Here's the problem with "conservatives have more extensive values": the only time they have more extensive values is when those values are a convenient cudgel aimed at liberals (or whatever group of others happen to be on the menu). Those extensive values evaporate the moment they become inconvenient for them or their team.
So do they really have more values? Or do they actually have fewer along with a bunch of extra weapons disguised as values?
It's a matter of evolution in my opinion. I believe moral values are basically innate. Let's look at some of them:
Care—the desire to help those in need and avoid inflicting harm
An evolutionary trait expressed most powerfully in mammals and social mammals in particular. The yield, a greater chance to mature and mate. Important to conservatives and for liberals primary.
Liberty—the drive to seek liberation from constraints and to fight oppression. A moral concern shared by liberals and conservatives.
A product of cognitive thinking, forethought. and intelligence. Yield, greater consensually expressed care for the individual's personal happiness and the resulting feeling of a debt to reciprocate.
Fairness—the impulse to impose rules that apply equally to all and avoid cheating A genetically innate concern of social primates expressed even in monkeys and shared by liberals and conservatives.
Loyalty—the instinct to affirm the good of the group and punish those who betray it A moral value necessary in social animals that yields social order and cohesion. Vital for conservatives and not so much for liberals
Authority—the urge to uphold hierarchical relationships and avoid subverting them
Same as loyalty and based on respect for authority of elders who have valid and extensive life experience Vital to conservatives, not really much for liberals
Sanctity—the tendency to admire purity and experience disgust at degradation
The genetic revulsion we feel if we ingest poison usually as contaminated food, the disgust and the vomit reflex. A life saving genetic endowment often turned into religious rules and rituals. Important to conservatives no very much to liberals. I agree that conservatives view liberals as morally dangerous because they lack moral intuitions that conservatives value. Sadly, our self respect is based on the fact that what we believe we believe to be true because it is sacred. Liberals are loose cannons morally and can believe anything.
Liberals constantly fall into the trap of thinking that moral choices are rational decisions based on logical thinking when in fact they are based on intuition, gut feelings based on group held standards. Liberals, by ignoring so many areas of moral concern that are natural to conservative thinking are seen as threats to the group precluding any hope of reasoning persuading them. Liberals and the Devil can quote scripture.
The issue is that the more moral concerns you have and the more ideas you have swallowed to support them, the more areas in which you can mistake your personal morality as evolutionarily appropriate. Rational thinking came late to the social primate game.
I believe, therefore that you are wrong, that liberals actually understand moral questions better than liberals in that they hold a greater number of moral concerns and ones that have survival value and any person of instinct can feel that to be true.
Again, the problem is that we have been programmed to believe in moral ideas when morality is what a person does who is awake. By awake, I mean present joyously in the now. I would call that God consciousness but names are not the thing.
Here is a now dated example of how these ideas play out politically:
Psychologist Jonathan Haidt studies the five moral values that form the basis of our political choices, whether we’re left, right or center. In this eye-opening talk, he pinpoints the moral values that liberals and conservatives tend to honor most. Now that you have watched...
www.cmhnetwork.org