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Posted: **Wed Aug 13, 2003 10:47 pm**

And I didn't even say it. Well, I guess they didn't use the term "evil", but you all know how to read between the lines...

Study of Bush's psyche touches a nerve

Julian Borger in Washington
Wednesday August 13, 2003
The Guardian

A study funded by the US government has concluded that conservatism can be explained psychologically as a set of neuroses rooted in "fear and aggression, dogmatism and the intolerance of ambiguity".

As if that was not enough to get Republican blood boiling, the report's four authors linked Hitler, Mussolini, Ronald Reagan and the rightwing talkshow host, Rush Limbaugh, arguing they all suffered from the same affliction.

All of them "preached a return to an idealised past and condoned inequality".

Republicans are demanding to know why the psychologists behind the report, Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition, received $1.2m in public funds for their research from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

The authors also peer into the psyche of President George Bush, who turns out to be a textbook case. The telltale signs are his preference for moral certainty and frequently expressed dislike of nuance.

"This intolerance of ambiguity can lead people to cling to the familiar, to arrive at premature conclusions, and to impose simplistic cliches and stereotypes," the authors argue in the Psychological Bulletin.

One of the psychologists behind the study, Jack Glaser, said the aversion to shades of grey and the need for "closure" could explain the fact that the Bush administration ignored intelligence that contradicted its beliefs about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

The authors, presumably aware of the outrage they were likely to trigger, added a disclaimer that their study "does not mean that conservatism is pathological or that conservative beliefs are necessarily false".

Another author, Arie Kruglanski, of the University of Maryland, said he had received hate mail since the article was published, but he insisted that the study "is not critical of conservatives at all". "The variables we talk about are general human dimensions," he said. "These are the same dimensions that contribute to loyalty and commitment to the group. Liberals might be less intolerant of ambiguity, but they may be less decisive, less committed, less loyal."

But what drives the psychologists? George Will, a Washington Post columnist who has long suffered from ingrained conservatism, noted, tartly: "The professors have ideas; the rest of us have emanations of our psychological needs and neuroses."

Posted: **Thu Aug 14, 2003 4:28 am**

Heh! In read an abridged version of this in the local paper last week. Notice how it has not really been mentioned in the news? :lol:

I live in a very conservative area, and I have always known that conservatives are some of the most uptight, dispicable people you'll ever meet.

Posted: **Thu Aug 14, 2003 10:06 pm**

Grant wrote:I live in a very conservative area, and I have always known that conservatives are some of the most uptight, dispicable people you'll ever meet.

How do you really feel Grant?

Posted: **Thu Aug 14, 2003 10:15 pm**

lukpac wrote:And I didn't even say it. Well, I guess they didn't use the term "evil", but you all know how to read between the lines...

Not critical of conservatives at all?

Posted: **Fri Aug 15, 2003 7:20 am**

Demonizing people, for their political convictions, is a very old device, to get one's point across.

All's that missing, are the drawings of horns, tails, and hoofs !

Don't these people have ANYTHING more important to waste our time about ? I don't think so.

Posted: **Fri Aug 15, 2003 7:57 am**

Hey, Mike, are you posting via carrier pigeon, or do you have power this morning?

Ryan

PS - The article is interesting but I don't see the controversy. I mean, of course that's how conservatives think. And the effectiveness of liberals is often paralyzed by indecisiveness and trying to make everyone happy, because they aren't as intolerant of ambiguity. Righties get things done, but not always the stuff that *should* be done. Lefties usually have better intentions, but rarely get their act together sufficiently to make it happen.

Posted: **Fri Aug 15, 2003 8:14 am**

Rspaight wrote:Hey, Mike, are you posting via carrier pigeon, or do you have power this morning?

Ryan

PS - The article is interesting but I don't see the controversy. I mean, of course that's how conservatives think. And the effectiveness of liberals is often paralyzed by indecisiveness and trying to make everyone happy, because they aren't as intolerant of ambiguity. Righties get things done, but not always the stuff that *should* be done. Lefties usually have better intentions, but rarely get their act together sufficiently to make it happen.

Ryan,

The power was actually out, where I am on Long Island, for just about five and half hours, last night. Power here on The Island, is spotty, and will be so, for a few days, at least, no matter what the News says.

I had the day off, anyway, thank God, but my wife is still in the city, at work, working, but with electricity where she is. She probably won't come home until tomorrow, at this rate. Her ride is a company electrician...
so.....she will probably stay with relatives in the City, overnight. For the meantime, we have her Mother coming out to stay with us, as her electricity still isn't on, after yesterday afternoon.

The day is just started here so it's still cooooool. But this afternoon, it's going to be in the mid-90's...so there are going to be more power failures.

Lightning striking, YEAH RIGHT !

Posted: **Fri Aug 15, 2003 8:31 am**

Matt wrote:Not critical of conservatives at all?

Have I ever said I wasn't?

Posted: **Fri Aug 15, 2003 8:35 am**

mikenycLI wrote:
Rspaight wrote:PS - The article is interesting but I don't see the controversy. I mean, of course that's how conservatives think. And the effectiveness of liberals is often paralyzed by indecisiveness and trying to make everyone happy, because they aren't as intolerant of ambiguity. Righties get things done, but not always the stuff that *should* be done. Lefties usually have better intentions, but rarely get their act together sufficiently to make it happen.

It just reinforces what people want to think about someone.

Easy thinking, or mind candy for the politically-challenged.

Posted: **Fri Aug 15, 2003 1:55 pm**

I thought I'd offer this, addressing the other extreme in the political spectrum. My apologies that it's an op/ed piece, and not the results of a study.

What makes a liberal?
Dennis Prager

August 12, 2003

Why do people hold liberal-left positions? (Liberal and left were once very different, but not anymore.)

This question has plagued me because I have long believed that most people, liberal or conservative, mean well. Very few people wake up in the morning planning to harm society. Yet, many liberal positions -- I emphasize liberal positions rather than liberals because most people who call themselves liberal do not hold most contemporary liberal positions -- have been wreaking havoc on America and the world.

How, then, can decent and often very smart people hold liberal positions?

There are many reasons, but the two greatest may be naivete and narcissism. Each alone causes problems, but when combined in the same person, they are particularly destructive.

At the heart of liberalism is the naive belief that people are basically good. As a result of this belief, liberals rarely blame people for the evil they do. Instead, they blame economics, parents, capitalism, racism, and anything else that can let the individual off the hook.

A second naive liberal belief is that because people are basically good, talking with people who do evil is always better than fighting, let alone killing, them. "Negotiate with Saddam," "Negotiate with the Soviets," "War never solves anything," "Think peace," "Visualize peace" -- the liberal mind is filled with naive cliches about how to deal with evil.

Indeed, the very use of the word "evil" greatly disturbs liberals. It shakes up their child-like views of the world, that everybody is at heart a decent person who is either misunderstood or led to do unfortunate things by outside forces.

"Child-like" is operative. The further left you go, the less you like growing up. That is one reason so many professors are on the left. Never leaving school from kindergarten through adulthood enables one to avoid becoming a mature adult. It is no wonder a liberal professor has recently argued that children should have the vote. He knows in his heart that he is not really an adult, so why should he and not a chronologic child be allowed to vote?

The second major source of modern liberalism is narcissism, the unhealthy preoccupation with oneself and one's feelings. We live in the Age of Narcissism. As a result of unprecedented affluence and luxury, preoccupation with one's psychological state, and a hedonistic culture, much of the West, America included, has become almost entirely feelings-directed.

That is one reason "feelings" and "compassion" are two of the most often used liberal terms. "Character" is no longer a liberal word because it implies self-restraint. "Good and evil" are not liberal words either as they imply a moral standard beyond one's feelings. In assessing what position to take on moral or social questions, the liberal asks him or herself, "How do I feel about it?" or "How do I show the most compassion?" not "What is right?" or "What is wrong?" For the liberal, right and wrong are dismissed as unknowable, and every person chooses his or her own morality.

A good example of liberal narcissism is the liberal position on abortion. For the liberal, the worth of a human fetus, whether it is allowed to live or to be extinguished, is entirely based on the feelings of the mother. If the mother wants to give birth, the fetus is of incomparable worth; if the mother doesn't, the fetus has the value of a decayed tooth.

There are not many antidotes to this lethal combination of naivete and narcissism. Both are very comfortable states compared to growing up and confronting evil, and compared to making one's feelings subservient to a higher standard. And comfortable people don't like to be made uncomfortable.

Hence the liberal attempt to either erase the Judeo-Christian code or at least remove its influence from public life. Nothing could provide a better example of contemporary liberalism than the liberal battle to remove the Ten Commandments from all public places. Liberals want suggestions, not commandments.

It's a shame that while someone such as myself tends to live in gray area in the middle of things, I have to vote for a person who most likely is going to be much closer to one extreme or the other.

Posted: **Fri Aug 15, 2003 3:05 pm**

Rspaight wrote:And the effectiveness of liberals is often paralyzed by indecisiveness and trying to make everyone happy, because they aren't as intolerant of ambiguity. Righties get things done, but not always the stuff that *should* be done. Lefties usually have better intentions, but rarely get their act together sufficiently to make it happen.

Good point, Ron. The ability to accept ambiguity and nuance is a double-edged sword lending itself to, on the one hand, sensitivity [a good thing] and indecisiveness [a not-so-good thing] on the other. But whereas I think liberals more than conservatives appear to want to make people happy, I think that behavior stems more from their trying to "do the right thing" as liberals are more sensitive to the validity of both sides of a particular issue. Actually, I envy conservatives their clarity.

Posted: **Fri Aug 15, 2003 3:39 pm**

Rspaight wrote:Hey, Mike, are you posting via carrier pigeon, or do you have power this morning?

Ryan

PS - The article is interesting but I don't see the controversy. I mean, of course that's how conservatives think. And the effectiveness of liberals is often paralyzed by indecisiveness and trying to make everyone happy, because they aren't as intolerant of ambiguity. Righties get things done, but not always the stuff that *should* be done. Lefties usually have better intentions, but rarely get their act together sufficiently to make it happen.

Yup! You nailed it! :lol:

Posted: **Fri Aug 15, 2003 3:47 pm**

This question has plagued me because I have long believed that most people, liberal or conservative, mean well. Very few people wake up in the morning planning to harm society. Yet, many liberal positions -- I emphasize liberal positions rather than liberals because most people who call themselves liberal do not hold most contemporary liberal positions -- have been wreaking havoc on America and the world.

'Zat so? Seems to me the havoc-wreakers are the Osamas and Kim Jong-Ils of the world, not the Jesse Jacksons and Russ Feingolds. The lefties might create social programs with bad economic and social consequences, which I guess is what this writer is on about, but they rarely end up actually killing people and driving millions into squalor in the name of pursuing the "evil" that conservatives see so clearly.

And the author needs to pick an idea and stick with it for more than one paragraph. Here he writes that "most people mean well." Then he writes...

At the heart of liberalism is the naive belief that people are basically good. As a result of this belief, liberals rarely blame people for the evil they do. Instead, they blame economics, parents, capitalism, racism, and anything else that can let the individual off the hook.

This is the classic slam on the left -- the Willie Horton attack. Liberals love killers and rapists, blah blah blah. What I want to know is why the right is so obsessed with punishing criminals, rather than reducing crime. The two are completely different things in many cases. The liberals I know have no problem with locking up criminals. But they also are interested in the economic, social and political conditions that cause crime. (And if you don't think that poverty, unemployment and Neanderthal drug laws have as much to do with everyday street crime as "evil," you're living in as much of a fairyland as the author accuses the left of being.) Draconian sentencing and the death penalty don't prevent crime, they just make people feel better after the crime has already happened. In the same way, attributing crime to "evil" lets government (and the people that support it via taxes) off the hook -- hey, crime isn't *our* problem, it's just evil people and we can't do anything about that other than lock 'em up and/or kill 'em. Either extreme in this case isn't very helpful.

(And why do I get the feeling that the author has poor (probably black) criminals in mind, and not people like the Enron and Worldcom execs?)

A second naive liberal belief is that because people are basically good, talking with people who do evil is always better than fighting, let alone killing, them. "Negotiate with Saddam," "Negotiate with the Soviets," "War never solves anything," "Think peace," "Visualize peace" -- the liberal mind is filled with naive cliches about how to deal with evil.

Hmmmmm. So FDR, as liberal as they come, was too much of a peacenik wimp to deal with Hitler? And Nixon, who no one has accused of being a touchy-feely lefty, ended the Vietnam War and opened relations with "evil" China. And would it have been better to "defeat" communism via a nuclear exchange? What babble.

Indeed, the very use of the word "evil" greatly disturbs liberals. It shakes up their child-like views of the world, that everybody is at heart a decent person who is either misunderstood or led to do unfortunate things by outside forces.

No, it disturbs liberals because liberals know that calling someone/thing "evil" is a way of trying to circumvent thoughtful debate about the subject. You can argue cogently about whether or not Saddam posed an imminent threat to the US, but it's hard to have a rational discussion about whether or not he's "evil."

It's ironic that the author insists the liberals are "child-like." Insisting that everything is either good or evil seems much more infantile to me.

That is one reason "feelings" and "compassion" are two of the most often used liberal terms. "Character" is no longer a liberal word because it implies self-restraint. "Good and evil" are not liberal words either as they imply a moral standard beyond one's feelings. In assessing what position to take on moral or social questions, the liberal asks him or herself, "How do I feel about it?" or "How do I show the most compassion?" not "What is right?" or "What is wrong?" For the liberal, right and wrong are dismissed as unknowable, and every person chooses his or her own morality.

This is such crap that I can hardly respond to it. Any right-wing argument that starts by accusing liberals of a lack of "self-restraint" is laughable on its face. How much "self-restraint" did Ken Lay exercise? What part of Bush's rush to unilateral war was an example of "self-restraint?" At what point in the awarding of no-bid postwar contracts to Cheney's Halliburton did "self-restraint" appear?

Maybe if this guy would spend more time thinking about what he's saying, and less time smugly assuming his personal views of "right" and "wrong" are universally applicable and the rest of us aren't on as lofty a moral plane as he, he wouldn't spew such nonsense.

Hence the liberal attempt to either erase the Judeo-Christian code or at least remove its influence from public life. Nothing could provide a better example of contemporary liberalism than the liberal battle to remove the Ten Commandments from all public places. Liberals want suggestions, not commandments.

And, of course, here's the punchline. Making not observing the Sabbath punishable by law. (Wonder how the NFL and NASCAR would feel about that?) And banning graven images would sure put a kink in a *lot* of things.

Oh, you mean you don't really believe everyone should follow the Ten Commandments? You just want to post them as a totemistic boast about how your religion is better than everyone else's? What a surprise.

How's this for a commandment? "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." Works for me.

Ryan

Posted: **Fri Aug 15, 2003 4:27 pm**

What I want to know is why the right is so obsessed with punishing criminals, rather than reducing crime. The two are completely different things in many cases. The liberals I know have no problem with locking up criminals. But they also are interested in the economic, social and political conditions that cause crime.

Particularly addressing the economic and social conditions may indeed help reduce crime, but at what cost? I for one don't care for the idea of my tax dollars going to support someone who's too lazy to go out and get a job. Improving the conditions in communities that seem to breed criminals may indeed reduce the crime, but not many people are going to want to foot the bill for somebody who won't help themselves.

That's not to say all the people from such communities are like this. Many of them are ready, willing, and able to work, and many of them do, but in jobs that pay far too little to maintain a decent standard of living. When they do make enough, they move out, leaving the others behind in a perpetually deteriorating environment.

I would be interested in seeing some responsibility on the part of employers instead of their maniacal dedication to the bottom line. An increase in minimum wage would help, but few employers would be willing to commit to linking wages, even partially, to inflation.

On the other hand, there's nothing wrong with some truth in sentencing. If someone is sentenced to 20 years, then lock him up for 20, not 5 or 10. I frequently read about people committing their fifth armed robbery, their third rape, their fourth drunk driving offense.

Some time ago I recall reading a story about a man, a parolee, who broke into a house, demanded a gun, and then took the two people inside hostage. When the police stand-off was over, the man and his two hostages were dead. All the media could talk about was how none of it would have happened if there hadn't been a gun in the house. All I could think about was how none of it would have happened if he had been locked up for the full term of his sentence.

While the goal of fines and imprisonment may be rehabilitation, they should be severe enough to be a deterrent, as well.

I leave this as a final example:

On a busy street corner in the inner city is a little old lady with a handbag. On another corner is a group of gang members. Parked near another corner is a police car with two officers in it.

Who's the safest person there?

The little old lady.

Because everybody in the neighborhood knows she's the lady that makes deliveries for the Mafia.

Posted: **Fri Aug 15, 2003 4:36 pm**

Here's a catch 22 that I've been thinking about lately...

Liberal ideology is to be open to various viewpoints. To accept people if they are different. To preach tolerance. Yet what happens when you come across those that are intolerant of others? Is it ok to be tolerant of those who are intolerant?

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