Mensch tracht, und Gott lacht

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Is the Liberal or Conservative Mind Better?

I know it’s hard to believe, but according to a recent study liberal and conservative brains actually work differently. To most people with a bit of common sense this is axiomatic, but to academics this needs a “study.” And surprise, surprise, according to these academics:

Exploring the neurobiology of politics, scientists have found that liberals tolerate ambiguity and conflict better than conservatives because of how their brains work.
Isn’t this amazing that liberals are, well, just so liberal! And not only this, “liberals could be expected to more readily accept new social, scientific or religious ideas.” Gosh if it wasn’t for liberals we’d all be stuck in the benighted dark ages of conservatism. And this must all be true because “scientists” tell us it’s true.

Now if these studies were talking about the classical liberalism of the 18th and 19th Centuries, then I could buy into the conclusions. But all those classical liberals are dead, and the new classical liberals of today are called conservatives. If one were to objectively observe American political discourse over the last 30 years it would be very clear that modern liberals are far less open to new ideas. In fact, they haven’t had one since the Great Society!

And if we use words like reactionary and rigid we see that the modern left embodies such terms. It is striking that the Democrat Party has been completely co-opted by the loony moveon.org left. Of course that all started with the left’s favorite American humiliation, Vietnam, and as the debate over Iraq in the last few days has shown us as well they are still invested in American humiliation. How liberal of them.

4 comments:

James F. Elliott said...

"Nae true Scotsman would put sugar in his gruel!"

"I saw MacDonald put sugar in his gruel yesterday morn'!"

"Then MacDonald is'nae a true Scotsman!"

MDV is an endless font of logical fallacies. Truly, a wonder of teh intertoobz.

Mike D'Virgilio said...

Wow, I've never been called an "endless font" before. Anyone that believes that modern liberals are the open minded, flexible ones in our modern political context is simply suspending their critical faculties.

John H. Watson said...

So where is the logical fallacy from MDV?

I'm not even sure about the cute MacDonald example. It may be a form of fallacy, but only because the first premise is taken literally and is thus mistaken. There's nothing logically inconsistent about it.

Regarding the study, Saletan at Slate dissects it rather incisively imo:

http://www.slate.com/id/2173965/

Jay D. Homnick said...

Yes, the liberals are open-minded enough to throw pies at Ann Coulter, jump in to block commencement addresses by Clarence Thomas, and try to limit the rights of broadcast on radio because conservatives have been outdueling them in that medium.

Conservatives are too close-minded to try to shut up Cindy Sheehan or Justice Breyer or CNN. They lack that gummy brain matter stuff that make the liberal mind so malleable.