Are Liberals Smarter Than Conservatives?

The American ^ | October 21, 2009 | Jason Richwine

[lbryce]

What if we could know, scientifically, that one side has the edge in brainpower? Should that change how we think about political issues?

Who are smarter, liberals or conservatives? This is the kind of question that could spark fierce and endless debates between political opponents, but what if we could know, scientifically, that one side has the edge in brainpower? Should that change how we think about political issues?

Though few partisans on either side are likely to admit it, most people at one time or another have suspected that their political opponents are dim bulbs. Sometimes these sentiments get aired publicly, and both the Left and the Right have been guilty of leveling the “you’re stupid” accusation. Last summer, for example, conservative activists pushed the view that Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, then a nominee, is an intellectual lightweight who lacks the brainpower to be an effective justice.

But questioning the IQ of opponents is a specialty of liberals. When John Stuart Mill labeled British Conservatives “the Stupid Party” in the 19th century, he apparently started a long-term trend. Ronald Reagan, after all, was an “amiable dunce,” according to Clark Clifford and other Democrats. And when Vice President Dan Quayle told a 12-year-old student in a spelling bee that potato had an “e” at the end of it, Democrats milked the incident for all it was worth and then some. They even had the same student lead the Pledge of Allegiance at their 1992 convention.

Smarter people usually make better choices, and smarter people are less likely to be conservative. So how are we to conclude anything but the obvious? Conservatism is stupid, right?

[lbryce]

I go with my gut feelings on this issue. From what I've come to know about those who've espoused a liberal, left-wing agenda throughout history, contemporary times, liberals, left-wingers have proven themselves to be the most mind-numbingly convoluted, stupidest people ever.

[wilco200]

No.

Next thread please.

[goodnesswins]

What a stupid question.

[SpinnerWebb]

I can put it this way...

Between me and liberals, we know everything there is to know.

Liberals apparently know everything about everything under the sun, except that they are pompous, elitist blow-hards...

and I know that!

[avacado]

Liberals are the party of the Regressives. They want to return to a monolithic and oppressive central government which we took care of some 234 years ago.

Conservatives are marching forward with the most modern document of freedom, liberty, and justice known on the planet.

[grobdriver]

"Stupid is as stupid does".
I heard that somewhere - and the current majority in the House and Senate seem to prove it out.

[Blood of Tyrants]

The liberals just think they are intellectually superior.

[DesertRhino]

The rub is this,,, No matter WHO is smarter, nobody has a natural right to rule because they’re “smarter”, even if it’s true. Scientists are terrible about this,,,”i prove to you that hamburgers are bad, so they should be illegal based upon my higher wisdom, how dare you ignore my professional opinion?”.

NOBODY knows whats best for an individuals happiness, better than the individual. Leftists assume the most educated person should choose for all of us.

It’s a false assumption, so the whole question is moot.

[Deb]

OMG, Becky! The Quayle Potato nonsense will never die!

Once again, the kid in question even told the press that the word was spelled with an "e" on the card Quayle was handed by the teacher and Quayle didn't want to contradict the teacher.

The really disgusting thing was Letterman had the kid on his show where the boy explained what really happened. And guess what was clipped from the West Coast airing and subsequent re-runs of the show?

This lie makes me madder that almost anything!

[DesertRhino]

57 states,,, NOBODY,, and i mean NOBODY could make that mistake.

[Vendome]

Nope. They suffer from Evil Eye and doing everything they can to apologize for their success and still keep everyone from being jealous of them.

[Cicero]

It depends what you mean by smart. We all know that there are high IQ people who are really dumb about practical matters. Traditionally, the most important thing was to have wisdom.

And in the West, for several thousand years, it has been agreed what wisdom is. Check Ecclesiastes. Check Plato and Aristotle. Check Aquinas. To be wise is to seek the true, the good, and the beautiful, to be guided by the four virtues, to do what God commands.

All that is basically what conservatives believe in. It’s the liberals who usually say, “I’ll do whatever the hell I want, as long as it feels good.” Or, “Do your own thing,” in the jargon of the 60s. Or, everyone is entitled to make up their own versions of reality, in the SCOTUS Casey decision that confirmed Roe v Wade.

So, if you go by which group has the highest IQs, it’s hard to say. No doubt there are plenty of people with high IQs on drugs, who rob people to feed their habits. No doubt there are plenty of high-IQ academics who abuse their positions. That’s not really what I’d call smart.

[Dr. Bogus Pachysandra]

Well, you can to your college,
you can go to your school
But if you ain’t got Jesus,
You’se an educated fool
And that’s all, I’ll tell you that’s all
‘Cause you better have Jesus
I tell you that’s all

Ry Cooder

[Domandred]

Wisdom != Intelligence

Conservatives are more wise no matter what their intelligence level.

[EnderWiggins]

In general...

Liberals think Conservatives are stupid.

Conservatives think Liberals are evil.

That’s always been my experience... at least.

[Canedawg]

They think they’re smarter.

We know they’re not.

[556x45]

Pretty much...after all they seem inclined to superstition rather than fact (ala global warming/climate change, homosexuality, economics etc.).

[the_Watchman]

Dennis Praeger brought up this subject in his show around noon today. He quoted Thomas Sowell who said that it takes an “intellectual” to be willing to overlook the moral depravity of gulags.

[csd]

Clearly conservatives are smarter, liberals think and act purely with emotion, they have a group mentality, and they fail to consider human nature in any of their beliefs. Conservatives use logic and reason, they are free thinking INDIVIDUALS that come to conclusion based on experience, human nature, and rational deliberation.

[r-q-tek86]

I’m inclined to go with Reagan’s quote... something like “It’s not that liberals are stupid, it’s just that they know so many things that aren’t true”

[the_Watchman]

I think it is quite a stretch to claim that liberals are evil. However, I think it is quite accurate to state the liberals do not understand “evil” or its consequences.

[Maverick68]

no

[conservativeharleyguy]

“The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so”. - Ronald Reagan -

Question: If Conservatives run “Think Tanks”, does that mean Liberals run “Emote Tanks”?

[TigersEye]

Smart is no guarantee of sanity.

Articles that explain how modern liberals suffer from a mental disorder.

• Regurgitating the Apple: How Modern Liberals "Think"
• Idiot Compassion
• The Secret to the Suicidal Liberal Mind
• Democratic Realism
• Swedish Moonbats Suppress Knowledge of Communist Genocide
• Is Liberalism Political Madness?
• Liberals clinically mad, concludes top psychiatrist
• Liberalism and the two roads to nihilism
• Liberalism is a Psychology

[ronniesgal]

No but those a-holes sure think they are.

[Brookhaven]

There is a difference between being intelligent and being educated.

Because a significant percentage of liberal thought comes out of academia, the assumption is that smart people are liberals. That’s based upon the false assumption that academics are smarter than the rest of society.

The more likely answer is liberals are attracted to careers in academia while smart conservatives are attracted to careers in other professions (law, business, etc...)

[airborne]

Liberals judge their intelligence by how many people they can fool and manipulate with their lies and deceptions.

There's nothing smart about that.

Just pure evil!

[RipSawyer]

IQ scores only measure certain aspects of intelligence. Some of the dumbest moves imaginable are made by people who have high IQ scores. Some of the strongest Obama supporters are those who hold advanced degrees and there aren’t many things that indicate stupidity more strongly than having voted for Obama, it shows an inability to sort out reality from pure hogwash.

I speak as one who has scored VERY high test scores. If IQ alone meant all that much I would have a lot more money than I do. I once voted for Ernest F. (Foghorn Leghorn) Hollings for senator myself, thankfully I have reached a higher state of maturity since then. I could never be stupid enough to vote for Obama unless I fall victim to Alzheimer’s or something similar.

[LibWhacker]

Yeah, well, it’s not conservatives who fill our prisons, a primary gathering place for the dumbest people in society.

[Tzimisce]

Clearly liberals are smarter: look at Hollywood - a place of geniuses.

Look at the Ivy League Schools places that put out studies like this one, they’re all liberal.

[Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus]

No.

[Varmint Al]

LIBERAL.... A liberal believes the constitution is a tool to interpret/change to whatever they want it to say.
CONSERVATIVE.... A conservative respects the constitution and believes in preserving the original intent of the founding fathers.

LIBERAL.... A liberal uses feelings to come to a conclusion and then tries to use logic to justify the conclusion.
CONSERVATIVE.... A conservative weighs the facts of the arguments and then uses logic to come to the best conclusion.

LIBERAL.... A liberal knows you need help because he believes you can't get along without someone's help.
CONSERVATIVE.... A conservative will tell you, "Look, I made it. You can make it too."

LIBERAL.... A liberal judges the success of welfare by the number of people who receive it.
CONSERVATIVE.... A conservative judges the success of welfare by the number of people who no longer need it.

LIBERAL.... A Liberal wants you to be comfortable in your poverty. They will help you be conformable with welfare and food stamps, but you can't work.
CONSERVATIVE.... A Conservative wants you to be comfortable by helping you out of poverty and supporting yourself.

LIBERAL.... Liberals want to legalize marijuana.
CONSERVATIVE.... Conservatives want to legalize the concealed carry of hand guns.

LIBERAL.... Liberals used to listen to the Mario Cuomo talk radio program.
CONSERVATIVE.... Conservatives listen to the Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Neal Boortz, Lee Rodgers, Melanie Morgan, Matt Drudge, Roger Hedgecock, Ken Hamblin, GG Liddy, Alan Keyes, Oliver North, Mike Reagan, and many more on talk radio.

LIBERAL.... Liberals believe that a problem can be solved by forming a government program or agency to regulate it. Then, when the problem is not solved, it only because the government program was under funded.
CONSERVATIVE.... Conservatives believes that most problems are caused by government programs or agencies.

LIBERAL.... Liberals are liberal with other people's TAX MONEY.
CONSERVATIVE.... Conservatives are conservative with their OWN money.

LIBERAL.... A Liberal sees the discouraged and downtrodden, gives them a HAND-OUT and says, "Look what I just did!"
CONSERVATIVE.... A Conservative sees the discouraged and downtrodden, gives them a HAND-UP, and says, "Look what you just did!"

LIBERAL.... Liberals believe that animals have rights. You have to be aware to have rights. Animals don't and don't even know they don't have rights.
CONSERVATIVE.... My ancestors did not fight to the top of the food chain for me to become a liberal vegetarian!

LIBERAL.... Liberals refuse to believe what the Second Amendment says and try to pass laws against it.
CONSERVATIVE.... Conservatives want to legalize the concealed carry of hand guns. NO! It's already legal. It is right there in the Second Amendment.

LIBERAL.... Liberals believe in limiting personal freedom for the betterment/good/safety of the people as a whole.
CONSERVATIVE.... Conservatives believe, in the words of Ben Franklin, "He who sacrifices individual freedom for personal safety ends up with less of both and deserves neither.

LIBERAL.... If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart.
CONSERVATIVE.... If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain.

Good Hunting... from Varmint Al

[GloriaJane]

Are Liberals Smarter Than Conservatives?

There is a great divide between book learning and wisdom.

Liberals have plenty of book learning, but they lack the wisdom that Conservatives have.

[Tribune7]

Um, no.

[dsc]

So often, what passes for intelligence among liberals is really just a facility with language combined with a good memory.

One cannot be a liberal and have a high IQ. However, one can be a *default* liberal and have a high IQ.

What I mean by “default liberal” is a person who is a liberal because everyone around him is, and because the media tell him he must be, but who has not brought any intellectual rigor to bear on the matter.

If such a person were as quick to understand philosophy as he is to grasp his scientific field, he would easily see that leftist thought is fatally flawed. However, he wrongly assumes that he *is* as quick to understand philosophy as science, and tells himself that he would easily see any flaws in leftist thought if they existed. So comforted, he returns his attention to his scientific specialty.

His passions lie elsewhere, his time and resources are limited (as are everyone’s), all around him approve of his liberalism, and he enjoys liberalism’s assumption of moral superiority.

His examination of the philosophical questions involved in leftism’s war against mankind ends right there.

Ecce, the default liberal.

My assertions are:

1. Philosophy is every bit as difficult as the hard sciences, though the lack of a means for real-time proof or falsification of philosophical propositions masks that fact.

2. Just as there are people who are very, very smart in philosophy but could never rise above a “C” in nuclear engineering, no matter how they exerted themselves, there are people who are very, very smart in nuclear engineering but could never rise above a “C” in philosophy, no matter how they exerted themselves. In the absence of such exertion, which must be guided by Western Civilization’s millennia-long study of philosophy, they tend to stall at the “F minus” level.

[dsc]

“Some of the strongest Obama supporters are those who hold advanced degrees and there aren’t many things that indicate stupidity more strongly than having voted for Obama”

One of the dumbest people I ever met had a Ph.D.

[rockinqsranch]

It isn’t which side is smarter IMO. Smart is relative.

Try which side is intellectually lazy, and see if that fits better. The Left easily exploits the intellectually lazy, so take it from there.

[meadsjn]

liberals, left-wingers have proven themselves to be the most mind-numbingly convoluted, stupidest people ever.

Liberals claim to be "educated", but their most popular under-graduate fields of study, Education, Sociology, Journalism, Political Science, Humanities, Psychology, are ALL collections of academic refuse who could not possibly get into any productive field of study.

After four years of such damage, no amount or type of graduate study can undo the mental discombobulation.

[jonascord]

I simply offer this.

The vast majority of mathematicians, technicians, engineers, actual creators and operators of modern technology, those who have demonstrated an ability to absorb vast amounts of factual data and logically create a functional and predictive conclusion, the ones who are going to survive a crisis, are "conservative."

Dreamy social scientists, artists, school teachers who flunked out of general math, power-crazed sociopaths, sexual obsessive-compulsives, all of whom seem to have trouble with balancing a personal check book, hire people to change the oil, and develop "moral equivalence" to justify any behavior, the proles who abrogate individual decision-making to whoever is willing, are "liberal".

Which ones are "Smarter"?

[lbryce]

Great list!
Should be incorporated into the DSM-IV.
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,
Fourth Edition(DSM-IV)

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is published by the American Psychiatric Association and provides diagnostic criteria for mental disorders. It is used in the United States and in varying degrees around the world, by clinicians, researchers,psychiatric drug regulation agencies, health insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and policy makers.

[TigersEye]

It is probably well covered under various dissociative disorders as well as compulsive self-destructive disorders. ;-)

[RJL]

Are Liberals Smarter Than Conservatives?

Of course they are, just ask them.

Al Gore and John Kerry were brilliant and Bush was a stupid monkey... until their grades were made public. Then the media just lost interest in the whole thing.

[Reeses]

Nature has the definitive IQ test for humans: tribal warfare. If a tribe of liberals lived next to a tribe of conservatives, the liberal tribe would eventually lash out in envy at their more successful busy beaver neighbors, starting a war. The conservatives would leave no liberal left standing to pass on their failed genes or culture. The IQ test of the Universe has determined many times that conservatives are smarter.

[OldMissileer]

NOBODY knows whats best for an individuals happiness, better than the individual.

If you notice, liberals are not a happy lot and do not like others being happy, especially when the others do not share the same thoughts and opinions.

Because of this, liberals want to share their misery and make sure EVERYONE shares it.

My apologies to Sir Winston Churchill for the bad paraphrasing.

[NEMDF]

But many of them consider themselves to be “highly educated” and are snobbish about their intellectual “status”. They just think they are smarter (and superior in all other ways).

[LucyJo]

This expresses my opinion as well as anything I've read:

~excerpt~

Bruce Charlton, a professor of theoretical medicine at the University of Buckingham, recently coined the term “clever sillies” to describe people who hold wacky political views seemingly because of—rather than despite—their high intelligence.
Conservative writer John Derbyshire has also observed that political naivety exists at both extremes of the IQ distribution, not just the lower one. The reason is that brilliant people can sometimes be so consumed by abstract philosophy that they forget common sense.
The late Irving Kristol once illustrated this phenomenon with an anecdote about his friend, the novelist Saul Bellow:

Saul, then an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, was, like so many of us in the 1930s, powerfully attracted to the ideologies of socialism, Marxism, Leninism and Trotskyism, as well as to the idea of “the Revolution.”
He and a group of highly intellectual and like-minded fellow students would meet frequently at his aunt’s apartment, which was located next to the university. The meetings lasted long into the night, as abstract points of Marxism and Leninism agitated and excited these young intellectuals.
Saul’s aunt, meanwhile, would try to slow things down by stuffing their mouths with tea and cakes. After the meetings broke up in the early hours of the morning, Saul’s aunt would remark to him: “Your friends, they are so smart, so smart. But stupid!”

Saul’s aunt may not have been a brilliant intellectual, but she had the wisdom and experience to see the fallacies of Marxism that her nephew and his friends could not.

[A_Former_Democrat]

Well gee, let’s analyze:

Liberals tout policies that have never worked, anywhere.

Conservative tout policies that have created the greatest nation in the history of the world

Mobility: Liberals move, shop and send their kids to schools built and maintained by conservatives. The opposite rarely occurs. And since actions speak much louder than words . . .

Crime, addictions, illegitimacy, underachievement in both education the the workplace are much higher amongst liberals and their constituencies than their conservative counterparts.

And someone really seriously posed the question about who’s smarter?

ROFL

[JEH_Boston]

There is a difference between being intelligent and being educated.

I couldn't agree more. My observation is that years of college education is inversely proportional to common sense.

[Marty62]

NO.
Liberals suffer from the fatal illness of inability to logically reach a conclusion on any issue.

They always come up with their hairbrain schemes and that is where the lefty brain shuts down.

No critical thinking..therefore they always end up with unintended consequences that prove their ideas dangerous to society.

[Ranald S. MacKenzie]

"57 states,,, NOBODY,, and i mean NOBODY could make that mistake."

That was just a Freudian slip...There are after all 57 Islamic states in the world, aren't there?