Proletariat Blog

Incredible. Or should I say, truly blind?

This may be the best example of not just selective truth but of an outright immobile worldview filter that will not allow any other ‘truth’ except that which is already believed. So much for leftist science. Even I imagined that someone who might call themselves a scientist (or perhaps it is a naive stretch to refer to the social sciences as ‘science’) would at least use evidence to lead them to a conclusion rather than the other way around.

Researchers help define what makes a political conservative

…Four researchers who culled through 50 years of research literature about the psychology of conservatism report that at the core of political conservatism is the resistance to change and a tolerance for inequality, and that some of the common psychological factors linked to political conservatism include:

• Fear and aggression
• Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity
• Uncertainty avoidance
• Need for cognitive closure
• Terror management

~berkeley.edu

I just had to laugh when I first read this. I laughed almost as much this afternoon listening to Naomi whatshername talk about the fascist takeover that is underway even as we speak by the Bush administration and conservatives.

The worst sort of straw man argument dressed in academic credibility.

Disparate conservatives share a resistance to change and acceptance of inequality, the authors said. Hitler, Mussolini, and former President Ronald Reagan were individuals, but all were right-wing conservatives because they preached a return to an idealized past and condoned inequality in some form. Talk host Rush Limbaugh can be described the same way, the authors commented in a published reply to the article.

This research marks the first synthesis of a vast amount of information about conservatism, and the result is an “elegant and unifying explanation” for political conservatism under the rubric of motivated social cognition, said Sulloway. That entails the tendency of people’s attitudinal preferences on policy matters to be explained by individual needs based on personality, social interests or existential needs.

Uh, yeah. No problem. See any similarities between socialist leaders throughout history? No? I wonder why not.