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The Pathology of
Berkeley "Hitler, Mussolini, and former President Ronald Reagan were
individuals, but all were right-wing conservatives because they
preached a return to an idealized past and condoned inequality in some
form," explains a UC-Berkeley press release entitled " Four
academic researchers, evidently, "culled through 50 years of research
literature about the psychology of conservatism" and found that "the
core of political conservatism is the resistance to change and a
tolerance for inequality." They list some "common psychological factors
linked to political conservatism." These are: Fear and aggression,
Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity, Uncertainty avoidance, Need for
cognitive closure, and Terror management.
Predictably, the study is totally insane. Here's my favorite part of the release:
The
terror management feature of conservatism can be seen in post-Sept. 11
America, where many people appear to shun and even punish outsiders and
those who threaten the status of cherished world views, they wrote.
Concerns
with fear and threat, likewise, can be linked to a second key dimension
of conservatism - an endorsement of inequality, a view reflected in the
Indian caste system, South African apartheid and the conservative,
segregationist politics of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-South S.C.
[sic]). (Note here that, according to the "researchers," a key dimension of conservatism is conservative politics. Brilliant stuff.)
No
one living in reality needs to be told how bizarre is this study, how
out-of-touch are the researchers' views about September 11 and
"post-Sept. 11 America," and how outlandish is their caricature of
human specimens called "conservatives."
What's striking is that
these academics find the political views of their countrymen so
perplexing and incomprehensible that they need to resort to
psychological studies of social cognition to explain it to themselves.
(Who else but their colleagues, after all, are going to find this
report the least useful?) How does a person get like that? Isn't that a more compelling subject of study?
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