An article that slipped through the net

It is part of the conventional religion among psychologists to believe that conservatives are the ones who are “authoritarian”.  Joe Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, Pol Pot and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers party just did not happen, you see.  And like most Leftist beliefs, this one is impermeable to evidence.  I have reported in the academic journals heaps of carefully conducted research  showing the belief to be false but I was wasting my time of course.  You can’t argue with something that people need to believe.

Still, every now and again, a piece of research pops up which questions the orthodox faith and one such article is: “Is political conservatism synonymous with authoritarianism?”, in The Journal of Social Psychology of Oct 2005, volume 145, issue 5,  p571ff. by H. Michael Crowson, Stephen J. Thoma and Nita Hestevold.  Their research is of course the usual rubbish that passes for science in psychology:  No attempt at sampling, no awareness of what the questionnaires they use actually say, internally inconsistent indices treated as informative, negligible correlations reported as if they offered useful information etc. but it is still nice to see a challenge of sorts to the orthodoxy being put up.  I would give a more detailed critique of what they did but I don’t want to discourage them too much.  They should probably read this and this and this, though.

Posted by jonjayray on Sunday, November 20, 2005 at 10:46 AM in Psychology
Comments (1) | Tell a friend

Comments:

1

Posted by John S Bolton on November 20, 2005, 04:33 PM | #

The left and the right would disagree on whether government must have every bit as much authority as necessary to force the rich to share. This reveals the left as authoritarian. When pressed, they cannot admit to there being any limit on the authority officials may need to exercise to suppress the selfishness of the rich, and specifically regarding the impulse to share with the poor. It is even, under one aspect, true by definition; the rich are those who do not share as much as they could, according to leftist usage. The left can be graded in intensity, according to what other considerations, and how many of them, they will alow to limit the authority of officials to force the rich to share. The moderate left allows practical objections to the effect of excess authority reducing the amounts of redistribution that are possible. The hard left wants no limits to offcial authority to redistribute, even when this means less is avaialble to the poor.

Post a Comment:

Name: (required)

Email: (required but not displayed)

URL: (optional)

Smileys

You must prefix http://anonym.to/? to gnxp.com links...
e.g., http://anonym.to/?http://www.gnxp.com/...

Copy your comment to the clipboard or paste it somewhere before submitting
it just in case the software loses it because the session time has been exceeded.

Remember my personal information

Notify me of follow-up comments?

Submit the word you see below: (not needed for preview)


Next entry: Continuities in German socialism?

Previous entry: Life in the smorgasboardroom

image of the day

Existential Issues

White Genocide Project

Of note

Majority Radio

Recent Comments

Also see trash folder.

Bill commented in entry 'Free speech and open discussion issues' on 02/09/12, 10:05 AM. (go) (view)

webyLibeNeerb commented in entry 'Hart Attack' on 02/09/12, 09:29 AM. (go) (view)

Graham_Lister commented in entry 'Free speech and open discussion issues' on 02/09/12, 09:00 AM. (go) (view)

Dan Dare commented in entry 'Free speech and open discussion issues' on 02/09/12, 08:37 AM. (go) (view)

Graham_Lister commented in entry 'Free speech and open discussion issues' on 02/09/12, 08:10 AM. (go) (view)

Leon Haller commented in entry 'Free speech and open discussion issues' on 02/09/12, 08:05 AM. (go) (view)

Helvena commented in entry 'Free speech and open discussion issues' on 02/09/12, 08:04 AM. (go) (view)

The Socal group scam commented in entry 'Yo! Cop = Scum Cow!' on 02/09/12, 07:16 AM. (go) (view)

The Socal group scam commented in entry 'The Moral high ground?' on 02/09/12, 06:50 AM. (go) (view)

Hyman commented in entry 'Aquilon Speaks: Moscow 2010' on 02/09/12, 05:47 AM. (go) (view)

RES commented in entry 'Who caused the 2008 housing bubble to burst in the U.S.?' on 02/09/12, 05:44 AM. (go) (view)

Robert Reis commented in entry 'Free speech and open discussion issues' on 02/09/12, 04:07 AM. (go) (view)

Jimmy Marr commented in entry 'Bowery Goes Stark!' on 02/09/12, 12:27 AM. (go) (view)

anon commented in entry 'The communitarian critique of liberalism left and right' on 02/08/12, 11:18 PM. (go) (view)

Ivan commented in entry 'Bowery Goes Stark!' on 02/08/12, 10:51 PM. (go) (view)

Ivan commented in entry 'Bowery Goes Stark!' on 02/08/12, 10:28 PM. (go) (view)

Silver commented in entry 'The communitarian critique of liberalism left and right' on 02/08/12, 09:48 PM. (go) (view)

J Richards commented in entry 'The communitarian critique of liberalism left and right' on 02/08/12, 09:48 PM. (go) (view)

Mary commented in entry 'Anti-white ideology is like anti-biotic overuse' on 02/08/12, 09:24 PM. (go) (view)

J Richards commented in entry 'Bowery Goes Stark!' on 02/08/12, 09:04 PM. (go) (view)

Ivan commented in entry 'Aquilon Speaks: Moscow 2010' on 02/08/12, 08:15 PM. (go) (view)

uh commented in entry 'The communitarian critique of liberalism left and right' on 02/08/12, 08:09 PM. (go) (view)

Guessedworker commented in entry 'The communitarian critique of liberalism left and right' on 02/08/12, 07:52 PM. (go) (view)

uh commented in entry 'The communitarian critique of liberalism left and right' on 02/08/12, 07:48 PM. (go) (view)

jamesUK commented in entry 'Aquilon Speaks: Moscow 2010' on 02/08/12, 07:36 PM. (go) (view)

Jimmy Marr commented in entry 'Bowery Goes Stark!' on 02/08/12, 07:10 PM. (go) (view)

Graham_Lister commented in entry 'Aquilon Speaks: Moscow 2010' on 02/08/12, 06:49 PM. (go) (view)

uh commented in entry 'Bowery Goes Stark!' on 02/08/12, 06:45 PM. (go) (view)

uh commented in entry 'Aquilon Speaks: Moscow 2010' on 02/08/12, 06:27 PM. (go) (view)

marloe commented in entry 'The communitarian critique of liberalism left and right' on 02/08/12, 06:21 PM. (go) (view)

Ivan commented in entry 'Bowery Goes Stark!' on 02/08/12, 06:17 PM. (go) (view)

Graham_Lister commented in entry 'The communitarian critique of liberalism left and right' on 02/08/12, 06:08 PM. (go) (view)

Jimmy Marr commented in entry 'Bowery Goes Stark!' on 02/08/12, 06:07 PM. (go) (view)

Ivan commented in entry 'Bowery Goes Stark!' on 02/08/12, 06:03 PM. (go) (view)

Ivan commented in entry 'Aquilon Speaks: Moscow 2010' on 02/08/12, 05:53 PM. (go) (view)

General News

Science News

The Writers

Each author's name links to a list of all articles posted by the writer; the hashes link to authors' homepages.

Links

Endorsement not implied.

Controlled Opposition

Crime

General

Immigration

Islam

Jews

Nationalist Political Parties

Science

Whites in Africa