Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Conservative Whiners

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A nice review on hack conservative site NewsMax of the recent Berkeley study that found that whiney kids grow up to be conservatives while cheerful children become liberal adults. “Ever since Theodor Adorno came out with his scandalously flawed Authoritarian Personality in 1950, liberal and leftist social scientists have been trying to diagnose conservatism as a psychological defect or sickness,” Jonah Goldberg commented in a separate piece about the study in the National Review. ” Here’s wishing for a speedy return to good health — or an outrunning of childhood demons — for Mr. Goldberg and his colleagues.

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  1. I find it counter-productive when anybody on either side of the debate gets into mouthing junk-social-science reasons why the other side is universally inferior. As much as I love science (of which one study does not make) – please consider not passing on talking-points that are name-calling by another name.

  2. “Men conceive themselves as morally superior to those with whom they differ in opinion. A Socialist who thinks that the opinions of Mr. Gladstone on Socialism are unsound and his own sound, is within his rights; but a Socialist who thinks that his opinions are virtuous and Mr. Gladstone’s vicious, violates the first rule of morals and manners in a Democratic country; namely, that you must not treat your political opponent as a moral delinquent.”

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    Differently winged, remember?

    • But Jeff Greenberg, a social psychologist at the University of Arizona who was critical of Jost’s study, was less impressed.

      “I found it to be biased, shoddy work, poor science at best,” he said of the Block study. He thinks insecure, defensive, rigid people can as easily gravitate to left-wing ideologies as right-wing ones. He suspects that in Communist China, those kinds of people would likely become fervid party members.

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      I have indeed known several insecure, defensive and rigid people on the left. I would love to say that we libs are all confident, outgoing, reasonable, and, I might add, astonishingly good-looking, but … really, it’s only 90% of us. 😉

  3. It only studied kids in Berkeley?  What about whiney emo kids from Omaha who wind up being super liberal?  Could some of the same psychological factors be at work?  Does anyone care?

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