The Sunday after the short-term budget deal that prevented the government shutdown, Paul Ryan said on “Meet the Press” that the Repubs got “a pretty good outcome.”
“We represented one-third of the negotiators, but we got two-thirds of the spending cuts we were asking for,” Ryan said.
Relying on the work of political psychologists who do those scary brain scans, Sally Kohn argued in a Friday Wash Post op-ed that the value liberals place on tolerance — contrasted with the conservative tendency to divide the political world into fights of good vs. evil — helps explain why Washington’s big recent compromises seem to end up closer to the Repub positions, even though, as Ryan noted, the Dems control the Senate and the White House while the Repubs control only the House of Representatives. Writes Kohn:
“Since the 1930s, political psychologists have argued that liberals are more tolerant. Specifically, those who hold liberal political views are more likely to be open-minded, flexible and interested in new ideas and experiences, while those who hold conservative political views are more likely to be closed-minded, conformist and resistant to change. As recently as 2008, New York University political psychologist John Jost and his colleagues confirmed statistically significant personality differences connected to political leanings. Brain-imaging studies have even suggested that conservative brains are hard-wired for fear, while the part of the brain that tolerates uncertainty is bigger in liberal heads.”
Like, I suppose, a typical liberal, I find myself reluctant to go here. Calling conservatives closed-minded seems kinda closed-minded to me. But, in addition to brain scans, Kohn claims to have poll data on her side:
“In the weeks leading up to the budget showdown, the Pew Research Center found that 50 percent of Republicans wanted their elected representatives to ‘stand by their principles,’ even if it meant causing the federal government to shut down. Among those who identified as tea party supporters, that figure was 68 percent. Conversely, 69 percent of Democrats wanted their representatives to avoid a shutdown, even if it meant compromising on principles. With supporters like that, who needs Rand Paul?”
You might recall that Lenin is credited with the term “useful idiots” to describe those on the left who clung to the idea of the Russian revolution producing a “workers paradise” when the evidence strongly contradicted this.
You can simply look through the comment section on this very blog and see plenty of liberals employing a ‘good vs evil’ approach.
Why did the Repbulicans ‘win’ the recent budget deal? Various reasons of course but one of the biggest is that the federal budget has simply exploded over the last decade. The idea that there isn’t even 1% of fat in there to cut is simply ludicrous.
Re: the headline. In a word, yes.
I’d like to see a LOT more “Fighting Bob LaFollette” and a lot less cool and analytical Barack Obama in terms of both spirit and rhetoric. Liberals have too often allowed the “take no prisoners” attitude of the radical right to win the day, even when the arguments from the right are idiotic.
Our 6th District Congresswoman is a case in point. That she’s not being publicly labeled as the lying demagogue she has demonstrated herself to be by the ‘Strib, and her latest falsehoods greeted with obvious eye-rolls by TV anchors not working for Fox, suggests to me that “fairness” and “tolerance” are being carried to ridiculous extremes.
There are other examples, including barbaric cultural practices of some immigrant groups (e.g., female genital mutilation) that ought to be condemned outright – loudly and often – but instead are either not mentioned, or only spoken of in polite whispers, in the name of “tolerance.”
Technically, your dictionary would tell you that “tolerance” is not synonymous with “approval,” but for the aggressive neofascists on the right, opening the rhetorical door of tolerance even a tiny bit is all they need.
“Are liberals suckers?”
Yes, they are. One of the liberal underpinnings of our legal code, for instance, makes us all suckers. Huh? It is the premise that the accused are innocent until proven guilty – beyond a reasonable doubt. The result? OJ walks. The conservatives, living in fear, would rather hang ’em all and let god sort ’em out. The liberals, suckers that they are, find that remedy odious & would prefer to put criminals back on the streets to prey on us, than to erroneously incarcerate the innocent.
Are liberals suckers? Are zebras basically black with white stripes, or white with black stripes? I don’t know!
And if you asked: are conservatives morons? … I would give the same answer. I don’t know!
I think it is possible and even plausible that one can be a gun-loving liberal who believes fiercely in civil liberties and fights for the freedom of the individual against the group. Unfortunately, liberals are not even as vocally militant as conservatives these days.
But to the main point … aren’t we all fighting against oppression of one sort or another whether we are successful or not?
Aren’t labels like “suckers” cheap, pointless, dismissive, and rhetorically idiotic? What makes one so sure of one’s victories or defeats? Are they Pyrrhic and
illusory or are they truly lasting and real?
“Brain-imaging studies have even suggested that conservative brains are hard-wired for fear, while the part of the brain that tolerates uncertainty is bigger in liberal heads.”
HA! That’s rich. If that were true the conservatives would be the admitted collectivists fighting to hold onto their union jobs while huddled together in the city, demanding that government provide for their every need from cradle to grave and the liberals would be the individualists who risk their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor by fighting for their country, risking it all to start a business, and willing to starve before they asked for a government handout.
Nope, seems to me that the alleged “scientists” got it backwards.
It’s my belief that the average conservative has a particular set of psychological dysfunctions based on their loss of the ability to feel or express compassion, empathy, and trust (in anyone who does not agree with them completely on every issue).
But an additional dysfunction they often have involves losing the ability to feel as if they are able to control their own lives by their own actions coupled with the ability to fight fairly and with equanimity for what they believe in (they can ONLY fight “dirty”).
Thus, with the strong (and unconscious) internal sense that their lives are out of control (or about to be),…
due to what must be external forces (because the ability to feel as if they can take actions required to take control of their own lives is denied to them by their dysfunctions),…
coupled with the lack of ability to trust all but a very few people, and the inability to fight in any open, above-board way, OF COURSE they operate in constant fear.
We “LIBERALS,” on the other hand have a slightly different dysfunction when it comes to fighting. Most of us liberals have been raised in ways that have beaten out of us (literally or figuratively) the ability to stand up for what we believe in IF IT WOULD MEAN HURTING SOMEONE ELSE’S FEELINGS.
No matter how true what we’ve said is, no matter what the reason for our opponents’ emotional responses, our strength leaves us as soon as those we oppose seem to be offended or hurt by what we’ve said.
When it comes to Teddy Roosevelt’s old aphorism our “conservative” friends can only do the second half – “carry a big stick.”
We “liberals” (including especially president Obama, whether by dysfunction or conscious design out of the desire to frustrate the “angry black man” image) can only do the other half – “speak softly.”
Which, of course, means the “big stick” always wins.
While the oh-so-well-spoken-and-reasonable soft speakers wait for the (we’ll follow a strong leader anywhere) public to listen to and realize the truth of their arguments, those with the willingness to fight dirty, early, and often for what they want, (even if it’s absolutely selfish and self serving) will generally win the day,…
their single-minded “passion” being mistakenly taken as indication of correctness.
Although our “conservative” friends are unlikely to seek the skilled help they need to recover their missing pieces (their inability to trust precludes it),…
We “liberals” are just as unlikely to seek and accept the skilled help WE need to recover our authentic ability to truly fight for what we believe in,…
because to do so would seem to betray the memories of the loved ones who taught us that it is NEVER OK to hurt others’ feelings without offering us any actual ability to discern that it might be necessary and completely defensible to take strong action against bullies and bullying demagogues rather than forever remaining their victims, and allowing those who need us to protect them to become victims of those bully’s dysfunctional approaches to life.
If we “liberals” don’t soon learn to stand up for what we know to be good and right and true, in ways that are morally defensible and ethically responsible,…
BUT FAR STRONGER THAN WE ARE WILING TO USE NOW,
We will lose our nation to those who would bully us and our fellow citizens right into Economic Oligarchy supported by fascist police state tactics brought to bear in the name of law and order,…
“wrapped in the flag, and carrying a cross.”
As a side note: what the brain scans show is not “hard wired” at all, but just the functioning of the very plastic human brain currently performing as it has been programmed by the typical life experiences of “conservatives” and “liberals.”
NONE of this is hard wired. ALL of it can be changed and will change if healing experiences are brought to bear that restore the missing pieces of each person’s personality.
“a gun-loving liberal who believes fiercely in civil liberties and fights for the freedom of the individual against the group”
Sounds like former Governor Ventura.
@#6 – “…the individualists who risk their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor by fighting for their country, risking it all to start a business, and willing to starve before they asked for a government handout.”
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I take it that “conservatives” are the true and only ones that fit this picture you have lavishly painted.
Let me ask: what fortunes have they risked (other than others’) and what sacrifice have they made (except the blood of the minority and the underprivileged)? Why do conservatives keep asking for tax breaks and work hard at stiffing the government every loophole chance they get? Aren’t they also asking for something from nothing? And who [or when] was the last conservative who ever starved in this great land of ours?
Yesterday, while MinnPost was publishing this column, other online news sources had headlines, “S&P Slashes Outlook on U.S. to ‘Negative’ Amid Soaring Debt”. For the first time since its founding in 1941, Standards and Poor downgraded our nation’s credit rating. S&P says there is a 33% change it will downgrade our nation’s credit rating once again in the next two years.
What will serve us better in this position as a nation clearly in decline; is it fear or interest in new ideas and experiences?
Steve, you have your facts wrong. S$P has not down graded the US credit rating. It’s still a AAA.
And really, what credibility does an organization that insisted Bear Stearns was fine up until it’s moment of collapse?
The far more credible IMF sees a much healthier prospect for the US economy.
David: Spin it like the White House.
Link to NPR article regarding NEGATIVE outlook issued yesterday,
http://www.npr.org/2011/04/18/135519643/s-p-issues-warning-on-u-s-credit-rating?ft=1&f=1003
Excerpt:
The credit rating company Standard & Poor’s has issued a negative warning on the triple-A credit rating of the United States. S&P says the U.S. has not come up with a credible plan to address fast-rising deficits and mounting debt. S&P warns there’s a 1-in-3 chance that it could downgrade the U.S. top credit rating within two years. Markets were down sharply on the news.
Steve: Nice spin yourself.
One negative warning on a one-third potential of a downgrade is NOT equal to one downgrade plus the potential of another.
That said, yes, the deficits and debt are a problem – one which will not be solved by demagoguery which refuses to acknowledge half of the problem, to the point of continuing to make it worse.
The fact remains, Steve, S&P still rates US debt as AAA. There’s been no downgrade of that rating. Facts are stubborn things.
Yes the rating is AAA; the rating to which I referred in post #10 was the NEGATIVE, which technically is not a rating, it is an outlook.
Yesterday, S&P changed the outlook of the US debt from STABLE to NEGATIVE. A $1.4 trillion annual deficit and mounting debt will do that. NEGATIVE is actually quite charitable, all things considered.
But, no need to fear; “be open-minded, flexible and interested in new ideas and experiences”.
High fives all around!
Actually I don’t we’re talking about liberals. I think we’re mistaking “middlists” for liberals. I think “middlism” is the great invisible ideology of our time. The idea that any conversation or debate represents two extreme views and the answer must always be in the middle. This skews the discursive landscape by automatically rejecting either side of an argument and pretending that no one can be right. This is NOT a liberal principle, it is a Middlist principle. The problem isn’t liberals, it middlist being misidentified as liberals.
@#6 – Paul – “Middlist”?!
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Is there really such a thing? From the way you described it, anybody under that umbrella sounds nihilistic to me.
But, maybe, functionally, there maybe nothing wrong in doubting any side (right or left) and subscribing to the philosophy of “wrongism” a la Katherine Schulz.