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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."
People get paid to work that out???
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!!?
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.
To them, there's only one thing worse then burning eternally in hell - having a penis up your asshole.
I'm drunk and I want to fucking kill you all!
I feel like death on a soda cracker.
Liberals do not use their brains therefore there is no fear response.
Yeah, well easily scared pussies like you usually wind up bound with duct date and throat fucked until you suffocate and die!
I feel like death on a soda cracker.
> Wow, your sane, calm, and carefully-reasoned response has totally convinced me.
That was a flame, not reasoned debate. I'm just damned tired of variations of this same meme showing up here with increasing frequency. Be good when this election season is finally over and /. can get back to news for nerds instead of a slightly less demented version of Daily Kos.
That said, I meant every word of it. I think Reagan's solution was the correct one. Don't negotiate with evil; confront it, call it out AS evil with as much firmness of conviction as can be mustered. 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.
Once Reagan declared the Soviet Union the "focus of evil in the modern world" it forced all of their supporters into the no-win scenario of either arguing that the genocidal madmen running a prision nation were not actually evil, or conceding the point and declaring for the forces of darkness. Even the famed forked tongues of French diplomacy could't manage to defend the Soviets and they found their countrymen not quite so craven as to declare "To Evil!" to appease the Russian Bear. From that everything else followed.
Both the Soviet Union and the modern American Democratic Party are based on the same wicked ideas. Win that argument and I don't give a damned about winning any arguments with Democrats. The Democratic Party is currently the focus of Evil in the world and must be destroyed. End it and Al Queda no longer matters, any who don't figure out the jig is up can be hunted down at our leisure. Just like Vietnam was a battle in the Cold War where the dying was there but the war was fought here against the enemy within. The good guys lost that battle, but Reagan later won the bigger theater wide struggle with but a word. But he didn't end the War, the same war rages on. It is time to end this madness before it consumes our civilization. Reagan had the right idea, he just didn't see the logical next step.
Democrat delenda est
The most amusing part of your post is that you did it as Anonymous Coward.
Ahem - they are **reporting** that they have better mental health. Doesn't mean they're actually healthier. In fact, they could just be more fearful that other people will think they're nuts.
It is a fact that artists, nerds and techies tend to be more mentally shall I say, weird, than the rest of the population. A high percentage of the nerds and artists that I have personally come in contact with are either bipolar, autistic or schizophrenic. And guess what, almost all of them are left wing. Let me add that I have nothing against them since many are true geniuses in what they do. It's just that they tend to be socially rebellious by nature.
The problem with many "liberals" is that they have a silly, rosy view of people and the world, and think there's nothing to be afraid of with people who are "different", even if their religion tells them they need to kill you.
No, it's not at all true that liberal don't warn that Christians are dangerous.
In my observation of the Real World, you'd find that about half the Reps think the Dems are wackos, and the other half are willing to listen to alternatives, even if they think the Dems are misguided. Conversely, 100% of the Dems will say "the Reps are all stupid. Why? They're just stupid, that's all".
And in my observation, there are a great deal more very insecure people in the Dem camp, who are constantly afraid of the bogeyman and want someone to take care of it for them. The Rep is more likely to just shoot the bogeyman, when and if it appears, rather than beg someone else to protect them.
Very broad generalizations, but such are my observations. Your biases may differ. ;)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Yep, the Libertarian Party isn't exactly known for picking great candidates, just like the Dems and Reps seem to always pick the absolute worst possible candidates. That's why I like to consider myself a "mild libertarian" (note the lower-case "l"), not a member of the party which has some absolute nuts in it. But I do like to vote for Libertarian candidates in many smaller races, to hopefully bring more diversity to politics than the current Dem/Rep duopoly.
For this year's election, I'm definitely not going to be voting for the LP candidate, Bob Barr, and his con-artist VP. I'll probably vote for the Constitution Party candidate instead.
Unfortunately, that's true. Many in the Libertarian Party are rather extreme that way, which is why I frequently don't agree with them.
My point, however, was that they're the only party that believes in freedom as a principle (though many, as I said, go too far and don't realize that without some regulation you can't guarantee freedom, as the strong will prey on the weak without regulations to keep things fair). The Dems and Reps don't even believe in freedom; they're happy to take away your freedoms whenever it suits them and their wealthy friends.
So you think criminals have some kind of "gun x-ray vision" to see which homes have guns?
You're an idiot.
Around here, the homes getting invaded are the ones without guns. When they hit a home that has guns, they get shot.
Are you stupid? A quick google search yields stuff like this:
http://www.local6.com/news/13542239/detail.html
http://www.local6.com/news/10832086/detail.html?rss=orlpn&psp=news
http://www.foxcarolina.com/news/17379037/detail.html#-
http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2008/sep/19/home-invader-fatally-shot/
http://www.wptv.com/content/tcoast/story.aspx?content_id=13fcb937-2235-4ad3-9322-974c87b31eb1
I could post tons more links, but I think you get the idea. Of course, there's plenty of stories of home invaders shooting unarmed residents, and that's a good reason to keep guns in your home.
Of course, dumb liberals like yourself probably think that banning all guns will simple stop home invasions, completely neglecting the fact that many criminals are large men who've spent lots of time in prison pumping iron, and don't need guns to commit crimes against women, children, or elderly people. It only takes a swift kick to get inside a modern home, with the way they build them now. If you're a 75-year-old woman, how exactly are you going to defend yourself against 4 musclebound men intent on doing you harm?