My plan to save American democracy

[Imran Siddiqui]

So, liberals want order (mitigate the chaos) while conservatives actually create order?

[David Floyd]

The OP is that people are basically stupid. I agree. That's why "the people" as a whole need as little power as possible, either directly or indirectly. This means that we need much, much greater restrictions on the power of government, especially at the federal level. The US system is basically fine, and I think that the original intent was for strictly limited government, but unfortunately that isn't the result.

The less that government can do, the less that stupid people can pressure it to do. It's tough to vote for welfare (either individual or corporate) if the government lacks the power to enact welfare, for example.

[Vesayen]

Originally posted by David Floyd
The OP is that people are basically stupid. I agree. That's why "the people" as a whole need as little power as possible, either directly or indirectly. This means that we need much, much greater restrictions on the power of government, especially at the federal level. The US system is basically fine, and I think that the original intent was for strictly limited government, but unfortunately that isn't the result.

The less that government can do, the less that stupid people can pressure it to do. It's tough to vote for welfare (either individual or corporate) if the government lacks the power to enact welfare, for example.

I do not think that people are not basically stupid. I think that people are uneducated about the government and the issues which face our nation. Life is busy and they do not want to invest the effort to learn which is somewhat understandably, life is busy. It does not help that the media and politicians have a vested interest in keeping them ignorant. I don't really care who is to blame, I just want to fix the problem.

[David Floyd]

Well, people are stupid in that they don't seem to have the critical thinking skills to see past the media's sensationalist bull****. Also, people are stupid for voting on issues and in elections where there will be far-reaching consequences, when they are uninformed.

Yes, they don't have time to spend hours a day on current events, but if they don't have the time/inclination to devote a little study to what they are voting on, then they really are too stupid to vote.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
So, liberals want order (mitigate the chaos) while conservatives actually create order?

No. Liberals believe that any order is created by man, and thus is maleable. This means that progress is possible but also that order can sometimes be repressive.

Conservatives believe that there is a pre-existing order or pre-existing rules and man must follow them and work within them. Attempts at radical man-led change are most likely to be wrong because they undermine said order and replace it with man-made chaos.

So, either you think:

Universe orderly, man introduces chaos (Conservatives)
Universe chaotic, man introduces order (Liberal)

[Vesayen]

I hate the term liberal and conservative. So many people ascribe so many meanings to them that they are useless. I refuse to use them and if someone uses them with me, I ask them to explain what they mean, another way.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by ramseya
There, the exact opposite (superiority instead of inferiority) leads to Conservatism and Authoritarianism.

It's not one or the other. Like Gepap said, they believe in hierarchy. You can believe you're superior to some people and inferior to others. It's important to conservatives that everyone has a place in the hierarchial system and no one tries to fight the system to get power that conservatives don't believe they deserve.

[ramseya]

Kidicious:

well my point was less a statement of opinion and more a point to make the exact opposite claim as Agathon's authoritarian psychology people, to undermine their idea about preoccupations about inferiority leading to authoritarianism. I figured if I made a compelling case for the opposite, it undermines those thinkers.

It's not always true obviously. I do think my point explains why certain people do become conservatives (I think it applies to Schwarzenegger, for example, and probably to McCain, as well, and to all the privileged Republicans like Dubya Bush and Mitt Romney, as well as the non-privileged but brilliant Republicans like Condoleezza Rice and Clarence Thomas). All those people, for various reasons, were very successful individuals (even if in Bush' case it was due to a silver spoon), whom I imagine did, at the dawn of the Conservatism, wonder why they were successful and why others aren't and believed it all lies in the individual's enterprise or lack thereof.

I'm sure though JFK probably fitted that easy living mode though, between his silver spoon and his (I am told) good looks, and he was obviously a Democrat. So the case, obviously, isn't always true or even true more than half the time.

Just goes to show you how ascribing psychological traits to political beliefs doesn't make much sense, even if it can be compelling for some people.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by ramseya
Agathon:

Please, for god's sake, don't tell me you actually believe that crap? That Robert Altemeyer is hardly an unbiased researcher. His publications:

* Enemies of Freedom: Understanding Right-Wing Authoritarianism, 1988 (ISBN 978-1555420970)
* The Authoritarian Specter, 1997, which examines the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995 (ISBN 0-674-05305-2)
* Amazing Conversions: Why Some Turn to Faith and Others Abandon Religion, 1997 (ISBN 978-1573921473)
* Atheists: A Groundbreaking Study of America's Nonbelievers, 2006 (ISBN 978-1591024132).
* The Authoritarians, 2006 (available online at theauthoritarians.com )

Every one of those publications screams intense bias (except maybe Amazing Conversions).

Looking at the wikipedia article on his concept of "Right-wing Authoritarianism", Republicans are described as if they were Nazis, the article saying that they "say they value freedom but actually want to undermine the Bill of Rights, do not value equality very highly, and oppose measures to increase equality."

Altemeyer's research is peer reviewed and his experiments have been replicated hundreds of times by other researchers.

You have nothing.

Moreover, you do not appear to understand what a "right wing authoritarian" is. It isn't someone who is necessarily right wing, but someone who supports the established authorities (it's an older sense of "right"). Altemeyer's personality test was given to residents of the Soviet Union, and the high RWAs were the people who supported the establishment there.

If you want a psychological motivation behind different political beliefs, I highly doubt Republicans are the ones with dreaded feelings of inferiority. My suspicion is quite the opposite; that Republicans were the ones who tended to be always successful in their youth; some so because they were born with silver spoons, others weren't but had certain advantages which made things easier for them, anything from being intelligent to athletic to physically attractive to even White... Hear me out...

Your assumptions are baseless. Altemeyer's claims are based on over 30 years of peer reviewed research which has been replicated hundreds of times.

I'm terribly sorry that I prefer to believe him rather than your attempt to weasel away from a truth you don't like.

There, the exact opposite (superiority instead of inferiority) leads to Conservatism and Authoritarianism.

No. You might want to read up on Social dominance orientation, which I mentioned in an earlier post. That is different.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Zevico
Those are generalisations I am unwilling to accept without actual evidence.
I would be interested in how you would differentiate between authoritarian and non-authoritarian people on a broad societal level. It sounds to me like an impossibility. Such generalisations are unlikely to hold for all people. It would hardly be fair to discriminate against 'innocent' non-authoritarians who subscribe to 'conservative' views.

There aren't very many of them. These sorts of variables are not good at predicting what individuals will do, but are extremely accurate given a large enough sample. The vast majority of authoritarians are conservatives.

[Agathon]

The sad truth is that if you take a conservative, the more conservative that person is, the more likely it is that they have a fascist type personality. As if the constant militarism and religiosity did not give it away.

There's absolutely no reason why each side in a political debate must be equally rational. And in fact, it turns out that they are not. Authoritarians gang up one one side of the debate, and they are notoriously irrational and bigoted. Remove them from the political process, and everyone will be better off.

[BeBMan]

Lotsa commies are quite conservative at the core.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by ramseya
Kidicious:

well my point was less a statement of opinion and more a point to make the exact opposite claim as Agathon's authoritarian psychology people, to undermine their idea about preoccupations about inferiority leading to authoritarianism. I figured if I made a compelling case for the opposite, it undermines those thinkers.

It's not always true obviously. I do think my point explains why certain people do become conservatives (I think it applies to Schwarzenegger, for example, and probably to McCain, as well, and to all the privileged Republicans like Dubya Bush and Mitt Romney, as well as the non-privileged but brilliant Republicans like Condoleezza Rice and Clarence Thomas). All those people, for various reasons, were very successful individuals (even if in Bush' case it was due to a silver spoon), whom I imagine did, at the dawn of the Conservatism, wonder why they were successful and why others aren't and believed it all lies in the individual's enterprise or lack thereof.

I'm sure though JFK probably fitted that easy living mode though, between his silver spoon and his (I am told) good looks, and he was obviously a Democrat. So the case, obviously, isn't always true or even true more than half the time.

Just goes to show you how ascribing psychological traits to political beliefs doesn't make much sense, even if it can be compelling for some people.

I see the point that you're trying to make. Inferiority is really the core though. Superiority goes along with it.

Another study that was done showed that conservatives are very different parents than liberals are. Conservatives spank their children much more than liberals do. Liberals tend to rely on talking sense into their kids more than conservatives do. I've heard conservatives tell their children "don't speak when adults are speaking." That kind of thing is going to make kids feel inferior. When they grow up they are conservatives too many times, or they are liberal but tend towards having authoritarian attitudes themselves.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by BeBro
Lotsa commies are quite conservative at the core.

Not the ones that live in western societies.

Look, it's all very well to have people talking out of their asses, but the research shows that conservative pretty much means fascist or semi-fascist in most cases.

As far as I am concerned, trying to deny it is like trying to deny the theory of gravity. The research is there, and it is unambiguous. In our societies, the authoritarians are for the most part the people we label the political "right".

Frankly, it's obviously true to any thinking person. One only has to witness the pathetic attempts of Apolyton conservatives to define their ideology, let alone to defend it. It's not an ideology, it's a pathology.

After all, if science demonstrated that blacks were inherently stupider, you can bet that your local tories would be jumping all over it.

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by Agathon


Not the ones that live in western societies.

Look, it's all very well to have people talking out of their asses, but the research shows that conservative pretty much means fascist or semi-fascist in most cases.

Like those who want to remove anyone from the political process they don't like with the vague promise that "everyone will be better off" then? If I want an Obrigkeitsstaat, I could as well go back to the Kaiserreich, they had at least cool battleships.