Forum Post: Your brain on conservatism
Posted 13 years ago on Nov. 4, 2011, 3:51 a.m. EST by Lockean
(671)
from New York, NY
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Excerpt:
Yesterday I sketched the sort of personality type most likely to identify as conservative: those who prefer stability to change, order to complexity, familiarity to novelty, and conformity to creativity. This sort of personality type is drawn to clear lines separating in-groups from out-groups, highly aware of social hierarchies, suspicious of change, and strongly inclined toward system justification, i.e., seeing the prevailing socioeconomic regime as worthy and desirable
I often think that the actions and rhetoric of today's conservative politicians are easier to make sense of at this level, the level of temperament and worldview, than at the level of stated principles and policy proposals. Seeing through this lens can help make sense of a lot of stuff that otherwise looks hypocritical or absurd. In particular, it can help make sense of the political fight over climate change and clean energy.
The other day, Stephen Lacey flagged some comments from Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) that I found extremely revealing:
So what I'm trying to do is say, the government should not be picking winners and losers, let the private sector determine the winners and losers, and then ... when somebody is successful, then you give them the subsidies and the tax credit.
This makes absolutely no sense relative to the small-government, fiscal conservative principles Stearns purports to hold. Nor does it make sense as energy policy. But it does make sense at a deeper level.
Remember, system justification means seeing the current socioeconomic status quo as necessary and desirable. To see it that way, one has to view the outcomes produced by that system as just. That is why conservatives have such a deep attachment to the notion that those who succeed are those who deserve it. Success, to conservatives, is just a measure of desert. This (via Will Wilkinson) is from an interesting paper by Mark D. Harmon in which he rounded up previous studies in this area and ...
... test[ed] their conclusions against six U.S. public opinion polls. Secondary analysis found consistent and strong relationships. Conservatives and Republicans overwhelmingly attributed poverty to the personal failings of the poor themselves (lazy, drunk, etc.) while Democrats and liberals consistently offered social explanations like poor schools and lousy jobs for poverty. Later he looked at the inverse question, the reasons respondents give for others obtaining wealth (2010b). Generally he found that Democrats and liberals attributed wealth to connections or being born into a wealthy family, while Republicans and conservatives declared wealth comes from hard work.
This is really a foundational part of the difference between liberals and conservatives. It helps explain the enormous support within the conservative grassroots for policies that overwhelmingly benefit a very small number of very rich people. The rich, after all, are the winners. They are smarter. They work harder. They reached the top of the hierarchy. They deserve to be rewarded.
As conservatives see it, instead of being rewarded, the rich are beset by losers trying to take what they earned to give to those who couldn't hack it. For the true conservative, all out-groups -- socialists, environmentalists, feminists, immigrants, unions, homosexuals -- are manifestations of the same phenomenon: losers try to cheat, trying to rig the system, to get what they couldn't win fair and square and don't deserve. Takers leeching off of Makers, as Paul Ryan would put it.
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Neocons are experts on everybody's lives but their own. Progressives actually have a life.
you know what is funny.
imagine you had a delicious chocolate cake you wanted your two children to share. you give one of them a knife and you tell her, "you shall make the first cut, and your brother will have the first pick"
VOILA FAIRNESS.
perhaps we should all live a life dictated by others, and others shall live a life dictated by us.
He said "only trolls notice status" lol someone got picked last for the team during high school.
Perhaps we teach them that everything is equal and first has no more promise than second place or third, actually. Only trolls, not referring to you of course, only trolls see a value in status. As they sacrifice the moment by judging it, talking when the gain at that moment is in the listening.
Struck a nerve. :)
I find it strange that you defined conservatives fairly well in the first paragraph and then proceeded to crap out the rest. First of all, being against bailing out failing corporations or banks, which is the private sector the quote was referring to, is not being against the little guy. It is one thing to be for regulation to prevent monopolies and unfair competition, it is another thing to not regulate and then bail out the ones that have a disadvantage. It is also not in anyone's best interest to prop up companies that aren't making sound financial decisions and are failing on their own. Let them die so someone else can take their place or pick up their slack. How can an evolutionist not believe in survival of the fittest. Regulating the bully is bailing out the little guy. I have to go, but I plan to come back later.
This isn't about bailouts. Bailouts for failing banks/industries are one thing, and I don't think any coherent philosophy is for that as a policy - that sort of thing usually comes about in a reactive panic...
Stimulating a (beneficial, to the common good) industry in its infancy, like solar energy, is a different matter. The entrenched fossil fuel industry produces all sorts of barriers to entry to competition from alternatives. The market is stacked in their favor - via all sorts of mechanisms (subsidies, economies of scale, structural externalization, etc) basically amounting to inertial advantage for big oil. Not to mention this isn't just about profit, and it's not some sort of entertaining horse race where we have no societal interest in the outcome (beyond the cash bets we place). This is about our sustainability and long-term success as a civilization.
Anyway, I think you should read the Stearns quote again. Subsidies and tax credits for success? Meaning, oil companies deserve continued subsidies and tax credits? Hmm.
Oh, and knowing the truth of evolution in nature does not mean I have to embrace it as a social good. Humans have the ability to exceed nature and therefore the moral duty to do so. Otherwise, toss everything (civilization itself) out and just go back to might makes right.
Sorry douche-bag but I am a supporter of the LGBT community and I am very conservative
I'm a conservative.
AND I want change. I want gay marriage legalized, marijuana decriminalized (but still restricted like alcohol), and the private banking monopoly called the Fed razed to the ground.
Your post, as often happens when people Stereotype and Prejudge instead of keeping an open mind, is not correct. Most conservatives simply want to preserve the Bill of Rights (especially the 10th amendment) as it is the strongest protection against tyranny by the oligarchy (congress and the rich). We want what Jefferson wanted - enforce the Law of the constitution.
The problem in recent history is that Congress has been ignoring the Bill of Rights and exercising powers never granted to it by the People or the People's State Legislatures. That needs to stop. Never was Congress granted power to swipe 1.5 trillion from the consumers to give to the sellers (megacorps). Every one of them who voted for those bills should be fired.
Labels are for food.
The problem with your view is that it is so extremely narrow minded. Both liberal and conservative are defined within the social and cultural context which varies tremendously from region to region, even within the US.
And there are rather distinct lines between fiscal attitude and social attitude, until one mistakenly attempts to blur them.