Slashdot Mirror
Political Viewpoints Linked To Fear
Pentagram writes "Researchers writing in Science report that the political orientation of test subjects who have strong views is linked to how easy they are to startle. They found that subjects who were more fearful were more likely to have right wing views, such as being in favor of capital punishment and higher defense budgets. The researchers suggest that this psychological difference is why it is so difficult to change people's minds in political arguments."
Easily startled people carry guns, so be careful out there!
Hate leads to Anger... Anger leads to killing George Lucas for some really bad movies.
Republicans are cowards.
Yeah this discussion is going to go well...
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
...and I'm also extremely easy to startle.
Oh well, by this point I guess I should be used to being an anomaly in the data.
I read Usenet for the articles.
Try chewing your food next time.
We learn to avoid danger as we grow up and experience the world, and that is what shapes who we are. Sometimes we become extra fearful of silly things, and thats how we get phobias.
Who is this Karma guy and why is he bad ??
People get paid to work that out???
So, liberals are the least fearful. While right wingers are the most jumpy. Wow, this article (and my comment) is going to have some serious down mods.
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
Aye, me mean, tis' possible t' phrase the same question multiple diffarnt ways, and each time, gettin' a diffarnt answer from the same person. Tis' called "Politics" Ye'll ne'er get me buried booty!
There was also a more indepth article about this last year in Psychology Today: http://psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20061222-000001.xml
First, they were attached to equipment to measure skin conductivity, which rises with emotional stress as the moisture level in skin goes up. Each participant was shown threatening images, such as a bloody face interspersed with innocuous pictures of things such as bunnies, and rise in skin conductance in response to the shocking image was measured. Those who lean towards the left are more likely to frequent Slashdot, and are therefore used to the occasional goatse.
This is one of the best posts i have ever seen.
NO SIG
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
In retrospect.... I'm in the UK, and the more right-wing the paper, the more knee-jerk to headlines.
I guess it's also what gives the conservatives (small c) that weird advantage in polls- their always more likely to be 'in tune' with the masses, because their opinions are always more likely to have been formed off the back of the most recent scare story.
"Be light, stinging, insolent and melancholy"
I think being startled has much more to do with the ability to concentrate than with fear.
I am the most startled person I know... If I am concentrating on something, I make a total vacuum, I block all my senses... if at that point I am distracted by someone I will jump a foot in the air and scream. I don't consider myself fearful though.
Right wing in the US has, for most of its existence, been isolationist and thus favored less military rather than more. I don't believe there's any connection.
All in all, this research is probably crap.
\u262D = \u5350
They could startle easier because they're cowards. Or maybe they're just more situationally aware because they're not high.
While there are plenty of intelligent and insightful right-winged folks out there with good ideas, this observation mirrors my own experience with your joe-average "I am a Republican" type.
Perhaps the tag "icouldhavetoldyouthat" would be good.
Do you think there is a correlation also to the fact that TV shows and Video Games desensitize people to real-world violence? Do right wingers play and watch less violence than left wingers? Thus ... the right-wingers have not been desensitized and have more to fear and the left wingers have been desentized and fear nothing?
I am a libertarian, and I tend to think that this is more common sense. If you are not afraid, then defense is not a high priority. If you feel afraid, then suddenly defending yourself becomes much more important. That the desire for greater defense spending increases as fear increases is common sense.
Capital punishment could be viewed in a similar vein, though I wonder if the correlation is as strong. Some people think that capital punishment is more effective than the alternatives.
Other issues, such as gun rights, also play into fear. Scared people are more likely to want to defend themselves.
Free market economics? I don't really see how fear could be used to promote that. In fact, I'd expect the opposite.
The researchers commented on this situation on NPR this morning. Yes, you could potentially see Republicans that way. But the researchers suggested that you could also see Democrats as "lacking in a basic sense of self-preservation."
The researchers went on to say that they don't believe that either label is appropriate. Rather, they hope both sides will use this information to better understand one another.
From my own perspective, I feel that it's also worth pointing out that both sides tend to follow their ideals. It's not like Republicans tend to avoid military service after demanding it, and it's not like Democrats seek military service due to a lack of self-preservation. The two sides merely react to certain stimulus, but the actual psychology of the drive is obviously more complex. Which leads me to my next point.
Many of the other researchers interviewed by NPR were skeptical of these findings. Their belief was that the study failed to show that these responses were set biologically and not by environmental stimuli. So in fact, it may be that Republicans are more suspicious of attacks than Democrats due to their environmental training. Which certainly seems more likely than dividing people up into "cowards" and "idiot-savants".
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Yes, the fact that politics is in large part driven by fear is nothing new. So why is this interesting?
It is interesting to science. There is a marked difference between what we "know" intuitively. In a lot of cases, the intuitive answer happens to be true. Science progresses because we question the obvious. They basically strengthened an assumption. The problem with this is that the media gets these kinds of news wrong. The media doesn't know how to interpret this correctly. Cue the bruhaha about scientists confirming something obvious again.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Talk about fear of competing ideas, you Libs need a mirror. Variations of this story appear here and on every libtard site every few weeks now, claiming conservative ideas are the result of mental defect. Because if you can keep that idea formly in yer heads you can justify the childish antics you guys normally do when exposed to a different set of ideas, shout it down. Because if the other side is mentally ill there isn't a reason to even allow them to speak.
To a liberal, 'diversity' is defined as all colors, gender identities and faiths all thinking exactly alike. Because the one thing liberalism can't tolerate is reasoned debate since the whole system is based on emotion.
No, I don't think liberalism is a mental illness in return. I think it is evil. You guys have free will, you chose the wrong side. Of course you convince yourselves that notions like good and evil are outdated because few will admit to serving evil so you solve that problem by handwaving the whole question away.
Democrat delenda est
I hope that they didn't try this test with weapon owners... There is a strong part of me that thinks that everyone needs to be trained in either martial arts or using some type of small arms weapon... (be it a knife, sword, gun, mace, tazer, or nerf bat.) just in case anyone decides to pick on you or just slightly annoys you, that it'd be socially acceptable to instantly beat them within an inch of their lives... The lesson to be learned is don't startle/annoy people that have weapons unless you want to win a darwin award.
I learned from my brother that if you want to stop annoying behavior a quick punch in the face is the quickest safest course of action. Of course, the best long term solution to stop being bothered by my brothers annoying behavior was to go off to college and never ever move back in with the parents where said brothers lived.
What political party was that other than the don't annoy me or pick on me party? (note: I'd love to take a nerf bat or lighting bolts to any group that wants me to pay higher taxes for just about any reason. That I've got a good imagination and can envision all those groups getting violently removed from my life has kept me somewhat sane and out of jail. )
First, they were attached to equipment to measure skin conductivity, which rises with emotional stress as the moisture level in skin goes up. Each participant was shown threatening images, such as a bloody face interspersed with innocuous pictures of things such as bunnies, and rise in skin conductance in response to the shocking image was measured.
Those who lean towards the left are more likely to frequent Slashdot, and are therefore used to the occasional goatse.
Seriously, though, McCain admitting to not knowing how to send an email, and Governor Palin's poor choices of password/secret question illustrate what we have long suspected: Right-wingers are, by and large, less interested in the interwebs. Let us not forget Democratic Ted "Series of Tubes" Stevens.
Perhaps a significant population of left-leaning individuals are more used to being rickrolled and whatnot.
It's a bit of a stretch, I'll admit.
"A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged" - I guess the message there is supposed to be "having been mugged and now being familiar with the true nature of the world around them, they learned that the ideals they formerly embraced were foolishly misguided" but I always read it more as "having been mugged they allowed fear to take over their lives, replacing their sense of justice with a more Machiavellian approach to the world."
Bow-ties are cool.
This is sure to be a well reasoned discussion.
The reason right wingers startle more easily is because they know their view of the world is a very selfish one and that makes them feel guilty. They go around expecting that eventually someone's going to jump out and call them on it so they're always on the defensive.
There, that's a good start.
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
This definitely affects Democrats, too. My father-in-law is a staunch democrat, and he's also very anxious all the time. It affects his political views because he worries greatly about things like health care and such, things which he thinks the gov't can protect us from.
There's a well-known saying: "A Democrat is a Republican who's been arrested, and a Republican is a Democrat who's been mugged."
I know that the saying works for me, too. My wife and I were the victims of gang violence (well, just some inner-city middle schoolers who broke our car window while we were in the car, causing my wife's face to bleed) and I definitely think it caused me to lean to the right, and more recently I was arrested (charges later dismissed) which caused me to not trust the police and lean to the left.
Now, I don't think I'm really on either side. The police aren't going to really do too much to you as long as you don't make their lives difficult, and I think I can handle myself and my family if the whole economy implodes. Politicians usually don't actually make you safer. Good neighbors, family, and friends do.
Goatse linked to FEAR!
I feel like death on a soda cracker.
It seems to me that much of the current war on * sham is based on irrational fears. It's well known that humans have difficulty understanding on a qualitative level very low and very high probabilities.
So, for example, people might be far more concerned about being killed in a 9/11 repeat (5000 people) rather than in an automobile accident (~20,000 p/yr), despite the latter being far more of a risk to them.
Of course there are reasons to fear the former more than the latter that are reasonable, such as placing more value on how one dies than if (I don't consider this unreasonable; I'd rather be shot by a stranger than my best friend)
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
BOO! Hahaha.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Are you trying to tell me that Chuck Norris is easily startled? Cuz that is FUCKING BULLSHIT.
Similes are like metaphors
It supports their world view?
Talk about trash science.
"The authors first conducted a random telephone survey of Lincoln residents to find some who held strong political opinions. Then 46 selected respondents were invited to come in to the lab and fill in questionnaires to reveal political beliefs and personality traits. Participants were then given two types of tests to measure physiological responses to threat."
Let's see. A none random sample of 46 people? Yea that is some good hard science.
I think this is a great experiment on Slashdot.
Just how many people "Hard core science and self professed skeptics will question this? My guess is very few.
None random sample and a tiny sample size == USLESS!
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I suppose this makes sense. I mean think about it if you panic you are more likely to respond in force. It is probably a good instinct from when we were caveman as a last resort to save us from some wild animal trying to kill us. The bad news is of course we are in modern society now (I think) where those sort of things are less likely to happen and thinking it over before doing is a better course of action.
Huh, I wonder what political viewpoints may correlate to me finding this news strangely satisfying.
I got someone I want to go "RAWR!" to and see how high they jump...
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
Eh, you fail reading comprehension. Nowhere did the article or summary claim that wanting capital punishment or higher defense (Important Enough to Capitalize!) made one fearful. The gist is, if you are easy to startle, you are more likely to be conservative. That's all.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
No, MY beliefs are valid, not yours! Yours are silly and smell bad!
Invoke Godwin's law and I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
To them, there's only one thing worse then burning eternally in hell - having a penis up your asshole.
Just wave a terrorist-on-stick in front of them and suddenly everyone turns into a right-wing extremist republican.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
FTA: "decided to test the idea that liberal and conservative (or "protective") social beliefs are related to individuals' sensitivity to threat."
So really what they tested was whether people who have more protective attitudes toward others react more to fear stimulus. Well, isn't that obvious? Correlation OR causation, it seems a pretty direct link that if you are afraid of something, you'd want to protect against it, and if you are afraid of more things, you'd want to protect against more things, and if the intensity of your fear is higher, the level of protection would increase.
So how on Earth did they translate that into "conservative" political views?
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Why is it that people assume that biological = innate? All of a person's thoughts, emotions, decisions and actions are the result of the biological operation of the brain, whose operation is as much a function of learning and experience as it is genetics.
What does higher defence budgets and being pro-capital punishment have to do with being right wing (i.e. being in favour of commerce and small government)?
Did the most assuredly left-wing former communist nations have tiny proportional defence spending and no capital punishment?
Azural - instrumentals
as much as i'd like to have another reason why social authoritarianism is laughable, this is clearly an irrelevant study with a very small set of subjects, the statistics alone are flawed.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
The debate is over. Conservatism is a mental disorder, it should be banned, and the patients should be cured until they have nothing but the correct thoughts.
What if I think being politically motivated at all is a mental illness?
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
Politicians play off people's fears--it's been that way since been that way. The idea that there is a biological link involved only makes it even more deplorable.
This introductory survey matches up nicely with Robert Altemeyer's more substantial body of work. See http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
I'm sorry, but what have you been smoking? I think I need some. People defined as liberal are rarely if ever the ones shouting down the opposition. If anything they like to talk everything out too much so nothing ever gets done. This is why the democratic party is so fragmented and why they frequently lose in elections because they don't have solidarity.
You seem to be describing the current republican party labeling descent as unAmerican or non-patriotic. As Stephen Colbert likes to say, "Why do you hate America?"
There is no mental defect in either way of thinking, there are well reasoned debaters on both sides and there are really bad opinions on both sides. What childish antics are you referring to when referring to "liberals?" I'm honestly curious because it's entirely possible I've been hiding in a cave the last 8 years.
Talk about fear of competing ideas, you Libs need a mirror. Variations of this story appear here and on every libtard site every few weeks now, claiming conservative ideas are the result of mental defect. Because if you can keep that idea formly in yer heads you can justify the childish antics you guys normally do when exposed to a different set of ideas, shout it down. Because if the other side is mentally ill there isn't a reason to even allow them to speak.
To a liberal, 'diversity' is defined as all colors, gender identities and faiths all thinking exactly alike. Because the one thing liberalism can't tolerate is reasoned debate since the whole system is based on emotion.
No, I don't think liberalism is a mental illness in return. I think it is evil. You guys have free will, you chose the wrong side. Of course you convince yourselves that notions like good and evil are outdated because few will admit to serving evil so you solve that problem by handwaving the whole question away.
Wow, your sane, calm, and carefully-reasoned response has totally convinced me.
Fear leads to anger...
Anger leads to hate...
Hate leads to suffering
And no, I'm not just trying to stick in a fun Star Wars quote here, this is a very serious observation.
People shape their reality based on their perception. People expecting rain buy umbrellas. People expecting war buy guns.
Our society is bred and steeped in fear. And the most fearful are in the safest parts of the world anyway (probably in response to their fear). And in a society where our leaders can come from virtually anywhere, anyone can bring their born & bred fears with them up to the city council, the state capital, or to the white house... the very same fears with which they grew up.
And what comes from those fears? Reactions! Only when one is in a position of power, they can buy bigger umbrellas to cover their cities and states... or buy bigger guns that they can afford on taxpayer dollars.
Imagine a government without fear...
When whippoorwills call and evening is nigh,
I hurry to my Blue Heaven.
A turn to the right, a little white light,
Will lead me to my Blue Heaven.
I'll see a smiling face, a fireplace, a cozy room,
A little nest that nestles where the roses bloom;
Just Julie and me, and baby makes three,
We're happy in my Blue Heaven.
You know I'm gonna see a smiling face, a fireplace, a cozy room,
A little nest that nestles where the roses bloom;
Just Julie and me, and baby makes three,
We're happy in my Blue Heaven.
Whoever finds the Higgs Boson should get a good throat fucking!
I feel like death on a soda cracker.
By nana gov't I assume you are talking about the the extra 100k federal employees protecting my homeland and various agencies orchestrating bailouts in the trillions of dollars to make sure we don't lose any savings?
the Republican party.
It used to be that the right was all about a smaller FEDERAL government (not necessarily smaller government). Then as time went on, both parties used scare tactics to gain votes. The right convinced us we would all die, the world would end, and our children would all be crippled unless...
Anyway, the point is, it's not that the fearful gravitate to the right, but that the right uses fear to attract the fearful. After all, when you were afraid of the dark as a child you didn't want your parents to tell you there was nothing to be afraid of. You wanted them to hide under your covers with you. (Most parents fall somewhere in the middle).
People who are afraid of something are usually most comforted by those who are afraid of the same thing... that way they can watch each others back.
Ever wonder why social conservatives lean right politically? Wouldn't large government and lots of regulation be better to enforce socially conservative ideals? After all the more control a government has, the more they are likely to force morals on their people (look at the middle east, China, Nazi's). The more free we are of government influence, the more free we are to express ourselves socially. Regulating anything (abortion, marriage, sex education, etc...) are all very leftist ideas! But the right was always about fear... fear big government, fear taxes, fear communists, fear, fear, fear. Social conservatism is all about fear too... fear change, fear uniqueness, fear god, fear science, fear fear fear.
Fear attracts fear!
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
"Right-wing" was linked to conservatism?
When did it start equating to military rule?
Karma: Non-Heinous
Perhaps conservatives are not more easily frightened, but rather simply are more attentive to their surroundings and not as distant and out-of-touch as liberals. After all , ingestion of THC probably plays a large role in the slow response time that liberals show to stimulus.... uhh, like wow man.
I've always wondered why Republicans didn't believe that Americans had the courage to risk death by terrorism rather than give up our liberty. It turns out it's really that they don't have the courage to stand up to that fear because of their biology. That's a great relief, as it implies a social program of reinforcing bravery rather than cowardice might be able to reverse their tendencies to cave in. And not only that, they should be in favor of such a program, because they generally revere bravery as a virtue (perhaps because of a lack of same).
This could really be a turning point for democracy, as we've identified the source of one of the greatest dangers it faces.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
All the McCain/Harper supporters really need is a good dose of therapy!
Of course, fear is a healthy thing, a survival instinct if you will, so maybe the Obama/Layton supporters need to take a good look at their lives and realize they've been living a lie.
That leaves Canada with Stephane Dion, and the US with...the invisible man. Which is about the same thing, really.
Perhaps it isn't fear as much as it is concern for the welfare of the person they see with the bloody face.
Perhaps they have a more sincere reaction to someone suffering.
Further evidence that liberals just don't care. They're too self-absorbed and self-involved to care what happens to anyone else. So . . . they play up the charade of government assistance through taxation so they can feel good about themselves without actually devoting any time to helping anyone or getting personally involved.
Don't believe me liberals?
When was the last time you donated to the IRS above and beyond what you were taxed?
Then shut up.
: )
(start flames here)
Are you serious? A lot of people are annoyed by gays, PETA activists etc, while others are annoyed by gun nutters, conservatives etc. Almost nobody actively TRIES to annoy anybody (becase it isn't, as you say, socially acceptable). The world would be in a constant state of civil war because everybody would be beating the crap out of people that didn't fit into their view of the world.
Funny, I'm a social liberal, fiscally I run middle-ground (as long as there isn't deficit spending, I don't care what the government's budget is). As a social liberal, I'm more than happy to hear someone else's argument, nod in disagreement, and say "well, good thing we don't have to agree". I don't try to push my morals on anyone, so long as they give me the same leeway. I really don't see how that's evil. I think there would be a bunch of money left over for big planes and ships to keep enemy armies from invading my home, and ample money left over for healthcare, etc (although I would prefer the states to handle that), if they would stop blowing so much money on cracking down on consentual crimes, as well as ensure that education (you need a degree to do anything anymore) is affordable. If that makes me left-wing, so be it. But calling me evil, that's pretty well off the mark. Evil does require the desire for harm to come to another, so I'd be interested in how my views are "evil".
I got nuthin
Republicans are slobbering bed wetters.
How do libertarians and populists fit into this?
Jokes aside, I seriously doubt there is any kind of causal relationship here but merely a statistically significant correlation.
Its = possessive. It's = "it is"
Oh yeah, another Bush-cock-sucking pussy who needs the DHS (who regularly rapes 14 year-old girls) to protect his whiny ass. "Oh please, Mr. Bush! Don't let the big bad terrorists rape my ass and kill me!" Of course, you have no problem when Bush et al rapes your ass with a steel barbed cock. In fact, you probably like it in your sado-masochistic ways.
I feel like death on a soda cracker.
Oh come now. Surely you are exaggerating a tad. You're barely sane at all from the looks of it! Cheers!
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
You know who else was more powerful than I can possibly imagine? Hint: Rhymes with Amolf Mitler.
Fascist.
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
That article mentioned 'white subjects'. Why weren't black subjects involved in the study? Racist!
Need an automatic screenshot taker? Try here.
This is one of the primary theme's of Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine": that Americans specifically, more than any other culture, are driven by fear.
The left may not like the military, but they do try to vanquish their enemies. They just choose different weapons. They use things like the race card. Now they try to say that they are just so much smarter. They don't give in to their fear -- right? Yeah right. I see some of the most hateful fearmongering coming out of web sites like Kos. How long has the left told women that if Roe v Wade is overturned women will be put in jail if they get an abortion? It is a lie, but it propagates fear pretty effectively.
This just in:
People on the left side of the political spectrum have a strong inverse correlation between the research standards they are willing to accept to prove a point and the degree to which the outcome of the research justifies their negative preconceptions of people they dislike.
"The authors first conducted a random telephone survey of Lincoln residents to find some who held strong political opinions. Then 46 selected respondents were invited to come in to the lab and fill in questionnaires to reveal political beliefs and personality traits. Participants were then given two types of tests to measure physiological responses to threat.
First, they were attached to equipment to measure skin conductivity, which rises with emotional stress as the moisture level in skin goes up. Each participant was shown threatening images, such as a bloody face interspersed with innocuous pictures of things such as bunnies, and rise in skin conductance in response to the shocking image was measured. The other measure was the involuntary eye blink that people have in response to something startling, such as a sudden loud noise."
What are you, some kinda Nazi?
Just use a larger population, do some scare tests and political survey double-blind, and correlate later.
If you want to run a test yourself, check out the cute woman in this video: :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2Uxe9xG6HA
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Is it that republicans are more fearful, or is it that when people are driven to fear they are more likely to vote republican?
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
....an academic paper demonizing right wing views. Since I'm startled I guess I'd better go vote to kill someone. I guess I'll vote to kill jaywalkers then.
is when you use the power of government to hold a gun to people's heads in order to fund programs that you think are important, especially ones unauthorized by the Constitution.
It makes perfect sense to me (it's obvious, to be blunt) that right wingers afraid of terrorists, illegal aliens, criminals, foreigners, etc would be more easily startled than those without such fears. But do such fears cause right-wing viewpoints, or do those viewpoints cause such fears? Or is it a little bit of both (self-perpetuating)? My guess is that a singular experience will lead to one picking up a fear-based political viewpoint, which will then, in turn, cause additional fears to be ingrained into one's psyche. And of course rational discussion doesn't correct the problem. It's like religion - you can't reason someone out of something that they didn't reason themselves into.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
Dont they miss the obvious, people political views are very tied to their education and childhood.. For some reason many people share the views of their parents if they are in good terms together.
From the many people i have seen most have political ideas that are dependent upon the kind of early life they had. Never seen a poor ? Parents always look at right wing media ? Guess what is the result... It's A BIT more probable than finding its cause in a convoluted, not related behaviour.
You see, even fancy journals like Science troll. Ours is a troll-driven economy.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
People defined as liberal are rarely if ever the ones shouting down the opposition.
That's funny . . . why are liberals the ones always getting kicked out of Republican events for chanting some anti-war slogan? Strange how you don't EVER see conservatives getting kicked out of Democrat events . . .
This is not science in my view. A sample size of 46 from one city is just not representative.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
"And my fear is being an obnoxious blabbermouth." - Willow
From "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" Episode: "Beneath You"
... that Obama wins.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
No, the actual study was about being more supportive of policies designed to protect the family unit. There are pleny of social conservatives who are liberal in other areas of life.
Dude. I can't even believe you would make such a ridiculous statement.
I don't think the students here were liberal: http://www.nysun.com/new-york/at-columbia-students-attack-minuteman-founder/41020/
Conservative speakers are routinely harassed, heckled, have pies thrown at them (actually that one is pretty funny - but it still constitutes "shouting down"), or otherwise prevented from presenting their perspective.
It may be your university (or life) experience that conservatives try to silence but that sure as shit isn't mine. In MY experience it is always a group of liberals (specifically, social progressives, radical environmentalists, pro-choice zealots, and "wymen studies" feminists) that engage in preventing the first amendment rights of others, ALWAYS.
How is being in favor of Capital Punishment and Higher Defense budgets fearful when compared to all the liberals pushing Universal Healthcare and cradle to grave entitlements based on the fear that you may have to go it alone in this world if nana gov't isn't there to wipe your arse!!?
Well, maybe some of us aren't afraid that there is too little wealth to go around and we don't feel the need to horde it all for ourselves? Maybe we think that we don't need to "drill, drill, drill!" because we believe there are other solutions that are better for ourselves (and everybody else) and we're not afraid of trying? Maybe we are not afraid of God judging us to eternal damnation, so we can be a little more forgiving? Maybe we are not afraid of change because we believe that we can learn, and teach, new skills? Maybe we are not afraid of helping others because we believe that we are already capable of helping ourselves? Maybe by being less afraid, one is able to think "maybe I don't want the government killing it's own citizens. This is fun, you should try it...
And to all the "correlation is not causation" folks out there. No shit, now stop being so hyper-sensitive about data that has YOU leaping to conclusions...
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
Oh come now. Surely you are exaggerating a tad. You're barely sane at all from the looks of it! Cheers!
Oh come on, I slashdot that means that I'm not living in reality anyway. ;)
I don't think acting out of a perceived need of self preservation is how I would define cowardice.
Actually I think that's the definition of cowardice.
A November 2007 Gallup poll reveals that Republicans by a wide margin across all age, gender, income, and education levels report significantly better mental health than Democrats and Independents.
As we observe in nature, only the paranoids survive. The others are just nuts. LOL.
I know, I know... goatse has been around forever and ever, but seriously, what happens when some poor twelve year old kid comes in here and is like "goatse? wtf is goatse? *click* OH DEAR GOD!? MY EYES... MY EEEEYYYEEES!!".
Almost nobody actively TRIES to annoy anybody (becase it isn't, as you say, socially acceptable). The world would be in a constant state of civil war because everybody would be beating the crap out of people that didn't fit into their view of the world.
Nah, it's just too much effort to actively annoy others. ;) Let's face it. Everyone annoys vast political parties just by existing and living on this earth.
The world is in a constant civil war with everyone trying to beat the crap out people that don't agree with each other or fit into their world view.
I'm a realist. I'd have to beat the crap out of every other human on the planet... that isn't practical I might as well not put up the effort. Laziness saves the day yet again.
People defined as liberal are rarely if ever the ones shouting down the opposition.
Compare the styles of Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Judge Judy vs. Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, and Judge Wapner. Where are the left-wing wingnuts?
If anything they like to talk everything out too much so nothing ever gets done.
Have you considered that doing something, anything often worsens the problem? See: war on drugs, war on poverty, war on terror, DMCA.
This is why the democratic party is so fragmented and why they frequently lose in elections because they don't have solidarity.
One-person-one-vote elections are the most clever means I have ever seen for disenfranchising citizens. If it weren't for them and the two-party system which it mutually reinforces, American politics would have some depth beyond whether the plutocrats throw bones to simple theocrats or maudlin technocrats while they loot the nation for all its[1] worth. This is why you will never see this happen.
Sigh. I'm holding my nose and voting Obama the Republican over Palin the Whore of Babylon. This election sucks even more than the last one.
[1] Worth is used here as a noun, not an adverb.
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
Donnie Darko: Life isn't that simple. I mean who cares if Ling Ling returns the wallet and keeps the money? It has nothing to do with either fear or love.
Kitty Farmer: Fear and love are the deepest of human emotions.
Donnie Darko: Okay. But you're not listening to me. There are other things that need to be taken into account here. Like the whole spectrum of human emotion. You can't just lump everything into these two categories and then just deny everything else!
Republicans tend to think more about their immediate selves and family: no new taxes, gun rights, religion, and in certain people greed takes hold.
Democrats tend to think of the big picture: community, what's best for everyone as a whole. Give up cars for buses, even though the reality is people still need to drive themselves; green energy and if we can't have that, we'll have nothing! etc etc.
You can equate that to fear in terms of self-preservation...not that I'm itching to die for any cause, but I feel I'm less important than the whole. Many republicans I know don't even consider the whole...it's about Sunday dinner, spending time with the kids, etc.
I read a blog about this very subject a couple of days ago, the author of which actually was approached by a similar if not the same study (link at bottom).
The author has some amazingly good points - whether or not you like and/or agree with him, it's a simple fact that these "studies" almost always come out the same way and are represented the same way. Don't believe for a second that there is anything "scientific" or "impartial" about any "psychological study".
Liberals = "open to change" and Conservatives = "fearful" is the way these studies always represent people (and I wonder if liberal-leaning academics have anything to do with this?)
You can just as easily say Liberals = "immature, childish" and Conservatives = "mature, rational" with the same data - but you'll never see that because people can't swallow it.
Take it or leave it. I'm Independent myself and don't feel fear or the need for "change".
Original article: http://ace.mu.nu/archives/273695.php
Both the Soviet Union and the modern American Democratic Party are based on the same wicked ideas.
You don't get invited to parties, do you...
From the article:
The authors first conducted a random telephone survey of Lincoln residents to find some who held strong political opinions. Then 46 selected respondents were invited to come in to the lab and fill in questionnaires to reveal political beliefs and personality traits.
The studies demographic is 46 people from the same city. How is this worth mentioning?
Yep, as long as your foes are the vile, immoral, baby-eating minions of evil that you envision them to be, then clearly reasoned debate has no place here. Shades of gray have no sway in a monochromatic worldview. Someone has to be the good guy, and someone has to be the bad guy, just like they were in the cartoons of my youth.
Where does he fit in? And what about the people who fear only Chuck?
on the assumption that others are like you.
if you are calm, rational, slow to action, it is reasonable to behave that way if you assume that others are also calm, rational, and slow to action. if you are impulsive, protective, and violent, it is reasonable to behave that way if you assume others are also impulsive, protective, and violent.
Makes sense. Look at the more emotional members of both ideologies; get a left-wing nutjob mad enough and he'll riot and fight with the police. Get a right-wing nutjob mad enough and he'll make an anonymous death threat. Ever seen a Young Republican meeting? Most of them look like they'd run away if you raise your voice at them. They make your local Linux Users Group look like the Raiders' offensive line.
....Global Warming - not something based entirely on fear mongering? Because it doesn't seem to be working on Republicans.
-Styopa
It said, "Vote Democrat, pussy!"
Game... blouses.
Every bloody two years you can count on some scientist telling you that the reason why Republicans vote Republican is because they're either mentally ill, emotionally stunted or biologically broken--and so we must somehow either take pity and help those poor conservatives, or perhaps look for a pill which will at least help these poor helpless folks stop clinging to their guns and their bibles holed up in their churches waiting for the rapture.
No; political viewpoints are not held because reasoned people come to different conclusions based on underly philosophical differences. No; differing viewpoints are because people are sick, and perhaps mentally unstable.
Which means, I guess, that the former Soviet Union had the right idea locking up political dissidents in mental institutes: disagreement is a sign of a broken mind that only needs to be fixed with drugs and "re-educated."
Bah.
I realized the basic trait governing conservatives when I was barely out of college. You can't look at a population group that consistently fights to avoid, prevent, and defer anything resembling change and NOT come to some sort of conclusion involving anxiety/fear.
This is also why you see your racist populations comingling with conservatives - the racists are your outliers, so anxious about change and differences that simple things like appearance and group affiliation take on more pronounced significance to them.
Aside from having a study behind it, this is hardly surprising. Right Wingers have been very vocally yellowing their pant legs for decades now, and are so terrified they are willing to surrender all their civil rights away (rights our ancestors fought and died to gain, I might add).
We can't allow our nation to be governed by people paralyzed by the fear of their own shadows. It's time to ditch the cowards and criminals from the government, and allow our nation to once again be run by the brave and bold people who are willing to live free, even should it costs them their lives.
Yes. Descent is quite unAmerican. We Americans prefer to go uphill.
Irrational US vs THEM mentality is about equally strong no matter who your "US" is.
That makes me wonder:
Are fearful people more likely to be against gun control or for it? I can see fear playing a part in both sides of the issue.
-------
Incite and flee.
Someone doesn't like me!
Boo hoo, I think I'll go home and cry into my copy of Das Kapital.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
... I've been hiding in a cave the last 8 years.
I didn't know Bin Laden posted on /.
(I wish I could remember my password... I'm not a coward, I'm an anonymous liberal!)
I used to be a Democrat and then a bunch of left-wing activists hijacked the Democratic Party and told anyone who disagreed with them to get lost. So I became a Republican, even though I have little in common with the traditional Republican constituencies.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
The article says:
"The researchers found that both of these responses correlated significantly with whether a person was liberal or conservative socially. Subjects who had expressed a high level of support for policies "protecting the social unit" showed a much larger change in skin conductance in response to alarming photos than those who didn't support such policies. Similarly, the mean blink amplitude for the socially protective subjects was significantly higher, the team reports in tomorrow's issue of Science. Co-author Kevin Smith says the results showed that automatic fear responses are better predictors of protective attitudes than sex or age (men and older people tend to be more conservative)."
But is a protective attitude liberal or conservative? It seems like it could go either way.
"I just took a massive shit. It must have been that foot long subway sub I had yesterday. I didn't expect such a huge fucking log exiting my asshole. It feels slightly weird now."
Here comes the AC to save our economy. Hurry, tell Paulson and Bernanke how to do it.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
It's amazing what passes for science these days!
"O'Connor, smash the window." "Why me, Bigboote?" "It might be boobie-trapped!" "Oh!"<smash> -Buckaroo Banzai
It might have something to do with the fact that Democrats aren't continuously starting unnecessary wars...
It might be even simpler. The Conservative leaders use fear as a tactic, so those who listen to them become fearful. This leads to being on edge and easier to startle.
The Liberal leaders use hope, which should lead to a less fearful outlook.
And we already know that when folks' minds are made up, they don't listen to the other side because they don't want to risk being confused by facts.
The first isn't true because B implies A is not necessarily true when A implies B is true.
The second isn't accurate either because they only measured a very limited subset of fear types. Namely, association with physical threat. There are many other fears. Fear of being homeless. Fear of being alone, Fear of medical problems, Fear of being unemployed, Fear of starving, etc.
I'd be willing to bet that if you measured a group of people who collectivily share those types of fears they will turn out to be democratic and in favor of a nanny state.
Doesn't surprise me that people who react strongly to physically threatening situations are in favor of the death penalty. If you kept startling me I'd be in favor of your death too.
I will never live for sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
Bullshit. Political opinions are difficult to change because they rely on underlying beliefs that have been developing since we were toddlers. I have a pro abortion stance because I value the liberty of a grown adult more than the potential of an unborn fetus. Someone with a pro life stance has a strong foundation in their belief because of what they learned in church. By questioning their position, I'm attacking the validity of what they learned in church, questioning weather the church represents the word of god, and ultimately questioning the word of God it's self. By bringing up the subject, I attack all of these ideals without speaking a single word about religion.
Likewise, foreign policy is based on a lot of core values in how we relate to the world. "Does might make right?" "Is it best to focus on your own success, or is it best to work for the strength of everyone together?"
You can't change a political position without dealing with these core beliefs. And the core beliefs have a big head start on you.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94764491
OK, how many others here were startled by this report?
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
This is the stupidest use of the 'correlationisnotcausation' tag yet! TFS ONLY mentions correlation. Is this some grand troll attempt?
.evom ton seod gis eht
Very insightful.
As Dr. G astutely pointed out today, an increased startle response for conservative types (as opposed to liberal types) in the lab may be misleading. Some conservatives are inherently mistrustful of science, psychologists, academia, etc. and may well have been uneasy or uncomfortable while hooked up to some arcane machinery in an academic lab inhabited by those they didn't trust. Imagine what the liberals' startle response might be if the tests were conducted in a different manner - e.g. by soldiers, and within the confines of a military base.
OK, so people who are out of touch with reality don't notice reality much. That doesn't seem surprising.
This is on the same topic to an insightful talk I was watching earner today, Jonathan Haidt: The real difference between liberals and conservatives.
It runs to nearly 20mins but he kept my attention for all of it (quite the achievement). Here's their descriptive blurb:
The system works just fine.
I'm definitely of the opinion that conservatives are mentally stunted, (can't tell their W's from their M's), but that's okay. The world is set up to teach us all the lessons we need in order to grow. The lesson in this case is why following fear and mentally stunted leaders is disastrous. Souls learn only through repeated pains, so you dump a ton of souls on the planet and let them do their thing. To try to control the less advanced souls through drugs and behavior modification slows down the process; you can only truly learn from mistakes and applied experiences. Let the retards run free and bang into stuff. We all have to go through the process; we've all been retarded. Heck even at the highest forms achievable on this plane, the best of us are barely functional.
But in my personal life, I try to keep the conservatives at a distance. They can lead their fear-filled, mentally challenged, inflexible viewpoints and the associated disasters they call 'lives' without my active participation! It's far too draining to spend time around that bunch of dysfunctional stiffs; "Love Jesus while killing them A-rabs and punishing the poor!" What a travesty of incompatible thinking processes; being in a roomful of conservatives is like experiencing a head-on train collision everybody is pretending not to see.
-FL
Of course you convince yourselves that notions like good and evil are outdated because few will admit to serving evil so you solve that problem by handwaving the whole question away.
And yet your side rejects aid for the poor, supports wars, and is absolutely intent on removing any sort of accountability from business executives of the harm their actions cause to our finances and our environment.
You honestly think conservatives are on the side of good when you refuse to punish the evil that powerful men do in favor of kicking the weak while they're down?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
To a liberal, 'diversity' is defined as all colors, gender identities and faiths all thinking exactly alike.
That's actually a very interesting way of putting it, thank you. As a Christian, the idea that "all faiths are equal" has always bothered me, simply because I think it shows a deep misunderstanding of most religion, and that level of misunderstanding betrays a lack of respect. So, I feel like anyone who tries to say that all religions are equally valid is being disrespectful of my religious beliefs!
Because the one thing liberalism can't tolerate is reasoned debate since the whole system is based on emotion.
And here's where I have to disagree with you. Neither side has any interest in reasoned debate, at least at the extreme ends. Both sides are fearmongering. Republicans want everyone to be afraid that Barack Obama would double everyone's taxes, destroy small businesses, require mandatory abortions, make it more difficult for straight couples to get married, and encourage Islamic terrorists to attack our country again. Democrats want everyone to be afraid that John McCain will hand fistfulls of cash to rich billionaires while encouraging the bank to take your house away, destroy small businesses, eliminate science and health education from schools, wipe out the last several decades of advancement in the fight for racial and gender equality, and encourage Islamic terrorists to attack our country again. I don't hear much call for reasoned debate coming from either side.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
I'd replace the word 'fear' with the term 'recognize'.
Fear is emotional, but once you explore and understand all the facts surrounding a potential threat, the emotion vanishes. I'm not afraid of fire, but I recognize that fire can cause me terrible harm if I don't handle it correctly. In the same way, I really don't fear any of the threats being hurled at us through the media. I've learned they are largely fabricated horseshit which can be dealt with by any number of means which don't require me to run around flailing like an idiot.
Knowledge protects.
-FL
A long long time ago in a galaxy far away I did social psychological experiment between need to punish and a believe in a just world (hypothesis by Melvin Lerner). We found a significant correlation, it wouldn't surpirse me that the BJW questionaire can be correlated with political orientation. http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v3n2/justworld.html
Dude, Woody Allen is one of the SANER people on the left attacking Sarah Palin. Woody-fucking-his-adopted-daugher-Allen.
Good God, we've got ELECTED DEMOCRATS calling Palin "disabled".
If we can open that argument up I'm convinced it will be as easy to convince the undecided that the core of the Democratic party is indeed evil as it was to win the argument the Soviet Union was utterly Evil.
Unless you believe that the core of the Republican party is also evil, I'm afraid I can't support your position.
I'm younger than you are, so I missed the Cold War scare that you're referring to. Consequently, I don't have an irrational fear and hatred of the USSR drilled into me, so telling me that the Democratic party is as evil as Russia was in Reagan's day just doesn't make the emotional connection you were going for.
I can see that if you start with the premise that Cold War era Russia was inherently evil, and the Democratic party promotes some of the same ideas that were a cornerstone of Russian society, then the Democratic party must be evil because those ideas must be evil. However, please try to understand that many of us do not take this premise to be a given. If you believe socialized healthcare is evil, you'll have to argue the case for why it is evil, not just draw a connection to Russia. If you believe a so-called "progressive" tax system (in which wealthier people pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes) is evil, you'll have to explain why it's evil. If you believe that charging suspected terrorists with crimes and prosecuting them in a court of law, rather than simply detaining them without charge indefinitely and subjecting them to torture, is evil, you'll have to explain why. If you believe requiring a warrant in order to eavesdrop on someone's phone calls is evil, make your case.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Er... that should read I don't think the students here were conservative.
(Damn no edit feature.)
And yet your side rejects aid for the poor, supports wars, and is absolutely intent on removing any sort of accountability from business executives of the harm their actions cause to our finances and our environment.
Conservativism rejects mandatory aid for those the government may choose to define as "the poor." Voluntary aid is preached and expected amongst all members of the conservative circles.
and BOTH major political parties currently focus their power to remove criminality from business executives. Both parties thrive on corporate contributions, and will throw babies in front of trains to save big businesses. Uncorrupted members of both liberal and conservative sway (even the extremists) want to see these men burned at the stake... but you don't heat pools on ideals, so the powerful greedy will continue to protect big business who will donate at the expense of the people who might donate.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
According to a recent poll, 0% of Republicans are gay.
This fits well with political observation I once read about: Liberals are the builders; Conservatives are the defenders.
It also fits well with a study I read about that found that pessimists were more accurate in their appraisals of situations.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
I have no idea what you are discussing, but I noticed that your definition of evil is a little off. Inaction can be just as damaging as an action. You see a woman getting mugged and do nothing. That would be evil. Apathy is just as bad as malice.
Space Shuttle was a program that strapped humans to an explosion and tried to stab through the sky with fire and math
I wonder whether the people who keep parrotting this actually know what it means.
Yes, correlation is not causation, but there are three possibilities to explain statistically significant correlations:
right wing political membership causes fear
fear causes right wing political memberhsip
some common factor causes both fear and right wing political membeship
Take your pick.
Um, no they don't. The Democrats target working class voters. Labor, so to speak. The middle class.
If you "pander" to poor people, the middle class gets irate and votes the other way, and you lose in a landslide. If the Dems help poor people, it is out of an actual interest in helping their lives get better, not out of political benefit. Do the Dems promise government programs? Sure -- but they generally target everyone who is "not rich", and not John McCain's $4,999,999 not rich either. The Dems' programs generally target the upper-middle class right on down to the destitute.
As for gun control -- neither side panders. The conservatives stick to their principle that government regulation and intervention is bad, and the Democrats to their principle that collective good may outweigh individual harms.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Worldwide, careerist hacks have hijacked almost every political organisation to provide their own meal ticket and empire building opportunity. Grass roots membership has been condemned to irrelevance and largely withered away, making it much easier for branch stacking based even more often on personality than on single issue "moral" agendas.
It's nice to dream that this is a sign of end game for the tyranny of 51% of 51% and so on recursively that is the blight of overscaled representative democracy in parallel with the end game for capitalist triumphalism and just behind the end game for mass media influence, but in reality their relics will all keep blundering along in our increasingly internet-mediated world.
Politicians of every stripe exist to mind your business. It hasn't been left-right for years, just which flavour of authoritarian meddling. The US Democratic Party has no concept of left-wing. Money is a good rough measure of what you owe nature.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
liberal != Democrat... Not too many Democrats would go to a Republican event but there are liberals who might. I suppose starting wars with lies will get people pissed off at you in ways that negotiating with your enemies won't.
When it comes to the physiological response, a more complete description might be "fight or flight", as Fear and Aggression are closely linked. In addition, I've noticed that Conservatives tend to be afraid of People, while Liberals tend to be afraid of Things.
To clarify, I mean that Conservatives seem to focus on threats with a human face -- foreign terrorists and rogue dictators without; criminals, illegal immigrants, and gays within (gays are a particularly interesting example of "threat", due to an odd mix of cultural and psychological reasons, instead of being any threat to life/liberty/livelihood). This leads to harsher law enforcement and big military budgets.
While Liberals seem to focus on systematic dangers, like pollution or global warming. This leads to lots of attention to things like pesticides, endocrine disruptors, and genetically modified organisms; resulting in lots of regulation and governmental intervention.
Didn't Reagan negotiate the IRM treaty with the Soviet Union? Or is that part of the Reagan hagiography ignored when it's politically useful?
It might have something to do with the fact that Democrats aren't continuously starting unnecessary wars...
You mean like Vietnam?
...
Where are the left-wing wingnuts?
Here are just a few:
Sandra Bernhardt
Charlie Rangel
Kathleen Sebelius
Randi Rhodes
Matt Damon
William Ayers
Geez. That's just in the past few days.
I didn't even bother going for Keith Olbermann videos.
Well, maybe not.....but that's besides the point.
He is correct, after all.
Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, FDR, US Progressives...all share a common idea base.
Common up thru the national socialism vs international socialism schism anyways.
But, yes, the modern Democrat party has foundations in the old Progressive party
Slashdot: you'll not find a more wretched collection of villainy and disreputable types...
On a more rational (than my last post) note, how is it a defect to be more easily afraid? Fear is a GOOD thing when one is facing a real threat; it causes one to take actions to defend oneself (such as increasing military spending or reaching for a rock, as the case may be)
You could just as reasonably argue that liberals irrationally shrug off threats that are dangerous to them, and that they are incorrect, or make a more fair argument that people who hold extremist beliefs fair to accurately gauge risk.
Even if it is the liberals who are right and conservatives who are wrong here I hardly think you can call this a "disease", more a different worldview.
I'm a lot more scared of being abducted and held without trial by my own government than dying in a tiny terrorist attack; this is no more or less rational than someone with the opposite fears, and both are less rational than someone who is afraid of cars because of the risk of death.
I am just glad to see that folks from both sides are acknowledging the fact that a lot of human decision is related to fear. Including capitalism.
They are not all the same. Recent history shows that. For all their faults the Democrats at least *try* to govern well. The Republicans are enthralled by an ideology that all government is inherently bad, so they govern poorly, thus fulfilling their own prophecy.
The republicans tend to push for more government, laws and war and the democrats push for less.
Neither is wrong so long as both parties push the same amount.
It's truly a beautiful democratic balance. The problems occur when people like Bush and his IN-GROUP go outside the law and take control in a dishonorable fashion. Be aware this isn't a fault of democracy (our system is very good), but of evil forces working to undue democracy. WE MUST RESIST OPPRESSION
Politics of fear is a very old tool and is often employed by the unscrupulous. You don't have to be a full flung fascist to use it.
I never understood why some people are disturbed by homosexuality in others. So what if there are some people who like to have sex at home -- what's the big deal?
It's official, you're a f*cking idiot.
<handwaving>Bye now.</handwaving>
Get your dogma outta my yard!
republicans are known to give more to charity than democrats.
It's not fair counting the $85 billion bailout of AIG as "charity"
Conservativism rejects mandatory aid for those the government may choose to define as "the poor." Voluntary aid is preached and expected amongst all members of the conservative circles.
And doesn't happen. At least not enough to cover the bases and not towards people who may need it but may not be likable to you. Voluntary welfare works about as well as voluntary adherence to the law (a.k.a. deregulation). People find it all too easy to be callous to others without some societal pressure not to be a jerk.
Besides, our private healthcare system just isn't working for people like me who aren't upper middle class or employed by a large company right now. I'm not "poor," by any means, but I think there are some areas where government could be doing a better job than the private sector is. (Just look at the wonderful financial crisis we're all in thanks to deregulation of unscrupulous lenders and foolhardy buyers.)
and BOTH major political parties currently focus their power to remove criminality from business executives.
I wouldn't really disagree too much. The difference between Republicans and Democrats is that one party proudly beats its chest about voting for pro-business & anti-consumer legislation, and the other party feels guilty about it (and is quicker to react when the public gets upset).
The party bases and the underlying philosophies differ, though, on the issues. One reason that I'd love to see better public election financing is that it would finally do away with the necessity to coddle special interests groups and open up a real difference between the two parties. I'd love to see what the parties would do if their morals weren't shackled by the need for big donations.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Surprise, surprise. Life's newbies. As this guy sort of let on, a few years ago...
Polls consistently show that members of the armed forces are overwhelmingly Republican. If Republicans are more afraid, why would they join the military where they can get their asses shot off?
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
What is the Democrat Party?
Gay people are fearful in a deep way. Any outward confidence gay people have is hard won and prized, not easy. So, should we find a higher amount of Republicans in gay communities?
If aspiration is a virtue, achievement cannot be a vice.
...there isn't a reason to even allow them to speak.
So, the Liberals are responsible for this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone
travesty becoming a standard part of the American political landscape... Dirty red HIPPIES!
"... nothing is certain but Death and Change"
so take a deep breath, relax and deal with it.
I refuse to be dominated by my own fear;
I refuse to be limited by yours.
er... Waidaminit; nowadays, I guess its the Conservative Republican states[1] that are "Red" [2]
Times , they ARE a-changin'[3]
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_states_and_blue_states
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reds
[3] http://www.forbes.com/2008/09/09/dylan-amazon-music-face-markets-cx_lal_0908autofacescan03.html
The right is for an increased defense budget and capital punishment? Which right is that again? I'm right-wing, I'm not for either of these things.
Abortion, welfare, gay rights, school prayer, give me a fucking break. This article is shallow, useless and frivolous just like most of all political debate that goes on in the US.
Meanwhile fiat money central banking, military adventurism and torture remain untouched by any significant criticism and coverage.
Send your spendthrift head of state this
Funny, I'm a social liberal, fiscally I run middle-ground (as long as there isn't deficit spending, I don't care what the government's budget is). As a social liberal, I'm more than happy to hear someone else's argument, nod in disagreement, and say "well, good thing we don't have to agree". I don't try to push my morals on anyone, so long as they give me the same leeway. I really don't see how that's evil. I think there would be a bunch of money left over for big planes and ships to keep enemy armies from invading my home, and ample money left over for healthcare, etc (although I would prefer the states to handle that), if they would stop blowing so much money on cracking down on consentual crimes, as well as ensure that education (you need a degree to do anything anymore) is affordable. If that makes me left-wing, so be it. But calling me evil, that's pretty well off the mark. Evil does require the desire for harm to come to another, so I'd be interested in how my views are "evil".
"I don't try to push my morals on anyone, so long as they give me the same leeway."
Yet you support that as long as there's no deficit it is perfectly OK for the government to take from some people to give to others. That's the evil hidden right there.
If the government spends 100 billion dollars it's got two choices, since the State is not a fountain of goods, education and miracle drugs; it either takes the 100 billion from people who earned it through productive activites, or he prints the 100 billion, making everyone foot the bill when all prices go up in consequence of this inflation. I like that you support a balanced budget as that restricts the government to the first method, but taxing someone is still harming them.
Funny thing is that rampant US government growth has only been truly significant after the US instituted its central bank and later went off the gold standard - which was quite unpractical for politicians who wanted to spend money without having to raise taxes i.e. inflating the money supply. That enabled them to increase their spending without actually taking money from people, which had that nasty side effects of getting yourself thrown out of office more often than not. But there's no such thing as a free lunch, as we all know.
To paraphrase Bastiat, when the law ceases to limit itself to being just, it necessarily becomes a 'weapon' for injustice, and everyone will enter politics to get the chance to swing it at somebody else or protect himself from getting hit by it.
If you want to drink at the source and figure out for yourself what you think of it: Bastiat's The Law
Send your spendthrift head of state this
I think we can all guess what the graphs would indicate in an intelligence comparison. And I strongly suspect that there would be a conspicuous correlation between such results and the cowardice/paranoia-related results of this recent Science study. Conspicuous like the South American / African continents' jigsaw puzzle.
New research concludes that water is typically wet.
Of course I didn't RTFA... why would I do that? You really are new here aren't you? Don't let my UID fool you.
It is interesting what people make a big deal about isn't it? Left and Right, people need to chill about the BIG ISSUES and figure out what really matters.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
If their fear responses have anything to do with their economic circumstances, families, friends and educations, their study says less than nothing.
Phroggy, the USSR is and was not evil, it was simply a threat to our way of life. Some people describe that as evil, but by that definition the USA was evil to Russians. TRUST ME, young man, the American way of life is preferable. Also, don't be so quick to call fear of Socialism "irrational".
This matches the "facts" perfectly. Everyone knows that most of the people in our armed forces are easily frightened Democrats ... err, did I get that wrong?
Any statistical study with political conclusion should include the leanings of those conducting the study. We all know how easy it is for biased people to cook the books and dress up the numbers. Just look at wall street this week. In my own personal experience, workaholics tend to be conservative. Most liberals I know sit around collecting disability checks complaining about big evil corporations all day. Hey, maybe I can produce a biased study "proving" my preconceptions, too.
Wow, your sane, calm, and carefully-reasoned response has totally convinced me.
Yeah, no kidding! But in all fairness, there are parts of the post that do jive with my experiences with liberals. And the *frothing* jives with my experiences with conservatives. I get stupid from both sides, in both ears, every day. And that is why I hate all of you.
-jde
Having read the study, I think that the researchers have made a big deal out of essentially null findings. Their graphs look great, until you look at the error bars. They barely managed to get a p
Going back to the skin conductance plot, there are 4 bars. The "conservative" bar is larger when they were exposed to arousing stimuli. But imagine if the results had come out another way; for instance that both "conservative" bars were higher. There are several ways the bars could organize themselves, and still support some general conclusion about "conservatives". This means that the p=.05 significance is actually functionally greater than that, and should be considered with much skepticism.
The real question is what is the range of probable effect sizes that being conservative has on your arousal level? They don't report effect size measures, because you can tell it would be tiny (essentially nonexistent).
On a side note, the journals Science and Nature are known among psychologists for publishing studies that, for some reason, can never be replicated. It is kind of a joke among psychological researchers. The worst thing is that when you correct problems in the original research and try to publish a response showing no effect, they won't publish it. That's not science, that's just publishing sexy research, regardless of the quality.
On another side note, I am a (very) liberal cognitive scientist. The results of this research play into my particular biases as a liberal. That's why it makes me angry when such shoddy results are published and get press. I don't like people playing to my biases.
In the US, we have an odd pairing of free market liberalization with social conservativeness, and on the other side a pairing of social welfare and government interventionism with social liberalness. It's an extremely odd pairing. Here you've got someone who is fearful, and therefore favors a strong national defense and government regulation of immorality. That person would naturally lean Republican. You might also assume that same person might be equally fearful of financial or health difficulties, and might therefore favor government-provided safety nets. Well, in the US you'd be dead wrong, because that person would be more likely to be a Democrat.
To a large degree, this artificial pairing limits the options for the libertarian-minded. Either we have government interference in our bedrooms, or in our wallets, pick your poison. It also potentially limits the Republican Party's social conservative agenda. For instance, would abortions be less commonplace or even irrelevant if young women had access to more affordable health care, maternity leave, daycare, and other forms of government-provided social services?
I'd love to see the same study performed in Europe, where the pairings of social conservatives and fiscal conservatives isn't so strong.
"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." Albert Einstein "Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense" Voltaire "The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next." Henry Beecher
This whole study just seems silly to me. I have only read one comment that made any sense; the one that said both liberal and conservative positions are moving targets which very few folks completely agree with. There are reliable repeatable polls that show well over 80% of Americans think that English should be than national language, that there should be no welfare benefits for illegal aliens, and schools should only teach in English (except for foreign language courses). Yet both Democrats and Republicans fail to represent any of these views. Look around and see how many folks you know who hold mostly Democrat views but are for say the death penalty; or hold mostly Republican views but are for universal health care. There are so few pure Republicans or Democrats that any attempt to label some one as such for the purpose of this study is doomed to fail.
Those who forget history are condemned to go to summer school.
So what if Republicans are scared of the multi-pierced, tattooed, "haven't bathed in a month", circus-freak-protester wing of the Democrat party who were trying to sneak buckets of human waste into tossing range of the GOP convention? Who wouldn't be?
On the other hand, all it takes to scare a liberal-progressive Democrat is for a kid to merely pray at a high-school graduation. The mere thought can cause liberal-progressives to froth at the mouth and piss-backwards for *days* until the threat of prayer is removed by any and all means necessary (ACLU, lawyers, cops, protests -- even if they have to refuse a diploma to the student).
So even though opinions vary, everyone's scared of something...
Most babies have a startle reflex where their arms go out to the sides, and their mouth goes open. I have still got this at 52. I startle easily, I admit it. By this test, I ought to be Hitler. However, I don't recognize any part of the description of these people. I don't think I am more fearful of my immediate neighbors because I jump in a silly way when things go bang. I just live with it. I certainly would not want or trust any organization with the death penalty, or control of speech, even if it would mean people were polite like they used to be and kept their gardens tidy.
I think there are at least two sorts of jumpiness here, and they need to be separated. Are there many others out there like me?
In 'The Blank Slate' Stephen Pinker makes a good case for liberal/conservative viewpoints coming from essentially different views of human nature: the left comes from the utopian vision that says we're all capable of being wonderful and altruistic and it's society that teaches us to be otherwise. Conservatives come from the tragic vision that has us all ready to kill our neighbours for their gold and women and it's only society that teaches us to be otherwise.
These results fit perfectly with that theory. Conservatives feel that others would love to do them harm, liberals think that deep down nobody wants to hurt them.
All of the above is massively, probably offensively simplified for brevity, but is not an attempt to flame either group.
Litany against fear used by the Bene Gesserit.
I guess conservatives will never be the Kwisatz Haderach.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
People are either *with us* or *against us*.
He was a freedom fighter, because he was a *good guy*.
Only bad guys become *terrorists*.
When presented with the image of an injured human, conservatives were more likely to respond than liberals.
The seriousness of the above post is not guaranteed.
'The Power of Nightmares argues that the threat of radical Islamism as a massive, sinister organised force of destruction, specifically in the form of al-Qaeda, is a myth perpetrated by politicians in many countries--and particularly American Neo-Conservatives An excellent documentary By Adam Curtis'
"What we need right now is a clear message to the people of this country. This message must be read in every newspaper, heard on every radio, seen on every television... I want everyone to remember, why they *need* us!"
davecb5620@gmail.com
Like every democrat I've ever seen or heard interviewed. Everything they are guilty of they attempt to defuse by pointing at some republican. Remember, kids, you can't justify bad behavior by pointing at other bad behavior.
What I'm getting at is that Republicans aren't always wrong in those respects. Sometimes control and structure ARE necessary.
There seems to be some inconsistency here. True conservatives want LESS government regulations in both the economy and in ones personal lives. The republican party of today is dominated by NeoCons who advocate LESS government regulations in the economy and MORE government regulations in ones personal life (domestic spying, laws about what consenting adults can do in the privacy of their bedroom, etc.). There seems to be very few true conservatives left and most republicans are of the NeoCon ilk. So it appears that you are arguing from a NeoCon way of thinking.
I say we all just give in and give the liberals the quasi-communist government they have been yearning for for the last 40 years.
That's the only way they can truly see the consequences of their goals. Then we can overthrow it and get on with our lives... Oh wait... we won't have any guns. Nevermind.
*throws a rock at an M1 Abrams*
Not counting a couple of exceptions, bullets tend to travel faster than the speed of sound. By the time your soldier had anything to hear, he would already be dead.
Now go read what Grampa actually wrote,
A very easy example: An easily frightened solider is walking in the woods. He hears something and is frightened, and immediately flinches. A bullet flies over his head, and he turns and returns fire, killing the enemey.
Grampa did not say the soldier heard a bullet, only that he heard something. The click of a safety, chambering of a round, snapping of a twig by the shooter, or maybe even something unrelated at all to the shooter. Grampa just said "something."
-- End of lesson, beginning of sermon. --
There exists a political leaning with habitually bad reading comprehension. This political leaning also excels at nit-picking (figuratively, and in many cases, literally). Those of this persuasion cannot understand context.
There is certainly a correlation between reading comprehension skills and this political persuasion.
They're the kind of people who display, "If you can read this, thank a teacher" bumper stickers. They waited until the subject was covered in class, and think that everybody else was just as stupid.
No wonder they cannot hold context. No wonder they cannot comprehend the written word. No wonder their entire intellectual abilities are focused on correcting spelling and grammar. Their thinking cannot scale.
They nit-pick because they are nit-wits.
On a related note, something I've noticed, and the more left-leaning the Dem, the more likely this is:
A Republican (of any leaning) will say of the Dem candidate, "He's stupid because [list of reasons, which may or may not be valid, but still there ARE reasons]"
A Democrat will say of the Rep candidate, "He's stupid." No reasons given. If you ask for the reason they think this, the response is some variant on "He's stupid, that's all!"
In short, one side runs on reason (misguided or not) and the other side runs on pure emotion.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
this article (JUST READ HIGHLIGHTED parts) http://moralsurgeon.blogspot.com/2007/09/death-fear-psychology-explains-bush.html shows (unless it is a hoax) how powerful and diabolical the manipulation of fears can be. Massively effective.
Sure, the common base idea would also include republicans. It's called we pick a few people to manage a lot of people - e.g. government. Unless you are an anarchist, you have something in common with Hitler.. Yeah You F*ING Hitler supporter!!!
My slightly altered response is that your association of social programs makes an implication that they were:
A) Bad policies
B) Bad policies because the outcomes of 3 of the 5 groups are culturally considered bad, evil, failed. Thus whatever they supported must also be bad, evil and a failure.
Nice deduction.
Personally I believe there is an ever changing sweet-spot in the degree of social support that the government needs to provide.. I do recognize, however, that it's very hard to take away that which you've given/promised. That's why car manufacturers have an MSRP. They almost never sell at that price - they always give some temporary discounts.. Perhaps that's how we need to sell social programs to the US public. As temporary with regular visible periods of sales and expensive times. Then you relax and future proof short-term solutions to social/economic crisises.
-Michael
According to TFA, the questions did not identify party affiliation, but rather social attitudes. For example:
They then went on to suggest that the "fearful" reactions aligned with what we regard as "conservative" social attitudes.
Even the authors don't conclude that this means Republicans are more fearful than Democrats, only that the study suggests a genetic predisposition to a political viewpoint.
These parties would happily change their platforms if it netted them more votes
True. An excellent example is the attitude of the two parties toward civil rights, which were originally championed by the Republican party and opposed by the Democrats during the Civil War and Reconstruction; by the 1960's the Dems made civil rights a central part of their platform, and Republicans took the opposite tack to win white votes in southern states, by supporting "states rights".
Soylent Green is peoplicious!
How was Russia a threat to our way of life? I've never understood this argument.
1) Russia kept territory it re-invaded during WWII. The argument at the time seemed at least logical, if not convenient - to prevent Germany from attacking a 3'rd time and decimating Russia proper. Later the logical excuse was a buffer against NATO - give a longer delay from fired nukes that the US enjoys due to the atlantic.
2) Russia sent lots of spies in the US. Exactly the same as the US sent into Russia.
3) Russia supported proxy wars, with the implication that the supported side would adopt communism. Exactly the same that the US did in Central/South America and in S.E. Asia but with non-socialized small-government groups (we liked to call them democracies, but guess what, you vote for communist leaders too; we don't even live in a democracy, but it's a marketable paraphrase).
4) Russia had nukes pointed at the US. We had nuclear capable bombers that regularly did fly-bys of the Russian international waters. Russia had more mobile ground nukes, and we had more bombers. Our side had the advantage because when you want to make a political point, it's safer to put the nukes right into their back-yard and say 'dare me to pull the trigger' than to have passive nukes power-up half a world away. We also had lots of fixed position nukes, but that was just stupid - because they were expensive and were less menacing than mobile nukes. Only advantage was that they had greater range and were slightly faster to deploy from scratch.
5) There were honest to goodness Communist parties in the US. Later those parties were arrested, disbanded, financially ostricized (who'd employ a card carrying communist). It was later replaced by the socialist party - hard to ostracize most of our NATO allies at least. Conversely, there were free-marketing, term-limiting, checks-and-balance decreeing, private-ownership promoting citizens in Russia. And many of them DID win. There was lots of private enterprise in Russia before it's financial and political collapse, just as there's free markets in communist china (thanks to Hong Kong's prior British rule). Our 'card carrying communist' rhetoric was matched with 'capitalist pigs', where the few immoral corporations run everything. We've got those people here too, but we just call them 'evil corporations' and don't tend to attribute it to the government.
My point is not that we were just as bad as the Russians (though we were), it's that there isn't a legitimate cause-and-effect as US patriots would like to imply. Russia didn't do all these things and then we reacted by creating 'peace keeper missiles'. Historically it was a back and forth game, where many of the threatening aspects of the cold war were produced in tandem. You could not morally blame one side more than the other. Thus communism and Russia were not the root of the treat.
And hopefully I've addressed your fear of socialism comment. Most of our allies support it - we don't fear them.. And in fact, the UK is doing better educationally and financially (both for the average citizen and for the government as a whole) than we are. And the war costs would only account for the Federal US financial woes.
I'm not advocating socialism and certainly not the lack of private ownership (pure communism), but they are well thought out forms of government that when implemented correctly, and in the correct scale, have great potential. But mismanagement will get you every time - just like in US capitalism.
-Michael
What's so funny about that? Isn't that what he said?
Michael, you're playing the moral equivalence card which is irrelevant. I said that by defining evil as a threat to one's way of life, then we were evil in the eyes of the USSR. What the hell does "just as bad as the Russians" have to do with anything? I'm talking about preferable WAYS OF LIFE for citizens! By the way, the UK is not Socialist. Plus, it's a bit apples-to-oranges to compare such a homogeneous place with such a diverse one as the US. How do you think the descendants of the UK are doing in the US compared to those still living in the UK?
Allow me to repost the critical element which addresses your post:
"How was Russia a threat to our way of life?"
Let me then paraphrase the rest:
I've never seen a logical or practical example of how they were a threat to our way of life.
I challenge anyone to provide a credible argument to the contrary.
And a further ramble which probably won't gain traction here:
I HAVE heard various destabalizing and possiblly life-threatening situations that existed during the cold war (most of which I listed). But hopefully I have demonstrated that they were strategic counter-measures of CHOICE - often originated by the US and thus it is fully understandable that a competing world power would try and match our strategic position, if not occasionally exceed it - in a modern chess game.
The one thing I understood since I was young was that MAD kept us safe moreso than anything else. 3'rd party nations had to choose sides or risk being conqured by one of the two sides. For some reason neither side really went after the middle east after a series of power exchanges left them as wild-cards.
While I can see how you label my article as moral relativism, I am merely trying to give an unbiased historical account - the focus of which is to attempt to break down the notion that the US has seriously ever been under threat. Even durring WWII the US had no credible short-term threat. It was only with the possibility that Asia and or Europe would fall under an single authoritarian rule that our future would be at risk. Germany in WWI and Germany and Japan in WWII only ever attacked us in attempts to keep us out of the war - if only temporarily.
-Michael
No offense, but you are naive in your youth. Read about Domino Theory and the spread of Communism. To think that the US was immune from it is simply false. Yes, the ideal of Socialism is appealing (to some), but I challenge you to show me a practical application of it (now or ever) in a country that you would prefer to live in. Cuba??
If I had to take a shot of whiskey for every logical fallacy in your post, I might manage to kill enough brain cells to be a republican.
... why are Democrats so afraid of Palin?
+1 .. why is this flamebait?
The Internet is a parody of itself, sometimes.
As long as not every mind is soundly defeated by life's complexity and every illusion of control and knowledge has been duely shattered, there will be people who think they know how it should be done.br What the article shows is two fundamentally different vantage points regarding government. Although an individual from one side may find smarter things to say, these things don't touch the essence that lies behind either vantage point. These endless discussions don't even begin to touch the humongous question that lies beyond either side. One side always wins, because the other side said something silly, or did something wrong, but again, this has nothing to do with the big question that lies behind these two ideological genders. Usually it amounts to little more than base mud slinging, skull bashing and childish glee at the slightest sign of weakness on the other side. It may be many things, but civilized it is seldom. I don't pretend to be above all this, but let's face it, it's all pretty pathetic, human political debate.
"Fear is the mind-killer."
I really don't buy the conclusion. The startle reflex does not necessarily mark someone who is afraid. It may, however, mark somebody who is alert.
I have a high startle reflex. Is it because I hold conservative viewpoints? They might say it is. I say it likely has more to do with a high physical sensitivity (past the point of the sensory borders.. it's called synesthesia when that happens) and have trained myself to be reasonably good at playing First Person Shooter games.
Other posters have mentioned conservatives indicating a higher level of mental health than liberals, and I've read similar statistics on charitable giving and on happiness in their lives. You could turn it around and claim that liberals have a lower startle reflex because they are more likely to be depressed.
Any way you put it, though, all it means is that the conservatives in the study were more alert. That isn't the same thing as fearful.
When they want to have sex in the parks
Well then they're "parkosexual" rather than "homosexual."
No offense, but you are naive in your youth.
No, you're senile in your old age.
Read about Domino Theory and the spread of Communism.
Read on how it was complete garbage?
Yes, the ideal of Socialism is appealing (to some), but I challenge you to show me a practical application of it (now or ever) in a country that you would prefer to live in.
Socialism didn't fail, it was overthrown by the CIA.
The left leaning slant of the researchers is made obvious in more than one of their own statements. Firstly, "political orientation of test subjects who have strong views is linked to how easy they are to startle". To suggest that Republicans views are generally, more strongly held to, than are those of Democrats, is ridiculous. For many more reasons than just simply the fact, that it is Democrats whom demonstrate their strongly held views in the many protests and marches on Washington. Secondly, "The researchers suggest that this psychological difference is why it is so difficult to change people's minds in political arguments". This implies that it is Republicans who are the ones who's minds are so difficult to change. As if there are Democrats being converted on a daily bases. Well, as a matter of fact, there are. Its been widely stated that racism is rooted in fear. Its also been recognized that this election year, many Democrats won't be voting Obama, simply because he's black. In making the two statements of "strong views" and "changing minds". The obviously leftist researchers have demonstrated their "fear" in recognizing the the simple truth. Which incidentally, "facing the truth" is the core fear of most Democrats. Which is the most common thread linking them to each other. Their party's composition of the various groups, whom are all perpetually, delusional "victims"(feminists, gays, ethnic minorities). Are political views with "fear" at their core. They, believing that if their protective, Democratic party is not in power. That the degree of their victim status will surely increase. While their perception of being victims, justifies, in their own eyes, the often practiced victimizing which they engage in. Its an uncomplicated psychological process, of which the researchers ought to research the Democratic frequency of possessing such a mentality. Such as when they victimize opposing views by asserting that they're the product of mental defect. Not only is such an accusation, a "cowardly" method of avoiding having to debate and defeat the opposing view, by solidly proving your own to be valid. But is in itself, evidential of mental defect. Due to its great degree of ridiculously irrational thinking. If one merely makes known his view of that he disagrees with homosexuality. That person is immediately attributed with possessing the mental defect of "homophobia". Recently, the homosexual, political machine has taken the stance, of that anyone whom they label as a "homophobe". Is one who's mental defect is purely the result of that he himself is a "unaware" homosexual. This ridiculous claim only makes it even more obvious that "homophobia" is a fallacious disorder, which was manufactured in the political realm. Not in any supposed scientific one. Also, it's yet another cowardly, false accusation. Since what it entails, is that it eliminates even the mere possibility of that homosexuality may be illegitimate. Revealing how leftists have not the fortitude to face that indeed it is illegitimate and a deviancy from the norm. Despite the fact that the completed "Human Genome Project" revealed that no homosexual gene exists. Also, that if gay is natural, inherent from birth. Then why are their sexual organs incompatible in 100% of the cases? Then, even if they were, still reproduction would be impossible. If any one requests, I can tell you about the other Democratic groups also.
My problem with modern conservatives today is that they send their representatives to congress to try to get as much money out of the federal government as possible and do so at the same rate as liberals (as far as I can tell). Furthermore, red states (generally speaking of course) eat up much more in the way of federal social program money than blue states and pay much less in. I don't understand the logic that wants small government yet milks as much out of the system as those that want big government. I don't get the logic of people who think social programs are a waste and then eat up more of these programs dollars than anyone else.
Of course there are conservatives that are true to the ideology of conservatism and "walk the talk" (and that's great) but it just doesn't feel like this is the norm based off the numbers.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.