The Tyranny of Clichés: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas (34 page)

Of course, it shouldn’t be a surprise that the whirligig spit out a refined version of the garbage shoved into it. Again, there’s surely some merit to the idea that our psychological wiring or our genes contribute to our political worldview. But the idea that it deeply informs our ideological precepts is deeply problematic. As I write this the Republicans are being routinely denounced for their “radical” desire to “fundamentally change” America’s social contract by reforming Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. America’s most prominent liberals have a white-knuckled grip on the status quo and fear change as ferociously as any conservative ever did. They spew poetry about the “legacy of FDR” and suggest that anyone who doesn’t agree is somehow unpatriotic. Does that make them conservatives?

The market, which conservatives and libertarians want to radically expand at the expense of government, is the most powerful force for change in human history, Christianity included. And yet the supposed “market fundamentalists” are terrified of change? We are constantly told that conservatives are enthralled to extreme ideological notions and yet the whirligig says that we “eschew theory.” Please.

The clearest sign that this is all a con built on a lie masquerading as science is that the overwhelming majority of this “research” seeks to find why
conservatives
are the way they are. A truly dispassionate approach would
yield as many papers trying to decipher why the hell liberals are the way they are. In other words, all of this works under the assumption that liberals are normal, and conservatives are abnormal.

In fairness, some researchers do assert that liberals are the deviants—the evolutionarily superior deviants. Satoshi Kanazawa of
Psychology Today
argues that liberalism is genetically abnormal and its rise is a direct result of the fact that liberals are smarter than conservatives. He defines liberalism “in the contemporary United States as
the genuine concern for the welfare of genetically unrelated others and the willingness to contribute larger proportions of private resources for the welfare of such others
” (emphasis in original). And because mankind evolved in close-knit hunter-gatherer tribes such a worldview is “genetically novel.”

Kanazawa goes on to write that, “apart from a few areas in life (such as business) where countervailing circumstances may prevail,
liberals control all institutions
. They control the institutions because liberals are on average more intelligent than conservatives and thus they are more likely to attain the highest status in any area of (evolutionarily novel) modern life.” It’s an engaging essay to be sure, but it’s also barmy. It assumes that institutions designed to attract ideologically like-minded people are proof of liberal intellectual superiority because they attract and retain ideologically like-minded people.

The Achilles’ heel of his argument can be found in his parenthetical concession that there are a “few areas in life (such as business)” where his theory falls apart. Why is business—a huge sector of American life—a contradiction to his thesis? The reason should be obvious: The institutional ideological filters do not screen out conservatives. In business, the bottom line is, well, the bottom line and not an affinity for social engineering, liberal group think, or progressive do-goodery. As a result there’s no bias against conservatives. Liberals can succeed on Wall Street if they don’t let their liberalism get in the way of profits. Conservatives can succeed on Wall Street if they don’t let their conservatism get in the way of profits. The same goes for many institutions not driven by profit motives, like the military, law enforcement, engineering, and the hard sciences. In short, Kanazawa’s argument makes complete sense if you ignore all of the things that better explain the phenomena he’s describing: Culture, history, sociology, and plain old facts. Anybody who’s actually looked
at how academia, Hollywood, or publishing works understands that the gatekeepers aren’t simply keeping stupid conservatives out; they’re keeping conservatives out, period.

There are other problems with this argument. Christianity, while genetically novel, is not novel in a historic sense, and it is by his definition intrinsically liberal. After all, at the core of Christianity is the faith that we are all children of God. Also, it is a wonder that Kanazawa never considered the implications of his argument when it comes to issues of race. Blacks are woefully underrepresented in the leadership of institutions. Replace “conservative” with “black” and you have, on liberalism’s own terms, a quintessentially racist argument. He might respond that there are institutional biases against blacks. But that would raise some real problems, too. After all, why should such biases exist if these institutions are run by liberals? The response would have to invoke all sorts of arguments and facts that reside outside of his crude genetic reductionism. Well, the same is true for conservatives, perhaps even more so. Liberal institutions have dedicated their vast brain power to attracting more minorities into their ranks, and to date they’ve failed. But they also spend considerable portions of their intelligence on keeping conservatives out of their institutions and they’ve succeeded.

The evidence for this bias is broad and deep. According to a 2005 tally, registered Democrats at Stanford and Berkeley outnumber registered Republicans by a ratio of 7 to 1. In all the California schools surveyed, the ratio between Democratic and Republican professors of neuroscience is a staggering 13-1. Only the departments of sociology, ethnic studies, and performing arts are more lopsided.
¹⁰
Psychologist and author Shawn Smith responding to Kanazawa writes that the field of psychology, “which is unquestionably dominated by liberals, has developed an ugly habit of falsely maligning the political right. Through respectable-looking ‘research’ we sling mud with flawed data and tendentious methodology.”
¹¹

“These bogus studies,” he continues, “build on each other to create an inbred, incoherent body of literature that will be cited with unquestioning faith by the next conservative-bashing researcher. And there are plenty of them. A simple PsycINFO search for the word ‘Democrat’ returns 324 articles. ‘Republican’ yields more than double, at 688 articles. Clearly, psychologists
have deemed conservatives worthy of a special level of research. The bulk of that research is ‘unflattering,’ in the words of Professor Richard Redding, J.D., Ph.D.”

Frank Sulloway, the coauthor of “Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition,” demonstrates how this bogus research becomes self-justifying. In a
Los Angeles Times
story about a different study—which he touted as significant, not surprising since it bolstered his own findings—Sulloway declared, “There is ample data from the history of science showing that social and political liberals indeed do tend to support major revolutions in science.”
¹²
There’s much stupidity here, given that many of the political liberals he’s referring to held views that would mark them as conservatives on any of the F-scale type tests. Moreover, as Saletan notes, “When new ideas turn out to be right, liberals are vindicated. But when new ideas turn out to be wrong, they cease to be ‘revolutions in science,’ so it’s hard to keep score of liberalism’s net results.”
¹³

Indeed, a more evenhanded statement would be: “There’s ample data from the history of science to show that liberals tend to support every fancypants new idea that comes down the block, including both successful ones like the pasteurization of milk, and incredibly evil ones like forced eugenic sterilizations.” And a more honest researcher would ask: “Why are liberals always keen on heralding the Next Big Thing without any skepticism?”

As with any institution or field cosseted by groupthink, all additional biases become self-fulfilling. Already some of the scientists involved in this much hyped research have set up political consultancies where they promise to not only test brains for ideological leanings, but advise politicians and similar clients on how best to navigate all of the abnormal minds out there.
¹⁴

The fact that liberals are more likely to embrace this stuff might be an inducement for the scientists involved to tell their potential clients—and boosters in the press—what they want to hear. And the fact that liberals are open-minded about a scientific endeavor that confirms all of their biases only reinforces the notion that liberals are open-minded and “proscience.”

The hypocrisy of liberals in all of this is beyond even quantification through meta-analysis. Liberals routinely insist it is outrageous to speculate
about the genetic basis or heritability of intelligence or other traits among different races and sexes, while at the same time they are giddy to entertain the notion that conservatives have broken brains—based solely on the fact that they are conservatives. One can certainly understand the trepidation about some of these taboo subjects. But how on earth to explain the enthusiasm for studies that in effect medicalize political differences?

The short answer is that this is just the latest in a long string of examples of the Left looking for ways to dismiss opposing arguments rather than grapple with them. According to science, conservatives believe those things because, like pedophiles and psychopaths, they just can’t help themselves. And once you’ve taken that to heart, it becomes all the easier to understand why conservatives reject science when it comes to more prominent ideological priorities of the Left. Conservatives aren’t skeptical about global warming because there’s any science on their side; it’s simply because they’re hardwired to be Neanderthals. Indeed, since a great many liberals—like a great many conservatives—don’t grasp the complexities of many scientific questions, they simply take it on faith that their experts are right, and since we all know liberals believe in science, that must mean that conservatives do not. Everything is so much easier when you have a god made in your own image on your side.

19

YOUTH

T
here is a little discussed fact, well established in the social science literature: Young people tend to be stupid. In fact, as a statistical matter, the younger you are, the more likely it is you will be ignorant and, frankly, dumb. While there’s a lot of noise in the data, it’s clear that all the way at the left end of the
x
axis every newborn person is what psychometricians call “a complete moron” and that condition only improves as you get less young.

This is not to say that we are born “blank slates” as René Descartes suggested. We do come with a lot of preloaded software, but that’s mostly in the form of our operating system. Socrates’ dialogue with Meno and the film
Baby Geniuses
notwithstanding, we simply don’t
know
much when we are born. And it takes time to load our hard drives. The current scientific consensus is that the human brain doesn’t finish developing until the age of twenty-five. Until then—and some would say even after—our brains
are a battlefield between cognition and glandular impulses. Even young geniuses—those whiz kids who discover new chemical compounds, solve ancient mathematical conundrums, invent new places to put cheese on pizza—tend to be noticeably dimmer in other spheres of their lives. They make poor romantic decisions, overeat food that is bad for them, buy cars they can’t afford, and wear Members Only jackets on first dates. Some studies have even found that large numbers of them vote for Ralph Nader.

Now, it’s not entirely young peoples’ fault; they were born that way. Moreover, they tend not to care for the simple reason that, all things being equal, it’s a lot more fun to be young than to be old. Of course, that’s not always true. Young people are also meaner to each other than older people. This is particularly sad because young people are vastly more insecure and sensitive than older people.

It helps if you think of youth as a drug. “Young people are in a condition like permanent intoxication,” explained Aristotle, “because youth is sweet and they are growing.” F. Scott Fitzgerald concurred. “Everybody’s youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.” When you’re a baby, everything is just wild. It’s like you’re high all the time. Your mood swings are crazy. Everything tastes so, so, so good, or so, so, so bad. Even the most trivial objects—car keys! A box of Kleenex!—can elicit joy. Liberated from every social convention, you see nothing wrong with soiling your pants, hurling food, picking your nose, or throwing a temper tantrum at the slightest insult or offense. In childhood, the high levels out a bit. You’re slightly more open to reason. But you’re still like a dog finding joy in incredibly simple things, like running around for no apparent purpose.

But you’re still pretty dumb, though. Your financial literacy is close to zero. Throwing away your life savings on candy or comic books seems entirely reasonable. Jumping off tree limbs, playing with matches, running with scissors: It doesn’t occur to you that this is all idiotic behavior. But again, you don’t care because by adult standards you’re higher than a moon bat.

Teen years are both better and worse. Even as your brain is starting to work out the basics of cause and effect and your long-term time horizon extends from hours to days to, if you’re really mature, weeks, your body is
doing all sorts of bizarre things. Like a stoner who can’t contain his excitement over the prospect of watching a
Dr. Who
marathon with a case of Krispy Kreme donuts and an economy-size jug of off-brand chocolate milk, your ability to prioritize your time and energies is woefully impaired. Sure, at school you can learn about long division, the pluperfect tense, and crop rotation in the fourteenth century, but you’d much rather talk about the Situation on MTV’s
Jersey Shore
. Or you might be a more substantive lad or lass and commit yourself to more serious fare, like multiplayer video games or perhaps even reading a book, such as Frank Herbert’s
Dune
. After all, they do say that the Golden Age for science fiction is sixteen.