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Liberal smear job might be psychological affliction
Colin McNickle is the Trib's director of editorial pages. Ring him at 412-320-7836. E-mail him at: cmcnickle@tribweb.com.
Hint: Linking conservatism (of all things) with Hitler (of all people) should be your first clue that this study is garbage.
Four professors, in an exercise directed by the University of California at Berkeley (where else?), say they reviewed 50 years of research literature about the psychology of conservatism. They concluded that "at the core of political conservatism is the resistance to change and a tolerance for inequality."
Oh, yes, and "fear and aggression" are part of the "common" psychological makeup of conservatism's practitioners, along with "dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity," "uncertainty avoidance," the "need for cognitive closure" and "terror management."
This rubbish was published -- an amazing feat considering its guffaw factor -- in Psychological Bulletin, the house organ of the American Psychological Association.
This research marks the first synthesis of a vast amount of information about conservatism, says UC-Berkeley visiting prof Frank Sulloway, one of the study's authors. The result is an "elegant and unifying explanation" for political conservatism under the rubric of motivated social cognition, he adds in a university news release that had to be revised and re-released to vet it of even more biases and shibboleths than were found in the study.
Actually, the "study" is further proof that liberals in the academy don't have a clue. I'm not exactly sure what "motivated social cognition" is, but use of such a psycho-babble term indicates to me that our Berkeley friends have a little ignition problem, as in they're not firing on all cylinders.
Indeed, conservatives seek to conserve existing institutions. But that's not based on some kind of psychological defect, for goodness sake. Stability is a fundamental of republican government. But by the Berkeley study's standards, fealty to the rule of law and the Constitution is somehow deviant behavior.
"Tolerance for inequality"? What a distortion. Conservatives happen to believe in equal opportunity. Berkeley liberals think "equal results" is a synonym. If there aren't equal results, there isn't equality in their minds. Equal opportunity is the backbone of free markets, which require failures in order for there to be successes. Equal results, i.e., "leveling the playing field" in order to "make everybody winners" actually makes everybody losers and no less than wards of the state. It's the socialist model.
And then there's affirmative action. Envisioned (and enacted) as a way to correct specific past cases of discrimination, it has become a Supreme Court-sanctioned and twisted concept of discriminating against one race to "remedy" past discrimination against another race, et al. Affirmation action aficionados, usually liberals, often call affirmative action foes "racists." So, those who oppose discrimination have a tolerance for inequality?
"Intolerance of ambiguity"? Try the rejection of moral relativism. Try the rejection of "living constitutionalism." Try the rejection of fundamental illogicality.
"Dogmatism"? If the Berkeley crowd is referring to the first dictionary definition of the word, I'd wholeheartedly agree. For the rule of law, fealty to the Constitution, devotion to equal opportunity and at least some modicum of morality indeed are sound (if not required) tenets of a republican society. But these Berkeley-sanctioned researchers mean it as pejorative -- "a tenet put forth as authoritative without adequate grounds." And how perverted it is that anyone could view the base tenets of republican society as something unproven.
But far and away the most offensive and wholly inaccurate notion is the Berkeley study's repetition of the widely (and wildly) held liberal shibboleth that conservatism somehow is Hitlerian.
From the revised news release touting the study: "Disparate conservatives share a resistance to change and acceptance of inequality, the authors said. Hitler, Mussolini, and former President Ronald Reagan were individuals, but all were right-wing conservatives because they preached a return to an idealized past and condoned inequality in some form. Talk show host Rush Limbaugh can be described the same say, the authors commented in a published reply to the article."
Let's set the record straight and earn the wrath of every post-1960s-illeducated college history professor: Hitler and Mussolini were not right-wing conservatives. Nor were they conservatives of any stripe.
Since when is Nazism and fascism -- each embracing socialism, each influenced greatly by Marxist ideology -- conservative?
And pardon me, but given that liberals and Democrats have for so long been so taken by both -- in their economic schemes and their repeated forays into social re-engineering -- can any reasonable and modestly educated person deny that it is they who actually are Hitler and Mussolini's ideological compeers?
I think not.
The best contemporary and accessible definition of conservatism that I've come across -- neither too pointy-headed nor too dumbed-down -- can be found in the introduction by Jerry Z. Muller in his 1997 anthology of conservative social and political thought:
"In the course of the 20th century, conservatism was defined not only by its opposition to the radical left but by antipathy to the spread of the welfare state and attempts to bring about economic redistribution, and by skepticism regarding the solution of social problems through massive governmental action."
Funny, but somehow I don't think Adolf and Benito sat around lamenting such things.
If anybody has a psychological affliction worthy of serious couch time, it's the Berkeley researchers who have perverted history to comport with their very liberal, very sleazy smear job.
