Posted on 11/25/2012 10:28:39 AM PST by AnonymousConservative
Good thing the author is anonymous, as this kind of manure-spreading would damage one’s reputation if one were known!
How does abortion factor into your theories?
That’s funny, given I just got a Freepmail from somebody who did their graduate work in cognitive neuroscience, saying how right I was.
r-selection strategies are about producing as many offspring, as quickly as possible, regardless of quality. To speed things up, parental attachment goes down. Fathers take off, mothers boot the offspring out after a base level of maturity is obtained. It’s why baby rabbits the size of tennis balls are out on their own, and never see mom again - mom is working on the next litter. This is called diminishing the investment in rearing.
The offspring’s ability doesn’t matter, since resources are free, and there is no competition.
If you accepted the theory, you would predict that in Liberals, emotional attachments to offpsring would be minimal, and the Liberal would take any measure possible to maximize mating investments, and minimize rearing investments.
In the theory, contraception, single parenting, and abortion are all ways to minimize rearing investments. Literally, children are not important emotionally to them, and this would be predicted if they were psychologically r-strategists.
Look at Obama saying if his daughter were pregnant, he wouldn’t want her “burdened” with a baby. He instinctively doesn’t see a grandchild, or anything special. It’s just a lump of flesh his daughter would have to carry around to the market, if she weren’t allowed the throw it in the trashcan. Would Reagan have been capable of saying that, or thinking that?
By contrast, The K-strategy requires an offspring be as capable as possible, and parents will be emotionally obsessed with the well-being and ability of children. This leads parents to put their children first, and raise them for extended periods.
Although there are logical reasons to oppose abortion, I think one unspoken driver is that Conservatives see the young as important, and feel a concern about their well-being, in a way Liberals truly can’t grasp.
If you don’t have that drive, there is little reason to “burden” yourself with concern about the issue, and all the visual aids of fetuses yawning, and little fingers grasping won’t have an effect.
No, I don’t base that on the media, but rather what Bush has done, combined with an assumption of Bush’s fundamental goodness.
One Question. Would a smart, moral man, invite Teddy Kennedy to work with him, on key legislation, hail him as a great guy, and then think Kennedy would not stab him in the back? Bush did that.
If you accept Bush is genuinely good (and I do), then he completely destroyed the Conservative movement only through ignorance and stupidity. There is no other possible conclusion. He had September 11th, people viewed Liberals as tools, without him even saying anything, and eight years later he had handed them congress (as well as a much larger government), and destroyed the Conservative brand.
The alternative is Bush was brilliant, and destroyed the Conservative brand on purpose, but I just don’t buy it.
But if you really think he was a great strategist, by all means, tell everyone here we should ask him how to revive the Conservative movement.
I’m sure your ‘cognitive neuroscience’ friend has an education that includes Phillips Academy, Yale, and Harvard School of Business.
Do you think Bush would have seen any of that in his record, had he been borne to a poor coal miner in West Virginia? Might any of it have anything to do with, I don’t know, a Dad who was a former DCI, Senator, and possible President? Or might he be unusually good at schmoozing, and once his family got him in, might that have an effect on grade issuance in the soft sciences? Or could it be a combination?
Even better, will you make the case that we should all cede to Obama’s judgement because of his educational pedigree, which is just as good as Bush’s on paper? I mean, Harvard Law Review?
If not, I really don’t have time to play a game of let’s pretend to argue.
Especially when I can point to Bush kissing Teddy Kennedy’s ass, elevating his stature, and holding him up as some sort of respected figure. Either not smart, or not moral - even you have to agree. Your pick.
Either way, it was the real cause of the destruction of the Conservative Brand.
Ignoring this to elevate Bush in ways he shouldn’t be elevated only hurts the ability of Conservaitves to see mistakes in the past, and prevent repeats of those mistakes in the future.
Bush has some great qualities. But savy is not one of them. We need to ridicule that “go along with Libs to get along” appeasement crap, if we are to have any chance of getting it out of the movement.
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