Researchers help define what makes a political conservative (Mega-Barf Alert!)

UC Berkeley ^ | 7/22/02 | Kathleen Maclay, Media Relations

[harpo11]

Geesh, did someone find Timothy Leary's stash of LSD or somethin'?

This guy is trippin' A f'ing wrongo!!!

I can believe that this mental midget is actually getting paid for spawning such hateful nazi propaganda on a subject he has never ever lived.

I heard on Michael Savage's Savage Nation Talk Show a blurb from a speech the impeached former President Clinton gave in England recently talking gibberish about conservatives being the 4th way much along the same line as the nazi's used.

You know it is obvious by now the Clinton's who reason for living now is to totally decimate the conservative/republican political party, and marginaize and demonize any good American citizen who affiliates with the consservative movement.

How very much like Stalin the Clintonites operate. This sad sack overpaid prof, certainly is an example of one who is, and I quote directly from the mouth of this idiot,"... more comfortable seeing and stating things in black and white in ways that would make liberals" conservatives "squirm," Glaser said.

[x]

Sounds exceptionally silly. Adorno & Co. were writing at a time when behavioral scientists thought they had all the answers, and they did an exceptionally poor job "explaining" conservatism. These guys are writing at a particularly fallow period for sociology and social psychology and don't come up with anything particularly new or interesting.

If you want to understand conservatism, or liberalism or radicalism or socialism, start with people's interests, look at their ideas of justice and move on to their visions of the future. I'd have to say that if one wants to be scientific (or pretend to be scientific), one ought to take a "unified field" approach. One has to get far enough away from all ideologies to see how they all function, and not to treat one or another as a "problem" to be explained (or explained away).

If one starts from history, one sees how any ideology can be harmful to society or humanity or individuals, and how other ideologies develop to counter it. To write conservatism (or liberalism or radicalism) off as something to be explained away or overcome is to reveal oneself to be a shallow provincial.

Worship of "openness" is one of the Achilles heels of Sixties' social science. Openness also has to be seen in context, and its limitations and possible harmfulness. Openness across the board, openness to everything is impossible, and if it were, it would hardly be beneficial.

Another fallacy of these studies is that whenever an idea is established it's seen as conservative or right-wing. A Canadian social scientist defined authoritarianism and repression as inherently right-wing, because the left was by definition critical of authority and out of power. Clearly, this is playing games with language. There have been left-wing authoritarianisms, left-wing repressiveness, and left-wing closemindedness. To deny this is to play with a stacked deck.

Frank Sulloway wrote the book on the death of Freudianism. If this is what replaces Freud, it doesn't look much like an improvement.

[risk]

>>>> Hitler was LEFT wing (National Socialist!!!!, you know, like HILLARY!!!) NOT right wing like Reagen or Rush.

We see this argument often on FR, but it's only true in the sense that Hitler had toyed with other ideologies before choosing national socialism. The word "socialism" is just a word here. Yes, he had government programs for everything, and yes, his government was oppressive. However, his core political direction was reactionary and patriotic. In Germany, he was regarded as being on the right (within its political spectrum) and political science will continue to see Hitler as being on the right forever.

The point that Hitler was a statist does not make him "left" of center, nor does his socialized form of government.

I think people on FR should be proud to be "pro America" and "pro American" form of government. That makes us right wing, but it does not in any way make us fascist. Fascism here would involve more government, not less. That would still be right wing if it were predicated on patriotism and "bringing back the good old days." Reaction is politics on the right, but it can be constructive or destructive.

Also, there are many progressive ideas now on the right in America. After more than 70 years of socialism and statism, the right is asking for change. Perhaps we want the good old days from before the growth of big government to handle the Great Depression, but I think we want something new and better. We are on the side for "change."

I think accusing Hitler of being a leftist comes out of shame at being accused of being Nazis. That's not necessary! The ones accusing us of being fascist are the ones with the least blame. Just take the case of gun control. Right wing fascists immediately disarm their subjects, but so do leftists, whose inspiration is Stalin whether they'll admit it or not. Politics is a complex hybrid, not some simple "everything bad is on the left" formula. Both bad and good can emerge on the right.

Another way to see this is from the perspective of politics in China. During Mao's revolution, he was on the left. To hold power, he turned to the right, and conservatives in that context were "right wing communists." Now the spectrum is reversed and according to Michael Ledeen (see http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/31 ), we have fascism in China because the revolution had devolved into a statist capital engine with the sole purpose of generating funds for a military and economic engine for world dominance.

The terms right and left only explain so much.

The terms left and right are relative to the current state, the current time, and the currently prevailing ideologies.

[risk]

>>>> The ones accusing us of being fascist are the ones with the least blame.

Least immunity from blame, I mean.

[Thommas]

Hitler and Mussolini were FASCISTS, national socialists, of the highest order. How the hell were they conservatives? In what way was Ronald Reagan a socialist?

This report is the abortive result of academia mating politics with the pseudoscience of psychology. It was dead before full term.

[Canticle_of_Deborah]

roflmao.... It's worse. The next step for these guys is to get conservatism labeled as an illness in the DSM-IV.

Research studies are the first step.

[ggekko]

To project Mussolini and Hitler as Conservtive leaders is an unqualified howler. Hitler and Mussolini were both Socialists who comiited themeselves to radically reshaping their respective societies. This analysis is a joke as objective science; it is merely politics by other means.

Having lost the argument in the public square "progressives" now resort to the Soviet tactic of defining their political oponenets as being "crazy". How convenient.

[Canticle_of_Deborah]

Conservatism is a disease ping!

[NoNewTaleToTell]

Your tax dollars at work.

[TheAngryClam]

Indeed.

[virgil]

Hitler and Mussolini were not conservatives. They were radicals. They wanted to take control of social institutions and make them into an arm of the state. They wanted to change the focus of these institutions to control people. They wanted to change the old ways. Germany's conservatives didn't like Hitler, but they were foolish enough to think they could control him.

[SupplySider]

Those traits may apply to "conservatives". The only problem is, today's left are the conservatives. They are trying to hang on to and advance the socialist status quo that's been in effect for more than seventy years.

Let's see the profile of agents of social change, radicals, aka today's right!

[virgil]

I've seen it put that the Left is revolutionary while the right is reactionary. I think both the left and the right are subject to reactionary behavior. To associate reaction with conservatives is wrong. Conservatives tend not to be the ones who run out into the streets to set fires and break windows when they don't like something.

[freebilly]

- Fear and aggression

- Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity

- Uncertainty avoidance

- Need for cognitive closure

- Terror management

Ahhh..., the liberals in glass houses are throwing stones....

[Stultis]

at the core of political conservatism is the resistance to change and a tolerance for inequality

Gee, and here I thought it was conservatives in the 50's and 60's who wanted to "rollback" communism, while liberals argued for "containment" (i.e. acceptance of the status quo).

Then I thought it was the notorious conservative (and un-nuanced, war-mongering "cowboy") Ronald Wilson Reagan who radically altered American foreign policy in a bid to defeat the Soviet Union and simultaneously did a complete 180 in domestic fiscal and regulatory policy, just on the say-so of some Austrian economists who virtually no one else (save for another conservative in England) listened to. I also seem to remember that it was liberals (and "conservatives" like Kissinger most closely allied with the elite-liberal "establishment") who insisted that we musn't perturb the delicate balance of "detente" (their new word for refusing to change or contest the status quo) and that we must accept the inevitability of inflation and economic stagnation, and continue with the economic policy of the preceeding decade.

Then I thought it was George W. Bush who said we could fundamentally restructure the Middle East, and even act "preemptively," while it was again liberals who didn't want to change the status quo, and even wanted us to effectively pretend (in terms of the alliances and interational institutions we must adhere to) that the Cold War had never ended!

Boy, that last bit seems really clear and recent, but I must be delusional since these researchers at Berkeley seem certain that conservatives are fearful of and adverse to change.

(Or could they have accidently reversed the words "conservative" and "liberal" in the press release?)

[freebilly]

Glaser acknowledged that the team's exclusive assessment of the psychological motivations of political conservatism might be viewed as a partisan exercise. However, he said, there is a host of information available about conservatism, but not about liberalism.

Gee, liberal researchers at liberal universities have no information about the psychological motivations of liberals...

Who would have ever guessed...?

[risk]

>>>> Conservatives tend not to be the ones who run out into the streets to set fires and break windows when they don't like something.

We have these associations with the words "liberal" and "conservative" but there are historical reasons for them that are equally important. I think it's OK to say "I'm conservative and therefore I don't break windows."

Resorting to direct "dictionary" terms for identifying what these political terms mean is risky because they can be made to argue just about any social perspective that way. Maybe that's a part of politics -- that we adopt words we like to describe ourselves, and then find ourselves changing our behavior and our outlook to meet other definitions of those words as time goes by (and we mature in our perspectives).

[xm177e2]

Well, this proves it: Conservatism is a mental illness. America is suffering from a case of national insanity. But hey, we're enjoying every minute of it. I don't want to get better!