How Conservatism Breeds Racist Thought

Years ago on this blog I made the argument that conservative ideology actually promotes racism.  Because of its assumption of free will, it sees disproportionate dysfunctional behavior among certain minorities as a function of inner, intrinsic qualities, as opposed to external, structural forces.

New results from the General Social Survey (GSS) from the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago seem to confirm my argument.  As reported in the Washington Post:

"The biggest yawning gap between Democrats and Republicans is on the issue of motivation and will power. The GSS asks whether African Americans are worse off economically “because most just don't have the motivation or will power to pull themselves up out of poverty?”
A majority — 55 percent — of white Republicans agreed with this statement, compared to 26 percent of white Democrats. That's the biggest gap since the question was first asked in 1977 — though the gap was similar (60-32) in 2010."

An interesting question, not asked in the survey, might be whether conservative Republicans would also say that economically disadvantaged whites lack motivation and willpower.  A charitable view would hold they would, assuming no racial animus and instead following the logic of their dualistic view of human nature.

Yet how then, with this individualistic worldview, do you make sense of the fact that certain minorities are economically worse-off?  If they are "making the choice" to be worse off, and there is no appeal structural disadvantage, a racialized view begins to make more sense.

Big Trouble in Little Iowa

I recently wrote at length on Trumpism viewed through a behavioral lens. I thought I'd post this as it's a more simplified, digestible version. 

What we've seen in this election, more than anything else, is the rural cultural identity of the white/Christian/heterosexual/gender-conformist reacting against the notion that they are no longer considered superior. This narrative has been playing out on the right for decades, growing in strength alongside the rise of multiculturalism, feminism, LGBT awareness and strength. To hear the mythology, one would think these different groups are somehow taking over and oppressing the WCHGCs. Yet examine the actual events and one finds no removal of rights, but rather modest requests for polite inclusion - bake a gay cake too, say happy holidays instead of Merry christmas, add a girls soccer team, build a wheelchair ramp, don't mention Jesus in your opening statement, don't bully a feminine boy, try to hire some more women and minorities. This is hardly oppression. 

As a behaviorist, I think of the term "exctinction burst". This describes the tendency for people to engage in maladaptive behaviors (anger, yelling, violence) when behaviors they have previously been reinforced for engaging in are no longer reinforced - or placed on "exctinction". It's a natural process, and ought to fade in time, as long as the reinforcement is withheld. Unfortunately, if people remain in social groups that cling to these chauvinist behaviors (we include thoughts as behaviors), they will remain reinforced, and in a perpetual state of anger. This is especially true as the cosmopolitan dominated media and academia remain dominated by progressive values that oppose chauvinism.

Strange Boots

I've struggled to place myself in the shoes of Republicans who disliked Trump, but voted for their party anyway.

I start with someone who believes in my core progressive ideology -  pro-choice, government services for the poor, regulations, climate change, healthcare, higher taxes, etc. - but then expresses paranoid, racist and misogynist sentiments.  I can kind of imagine it, however there's really nothing like that on the left, where on the right you have an entire culture devoted to it (the 50% polled who seemed to express similar feelings to Trump - the "deplorables").

I find it hard to imagine.  Much of what is frightening about Trump is not just his bigotry but his authoritarian tendencies, seemingly born out of a hyper-masculine machismo which I am also allergic too, yet which is also a popular disposition on the right.  By itself, machismo isn't necessarily problematic, but in the context of larger retrograde attitudes, it takes on a bullying, chauvinist quality.

So I imagine these non-Trumpist Republicans as disgusted by his racial bigotry (the homophobic policies I'm assuming they're quite amenable to), embarrassed by his dim-witted bloviations, his crassness making them wince.  But he's also likely much more of a recognizable type, the kind of fellow not uncommon in right wing circles, be it leather-upholstered backroom offices or at the opposite end of a construction yard.  They are used to seeing him, tolerating him, even appreciating his git-r-done brashness all-the-while shaking their heads and rolling their eyes.

So now he's been nominated and, well, as long as he's surrounded by enough good old boys, he'll generally continue policies we want: dismantle Obamacare, cut up climate change regulations, stand athwart the gun rack, appoint conservative justices who might just finally end the fetal holocaust, and with any luck nuke ISIS.

I take solace in the fact that, while I disagree with these policy choices, they don't necessarily represent moral monstrosity.  They don't actually want to violently march into neighborhoods and rip apart undocumented families.  They don't actually want to ban Muslims.  They don't actually want to waterboard-and-then-some.  They don't believe in crazy conspiracy theories.  They don't read Breitbart.

However, their party nominated someone who does.  They have to live with the fact that they are in bed with this movement, which has consumed them.  At what point do you decide to leave?  We'll see.

American Mind Control

Like everyone else this election, I'm obsessed with the answer to this question: what is driving Trump supporters?

Is it economic anxiety?  Is it loss of white, Christian identity?  Is it simple bigotry? Is it authoritarianism?

My own current theory is that it isn't based so much on any of these things, as so much as an ideological narrative that has been stewing and metastasizing for decades, propagating largely via conservative media outlets, but thriving in the oxygen-rich environs of isolated rural and suburban America - church to church, gun show to gun show, Cabellas to Cabellas, racetrack to racetrack.

Would it be possible, I ask, for an ideological narrative to develop that isn't actually based on facts in reality, but rather on facts that are assumed by its own mythology?

The clearest example of this is the world of conspiracy theories.  Despite no evidence - and often times direct evidence to the contrary - a certain type of person continues to buy in to the larger story.  The belief is thus sustained and maintained over time.

You also see this in religion, where certain areas of inquiry are immune to contradiction.  The more insular and extreme the religion, the greater the immunity.  The pure example of this is the religious cult, where almost all sense of normality is overridden by dogma.

In general, we view people who go down these rabbit holes as abnormal, and generally psychologically flawed in some way.  Yet how so?  I'm not very familiar with the literature here, but my guess is that there a lot of theories but nothing conclusive.  At any rate, these types of people have generally been considered a small, deluded, (yet strangely persistent), segment of the population.

Yet historically we can find examples of ideological movements that are not abnormal to the population, but rather the norm.  Nazi Germany comes to mind.  Anarchists at the turn of last century.  Fundamentalist Islam is a more contemporary example of an ideology that is quite popular in many regions of the world.

So how possible, then, might it be that contemporary conservatism has normalized a form of hysterical, at times conspiratorial thought?  I realize that this line of argument could easily become a cheap form of ad hominem dismissal of valid political arguments.  But what we have in Trumpism are not valid political arguments.  The bile that has been spilling from AM radio for at least 40 years - throughout the 1980's, 1990's, 2000's and 2010's is not valid argument but demogoguery and conspiratorial falsehood.  Fox news, Breitbart.com and social media have only spread the narrative's reach.

Michael Savage:

"…You have to explain this to them in this time of mental rape that's going on. The children's minds are being raped by the homosexual mafia, that's my position. They're raping our children's minds."

Glenn Beck:

“President Obama, Tim Geithner, Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, all the other lawmakers are going after the blood of our businesses, big and small. Who's next? They have their fangs in the necks of everybody, and nothing's going to quench their thirst…There's only two ways for this movie to end: Either the economy becomes like the walking dead, or you drive a stake through the heart of the bloodsuckers.”

Bill O'Reilly:

"I just wish Hurricane Katrina had only hit the United Nations building, nothing else, just had flooded them out, and I wouldn't have rescued them." --Bill O'Reilly on his radio show, Sept. 14, 2005

Sean Hannity:

"Halloween is a liberal holiday because we're teaching our children to beg for something for free. … We're teaching kids to knock on other people's doors and ask for a handout." —Fox News host Sean Hannity (October 31, 2007)

Ann Coulter:

"God gave us the earth. We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees. God said, 'Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It's yours.'"

Rush Limbaugh:

"A feminazi is a woman to whom the most important thing in life is seeing to it that as many abortions as possible are performed. Their unspoken reasoning is quite simple. Abortion is the single greatest avenue for militant women to exercise their quest for power and advance their belief that men aren’t necessary. Nothing matter but me, says the feminazi; the is an unviable tissue mass. Feminazis have adopted abortion as a kind of sacrament for their religion/politics of alienation and bitterness.”~Rush Limbaugh, The Way Things Ought To Be, p.192-93 , 1992

The problem with people in cults or who buy into conspiracies isn't the specific beliefs they hold.  They are often innocuous enough.  Rather, it is the mental state within which they are interacting with the larger world.  The sense of measured, reasonable,  epistemological skepticism is gone.  Truth becomes "truth", and one becomes incredibly susceptible to manipulation, as long as the sense of anger, fear and often hatred, is fed.

It doesn't happen in a vacuum.  People just don't wake up one day and decide to join a cult.  But with enough isolation, social reinforcement, and limited knowledge, and desire for some kind of affirmation of values, the ideology seeps in, puttying the gaps with its insidious dogma.

The number one priority in cults is to develop in the individual a lack of faith in outside authority.  Don't trust your family.  Don't trust the government.  Don't trust outsiders.  This enables complete mind control.  Paranoid conservatism has slowly been developing a similar tactic: don't trust the government, the media, scientists, academics, or outside culture in general.  What is left is a form of mind control in which only paranoid conservatism has any authority.

So is it economic anxiety, bigotry, loss of White Christian identity, or authoritarianism?  We've all felt economic anxiety.  Having bigoted thoughts - fear of the "other" - is a natural part of being human.  We live in a pluralistic country that values personal freedom of religion and diversity.  Authoritarianism seems as much a value as anything else that becomes socially reinforced.

What stops us from allowing these things to rule our lives and destroy our objectivity is a faith in the outside world, a maintenance of continuity with our past, and trust in institutions that have stood the test of time.  There are certainly legitimate critique of the authority of government, media, science or academia.  But each are only as good as we make them, and themselves come from principles that we ignore at our peril: democracy, objectivity, empiricism, and study.  Cultish conservatism seems diametrically opposed to each of these.

The Dilema for Conservatives

Antoon Claeissens - The Judgement of Solomon (c.1536)

The election is so weird. I try to put myself in the shoes of reasonable conservatives. What if the Democrats had someone who was so ridiculous, but for all the character flaws (ego, racism, misogyny, ignorance, sadism) at least had a somewhat progressive agenda, while the opposition was going to cut taxes on the rich, appoint conservative justices, eviscerate regulations, etc.? Who would I choose?

It's so hard to separate the personal from the policy in Trump, as often his policy (mass deportation of illegal immigrants, intensifying torture, Muslim ban) directly evidences his character. What would a democratic party that elected such an asshole even look like?

This article runs commentary on the transcript of the debate. When you see his words in print, they come across as even more inane than when delivered from his beefy face, which we've all grown somewhat used to.

I suppose if ever there would be a time to "send a message" to my party, this would be it. But of course, the problem isn't "the party", it is the great masses of Republicans who want this sort of man to represent them.

I'm not sure how many people read this blog, but it would be interesting if any were conservatives who are sympathetic to the dilemma I've described. How would one go about separating out the agreeable policy in a candidate from the disagreeable policy - especially when it is backed up by an obviously vile character?

Moving in with Hate

Reverend Jim Jones at a protest in front of the International
Hotel, 848 Kearny Street in San Francisco in 1977.
Photo by Nancy Wong

David Brooks feels the Democratic and Republican parties are undergoing a great realignment:

"....he most important social divide today is between a well-educated America that is marked by economic openness, traditional family structures, high social capital and high trust in institutions, and a less-educated America that is marked by economic insecurity, anarchic family structures, fraying community bonds and a pervasive sense of betrayal and distrust.... These two groups live in entirely different universes. Right now each party has a foot in each universe, but those coalitions won’t last."

He goes on:

"Just as the Trump G.O.P. is crushing the Chamber G.O.P., the Clinton Democrats will eventually repel the Sanders Democrats. Their economic interests are just different. Moreover, their levels of social trust are vastly different."

I don't know about Brooks' assessment of the disaffected right. For plenty of them I feel like it has less to do with economic or family realities, and more to do with a cultural, political ideology that creates a narrative of disaffection through its own logic and assumptions. Sure, it is appealing to uneducated, working class whites. But it is nearly as appealing to educated, upper class right-wing whites. The Republican party is hardly the party of the uneducated poor.

There seems to be such an emphasis on economic and social structures giving rise to this movement. While it makes sense, what about the notion that ideas can have a power of their own, and that ideologies can develop in which their own internal rules are self-perpetuating?

Examples of this would be Nazism, Communism, or Anarchism. Each of these movements capitalised on basic economic anxieties, but were much more largely about their own warped ideological assumptions. You might add any extreme movement: hyper-PC, religious fundamentalism. In each what draws people in is some basic anxiety, but it gets twisted into rigid thought control in which self-criticism and skepticism, nuance or flexibility isn't tolerated. There is a constant sense of threat, that there is a sort of war going on in which the "other side" is trying to get you at every turn. Extreme Christians have perfected this, referring to these sort of thoughts as literally being "from the devil".

Of course you have this type of extreme thought on the left.  Bernie supporters yelling about Clinton in the convention argued that if Trump had to be elected to prove a point, then so be it.  This stance was certainly extreme, and as such came at politics on a war-footing.  There are times when injustice is so clear that extreme protest is justified, but favoring a democratic socialist over a moderate neo-liberal in a center-right country isn't one of those times.  

But the extreme left is not nearly as ascendant as the extreme right.  Much of this is likely due to the reality that academia and media are indeed generally composed of liberals.  This allows the left to not feel so attacked, not so paranoid.  Liberalism in this sense is indeed more "respectable", and status quo, as Brooks claims.  However, the broader public's conservatism, and indeed the business class - whose influence is indeed immense, is just as much the status quo.  

So rather than false-equivalency, I feel it important not to ignore the peculiar qualities of extreme right-wing thought that may need some anxiety to get going, but has plenty of timber within its own logic and assumptions to burn brightly.  Just like any religion, there are particular, deep human needs which this ideology plays to.  Victims of cults or domestic abuse may be more susceptible to begin with, but the intrinsic structure of thought becomes reinforcing.  Cult leaders and abusive spouses masterfully manipulate their victims, spinning reality so that 2 + 2 = 5.

So too is the charismatic power of right-wing extreme media.  Listening to AM conservative radio is in many ways like attending a cult seminar, or for that matter an evangelical church.  Ideas that would otherwise seem preposterous or outright morally repugnant are delivered with a sweet, authoritative charm.  And the larger the audience, the more normalized this becomes.  The idea that Jews ought be exterminated wasn't hauled out on day one.  It was a slow process of getting people used to the idea that the master race needed to be cleansed.  Domestic abusers don't start off with intense abuse on the first date.  It is a slow process of control and domination.  Donald Trump couldn't have said what he says 20 or even 10 years ago.  But as the extreme right has ascended in its cocoon of fear and victimization, the space for his ideas was being prepared on airways and internet forums across the country.

By making external excuses for the extreme right, we are excusing its rhetoric of its intrinsic power.  Slavery, Jim Crow, segregation and antimiscegenation laws weren't the product of working class resentment, or changing traditional values - however much those anxieties might have helped at various points in time.  They were simply bad ideas which had their own internal logic and assumptions, and which were useful in their own right.  

Dog Men

Andrew Gelman points to findings from sociologist Jay Livingston that, contrary to recent news, partisan Tea Partiers aren't actually all that that happy.

When I was younger, I used to listen to a lot of AM radio conservatives for the thrill.  What struck me more than anything, aside form the mendacity and childishness, was the constant sense of outrage and anger at the smallest things.  "Road rage" was all the talk then, but these people seemed in the grips of a sort of "life rage".   Resentments were directed at every little inconvenience in life.  From video store clerks, to bicyclists, to ATM machines, to women with "clipped hair", their ire extended even beyond things that actually affected their life in any way, to the mere presence of people who were different from them.  All of it, however, was an affront.

Much of this was group kvetching, no doubt.  One wonders how many of these people sustain such levels of anger and intolerance on a daily basis.  Yet I've met more than one person who seems perpetually pissed off at a world they feel is constantly slighting them.  True, they are sometimes left wing.  But my lunch rooms over the years have held more than one borderline Republican spouting off about damn  wetbacks or the need to round up gang-bangers and shoot them.

For some, I think, the anger is simply dispositional; they're going to find a way to put their belligerence into political thought.  Yet for others, ideology is a convenient narrative that provides a ready-made answer for life's dilemmas.   This can have quite a balming effect, whether or not it encourages free thought.

The problem with modern partisan conservatism however, is that the narrative is built upon a kind of utopian view of human nature that is largely superstitious and inevitably leads to resentment.  They believe, along with everyone else, that people ought to do "the right thing".  However, instead of seeing human behavior in terms of a dynamic interplay of complex social structures and nuanced choices, they tend to see things in black and white.  Everyone is assumed to have, at every second, a clear choice between doing right and doing wrong.  People are either smart, or they are "idiots".  

The problem with this worldview is that there is no explanation for human behavior.  There is therefore a constant sense of astonishment and lack of understanding.  How could he have done that?  What an idiot!  And because the answers are always clear - whether from the bible, tradition, common sense (their favorite kind of sense), there is no point in trying to explain oneself or God forbid understand someone else. 

Discipline is the order of the day!  Punishment arises directly from this sort of thinking as it treats human behavior as so simple as to need only threat of punishment to function properly.  If the bad choice is associated with discomfort, then the good choice will easily be chosen.  In  a subtle way, their view of humans is as quite primitive, almost dog-like.

As long as everything is going well, I imagine the modern conservative to be quite content.  The problem is that he must live with the rest of us idiots.

An original Pavlov dog, mounted (Pavlov Museum Ryazan, Russia)

See No Evil, Hear No Evil: The Case Against Unfair Taxation

See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil, Philip Absolontion

Mark Kleiman points out that as budgets are slashed across the country, largely to keep tax rates low, the poor get hurt the most.  A. G. Holley State Hospital in Lantana, FL, the last remaining TB hospital in Florida, was recently ordered to shut its doors to cut costs and consolidate services elsewhere.  Unfortunately, as the Palm Beach Post reports, this state-level decision was made before a CDC report was released finding that

"3,000 people in the past two years may have had close contact with contagious people at Jacksonville’s homeless shelters, an outpatient mental health clinic and area jails.
....
Treatment for TB can be an ordeal. A person with an uncomplicated, active case of TB must take a cocktail of three to four antibiotics — dozens of pills a day — for six months or more. The drugs can cause serious side effects — stomach and liver problems chief among them. But failure to stay on the drugs for the entire treatment period can and often does cause drug resistance.
At that point, a disease that can cost $500 to overcome grows exponentially more costly. The average cost to treat a drug-resistant strain is more than $275,000, requiring up to two years on medications. For this reason, the state pays for public health nurses to go to the home of a person with TB every day to observe them taking their medications.
However, the itinerant homeless, drug-addicted, mentally ill people at the core of the Jacksonville TB cluster are almost impossible to keep on their medications. Last year, Duval County sent 11 patients to A.G. Holley under court order. Last week, with A.G. Holley now closed, one was sent to Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami. The ones who will stay put in Jacksonville are being put up in motels, to make it easier for public health nurses to find them, Duval County health officials said."

Conservative commentariate push-back on Kleiman's post argues that the hospital was a perfect example of unnecessary, wasteful spending.  These people could easily have been treated at regular hospitals.

The treatment of TB had indeed been making the hospital less necessary.  However, lest we assume that the hospital was indeed inefficient, Wikipedia states that,

"With the discovery of drugs to treat tuberculosis patients outside of the hospital setting, the daily census at the hospital by 1971 dropped to less than half of the original 500. By 1976 the beds and staff at A. G. Holley were reduced to serve a maximum of 150 patients. As space became available, other agencies were invited to move onto the complex to utilize the unique environment."

It would be easier to believe that Republicans gave a shit if so much of their identity and political philosophy didn’t rest on principles that excuse them from giving a shit.

To recap:

1. The poor are poor because they lack initiative/common sense and thus choose poverty; people “choose” their lot in life.

2. Taking care of them creates moral hazard that promotes more poverty.

3. Government is less efficient/more corrupt than private markets, i.e. charity.

4. Charity should be left to non-profits and families, not the “nanny state”.

5. The wealthy have earned their wealth by themselves, and thus owe no greater percentage of taxes to anyone.

6. Taxes are often little better than theft, and thus progressive taxation is tantamount to fascism.

7. Redistributive policies are driven by envy and class warfare, not practicality, moral concern, or social responsibility/justice.

8. The problems of the poor aren’t nearly as bad as liberals make them seem.

9. The liberal media present these one-sided stories unfairly.

10. Back in the good old days people took care of themselves.

11. Social programs inevitably lead to serfdom and socialism.

12. Democrats only offer such programs to earn votes from the poor (who probably shouldn’t be voting anyway).

13. Liberals have actually created the social dysfunction we see today with all their hippie sex and feminism, so it’s their fault.

I’m sure I left out plenty. Of course not all Republicans would agree with every item (although Libertarians surely would). But you’d be hard-pressed to find one who didn’t agree with at least half.

If one truly believes these things, then why would one support the state helping the poor at all?  To come out and say these things explicitly on a daily basis would surely expose one as heartless, cruel and well, lacking in common decency.  And so these principles are only heard when conservatives are pressed.  Instead, we hear about cutting taxes, balancing the budget, wasteful spending, limited government, and annoying liberals who whine about the poor, racial discrimination, worker rights, and any other cause that might remind one of the suffering and injustice that exists in society.

Hopefully, one presumes the conservative must feel, maybe if they just stop talking about it the "problems" will simply go away. 

Questioning the Social Good

The Spirit of '76, A.M. Willard

While looking back over some of my older posts (I'm considering using my currently unemployed status as an opportunity to publish my writings into something of a book), I came across an entry on the tendency of social spending to go to people not in our personal community, and thus "out of sight, out of mind".  I was reminded of how this is a perennial problem for progressivism, as not only must we make a case for the efficacy of these programs, but so too their moral necessity.  The merits of government action have a moral claim when they are felt to be worthwhile endeavors.  And they are worthwhile if they are providing a valued service.  We can all appreciate the services we experience directly, or can easily imagine to be necessary.  Roads, police, parks, libraries, etc. are all things that we can personally take advantage of.  A national defense, while more abstract, can at least be imagined to be important to the safety of ourselves and loved ones.  Yet what about a moral case for services that we will never imagine needing?

A moral appeal requires showing that the recipients of such social spending, the beneficiaries of our larger social largess, are themselves worthy.  Yet because of economic and social segregation, these are often people who are not a direct part of our communities.  To the progressive mind, ever conscious of inequality and social injustice in society, it is easy to imagine their plight, even if we do not live in their community.  We see a causal connection between a child raised in poverty and his likelihood of lack of success in adulthood, and argue that this is a social problem that requires intervention.

However, the conservative mind is much more likely to believe that it is the responsibility of the poor family to help themselves, and that it is not the moral responsibility of society to help.  Further, doing so would probably make things worse, either by wasting tax dollars better spent on growing the economy, or by creating a moral hazard problem in which the aspirations of the poor are dimmed and a culture of "entitlement" sets in.

Although as a progressive I am already biased against the conservative outlook, in my career working with the poor and needy, I have found little evidence to support conservative claims.  Indeed, have found them not only to be genuinely disadvantaged, but generally in situations in which but for government or private charity, their circumstances would be much more dire.  Neither have I found much evidence that a "culture of entitlement" has arisen because of social largess, primarily any such culture is the product of vastly larger forces at work than any pittance of social services on offer.  An individual with healthy levels of human and societal capital is not going to give up all personal ambition and choose a life of poverty for the chance to acquire free food stamps, child care, or a disability check.  While many individuals exist who no doubt could find more personal success would they just apply themselves, and instead rely heavily on government aid, they represent a very small portion of recipients, and in the absence of aid would still lack the human and societal capital to make much of themselves regardless.  Properly designed social programs are structured in such a way as to promote individual agency, rather than retard it.

But how to make this moral case to those who would not naturally align themselves with the poor and downtrodden, and who will rarely if ever directly experience their struggles?  Conservatism has become (to what extent it has always been, I can only guess) enraptured with the idea of government as a sort of personal market.  Instead of an institution that promotes the welfare and well-being of all, it is thought of as an institution that ought only promote the welfare of oneself.  Thus, the question becomes not "what is society getting out of government", but "what am I getting out of government"?

The model shifts from one of social insurance and shared sacrifice, to a personal, transactional ledger of goods and services rendered.  No better example of this exists in the movement towards vouchers and charter schools.  The question is posed as what is an individual getting for their tax dollars, as opposed to what is society getting?  Public schools have always been socialist in the sense that they are a provision of the government, guaranteed to all children, designed to maximize the social welfare of all.  Private schools, by contrast, operate in private, for the sole benefit of the individual, and without concern for the welfare of anyone else.  This is why we do not fund private schools with public funds - their purpose is expressly at odds with the mission of public governance.  If one spends public monies on private schooling, one might as well return all taxes and allow individuals to purchase parks, libraries, roads, police, etc.

The absurdity of this logic rests in the fact that public spending is fundamentally based on  a principle of social good, and the redistribution of what you might call social risk.  For instance, many people do not have children, yet agree to pay taxes so that other people's children are guaranteed an education, or so would theirs should they find themselves with young of their own - the risk being that any child should lack a proper education.  Likewise we all pay taxes for services that we do not directly consume, such as the paving of a street across town.  Yet we agree to such services in order to avoid the risk that any of us not have a paved road, or that should we drive down that road, it be paved for us as well.

This - the sharing of risk and mutual responsibility for fellow man - is a basic premise not only of democracy but of civilization going back millenium.  Even kings were obligated to provide for their people, lest the people become too dissatisfied and organize a rebellion.  The notion of democracy comes in when the people, not a king, demand to control how this risk is managed. For sure, the American revolution was fought expressly over the idea that taxes were being collected to pay for risks over which the people were given no claim of ownership.

Which is as good a place as any to bring up the Tea Party, a conservative movement founded in part with the Revolutionary notion in mind that taxes ought to be used fairly.  Yet to these conservatives, decked out in Revolutionary garb as they often are, the issue is not that the people are not being given say in how risk is managed (after all, the social spending they decry is passed legally, by elected representatives), but that they are be forced to risks which they do not approve of.  While the progressive sees the an injustice in the disadvantaged not receiving help from a society that has a moral responsibility to help them, to manage their their risk, the conservative Tea Partier sees an injustice in having to be held personally responsible for that social risk.  To him, driven by such long-standing distrust and anger at the government, the idea of social risk itself has increasingly been called into question.  In coming to view the government not as an institution entrusted to provide for the greater good, but rather as an institution unfairly taking from him and giving to others, he has come to question the very notion of social good itself. 

The Party of Evil?

I happened to be reading Ecclesiastes this morning, and I was struck by the relentlessness with which not just wealth, but the creation of wealth was being condemned.  The story on this particular section of the bible is that it is a radically un-capitalist treatise.  One certainly has trouble reconciling our modern free-market system with lines like this:

I undertook great projects: I built houses for myself and planted vineyards. I made gardens and parks and planted all kinds of fruit trees in them. I made reservoirs to water groves of flourishing trees. ...Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.

Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income.This too is meaningless.  As goods increase, so do those who consume them.  And what benefit are they to the owners except to feast their eyes on them?

Now, Ecclesiastes is said to have been written by King Solomon, and kings can hardly be said to create wealth.  At least, not in the Republican sense.  Maybe all of this was the talk of a man's guilt over not having truly worked and created something.  After all, in modern times, according to the mythology of Democracy, Private Property and Meritocracy, every man can now rise to the level of king.  Maybe had the king really had to pull himself up by the bootstraps, then he wouldn't be complaining so much.

But that wasn't what he was talking about.  He was talking about existence, and the idea that meaning comes not from spiritual things but - in his case - a higher power.  The argument was that true peace in life is to look away from worldly things and towards spiritual matters.

But aren't the wealthy the job creators, the doers and growth makers (the dreamers of dreams!)?  How could we disparage such noble pursuits?  Well, there has always been a tension in society between the sacred and the profane, especially in matters of economic activity.  And there has always seemed to have been an understanding - at least among those whose souls have not been completely lost to greed and avarice - that there is something inherently wrong with inequality and completely selfish pursuits. 

Historically, it has always been clear that inequality was the direct result of explicit privilege.  Enlightened democracy has slowly been able to enforce some measure of economic justice.  But we seem to have come to point in history where half the American population - belonging to the Republican party - seems to believe that privilege has been eradicated to the extent that inequality is now merely a measure of individual worth. 

As Kevin Drum writes today,

Republican economic policy has always promoted the interests of corporations and the rich. Once upon a time, this wasn't even an issue of contention. Everyone knew it and acted accordingly. The GOP's great triumph over the past three decades has been to gull the American public into believing that it's no longer the case. Their success has been nothing short of astonishing.

Language like "Job Creators" illustrates this perfectly.  To be obscenely rich is now not only something admirable, but something positively charitable.  To attack inequality, and ask the rich to pay more in taxes is actually an attack on everyone else's chances at success - unpatriotic even.  Republicans have been able to sell ordinary, non-rich Americans that whatever policies are good for the rich are actually good for the country too - even if they end up being worse for the country in the short-term. 

And so instead of holding the rich accountable for their share, their social and economic responsibility, we are asked to treat them like kings, and instead force the common man to make all the sacrifices - less resources for schools, infrastructure, criminal justice, public works, etc.

Would King Solomon have approved?

If you see the poor oppressed in a district, and justice and rights denied, do not be surprised at such things; for one official is eyed by a higher one, and over them both are others higher still.  The increase from the land is taken by all; the king himself profits from the fields..... I have seen a grievous evil under the sun.

Conservatism's Secret Logic

As Ron Paul surges in the polls, old questions arise about his involvement with racist publishing.  A particularly ugly quote from one of the articles published in his newsletter:

Given the inefficiencies of what DC laughingly calls the criminal justice system, I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.

Paul denies culpability, but Ta-Nehisi Coates doesn't buy it.

Had I spent a decade stewarding an eponymous publication steeped in homophobia and anti-Semitism, I would not expect my friends and colleagues to accept an "I didn't write it"excuse. 

I really can't say I'm surprised by any of it.  Much of conservatism is predicated on the same assumptions that would predicate racism. This is why it has always made perfect sense for there to be considerable overlap between racists and conservatives. I think the vast majority of conservatives despise the idea, yet privately rue the dogged logic that much of what they believe is entirely consistent with the racist cognitive framework. It’s a dirty truth, and the conservatives have two options: live in denial, or live dirty. The Ron Pauls, Pat Buchanans, Rush Limbaughs, Charles Murrays, etc. of the world have merely found themselves on the dirty end.

Politics, Language and Thought

As I look at conservative and liberal politicians, pundits and lay commentary, a pattern begins to emerge in which certain attitudes and cognitive "styles" seem to be more common to one side or the other.

The right seems to like certainty - as opposed to nuance, "masculine" forceful presentation and domineering conviction - as opposed to "feminine" softness and passive listening, or "openness". These seem strongly associated with traditional versus progressive social identities.

My guess is that many conservatives might disagree with that framing. Would they see any truth to it, though? Just by looking at the type of personal styles and approaches to governing and speaking, are there any patterns that they might see between liberal/conservative attitudes and personal presentations, especially that have policy consequences?

I think I see evidence for my framing. I also think you can find a lot of the language both partisan sides use that supports it as well. Conservative and liberal citizens seem to have divergent ways they see and talk about the world. 

George Lakoff, a liberal linguist who has done much to popularize this discussion, at least on the left, identifies a set of words significant to partisan politics, drawn from speeches and writings.  Among conservatives, the following words are given primacy:

character, virtue, discipline, tough, strong, self-reliance, self-reliant, individual, responsibility, backbone, standards, authority, heritage, competition, earn, hard, work, enterprise, property, reward, freedom, intrusion, interference, meddling, punishment, traditional, dependency, self-indulgent, elite, quotas, breakdown, corrupt, decay, rot, degenerate, deviant, [and] lifestyle.

And among liberals:

social, forces, expression, human, rights, equal, concern, care, help, health, safety, nutrition, dignity, oppression, diversity, deprivation, alienation, corporations, corporate, welfare, ecology, ecosystem, biodiversity, [and] pollution.

However, a study of the actual use of these words in political ads failed to find much of a correlation between the identified conservative language and conservative ads.  However, there did seem to be a correlation between identified liberal language and liberals campaign ads.  The author hypotheses that this need not undermine Lakoff's thesis, but rather illustrate the different dynamics involved in the efficacy of political advertising.

I've been reading this paper that looks at how psychologists and sociologists have tried to examine the issue over the past half century. However I'm pretty skeptical of their findings. For instance, they seem to want to suggest that there are personality types that lead to conservative or liberal thinking. Yet the personality types they identify are rather vague: conservatives = more conscientious, liberals = more "open to new ideas". But it would seem that conservative or liberal thinking leads to these dispositions. Furthermore, the tribal, identity-driven aspects of liberal and conservative communities reinforce norms that foster these dispositions. For instance, in one part of the study they cataloged the possessions of self-identified conservative and liberal grad students, and found correlations, such as more liberal students having more ethnic music in their CD collections. Yet are these students really more "open" people, or are they part of a liberal identity that has pushed them to go out and explore ethnic music? This normative pressure may indeed result in them being more "open" to different ideas, either cultural, political, etc., and thus seem to be more "open" people, but it doesn't necessarily tell us anything about an innate personality. Likewise, their findings that conservative rooms tended to be cleaner and have more sports memorabilia would seem to be evidence of conscientiousness and preference for tradition, yet these too are cultural, normative artifacts.

I'm curious how conservatives would see the issue. The psychological and sociological research appears to have been dominated by liberal researchers. Yet there is something to culture, ethnicity, normal and political partisanship. If not innate (likely), there do seem to be quite different normative pressures involved. Especially as society seems to have become more polarized, I think it is an important issue to investigate. As people become more politically polarized, both in community networks and even geographically, these norms would seem to be even more self-reinforcing. There almost seem to be many structural inevitabilities at work. Is this pattern a natural evolution of a heterogenous, democratic, wealthy nation, in which people's natural, tribal inclinations are perpetuated by their ability to self-select into political and cultural tribes?

Invoking the Myth of Means

In a speech to a student newspaper, Eric Cantor uses his poor grandmother to remind us that, as he sees it, the American dream is still alive and well in America.

"Widowed by age 30, she raised my father and uncle in a tight apartment above a tiny grocery store that she and my grandfather had opened. She worked day and night and sacrificed tremendously to secure a better future for her sons. And sure enough, this young woman – who had the courage to journey to a distant land with hope as her only possession – lifted herself into the ranks of the middle class. Through hard work, her faith and thrift, she was even able to send her two sons to college."

I assume that by referring to his poor grandmother, Cantor was attempting to overturn what he likely considers the myth of means. That is, that one does not need means to become successful - that poverty is no excuse.  Yet this is a misunderstanding of socio-economics. It isn't necessarily the fact that someone is poor that makes success difficult. It is what is so highly correlated with poverty - things like single-parenthood, lack of education, lack of parenting skills, lack of cultural knowledge, etc. Cantor's grandmother no doubt possessed many forms of social capital that she was able to leverage into social capital for her family.

In this sense, she would have been financially, but not socially impoverished.  The former is a hardship, but no where near as devastating as the latter.  Without knowledge, one is indeed powerless.  What Cantor assumes in his grandmother, he assumes away in what he would no doubt consider the "undeserving" poor: he assumes she made her own social knowledge, as he assumes others can make their own.  Yet this type of knowledge is not self-made.  It comes from generations before you, and generations before them.  In America we have poverty - social poverty - that goes back generations.  Despite whatever convenient faith Cantor and other conservatives claim to have in the individual, their faith cannot overcome the reality of finding oneself without the knowledge and power to be successful.

Indulging Hypocrisy

It seems to me that there is a huge gulf between the radical right, who truly believe the anti-all-government crap that seems the lifeblood of contemporary right-wing rhetoric, and the mainstream right, who enjoy the same rhetoric, while not actually believing it.  They actually believe in libraries, schools, medicare, social security, etc. But the radical right is so energetic and passionate... here's the question: why do moderates let them get away it, why do they pretend to agree?

On the left, there doesn't seem to be at all this kind of schism. You rarely hear for the outright abolishment of business. And if you did, the rest of the left wouldn't dream of pretending to agree.

I tend to think this is historical. Communism as a politically correct philosophy died a long time ago. Total free marketism is alive and well, despite routinely demonstrating massive failings. Reasonable people understand this, and advocate a mixed economy. So again, why does the right allow radical idiocy to invade their rhetoric?

I'm reminded of the radio right, in which half-truths are routinely bandied about, with a sort of wink-and-nod - we don't really think that (or do we)? It's a comfort with factual relativism that seems to baffle the left.

Nested Wrestling

I've always found there to be a fascinating tangle in the right-wing apology festivities surrounding environmental regulation.

There are the two claims generally put forth, almost always in tandem, in such a way as to gain strength from each other, like two orbiting bodies. The first is the idea that the environmental/human impact is not real. The second is that the ensuing regulation would be far worse - more disruptive, expensive, etc., if not an outright immoral taking.

There's an odd parallel to the tax-rate debate, where a primary, more empirical claim is wrapped within a seemingly impenetrable layer of subjective and unproven nebulousness. The testable environmental claim sits upon a throne-claim
of philosophical piety in the form of policy dithering, back-peddling and weak appeals to property right. There is a great deal of empirical data on the leveraging of human and social capital into financial success (i.e. the scaffolding of privilege), yet it too gets nestled in a tangled web of high-minded appeal to pseudo-developmental philosophy and - just as magical - supply-side kabuki.

Kicking and Screaming

I've written about this before, but I'm always struck by the sense of antipathy conservatives have towards discussions of race or hatred.  I know conservatism is nuanced. But it is a movement nonetheless, with standard talking points and rhetoric that act as stand-ins for large assumptions and intuitions.

It's an empirical claim, too (I'm sure someone has done the research).  Do a Google search and you will come up with very little in the way of conservative thoughts on race that aren't merely about defending perceived liberal critiques.  I mean real, good-faith attempts to try and understand what racism (and hate, for that mater) is. 

It seems a subject better left alone. Yet it is a problem - the "other" - that rears its ugly head again and again. The more we know about it, the more we can keep from falling into old patterns of thought. Far from being some thing that is "over", it is all around us.

There is a narrative about power imbalances, out groups, etc. that I embrace, as do most liberals. That's how we can see a deep resemblance between racism and antipathy of homosexuality by religious followers, and consider the embrace of a hateful textual interpretation as rooted in larger historical oppression. Of course, we don't stone people to death, as it says to do in the bible. Yet why don't we apply the same "intuition" to its homophobic passages, dispensing with them as needed (along with all the other idiotic biblical "teachings")? Because we have yet to truly call homophobia out as the hate it is, just like sexism or racism.

As far as I can tell, it is a fact that conservatism isn't interested in connecting these dots. Whereas literally thousands of books, magazine articles, academic papers and studies have been written by the left on these dynamics, inspired by and in turn inspiring progressive cultural protest movements.

It makes sense. Conservatism in general has always been interested in maintaining the cultural status quo. The fact that this has often meant maintaining racial, sexual, gender, class dynamics seems at best (to the more liberal right) a sort of unpleasant sacrifice, at worst (to the far right) a happy constant.

Modern conservatism is of course much more enlightened and comfortable with the cultural change that has unfolded, with people like Sarah Palin calling themselves feminists - a concept that only a decade ago would have had Phyllis Schlafly pissing her pants. (I'm not sure, does Limbaugh still talk about "feminazis"?). And thankfully most of us can agree that interracial marriage is OK, and that diversity is important in the workplace.

So Glenn Beck has his rally and honors Martin Luther King, which is wonderful because the attendees genuinely honor his memory. However the irony is lost that conservatism was brought kicking and screaming onto the right side of history (that the whole notion of a conservative rally actually honoring a black leader seeming odd speaks volumes about current racial make-up of the Republican party). Conservatism still seems largely about whites talking to whites about whites. When minorities are mentioned, they tend to be cast as "the other", whether it's illegals, Muslims, gays or other non-conformist whites.

I mentioned "thousands" of books being written by the left that explore dynamics of race, identity, etc. Obviously the vast majority of people on the left haven't read them. But they have been influenced by those who have, and identified with the story being told. Something in them responded to these ideas. As they looked at the world, these ideas resonated with what they saw.

So what is it about the liberal impulse that sees black, latino or gay pride and is moved, not just to re-examine their own preconceived ideas, but to go out and try and convince others? Because all of this cultural progress doesn't happen by magic. It takes sustained effort, by thousands, millions to push new ideas and ways of thinking.

And what is it about the conservative impulse that recoils from this kind of progress, feels threatened by it? When conservatism began to push back against "political correctness", or "multiculturalism", it was a direct response to liberal advocacy of social change. Sure, some of it was about perceived over-reach, but it was rarely couched in sympathy with the larger project of cultural progress. It was defensive of what it felt was a direct attack on it itself.

Again, this goes back to a lack of openness to exploration of the roots of oppressive cultural dynamics. Political correctness was always about critically examining preconceived cultural assumptions and biases. It was a direct outgrowth of the liberal impulse to look at out-groups and the historically disempowered and find leverage points in society from which fundamentally hateful and oppressive ideas, cognitive failings, were perpetuated. Why do presidents have to be male? Why do the important voices in literature need to be white? Why are jokes about out-groups funny? Why aren't there more minorities in ads? Etc., etc. The conservative response to this, to the extent that there was one in the media, was relentlessly negative.

Something about cultural conservatism seems to be in a permanent state of timelessness. The now is always now. Things seem taken for granted that had to be fought for relentlessly. Sure, we all agree that racism is wrong. But that obvious assertion didn't happen over night and took vast amounts of work to overcome. The same with sexism. We're getting there with homophobia. Go back 20 years and conservatism was virulently anti-gay. I imagine in a decade conservatives will take it for granted that homosexuality is perfectly natural. Heck, they might even hold a rally and honor Harvey Milk!

That'll be the day.

The Flat Tax Society

I wish I could claim credit for the title of this post.  That goes (as far as I can tell) to Michael Kinsley, writing about the phenomenon in the New Yorker in 1995.  As true then as it is now, conservatives embraced the concept of cutting taxes for the rich, for corporations - in the name of "fairness".  I suppose what has changed since then is the degree to which the Republican party has shifted even further right.  But when House Majority leader Dick Armey drafted flat tax legislation in 1995, this very right-wing idea was front and center.

Today people are talking about Mitt Romney's statement that "corporations are people too".  Jonathan Chait points out that a favorable interpretation would be that he is actually correct.  While there is a legal implication for corporate personhood,

That is not the point Romney was making.  Romney was saying that taxes on corporations are in fact borne by people. Romney probably wouldn't admit that these are people who partially or completely own corporations, and thus far richer in the aggregate than the general public. But the fact is that they are people. Raising taxes on corporations is simply raising taxes on a certain category of people.

It was further pointed out to me that a significant portion of corporate shareholders are indeed middle class pensioners, 401k holders, etc., and that taxes on corporations come at the expense of these people, not the "fat cats" we tend to think of when we think of the wealthy CEOs, managers and large individual stockholders.

The original heckled response was that corporations ought to be taxed to pay our bills.  And Romney put his foot in his mouth before he was even able to make the inevitable supply-side case that not only should we not tax corporations, but that we shouldn't be taxing anyone.  By which of course, he means the rich - the "job creators", etc.  This is now the standard Republican answer to every problem.

Because taxes are no longer an important civic responsibility, to be shared especially by those who most can afford to.  Teachers, police, medicare and social security are expenses that a decent society is willing to pay.  It does so through taxes.  The regressive, "flat tax" idea assumes these expenses will be paid for by because we'll get enough revenue from the increased growth unleashed by having flattened our tax base.

We did a slight form of this with the Bush tax cuts 10 years ago, and the growth never appeared.  There never has been evidence of this so called supply-side miracle.  Yet people still call for cutting taxes on the rich.  Like members of the Flat Earth Society, they continue to deny evidence in favor of ideological fantasy.  Either that, or they cynically promise that growth will pay our bills, while secretly knowing that a future collapse is inevitable. 

The Imperial Wing

There is a tendency on the right to deny the extent to which context, specifically the dynamic of power relations between groups, must be considered when evaluating cultural expression.  The question is often asked why a seeming double-standard exists.  For instance, why is it OK for atheists to promote themselves at the expense of Christians, while Christian attacks on atheist are deemed "intolerant"?  Or why isn't it OK for a preacher to burn a copy of the Quran, when if a Muslim were to burn a bible, hardly anyone would notice.

Yet, context is so important.  Atheist attacks on religion - while often tendentious - are just not going to be as hurtful to people because of the cultural context. If they were to attack religion in a reverse situation, where religion was in the small minority, a sense of threat and oppression would be much greater. Because they aren't, as an atheist I often find them refreshing, almost as a sort of venting process. For instance, when a black comedian makes fun of white people for a black audience, he's allowing them to feel bigger than they are for a moment, and experience a sort of freedom.

There's something here that is a strong piece of right-wing nationalism. It's this notion of majority/minority dynamics. In race and gender studies, the word "privilege" is often talked about. A key part of it is the insight that those in a dominant majority, or simply a dominant cultural position, tend to be blind to their own privilege. Thus, it is difficult for them to see how their assumptions and behavior don't apply to non-dominant groups.

Somehow, right-wing nationalism - almost better described as dominant-ism - is predicated on the denial of this context. There is a high sensitivity to the threat of diminishment. Michelle was maybe getting at this when she kept referencing Breivik's sense of emasculation. It is as though one's identity is so narrowly defined, so rigid, that seeing it as relative presents a serious threat. The right routinely talks about left-wing notions of relativism as being fascistic. (We should note the difference between culture as an artifact relative to time and place, and moral relativism's idea that there is no right and wrong. I'm speaking of the former).

The white, Christian male feels under attack. Yet he isn't really. What is under attack is a narrow and inflexible vision of that identity. Identity critique is assumed to be existential. So, take the founding fathers for instance. They were not perfect men. The original leftist critique of them was really a critique of the whitewashed image of them which was not only wrong, but advanced oppressive notions about American history and thus current and future reality.

I'm reminded of the story of the Emperor's New Clothes. His stubborn persistence in maintaining a deluded vision of himself is so great that he goes out in public stark naked, rather than admit to his flaws. We are all guilty of this of course. Any of us have found ourselves guilty of having pridefully deluded ourselves into a convenient myth-making. But right-wing nationalism seems to make an art out of this impulse.

"White pride", for instance, is an oxymoron. Unless you are so paranoid and deluded as to think that pride has somehow not been afforded you. "Black pride" or "gay pride" however, is a perfectly congruent articulation of the need to correct an historical position of disempowerment, and subsequent internalized oppression. The Emperor's New Clothes was a story about an emperor who did not grasp his own privilege, his haughty pride a parallel to his position. It would have made no sense to write a story about an underprivileged person. The Humble Fishmonger's New Clothes wouldn't make much sense.

Winning

In a recent discussion with a conservative, the following statement was made:

"The most important decisions in life don't require a high iq to make. Go to school. Don't do drugs. Show up for work on time every day. Don't reproduce before you're able to care for a child, Etc. Not following these simple rules turn people into losers."

This really seems to cut to the core of disagreement between liberal and conservative attitudes towards social inequality. Putting aside general circumstantial situations, why do some people seem to make such poor choices, and others make such better choices?

You've probably noticed that I have a running suspicion that conservatives are more inclined to believe that people have more free will than liberals. However, this is disputed. Yet I think this statement fits my claim.

So, the basic concept is that these important decisions are not difficult, don't require a high IQ, and thus the right course should be chosen more than it is. In other words, people who make the wrong choices are "losers", doing so by choice.

My critique of this is as a determinist. I believe that while people make choices, their ability to choose is enforced by prior learning and development. Basically, people are going to make the choice that they feel most compelled to make. Because this compulsion is real, no matter what options are in theory available to them, in reality there is only one option - the one they are most compelled to take.

For instance, two dieters are faced with the choice of eating a piece of chocolate cake, and only one is able to resist it. They both have the same number of choices, yet depending on their internal make-up - prior learning and development (and the interplay between these and genetics) - they will experience different levels of compulsion. While the right decision makes rational sense - if you are on a diet, you shouldn't have the cake! - humans are much more complex. And again, this complexity is rooted in our development. Chances are if you ask the successful dieter to tell you how he did it, he won't be able to explain it - he just did it. Likewise, the dieter who failed likely wouldn't be able to tell you why she failed - she just couldn't do it. Both wanted to resist.

There are definitely "losers" and "winners". There are people who work really hard and do everything they can to get ahead, while others take easier routes. And just like the dieters, how do we know how some people manage to succeed, while others don't?

There's actually a considerable degree of research on this! It is impossible to draw a 1:1 line of causality between any one factor, as humans are infinitely complex. But there are general factors that can be isolated to provide pretty good predictors of successful behavior. For instance, you take two groups of 100 people, and you can find behavioral correlations that will show clear patterns. Social researchers, psychologists and economists have found numerous connections between life circumstances, personality traits and behavioral characteristics that predict one's chances of being successful in life.

I don't think that conservatism seems to embrace much, if any of this research. There seems to be an odd cognitive dissonance, where even if the research or evidence shows predictive relationships between development and behavior, it is somehow waved away with the idea that people can always choose to "follow the rules".

Some conservatives who embrace the research, who might simply object to the idea of government programs intervening to help people, on the grounds that it doesn't work, or contributes to unsuccessful behavior, don't seem to have any thoughts on how we might help people who lack proper development. Problems exist that have existed, that exist now, and will likely continue to exist should we do nothing. Is there not a moral requirement that we, those of us who understand the problem, no doubt having had the gift of being taught how to be successful, act to help them, out of a sense of fairness? What would this plan look like, from a conservative standpoint? For every kid out there growing up with terrible disadvantages, what plan do conservatives have for him, who will be more likely to grow up to fail, and likely sire more failure-prone children?

Is the assumption that there is nothing that we can do? Because I can actually make a pretty good case that the availability of social programs does at least some good, in that it can provide just the sort of relief that many people need. I've witnessed it first-hand over and over, and there are statistics to back me up. It of course is not perfect. Many people are beyond help, and I'll admit that some may even be given improper incentives - although I think that case has yet to even have begun to be constructed.

So to the extent that this is an evidenced-based debate, and we are accepting the large amount of data and research out there on the subject of individual success, it seems we are left with questions of behavioral analysis and public policy. I'm open to new types of programs and approaches, but conservatives don't seem to have anything to offer, other than old arguments attempting to defend their right to basically do nothing and leave things at that.

Reality and Bias

 A new book purports to find evidence of widespread liberal "bias" in the media.

"In at least one important way journalists are very different from the rest of us—they are more liberal. For instance, according to surveys, in a typical presidential election, Washington correspondents vote about 93-7 for the Democrat, while the rest of us vote about 50-50 for the two candidates.
What happens when our view of the world is filtered through the eyes, ears, and minds of such a liberal group?
As I demonstrate—using objective, social-scientific methods—the filtering prevents us from seeing the world as it really is. Instead, we only see a distorted version of it. It is as if we see the world through a glass—a glass that magnifies the facts that liberals want us to see and shrinks the facts that conservatives want us to see."

A longstanding critique from the right, the left's snarky rejoinder: “reality has a liberal bias”.  Yet this is often demonstrably true, not only in terms of whether liberal claims can be substantiated, but in the very way in which the left traditionally approaches truth questions.  Liberalism is biased towards expertise, towards scientific inquiry, critical deconstruction of cultural norms and dominant paradigms.

The extent to which any of these are the paths to truth, then truth can be said to have a liberal bias. Although that’s not really accurate. Better said, liberalism has a bias towards truth. So, for instance, when a journalist points out that a business is polluting a river, is it liberal bias? When most illegal aliens are found to be exploited when all they wanted was a chance at a better life, is it liberal bias? When global warming is found to likely have devastating effects, is it liberal bias? When evolution is found to be absolutely true, is it liberal bias? When gays are – newsflash! – found to be normal, healthy people, is that liberal bias?

Conservatism is ultimately about common sense. And sometimes common sense is right; even a broken clock is right twice a day. But to the extent that conservatism is biased against expertise, or critical analysis, or relativism, or the deconstruction of tradition – in other words the machinery of free thought – then conservatism is biased against truth. As Buckley put it, to “stand athwart history and yell stop”, even alas, when that history is truth.

In the end, there is no such thing as a bias towards truth, only away from it. To be biased is to be operating outside the parameters of truth-finding. To the extent that conservatism rejects the very process of truth-finding, preferring instead to rely on such subjective and non-rational epistemologies as tradition or common-sense, it is biased against truth. And to the extent that the media is concerned with truth, then conservatism is often biased against the media itself.