Mar 22 2006
If I don’t get that capital gains tax cut, I’ll poop my pants!
Try as I might, can’t stay away from the politics….
Interesting story in the Toronto Star, called “How to Spot a Baby Conservative”.
It’s about a study done in (where else) Berkeley, by Professer Jack Block. He tracked 95 kids over the last 20 years, with detailed research on their personalities. His findings:
“The whiny kids tended to grow up conservative, and turned into rigid young adults who hewed closely to traditional gender roles and were uncomfortable with ambiguity.The confident kids turned out liberal and were still hanging loose, turning into bright, non-conforming adults with wide interests. The girls were still outgoing, but the young men tended to turn a little introspective.”
Big surprise, huh? A similar study cited gives this insight:
“The researchers reviewed 44 years worth of studies into the psychology of conservatism, and concluded that people who are dogmatic, fearful, intolerant of ambiguity and uncertainty, and who crave order and structure are more likely to gravitate to conservatism.”
Gee, that’s a stretch, huh? Needless to say, the studies have their detractors, who have appropriately called it the ‘conservatives are crazy’ study. But we knew that already.
I’m reading Thomas Frank’s “What’s the Matter With Kansas: How Conservatives Stole the Heart of America”, and he goes into, in good detail, about the prevalence of whiny conservatives. He calls it ‘plen-T-plaint’. Christians are being persecuted. Family values are threatened. Liberals are ruining everything. Doesn’t seem to matter that conservatives control all three branches of government, does it? Without plen-T-plaint, Bill O’Reilly would be out of a job, probably working the counter of an adult bookstore somewhere (the kind with those ‘movie booths’ that lots of middle-aged professionals seem to hit up on the way home from the office).
It’s really funny how, as much as the conservative leaders like to demonize the perception of liberal non-accountablilty, they sure love to play the victim. But they have no choice, because if they didn’t have the ability to raise the fear and anger and feeling of being slighted, they wouldn’t have anything else to win over the masses with. Certainly not going to with their positions and policies. By keeping people angry and ‘victimized’, it distracts them from the fact that the very people stirring up their anger are the ones whose policies are often responsible for that person’s miseries to begin with. Now if we can only get a few Democrats to point that out. Don’t hold your breath…
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John,
You know these studies are BS. I’m a little surprised you as a self proclaimed “liberal” would even print something like this. It’s neither open minded or productive. You have essentially cast this country into 2 seperate buckets. Liberal vs Conservative. It’s thinking like this that keeps this country in a 2 party system and accounts for the back and forth of politics and prevents real change. Rational people fight these stigmas and vote based on platform and character of a canidate; not the party line. I know you’re not a party line guy but what I don’t think you recognize is that people who you think carry the conservative label might just feel like you do.
Mike.
Mike,
I never actually said that I believed the veracity of the study, and I should have clarified that. I more or less posted it because I found it humorous. Like many social studies, there is bias, and a bit of bullshit. THere is some truth to it though, such as “people who are dogmatic, fearful, intolerant of ambiguity and uncertainty, and who crave order and structure are more likely to gravitate to conservatism.” That is more than obvious.
Unlike the cons, I can do nuance. And I do believe many of them are whiny babies that like to play the victim. Not all of them. And there are those on the left that are even whinier, such as the hypersensitive PC crowd. They just haven’t been able to translate the whininess into political successes like the right wing has.
I realize that the world is not black and white, and it does come down to more than just ‘liberals vs. conservatives’. There’s a whole ‘mushy middle’ out there , too. But there is definitely some truth to that in some ways. In many ways this is a war and battle for ideas. There are many on that side that believe some pretty vile things, and the world would be a much better place if they didn’t exist in the first place.I have no interest in ‘making nice’ with them any more than they do me. That’s another problem with the left… always trying to make consensus when the other side, given the chance, would completely obliterate us. It’s like negotiating a peace with Hitler and the next thing you know, stormtroopers are kicking in your door and hauling off your family.
If you read around on here some more, you’d see I hardly fit into the ‘liberal’ tag on many issues. I strongly believe that everyone is entitled to equal opportunities in life, but all people are not equal in skills, abilities, or intelligence, and it is wrong to be oblivious to that in our quest for a more egalitarian society. I don’t want a blind guy being the lifeguard at the town swimming pool just to help his own feelings of self-worth, when he lacks a vital component necessary to being a lifeguard: eyesight. And that’s something that many on the left seem to have a problem with. I’m not into bumper sticker sloganeering like so many on the left seem to be. Nor do I come to my views due to any kind of ‘one world’ spiritual psychobabble.
That said, I am gladder than hell for your input. I hope you come back and keep it up.
John
Hi John, Very interesting comments from you and Mike. am going to read more…Mom