Posted on 09/09/2007 1:22:49 PM PDT by Lorianne
A study funded by the US government has concluded that conservatism can be explained psychologically as a set of neuroses rooted in "fear and aggression, dogmatism and the intolerance of ambiguity".
As if that was not enough to get Republican blood boiling, the report's four authors linked Hitler, Mussolini, Ronald Reagan and the rightwing talkshow host, Rush Limbaugh, arguing they all suffered from the same affliction.
All of them "preached a return to an idealised past and condoned inequality".
Republicans are demanding to know why the psychologists behind the report, Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition, received $1.2m in public funds for their research from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
August 13, 2003? Have you been in a coma?
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Not to worry -- they'll be back next year reporting on how belief in God is a mental illness and three years after that with a report condemning the psychoses of monogamy.
The Berkeley Study uses the same flawed methodology and politically motivated interpretation as McGill U professor Robert Altemeyer, as well as that of his Frankfurt School progenitors, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer.
This should be in Breaking News!
The best line is the last:
George Will, a Washington Post columnist who has long suffered from ingrained conservatism, noted, tartly: "The professors have ideas; the rest of us have emanations of our psychological needs and neuroses."
If more breaking news, Jimmy Hoffa is missing and John Lennon was shot.
MORE interesting would be to study why liberals and all varieties of ignorant utopian socialists “preach a great leap forward to an idealized utopian future and an obsession with a leveling equality imposed by the jackboots of government thugs”
Now that is a study I would be willing to pay for!
Not very timely Lorianne, but to me a welcome reminder. The mindset of the elite left.
The last refuge of a blowhard marxist, comparing Ronald Reagan and Rush Limbaugh to Hitler and Mussolini. I’m sure Stalin, Lenin and Mao weren’t afflicted with this dreaded disease.
Reagan and Limbaugh, no mass genocide. Stalin, Lenin, Mao... well, yes but they weren’t afflicted.
Could it be that just by chance they were, but socialism/marxism has never been given a decent chance?
LMAO, these jackasses are so transparent.
George Bush and his brand of conservatism needing to be illustrated with that Biblical term compassion, meaning we Americans with the Blessings should in turn share via what ever means necessary with the illegals of this world who see fit the transgress our laws to set up shop here amongst us for economic relief. And even dear old Rush who the other day ask the supposed begin question what is wrong with being ‘gay’ regarding the liberal need to mock the morals voters once again over a toe tapping incident at a airport.
Now both of these people have apparently gone literally not just figuratively blind and deaf to attempt to give and excuse what they have NO authority to excuse.
If you are not a liberal, there must be something seriously wrong with you.
That's their template.
“You do not like communism? Impossible! Everyone LOVES communism. Clearly you are psycopathic and delusional. We must put you in the gulag for your own good.”
If everyone will just look and listen to what the left is doing, it will become clear that they are nothing more than Stalinist Communists.
May be an old article, but it`s still disturbing that these “doctors” have concluded that being against affirmative action (giving someone an advantage based on skin color), being against abortion on demand, believing in traditional marriage, etc., are mental diseases.
Thank you. They are still touting the silly “study” as proof positive of their righteousness.
“Hmmm, I believe since that day that German socialist proclaimed George Bush to be Hitler”
I remember that day. It made headlines around the world, and ever since then, the left has been comparing Bush and Republicans to Hitler and the Nazi`s.
Check out Will's reply back in '03
The four professors now contribute "theories of epistemic and existential needs, and sociopolitical theories of ideology as individual and collective rationalizations" and "defensive motivations" -- defenses against fear of uncertainty and resentment of equality. The professors have ideas; the rest of us have emanations of our psychological needs and neuroses.
But it is difficult to take the professors' seriousness seriously when they say, in an essay responding to a critique of their paper, that Ronald Reagan's "chief accomplishment, in effect, was to roll back both the New Deal and the 1960s." His "accomplishment"? So that is why Social Security and Medicare disappeared.
Until the professors give examples of political people who do not favor or condone equality in any form, it is fair to conclude that, for all their pretensions to scientific rigor, they are remarkably imprecise. And they are very political people, who would be unlikely ever to begin a sentence: "One is justified in referring to Stalin, Mao, Franklin Roosevelt and the editors of the New York Times as left-wing liberals because . . . . "
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