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Pathologizing Conservatism
Reason ^ | October 20, 2004 | Ronald Bailey

Posted on 10/21/2004 12:51:49 AM PDT by neverdem

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1 posted on 10/21/2004 12:51:49 AM PDT by neverdem
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To: neverdem

If I didn't know any better, I'd swear this guy made all of this up.


2 posted on 10/21/2004 12:57:33 AM PDT by ECM
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To: neverdem

a first step towards re-education camps....


3 posted on 10/21/2004 1:02:38 AM PDT by wrbones (Where'd I put my tin foil hat....)
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To: neverdem
The realities of the differences are a whole lot simpler. Conservatives learn through experience and observation. They discard theory for pragmatic behavior that's effective. Liberals do none of the above.

The interesting question is what causes one approach versus the other. I'd say intelligence and a firm but fair upbringing are probably the primary drivers.


4 posted on 10/21/2004 1:08:05 AM PDT by LiberalBassTurds (Democrats: The blind leading the stupid enabling the evil.)
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To: neverdem

...good exposure of Libertarian/libertarian intent.


5 posted on 10/21/2004 1:24:21 AM PDT by familyop (Essayons)
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To: neverdem
"Whether it be an unfortunate evolutionary holdover or a mental disease transmitted by our parents—the science is apparently still up in the air—academic researchers have surely amassed enough evidence of psychopathology that conservatism can be listed in the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Reasonable people, such as the distinguished academic researchers cited here, will no doubt agree that until effective treatments can be developed, we should reconsider whether sufferers of conservatism, like other mental defectives, should be allowed freely to exercise the franchise."

They can't be serious. This has to be a spoof of modern academia right? Please tell me it is?

6 posted on 10/21/2004 1:27:15 AM PDT by Smoote
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To: neverdem

Many liberals are extremely intolerant of world views, values, cultures and customs that do not mesh with theirs. It is the animal rights activist (ELF, ALF, PETA,) that blows things up and burns things up. It is the environmental activist (Earth First! Ruckus Society) that monkeywrenches equipment, destroys property and engages in confrontational tree sits and protests. It is the political anarchist that engages in the destruction of private property in violent protest over international trade, the war, etc.

One of our local environmentalists threw a bottle of beer at a County Supervisor and physically handled (poked the chest of a female) another participant at a watershed council meeting.

These liberal social scientists are so steeped in their own denial and so myopic, they don't even see their prejudice, intolerance and failure to allow diversity of opinion, culture and lifestyle.


7 posted on 10/21/2004 1:28:11 AM PDT by marsh2
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To: neverdem

Absurd.


8 posted on 10/21/2004 1:38:32 AM PDT by Jaysun (HAVE YOU GIVEN ALL YOU CAN TO RALPH NADER??????)
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To: neverdem
I recall the same line being peddled when I was in college in the 70's, principally through the works of Erich Fromm, who was a leading light of the "Frankfurt school." Fromm's "Escape From Freedom" (1941) and other writings contended that fascism and conservative political parties attracted authoritarian personalities who wanted to escape from democratic freedom and love.

Fromm and others of the Frankfurt school, socialists and worse, as well as their acolytes in the academy, seem to find it useful and self-flattering that even as they seek ever greater control over people, it is their opponents who fear freedom and not them. Self-deception and propaganda often seem to go together, especially among intellectuals.
9 posted on 10/21/2004 1:47:34 AM PDT by Rockingham
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To: LiberalBassTurds
Pseudo science in the service of fascism, which is coming from the left this time.

I've been thinking that the differences between right and left are spiritual rather than psychological, though there may indeed be psychological implications. I think what you're describing is a certain alignment of right-minded thinkers toward Truth---a concept which the left abhors.

To my way of thinking intellectual rigidity is characteristic of the left. Conservative types are seekers, who trust the evidence of their senses and their God-given intuition. This gives them greater capacity to tolerate ambiguity and to endure suffering. Liberals reject common sense and intuition.

10 posted on 10/21/2004 1:57:26 AM PDT by Innisfree
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To: familyop; Smoote

I took it as a spoof on liberals, especially those in Academic Psychology with those arbitrary scales, although the Wilson-Patterson Conservatism Scale(WPC) has a certain amount of consistency based on genetic endowment, not the environment in which they were raised.

I have fewer problems with libertarians than I have with liberals. Liberty is more important to the former. I'm not an anarchist, but as far as I'm concerned, the fewer laws the better.


11 posted on 10/21/2004 2:30:35 AM PDT by neverdem (Xin loi min oi)
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To: neverdem

"Those who proclaim that the noble is despicable end up by proclaiming that the despicable is noble."


12 posted on 10/21/2004 2:44:51 AM PDT by Sirc_Valence
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To: neverdem

"The genuine coherence of our ideas does not come from the reasoning that ties them together, but from the spiritual impulse that gives rise to them." - Nicolás Gómez Dávila

"So long as we have nothing to say to God, nothing to do with Him, save in the sunshine of the mind when we feel Him near us, we are poor creatures, willed upon, not willing...And how in such a condition do we generally act? Do we sit mourning the loss of feeling? Or worse, make frantic efforts to try to rouse them?" - George MacDonald

"I know you have been misled--as others have been--into thinking you can be 'anti-Zionist' and yet remain true to these heartfelt principles that you and I share." - Martin Luther King Jr.


Maybe too many people confuse "modern" to mean technologically and or progressively modern, and what is modern in that sense is often used as a weapon of moral values. The media uses this trick alot.

So the poor slaves of nature, libs, fat with their self-centered material gains, bored drunk, lash out. They do not see the value of the family, so they deconstruct truths, because they are hollowmen. And like the socialist slogan of "social justice" driven by economic ignorance and perversion, today's raving pagan cry is "change."

These impatient "progressives" have long been demonaically selfish. Christianity and Judaism has been their obstacles; i.e. the rise of the Hitler's National Socialist German Workers Party and the precious U.S.S.R. (The leftist Nation in 1934 approvingly wrote that the Russian "revolution"; the rise of Italian anti-capitalist fascism; the rise of Hitler's Nazi party reflected people who "demand a larger measure of security than can be provided by a system of free enterprise." What these authoritiarians share with eachother is a vitriolic paganism and nihilistic selfishness, not a basic resistance to mindless "change" (today's equivalent of "social justice"). So you naturally get more outrageous acts from people that are conditioned that way. The trap is that Satan persuades man to demean himself; to do with man as It does with nature.
As David Horowitz has written, in my view, describing the degenerate effects of the lib mentality, "Academic standards have been junked and far leftist faculty members hired and promoted as acts of solidarity by other leftists within the university system." This fifth column in the U.S. is naturally aggressively immmoral and as we have seen from their aiding of terrorists and undermining America's security in the middle of war they will do and say anything because they feel like it.
Some books which may help turn around the crisis of educational fraud and corruption is to learn about what really makes America possible. So I recommend the following two and 1/12th books which will help in this effort: "John Dewey and the Decline of American Education: How the Patron Saint of Schools has Corrupted Teaching and Learning" by Henry T. Edmondson III and "Faith & Freedom" by Ben Hart. There is also a good amount of data and analysis in chapter 11 of David Limbaugh's "Persecution: How Liberals Are Waging War Against Christianity" that is very useful.
As Ludwig von Mises, Milton Friedman and others successfully worked against the economic ignorance of their time and provided the Reagan Revolution with intellectual ammo, we can serve the cause of eternal vigilance for life and liberty by confronting an even more fundamental moral malaise: the deliberate and systematic destruction of America's Judeo-Christian moral compass that is epistemologically traceable people ! Get to it and spread the word!


13 posted on 10/21/2004 2:56:38 AM PDT by Sirc_Valence (Kerry= blah blah blah. Bush= Let's roll.)
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To: neverdem
Altemeyer, inventor of the RWA Scale, believes that there is no such thing as a Left Wing Authoritarian.

Guess he missed the 20th century, or at least the Lenin-Stalin-Hitler-Mao-Pol Pot-et.al. part.

14 posted on 10/21/2004 2:58:51 AM PDT by sphinx
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To: neverdem
According to Professor Altemeyer, right-wing authoritarians are cognitively rigid, aggressive, and intolerant. They are characterized by steadfast conformity to group norms, submission to higher status individuals, and aggression toward out-groups and unconventional group members.

Good gravy, I am none of the above save for 'agressive.' I'm a nonconformist, certainly not submissive to higher status (in fact, I have been consistently criticized for my lack or respect for authority figures), and am too selfish to be agressive towards unconventional types - I just don't care enough about them either way.

These whackjobs must have made all this stuff up!

15 posted on 10/21/2004 3:21:30 AM PDT by HitmanLV (I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.)
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To: neverdem

bttttt


All words true if you apply this to the real culprits, the left. They've shut down Stolen Valor, the anti Kerry film.


16 posted on 10/21/2004 3:23:10 AM PDT by dennisw (Gd - against Amelek for all generations.)
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To: neverdem

Didn't the Soviet Union consider anti-State thoughts to be signs of mental illness?


17 posted on 10/21/2004 3:49:45 AM PDT by Junior (FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC)
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To: neverdem
According to Professor Altemeyer, right-wing authoritarians are cognitively rigid, aggressive, and intolerant. They are characterized by steadfast conformity to group norms, submission to higher status individuals, and aggression toward out-groups and unconventional group members

Sorry, this sounds just like left-wing Democrats who walk in lock-step, who spout a party line with which disagreement is strictly forbidden, who suck up to the Hollywood elites and those in positions of power who 'matter' and who have remained steadfastly silent regarding the violence perpetrated against Republican headquarters and personnel across the country.

I'm thinking this is more a projection thing, psychologically speaking! (We're the monsters we accuse you of being, so you must be removed so we feel better.)

18 posted on 10/21/2004 4:01:11 AM PDT by Angry Enough
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To: sauropod

ping


19 posted on 10/21/2004 4:01:39 AM PDT by hellinahandcart
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To: neverdem

Fortunately for this person we have an economy so strong that it can support such silly lotus eating. During the Great Depression, clowns like this ended up selling pencils or digging ditches.


20 posted on 10/21/2004 5:36:58 AM PDT by BenLurkin (We have low inflation and and low unemployment.)
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