So I’m reading a report recently published by Psychology Today that analyzes the root causes of the differences between Liberals and Conservatives. Part of their report is taken from an experiment started in 1969 where nursery school teachers were asked to assess toddler’s temperaments. Twenty years later the test subjects were then reevaluated according to their political beliefs and these beliefs were compared to how they behaved as children. The magazine stated:
“They found arresting patterns. As kids, liberals had developed close relationships with peers and were rated by their teachers as self-reliant, energetic, impulsive, and resilient. People who were conservative at age 23 had been described by their teachers as easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and vulnerable at age 3. The reason for the difference, the [researchers] hypothesized, was that insecure kids most needed the reassurance of tradition and authority, and they found it in conservative politics.”
The magazine goes on to site another study:
“The most comprehensive review of personality and political orientation to date is a 2003 meta-analysis of 88 prior studies involving 22,000 participants. The researchers?John Jost of NYU, Arie Kruglanski of the University of Maryland, and Jack Glaser and Frank Sulloway of Berkeley?found that conservatives have a greater desire to reach a decision quickly and stick to it, and are higher on conscientiousness, which includes neatness, orderliness, duty, and rule-following. Liberals are higher on openness, which includes intellectual curiosity, excitement-seeking, novelty, creativity for its own sake, and a craving for stimulation like travel, color, art, music, and literature.”
The magazine contends that Liberals have more books than Conservatives and their books cover more topics. They claim Liberals are more optimistic. Are you kidding me? They say Liberals are more inclined to listen to classical or jazz music while Conservatives like country music. They say Conservative men would watch TV while a Lib would read a book. Another conclusion was “the more educated people are, the more liberal they become–but only to a point.”
As you can see, the study paints a very positive picture of Liberals while sowing negativity about Conservative people. So I sat there reading this article and realized I was being told by some “intellectual, deep-thinking” social scientist that I am easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and vulnerable. I am not creative, I do not like artistic stimulation, and I’m basically just an uneducated country bumpkin who listens to Willie Nelson (extreme Liberal) music all day.
Nothing could be further from the truth so I had to investigate. Turns out, all the “researchers” in the study are extreme Liberal idealogues themselves! Hmmmm. Now this is not an accusation, only an opionion, but it makes one wonder why the results seem to be so heavily skewed to reflect their own world view. The United States has many, many more Conservatives than Liberals. It can be proven in recent presidential elections. Why do you think Obama ran on a conservative platform of lowering taxes for the middle class, standing against gay marriage, never actually saying he is pro-abortion but rather the need to lower the amount of abortions, preaching personal responsibility, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc. I could put more etc’s in but for the sake of space I’ll stop. This is why Barack Obama is smart. He knew he would lose big if he displayed true Liberal quality’s.
I contend that Liberals are currently the minority who are out of touch with reality. Conservatism lives everywhere you look, it just isn’t articulated well or defended against left-leaning “studies”.
