There is an amusing post here, repeated here under the heading "Right Wing Personalities have greater trouble remembering what they read and making correct inferences". From that title one would expect that the post would have something to do with the conservative side of politics as we know it today. The author certainly seems to think that it does. BUT IT DOESN'T.
The post reports a bit of low-quality psychological "research" based on no sampling of any known population that relies for its measuring instrument on the old "RWA scale" devised by Bob Altemeyer. It is high scorers on Altemeyer's selection of questions who were "shown" to have poor memories. But the RWA scale has nothing to do with current politics. As I pointed out very recently:
Altemeyer's own statement about this may be worth noting (From p. 239 of "Enemies of Freedom"):
"right-wing authoritarians show little preference in general for any political party".
So the type of conservatism studied by Altemeyer is a rather peculiar subset of it -- one with virtually no everyday political relevance.
And note the implication: Voters for Leftist political parties are just as likely to be "Right-wing authoritarians" as are voters for conservative parties!
Confusing? Sure is! So how come? It all goes back to dippy old Altemeyer himself. He did not have a blind clue about what "right-wing" or "conservative" meant. He was so clueless about politics that he accepted the old Leftist lie that conservatives are simply people who oppose change! So, by his criterion, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan -- who were great advocates and agents of change -- were not conservative!
From Burke onwards, conservatives have been denying that they simply oppose all change but you cannot expect a Leftist psychologist to know any history, of course. I have summarized the history of what conservatives believe at geat length here and the ongoing theme is of course a belief in individual liberty.
So if poor old Alty did not know what conservatism was, it is no wonder that he found what he thought to be Rightist beliefs to be common among Leftists! Hilarious!
Other psychologists have made the same mistake. It shows what a bubble they must live in. All the conservatives I know would like to see a HEAP of things changed about our society. The idea that conservatives oppose all change is so totally brain-dead that anybody who believes it must never have talked to a real live conservative.
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ELSEWHERE
In Spain, anti-Semitism is the new leftist trend: "Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Prime Minister of Spain and Secretary General of the Socialist Party, arrived to power at a time nobody expected, not even inside the Party. Keen on populist tirades against the United States "Dickhead Bush" and "Ketchup Queen Kerry", his whole campaign did not bring much attention until the moment Al-Qaeda decided to blow up Madrid trains, killing almost 200 people and bringing to an end Spain's membership of the West. From that moment on, everybody knew nothing would be the same, and Spanish Jews knew there were hard times ahead.... Although many experts had foretold of the imminent disappearing of European Jews, nobody expected such a virulent explosion of anti-Semitism in Spain, not even under a Leftist government. The first signal came on Monday, 5 December, when during a dinner with the Benarroch family, Zapatero and wife began claiming what Vidal Quadras, member of the European Parliament, described on the radio as "a tirade of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism". By the moment the Benarroch couple had left the table to express their regrets, Zapatero was explaining his lack of surprise about the Holocaust: according to the people present, Zapatero claimed to understand the Nazis".
The difference that capitalism makes: "After 26 years of receiving food aid, China has emerged as the world's third-largest food donor, according to a report released by the United Nation's World Food Program. China donated 577,000 tonnes of food to more than a dozen countries in 2005, with the great majority sent across the border by rail to North Korea, which relies on aid to feed its poverty-stricken rural population. The findings of the report, which tracks all international food donations, underline China's growing economic and political clout in Asia, and show how far the country has come since the famines of the late 1950s killed an estimated 30 million peasants."
This sounds good for Britain: "Black and Caribbean girls will be the targets of the Government's latest drive to bring down the rate of teenage pregnancy, The Times has learnt. The move has been ordered by Beverley Hughes, the Children's Minister, who is concerned that teenagers from some ethnic minority groups remain much more likely to become pregnant than their peers from different backgrounds, even after taking into account factors such as deprivation and poor educational achievement."
British government wants to make restaurant restrooms as disgusting as public ones: "Restaurants and shops should "grow up" and let the public use their lavatories, Phil Woolas, the Local Government Minister, said. Mr Woolas was announcing a government strategy this week to shift responsibility for public conveniences to the private sector. He said that businesses should follow the example of McDonald's, which had a reputation for allowing non-customers to use its facilities. "Why should they be the only ones," he said. "And why does it have to be a furtive affair?" Public lavatories have been in inexorable decline, with many attracting drug users and criminals. Nearly half have been shut in the past decade and researchers say that there are only 5,500 left. Ministers believe that the public are prepared to pay to use lavatories." Is this the ultimate in socialism?
Social Security propped up by illegals: "There are two dirty little secrets behind the debate over the illegal alien issue that even the advocates of securing the borders first have failed to discuss. The first secret is that the estimated twelve to twenty million aliens living and working illegally in the United States have to commit identity theft to secure employment. The second secret is that without illegals' payroll tax contributions, filed under stolen or fraudulent Social Security numbers, the Social Security system would collapse years earlier than estimated."
For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).
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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)
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