Posted on 11/01/2009 5:12:29 PM PST by lbryce
What if we could know, scientifically, that one side has the edge in brainpower? Should that change how we think about political issues? Who are smarter, liberals or conservatives? This is the kind of question that could spark fierce and endless debates between political opponents, but what if we could know, scientifically, that one side has the edge in brainpower? Should that change how we think about political issues?
Though few partisans on either side are likely to admit it, most people at one time or another have suspected that their political opponents are dim bulbs. Sometimes these sentiments get aired publicly, and both the Left and the Right have been guilty of leveling the “you’re stupid” accusation. Last summer, for example, conservative activists pushed the view that Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, then a nominee, is an intellectual lightweight who lacks the brainpower to be an effective justice.
But questioning the IQ of opponents is a specialty of liberals. When John Stuart Mill labeled British Conservatives “the Stupid Party” in the 19th century, he apparently started a long-term trend. Ronald Reagan, after all, was an “amiable dunce,” according to Clark Clifford and other Democrats. And when Vice President Dan Quayle told a 12-year-old student in a spelling bee that potato had an “e” at the end of it, Democrats milked the incident for all it was worth and then some. They even had the same student lead the Pledge of Allegiance at their 1992 convention.
(Excerpt) Read more at american.com ...
I didn't realize the issue on who was smarter needed to be clarified. My view on liberals not being nearly as smart as conservatives, to put it as politely as I can, needs no documentation rationale. Like having faith in God, I just know that conservatives are overwhelmingly smarter
No....they’re smarter than everyone. Just ask one.
No
NO
Only if it turns out to be smart to be slaves to the godless ruling class.
It is not about IQ, it is about sociopathy.
Smart?
Or more “intelligent” as in having a high IQ?
There are plenty of Mensa members who have difficulty with rudimentary common sense, and basic life management.
Maybe they have selective memory amnesia or something. Then again, maybe they are just plain stupid.
**There are plenty of Mensa members who have difficulty with rudimentary common sense, and basic life management.**
I know several MENSA ELIGIBLE’s who CAN’t JOIN because.. “For being So SMART..those Poeple can be Extremely DUMB!!”
Libs are just more devious.
Believing that one must increase spending to pay for a tax cut is pretty abysmally stupid.
, , , and conservatives more naive.
If smart is rugged individualism then libs are bankrupt.
Exactly right, liberalism is disordered.
Hey, I heard about what you did.
Liberal policies always work. Their goal is to aggregate power to themselves, not to fix whatever promise they made.
I was a nuclear power plant operator in the Navy. Naval Nuclear Power School only takes people that score in the top 10% on the ASVAB and then fails about 50% of them. In Power School the average person (and I was very average) does 40 hours of class and 40 hours of “suggested” study time (read mandatory). There were a few guys in every class that would come in for an hour after dinner each day and read through their notes once. They aced every test. While the rest of us were cramming on Saturday mornings and Sunday nights they were out doing the things that 20 year old men in Florida should be doing.
Their problems became apparent once they reached the fleet. Unfortunately, most of them were 50/50/90, which means if there was a 50/50 chance they got it wrong 90% of the time. They could never remember which way to turn a valve. They were always screwing up the simplest of things. They could quote you the entire procedure verbatim but were unable to carry it out. On the other hand, the guys that scraped by in NNPS worked hard and double checked everything. Many of them were on mandatory 60 hours of study time in NNPS, meaning they put in 100 hours a week at a minimum. When something went wrong you wanted them on watch with you.
Articles that explain how modern liberals suffer from a mental disorder.
>> Are Liberals Smarter Than Conservatives?
Intelligence is overrated.
It's an old joke.
Good 'cause I ain't got nones. Been on this heres short bus all of my life.
Remember what Ronald Reagan once said, that it’s not that the Liberals are ignorant, or not smart, it’s that ? they know some much about nothing.
Let’s put some prominent liberal TV anchors on Jeopardy and showcase their intelligence...yeah, right.
We should let the libs underestimate us. All we need to know is that we're better at using our brains, controlling our emotions, planning battles, and using guns. So when it comes down to the decisive battles in terms of both policy and outright civil war, liberal overconfidence will make their downfall much easier for us and more painful for them.
If liberals were so smart, Why are the republicans the party of the rich and control all the big corporations. /sarc
Drop a Conservative and a Liberal in Falluja with an M16 and MRE’s. The smart one survives and it isn’t the Libtard.
Einstein: “Insanity (Stupidity) is doing the same thing over & over and expecting different results.”
Me: "Socialism ALWAYS fails. ALWAYS."
The illiterate Dem callers to C-SPAN couldn't read their talking points. I haven't watched it in years for that reason.
Long buses are overrated.
I’m not so sure. Conservatives have been hanging around libertarians too much and their cognitive ability has been greatly diminished IMHO. To be a libertarian “thinker” one must only read all the way thru Atlas Shrugged and then mouth the words “Lower taxes, less government”. At that point, one becomes a full fledged Libertarian genius.
I see too many conservatives today where the liberals were back in the 70’s. They thought it pretty obvious that if you gave poor people money, then they would become middle class people. Theory-wise, maybe it was too simplistic, but where I got critical was when the illegitimate birth rate started climbing from 20% to 30% to 40% to etc...70+%, even the dumbest damn liberal should have woke up to the fact that this theory had a flaw or two, to put it mildly.
Now you have conservatives doing the same thing. Wall Street and the wealthy have been sodomizing the country for about 3 decades, and here we have conservatives who just breeze thru life about like a Marin County liberal democrat just oblivious to anything being wrong with the “free” market. If conservatives had been hanging around their own kind instead of these brain-dead libertarians I don’t think you would see this.
parsy, who thinks his parents were right not to let him play with certain kids when he was little
I’ll stack a conservative’s wisdom against a liberal’s intelligence any day.
The qualifiers that separate to two seem to be rooted in belief/disbelief in a higher power`- at least a higher power than oneself.
Those who believe that man is the highest power fall prey to faulty reasoning, including believing they have a right to rule over their fellow man.
From this, flows all the rest...
It's no wonder most liberals have no sense of humor and are teeth gnashers with ugly countenances. I cannot conceive what life would be if I did not know I have a loving God who is ultimately in power...
God does not require one to believe in Him in order to be...He is. And one day, one by one, these dark souls who work their evil, will have occasion to know GOD IS. And they are not going to like it...that old “As ye have done...” one is a b*tch.
Pretty dumb article.
It might be summed up as: “Are conservatives stupid? No, not if you mean economic conservatives like us. Only if you mean social conservatives, dummies who think it’s better to be good than evil.”
So, if you believe in God, family, country, you must be dumb. I don’t think so.
Some of the people I went to college with have the most impressive degrees and professional certifications you could ever imagine but they're drowning in debt, have no real-world common sense (some actually think a 70% income tax rate would have zero influence upon my decision to work and would be a "good thing" for the nation - I'm not kidding). I never understood how they got as far as they did. It usually came back to bite them, though: They believed they were "entitled" to a certain lifestyle or pay grade and have been hit hard by this recession. My best friend's brother-in-law is upset that he can't find work in the financial industry right now yet there are plumbers making $60,000 a year in the area.
It's a special type of academic elitism. Frankly, it ticks me off.
But it's conservatives, though we may have IQ's across the entire spectrum, who are 'smart'...........quick in thought, bright, amusingly clever, witty, perceptive, logical, thoughtful, articulate.
The left, on the other hand is monothematic, dull-witted, derisive and lacking basic perception and rational thought.
There's no comparison.
I didn’t know that liberals believed in any truths that would make them “smarter.” If what is good, bad, noble, base, virtuous, or vicious is just someone’s opinion isn’t everyone equally smart in their world? They treat knowledge like it is trivia - random facts with no profound truth - will to power.
If there is a smartest guy out there, I’d nominate Pope Benedict and it would be tough to argue he is anything but a conservative.
Belief systems are very different than intellect and wisdom. There are very smart people with odious ideas. There are also highly educated people who are ignorant about practical matters, and have been deprived of the emotional maturation to adulthood by focusing on graduate studies.
May his plumbing back up on Thanksgiving Day. heh heh heh
Remember Lord General Cornwallis
I don’t know about the rain department, but but their wallets are much fuller. The Dinos are being used to further a sinister agenda, make no mistake~
er.... the BRAIN department.....
The conservative high end measure of intelligence is much like that exemplified by Sarah Palin who can skin a moose in the evening, and the very next day conduct a meeting with Japanese fising representatives in Home Porting protocols under International treaty. Liberals could never survive in such an environment.They would be dinosaurs,and actually are dinosaurs.
Most of what libs regard as intelligence ivolve strictly mental formulations and little mental tricks. They have little intrinsic wisdom , nor do they have much in terms of skillful means.Sarah Palin is a good example of a balanced super intelligence of widom , intellect and skill.
I reject the whole proposition that liberals can set the scale for the evaluation of intelligence.I agree with Anne Coulter, that liberal intelligence is actually an Oxymoron,that is essentially to say liberals believe that they "think therefore I am." Conservatives tend to posit "I think and do, therefore I am." What is intelligence if it cannot be manifest in wisdom activity, a commodity very short on the liberal side of intelligence. That's why our banking system is in such bad shape, while Canada's is not.
“Smart” and “wise” are two completely different concepts. Liberals might be smarter, but relying on government to solve every problem is inherently unwise.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.