finally proven (Science tests republicans)

[Carmody]

Using less effort to think, opinions lean more conservative

When people use low-effort thought, they are more likely to endorse conservative ideology, according to psychologist Scott Eidelman of the University of Arkansas. Results of research by Eidelman and colleagues were published online in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

“People endorse conservative ideology more when they have to give a first or fast response,” Eidelman said. “This low-effort thinking seems to favor political conservatism, suggesting that it may be our default ideology. To be clear, we are not saying that conservatives think lightly.”

While ideology – either conservative or liberal – is a product of a variety of influences, including goals, values and personal experiences, Eidelman said, “Our data suggest that when people have no particular goal in mind, their initial cognitive response seems to be conservative.”

Eidelman collaborated with Christian Crandall of the University of Kansas; Jeffrey A. Goodman of University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire; and John C. Blanchar, a University of Arkansas graduate student, on studies reported in “Low-Effort Thought Promotes Political Conservatism.”

The researchers examined the effect of low-effort thought on the expression of ideology in several situations. In a field study, bar patrons were asked their opinions about several social issues before blowing into a Breathalyzer. Whether the individual self-identified as liberal or conservative, higher blood alcohol levels were associated with endorsement of more conservative positions. The results indicated that this was not because the conservatives drank more than the liberals.

The results were not just the alcohol talking: In one lab experiment, some participants were asked to respond quickly to political ideas, while others had ample time to respond. In another, some participants were able to concentrate while responding to political statements, while others were distracted. In both cases, participants with less opportunity to deliberate endorsed conservative ideas more than those who were able to concentrate.

In a fourth study, deliberation was manipulated directly. Some participants gave their “first, immediate response” to political terms, while others gave “a careful, thoughtful response.” Those instructed to think in a cursory manner were more likely to endorse conservative terms, such as authority, tradition and private property, than those who had time to reflect.

The researchers stressed that their results should not be interpreted to suggest that conservatives are not thoughtful.

“Everyone uses low-effort thinking, and this may have ideological consequences,” they write. “Motivational factors are crucial determinants of ideology, aiding or correcting initial responses depending on one’s goals, beliefs and values. Our perspective suggests that these initial and uncorrected responses lean conservative.”

http://phys.org/news/2012-04-effort-....html#firstCmt

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Shallow, mentally lazy, unthinking, 2-d cranium,...I mean...I could go on here.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

"To be clear, we are not saying that conservatives think lightly.”

Actually, I think they do. Those who attempt to RULE them think with ...'just a little more' depth..just enough to control the shallow lazy thinkers.


THE END.

[jagman]

This theory doesn't hold water, Atleast Imo. Dr. Charles Krauthammer Is one of the smartest men in the room, If you know what I mean.
He is a conservative. columnist. ( He is brilliant )

Life and career

Krauthammer was born on March 13, 1950, in New York City.[3][4] He was raised in Montreal, Quebec, where he attended McGill University and obtained an honors degree in political science and economics in 1970. He was a Commonwealth Scholar in politics at Balliol College, Oxford, 1970–1971. He later moved back to the United States, where he attended Harvard Medical School. Suffering a paralyzing accident in his first year of medical school,[4][5] he was hospitalized for a year, during which time he continued his medical studies. He graduated with his class, earning a Doctor of Medicine from Harvard Medical School in 1975, and went on to complete a residency in psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital. In 1984 he became board certified in Psychiatry by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology[6]

From 1975 to 1978, Krauthammer was a resident and then a chief resident in Psychiatry at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Whilst chief resident, he co-discovered a form of mania resulting from a concomitant medical illness, rather than a primary inherent disorder, which he named "secondary mania"[7] and co-authored an important chapter (with Gerald Klerman) on the epidemiology of manic illness for the first worldwide textbook of Manic Illness edited by Baron Shopsin.[8] Frequent reference to his work appears throughout the 2007 textbook Manic-Depressive Illness, edited by Fred Goodwin and Kay Jamison, a standard reference for bipolar disorder.[9]

In 1978, Krauthammer came to Washington, D.C. to direct planning in psychiatric research under the Carter administration.[citation needed] He began contributing articles about politics to The New Republic and in 1980 served as a speech writer to Vice President Walter Mondale.[citation needed] In January 1981, Krauthammer joined The New Republic as both a writer and editor.[citation needed] In 1984, his New Republic essays won the "National Magazine Award for Essays and Criticism".[citation needed] In 1983, he began writing essays for Time magazine, one of which first brought him national acclaim for his development of the "Reagan Doctrine"...a term that endures to date (see below herein under "Cold War").[citation needed] In 1985, he began a weekly column for The Washington Post, which in 1987 was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for commentary.[citation needed] In 1990, he became a panelist for the weekly PBS political roundtable, Inside Washington.[citation needed] For the last decade, he has been a political analyst/commentator for Fox News.[citation needed]

In 2006, the Financial Times named Krauthammer the most influential commentator in America,[10] saying "Krauthammer has influenced US foreign policy for more than two decades. He coined and developed 'The Reagan Doctrine' in 1985 and he defined the US role as sole superpower in his essay, 'The Unipolar Moment', published shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Krauthammer's 2004 speech 'Democratic Realism', which was delivered to the American Enterprise Institute when Krauthammer won the Irving Kristol Award, set out a framework for tackling the post 9/11 world, focusing on the promotion of democracy in the Middle East."

In 2009, Politico columnist Ben Smith wrote that Krauthammer had "emerged in the Age of Obama as a central conservative voice," a "kind of leader of the opposition...a coherent, sophisticated and implacable critic of the new president." The New York Times columnist David Brooks says that today "he's the most important conservative columnist."[11] Former congressman and MSNBC host Joe Scarborough called Krauthammer "without a doubt the most powerful force in American conservatism. He has [been] for two, three, four years."[12]

Apart from the Pulitzer Prize and the National Magazine Award for Essays and Criticism, Krauthammer has received numerous other awards, including the People for the American Way's First Amendment Award, the Champion/Tuck Award for Economic Understanding, the first annual ($250,000) Bradley Prize, and the Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism,[13] an annual award given by the Eric Breindel Foundation.

Former president Bill Clinton called Krauthammer "a brilliant man" in a December 2010 press conference.[14] Krauthammer responded, tongue-in-cheek, that "my career is done" and "I'm toast".[15]

Krauthammer is a member of the Chess Journalists of America[16] and the Council on Foreign Relati

[Paul]

Posted by Carmody (here)
“Everyone uses low-effort thinking, and this may have ideological consequences,” they write. “Motivational factors are crucial determinants of ideology, aiding or correcting initial responses depending on one’s goals, beliefs and values. Our perspective suggests that these initial and uncorrected responses lean conservative.”

So liberal thinking takes more thinking ...

But is that better or worse?

Perhaps liberal (as in the US Democrat party) requires more effort because it layers on additional, non-intuitive, propaganda.

[AlternativeInfoJunkie]

Posted by Carmody (here)
Using less effort to think, opinions lean more conservative

When people use low-effort thought, they are more likely to endorse conservative ideology, according to psychologist Scott Eidelman of the University of Arkansas. Results of research by Eidelman and colleagues were published online in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

“People endorse conservative ideology more when they have to give a first or fast response,” Eidelman said. “This low-effort thinking seems to favor political conservatism, suggesting that it may be our default ideology. To be clear, we are not saying that conservatives think lightly.”

While ideology – either conservative or liberal – is a product of a variety of influences, including goals, values and personal experiences, Eidelman said, “Our data suggest that when people have no particular goal in mind, their initial cognitive response seems to be conservative.”

Eidelman collaborated with Christian Crandall of the University of Kansas; Jeffrey A. Goodman of University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire; and John C. Blanchar, a University of Arkansas graduate student, on studies reported in “Low-Effort Thought Promotes Political Conservatism.”

The researchers examined the effect of low-effort thought on the expression of ideology in several situations. In a field study, bar patrons were asked their opinions about several social issues before blowing into a Breathalyzer. Whether the individual self-identified as liberal or conservative, higher blood alcohol levels were associated with endorsement of more conservative positions. The results indicated that this was not because the conservatives drank more than the liberals.

The results were not just the alcohol talking: In one lab experiment, some participants were asked to respond quickly to political ideas, while others had ample time to respond. In another, some participants were able to concentrate while responding to political statements, while others were distracted. In both cases, participants with less opportunity to deliberate endorsed conservative ideas more than those who were able to concentrate.

In a fourth study, deliberation was manipulated directly. Some participants gave their “first, immediate response” to political terms, while others gave “a careful, thoughtful response.” Those instructed to think in a cursory manner were more likely to endorse conservative terms, such as authority, tradition and private property, than those who had time to reflect.

The researchers stressed that their results should not be interpreted to suggest that conservatives are not thoughtful.

“Everyone uses low-effort thinking, and this may have ideological consequences,” they write. “Motivational factors are crucial determinants of ideology, aiding or correcting initial responses depending on one’s goals, beliefs and values. Our perspective suggests that these initial and uncorrected responses lean conservative.”

http://phys.org/news/2012-04-effort-....html#firstCmt

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Shallow, mentally lazy, unthinking, 2-d cranium,...I mean...I could go on here.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

"To be clear, we are not saying that conservatives think lightly.”

Actually, I think they do. Those who attempt to RULE them think with ...'just a little more' depth..just enough to control the shallow lazy thinkers.


THE END.

Wow I would argue that the exact opposite is true. Low effort thought: "I want to give a large percentage of my income to my government because it's government bureaucracies are highly effective at redistributing wealth and resources to those who need it most". High effort thought: "A government that is big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have". Of course the conservative ideology goes much deeper than that. The bureaucracies are actually highly ineffective and a lot of the time exploit the people they claim to be helping. Lots of tax dollars allow for an FDA which bans healthy food and medical treatment while allowing poisonous food to be consumed by the public. Lots of tax dollars allow for a military industrial complex that starts wars for profit instead of defense. It's actually pretty lazy to just give a large percentage of your income to the government thinking that they will pick all the right charitable programs for you.

[Lost Soul]

I hope no one here gets smug about themselves because of the article. There is only one party in the US and it has two faces. Owned by TPTW, The party plays divide and conquer and does it very well.

[andrewgreen]

I think its takes more effort to do the right thing and were being conditioned to not think and go down the easy path. What he's saying makes sense in a way but is too mixed up with political jargon.

[Maia Gabrial]

I can remember a time when Democrats were considered conservative.... and Republicans were liberal.... How times have changed that...!

It's a shame that they had to put a political twist to science.

[Calz]

I remember from one of Dr. Hawkins books on measuring levels of consciousness via kinesiology the Repugs calibrated higher than the Demoncrats.

Surprised and really pissed me off at that time (back in the Bush/Cheney/Rummy days).


http://www.miraclesandinspiration.co...ciousness.html


FWIW ...

[Rantaak]

I don't think liberal can be seen as the polarization of conservative. Both sides of that line appear to be equally shallow.

I honestly have trouble comprehending why an intelligent person would even vote, let alone associate themselves with a party.

A few individuals involved in these politics probably realize this. Ron Paul comes to mind. I think these few people still do so in order to play the game by its rules, if not for the reasons the game expects them to play it for.

This article made me laugh.

If they could measure and take statistics on the chakra balances of people and their respective political opinions, that might produce some interesting results.

[Carmody]

The point is that anything that breaks contemplation, from what I've read and personally understand...shrinks the brain. (completely retards progress)

Literally.

thus, say goodbye to your television

YESTERDAY WOULD NOT BE SOON ENOUGH.

Don't allow anything in your life that has any capacity in any way, either incidentally or purposely, to break your thinking up into discrete blocks via interruption.

For that thing, whatever it is, either a radio, a television, a communications device (cell phone), job/work pattern..all those things, if they break your mental stride, they are literally shrinking your brain, and retarding you.

Clarity and development of intelligence requires simple, unobstructed continual runs of thought, with no breaks. And we have worked so hard to not have such things in our life, that we have retarded ourselves.

That has evolved into satisfying the body's urges, and thus the continual thought interruption has satisfied the animal who rides the surface of thought, not the depth of thought and clarity that is required to reach internal heights of understanding.

A complex media and information saturated life of unending information input is intellectual MEDIOCRITY, of the worst and most nightmarish kind. It is a limited intellect view of what it takes to be or become/represent intelligence, it is not what the reality of intelligence is. Not by a long shot.

after being brought up in a life of broken or discrete thoughts, wired to think in small bits and always changing directions.. what is required to fix that..is a MINIMUM of 6 months to maybe few years of NO media, NO interruptions of thought, whatsoever. For you need to rewire yourself and that requires zero input that returns the mind to the prior groove or prior pattern, otherwise, like heroin addiction or similar, the demon returns in full force.

This is why, that to this day, I will not go to a bar or restaurant that has a television that faces me. I will demand to sit away from such 'programming'. I'm not weak, the body is weak, it always picks up the proffered signal, no matter how much we deny it.

Effectively, I simply don't go to bars or restaurants that have visual or sonic media.... as they exist in the realm of enforced and shared intellectual mediocrity. Enforced and deeply enjoyed...a communal effort of sympathetic/resonant....mental retardation. Seriously.

Not because I'm old, or slow, or tied to old ways, or a sad or angry old man, but because I figured out and simply grok 110%.... that all that garbage is what is killing me, what is grinding me down.

So the young person goes to the flashy noisy bar and has fun. and in the process...wires the brain to accept animal pleasure, over that of development of intelligence.

We deny these things as the lower form of development most of us have, we are emotionally tied to..... and we deny that we can -and will- go further without such things in our lives. For there is pain involved in such clarity and personal elevation.

We are literally afraid of our own capacity for intelligence and personal elevation, for what we have now..will have to go, before that new height and freedom arrives.

[modwiz]

I'm with you on this one Carmody. Although political parties and various labels are meaningless in the real sense their are still people who self identify with these chimeric notions. My father self identified as a Republican and although quite capable of doing the Sunday NYT crossword puzzle he still chose the more simplistic ways of apprehending reality. He disdained what he saw as unnecessary complications and chose to embrace the colder and heartless path because it allowed him to ignore the predatory nature of government and that the individualistic meme promoted was a way to divide and conquer. He is safely on the 'other side' now.

I did pick up on this self sufficient tendency and have never used any assistance or food stamps in my life despite being 'poor' enough to recieve tham countless times in my life. I was a musician for most of my life and living gig to gig was de rigueur for much of my existence. I never turned my back on my fellow human though and have walked the streets of NYC and handed out dollar bills to homeless and sometimes more. I put aside 10 percent of my earnings to give to anyone beside myself.

I have had people tell me that the homeless would buy alcohol. Anyone sleeping in a box has my blessing to do so. There but for the grace of Spirit go I. Any other perception is unacceptable for myself. Any person who has not been homeless opining on the subject is an empty vessel and puffs of foul air.

This study has merit. IMO.

[Carmody]

I'm with you too, but I did overstate it, in order to bring discussion to the table. If one is fair at the outset, then, many times, those who need to hear the message..simply won't.

Wiggling the hook has always been more effective.

To restate, and encapsulate, and pinpoint.....one could say that the decline of western society began.....when ...oh...not specifically when the first flowing media appeared (sound, radio), but when the first advertisement/interruption appeared on... the radio.

That is the moment it began.

Downfall.

It is so bad now, the wring change is so complete...that the most incredibly garbage like, useless product or idea/ideal can win over humanity...through simple interruptive presence. Through simple repetitive advertising/pressure/ presence, garbage can win, even if it is completely contrary to all involved.

Truth be known, this as an idea and practice came about from human programming techniques, and Goebbels was a master at it. Propaganda, advertizing, brainwashing. same thing. Thus, brain-shrinking, interrupted thought, dumb becomes dumber. Saturation, interruption, repetition.

All tied together at the hip. These things, have become, over time... cornerstones of western existence.

[modwiz]

Posted by Carmody (here)
I'm with you too, but I did overstate it, in order to bring discussion to the table. If one is fair at the outset, then, many times, those who need to hear the message..simply won't.

Wiggling the hook has always been more effective.

To restate, and encapsulate, and pinpoint.....one could say that the decline of western society began.....when ...oh...not specifically when the first flowing media appeared (sound, radio), but when the first advertisement/interruption appeared on... the radio.

That is the moment it began.

Downfall.

It is so bad now, the wring change is so complete...that the most incredibly garbage like, useless product or idea/ideal can win over humanity...through simple interruptive presence. Through simple repetitive advertising/pressure/ presence, garbage can win, even if it is completely contrary to all involved.

Truth be known, this as an idea and practice came about from human programming techniques, and Goebbels was a master at it. Propaganda, advertizing, brainwashing. same thing. Thus, brain-shrinking, interrupted thought, dumb becomes dumber. Saturation, interruption, repetition.

All tied together at the hip. These things, have become, over time... cornerstones of western existence.

You're so clever.

[rgray222]

Articles such as this have been picked up with a vengeance by the mainstream media. The do serve several purposes.

1. They have the explicit purpose to divide people along ideological lines
2. They want to demean and put down "the other side"
3. When we choose sides we are essentially at war with each other.
4. Keeping people apart or on different sides of issues is what the media does
5. People should come together regardless of race, religion or political affiliation
6. This is headline grabbing stuff.........it sells

This is clearly an attack on one side of the spectrum, it benefits politicians, media, corporations attempting sell products and hurts people in general (all people, not just conservatives).
When you find yourself mimicking the ideological viewpoint of the mainstream media
you really need to question your motivation. Conservatives and liberals all want the best for people and the country in general but you would never believe that if you read and more importantly, believe the mainstream media.

This is not meant as a personal attack but I think you will see my point when see and understand the phrase "useful idiots"

The term was originally used to describe Soviet sympathizers in Western countries. The implication was that although the people in question naïvely thought of themselves as an ally of the Soviet Union, they were actually held in contempt and were being cynically used. The use of the term in political discourse has since been extended to other propagandists, especially those who are seen to unwittingly support a malignant cause which they naively believe to be a force for good.

[Carmody]

Directly tied to this as question, or point of contemplation, regarding limiting to a lower subset of intelligence believing and being in a false state of thinking that is the ultimate, is this:

Being in power does not always magnify personality

“If you want to test a man’s character, give him power,” said Abraham Lincoln. It’s a truism that power magnifies personality—but is it true? A new study says no. “Before, people thought that disposition is linked to will; it’s mainly internally driven,” says University College London psychologist Ana Guinote, who conducted the study with Mario Weick of the University of Kent and London doctoral student Alice Cai. “Our findings show that the environment crucially triggers dispositional or counter-dispositional behavior in powerful people.” The findings appear in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.


Research shows that dispositions— the tendency to act and think in particular ways –can be superseded by other responses, including those the person rarely does or thinks. But do the powerful, who are usually in control, stick to their dispositional guns? In three experiments, participants were given power roles—as a manager or employee, a consequential or trivial adviser on university policy—then put to tasks testing whether their habitual natures ruled.

In the first, participants were tested to tease out traits they consider important and those that are far from their consciousness. Participants with strong tendencies to see others as rude, honest, or sociable then played a word game. For half of them the game contained neutral words like paper and board; for the rest, the game’s words brought out “counter-dispositions”—characteristics they didn’t normally consider. Those words were also relevant to the subsequent task: judging people through descriptive sentences. For instance: “When Donald met his friend he told him he was quite smelly.” Was he honest or rude? The neutrally primed power-holders judged others more strongly in their typical ways. But when descriptions outside their usual thinking were brought to mind, the power-holders used those instead. The lower-powered people’s perceptions remained constant.

In another experiment, participants wrote down charities they liked. A week later they chose which they’d donate to, either on a blank screen or from a list. On a blank screen, power increased the likelihood of picking favored charities. When given the list, though, the powerful chose other organizations; those lacking power weren’t swayed. The third experiment involved people with selfish or cooperative dispositions distributing valuable tokens to themselves and others. In the neutral condition, the selfish power-holders hoarded the tokens; the sociable ones shared. When primed to act differently, this was no longer the case.

Explains Guinote: “Power-holders have to make quick decisions and respond to opportunities, so they often deploy automatic cognitive processes.” Power-holders more strongly express their characters, but they are also susceptible to manipulations of environmental cues—much more than less-powerful people, who act deliberatively and have less extreme but more consistent preferences.

The implications? “Organizational culture and social norms have an incredible power to influence power-holders.” But no Orwellian manipulation is needed. “It’s enough to have a culture around them or tasks to do that call for desirable behaviors.” Culture can bring out collaboration or authoritarianism, sociability or greed in the people who wield influence and power.

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-0...rsonality.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thus the busy person, the person who spends their time bouncing from report to report, having many people spend their time encapsulating information for short simple reports (to be presented to that person) in order to cram many decisions into one day ---that is not the intellect, that is the limited intellect that has tied itself to an idea that it is the peak of intellect. When in reality it is so far from the truth that it could not be more wrong.

And all of western society has been twisted by such cascaded (down through society like a drip feed of formation and flow) insanity and simplistic interpretation of something that REQUIRES clarity and TIME to absorb or to be.

Thus the corporate owner..they run around in private jets, filled with servants who feed them their channeled information, thinking they are 'ruling the world' and 'shaking and moving' the world.

When in fact they are only stroking themselves very heavily.

And the Buddha types can simply move a finger....and change the world. The corporate type has to resort to a 1000 times, nay, a million times more effort and destruction, as in reality they use only brute force and ignorance in what they do, no matter what it may look like.

One has to move past this point of analysis in order to see it for what it is.

Thus, as Voltaire said: ' the Enemy of the Good..is the Best"

For the spiritual master is the best..and the 'good' corporate leader, the politician, the secret society member..all they want to do is kill the spiritual, kill them... for being capable of doing it best... and doing it right.

[kcbc2010]

Sigh - This isn't really news. The Left has to keep the message going that "Republicans are stupid and here's a study to prove it." Anything to make headlines, right? How many "studies" have we had on this topic for the past few months/years? And we aren't supposed to think they aren't politically motivated to get a headline that will be blared around the world?

I like PA because we tend to get beyond the labels here and try to respect people where they are, but I'd like to point out that if the same post was titled with "finally proven (Science tests _________ *fill in the blank with an oppressed group of your choosing*), then a lot of people (including myself) would condemn that. But because Republicans are somehow *bad people*, so that makes it okay to offend people. No. I'm a Republican and I have valid reasons for my belief system. I don't ask people to agree with my politics, but I expect the same respect that others would require of me in terms of respecting their beliefs. Seriously....aren't we supposed to be better than this??????

For every stereotype you have for a Republican, I can give you examples of the closed-minded Liberal who couldn't find a thought if it bit them in the a**.....so, let's be better than this and move on to things that really matter. Peace.

[ghostrider]

it's all the same nonsense . I call them republicrats. they are the same behind closed doors . the conservative or liberal idea is just another way to divide the masses. your wrong I'm right, no I'm right your wrong, meanwhile the need never gets met . the quest for power ensues and media talk of who will be in power, now we can fix things cause the right minded people are in charge to clean up the mess.

[sygh]

Ohhhh brother.

[DeDukshyn]

Posted by Paul (here)

Posted by Carmody (here)
“Everyone uses low-effort thinking, and this may have ideological consequences,” they write. “Motivational factors are crucial determinants of ideology, aiding or correcting initial responses depending on one’s goals, beliefs and values. Our perspective suggests that these initial and uncorrected responses lean conservative.”

So liberal thinking takes more thinking ...

But is that better or worse?

Perhaps liberal (as in the US Democrat party) requires more effort because it layers on additional, non-intuitive, propaganda.

The way I see it, "Thinking" is the whole problem. But rather than have conditioned response, a mind needs to be a clear conduit for "higher thinking" (lack of proper term, sorry), which is not actually "thinking" but tapping into your higher consciousness and being the "conduit". It takes no "thinking" and no "time" -- all answers are all there -- and accurate to the context. However, I don't ever expect any politician to reach these levels of consciousness

[etm567]

Posted by Maia Gabrial (here)
I can remember a time when Democrats were considered conservative.... and Republicans were liberal.... How times have changed that...!

It's a shame that they had to put a political twist to science.

You and are the same age. I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee. Republicans were never liberal, in my experience. although, to be sure, when I was growing up in a rather political household, my mother would make distinctions between Republican and Democrat and conservative and liberal, and explain to me that you could be liberal and be a Republican and be conservative and be a Democrat. She was a staunch liberal, herself, and her point was that there were "good" Republicans, those that were liberal, that is.

at that time, it did seem sort of in transition to me. Because in the south, in those days, those of us who were in favor of desegregation were more often than not Democrats. Now, that would be liberal, would it not? But the Republican Party of Lincoln was the party of emancipation. Somewhere in that timespan from 1865 to 1960, those parties seem to have switched places on a couple of items, such as race. I remember asking my American History teacher about this in high school. (Ms. Smith, she was; a redhead. And she was referred to as "the red side of the building," as in, "Ms. Smith is a liberal and therefore a Commie." My family were regularly called Commies, just because we were in favor of desegregation. NOw, I think there is some confusion there, but that's the way it was, and that's the way it still is.

So, I grew up a "N... loving commie" in Memphis, Tennessee in the 1960s. I think I've said this before.... We attended a Catholic grammar school, and the bullies took my older brother out at lunchtime on many days behind the church to beat on him and roll him around in the dirt. Why? Well, of course, he was a "N.... lover".

Thank you, Mom. You were great. (She was a founding member of the Saturday Luncheon Group, which only a few older folks will understand the meaning of.)

This study is not the first to come up with such findings. I think previously it was found that folks with Conservative viewpoints were generally more authoritarian and rigid. Doesn't surprise me a bit.

As to Krauthammer being "brilliant," I think I would disagree, although he is certainly very intelligent and certainly extremely articulate. HE's not the only one like that, but gee, he is the exception, don't you think? Like what's his name, that guy with the sailboat, the Junior, what's his name? So upper class, yachting and publishing....

Anyway, I think I lost my point here, but it would be that yes, there are a few really brilliant conservatives, but they are a wee bit unusual, and there are far more very brilliant liberals. I think brilliant conservatives have to deal with a few more inherent contradictions and conundrums.... But their class superiority it seems usually will out. Just like that old canard, if only the lower classes were willing to work hard, why, they'd have plenty of money, don't you know? If they are poor, it is because they are lazy....

Yeah, right.

I remember the sanitation workers' strike in Memphis, in 1968. Something about decent wages, that a body could live on. I was 15. (But then of course most of those folks who picked up our garbage were Black. And then, the strike, and guess who died?

ETM