to oceans. we apologize for the error. good captioning sponsored by comedy central captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org