Erratum to “Correlation not Causation: The Relationship between Personality Traits and Political Ideologies” American Journal of Political Science 56 (1), 34–51 - Verhulst - 2015 - American Journal of Political Science - Wiley Online Library

Erratum to “Correlation not Causation: The Relationship between Personality Traits and Political Ideologies” American Journal of Political Science 56 (1), 34–51 - Verhulst - 2015 - American Journal of Political Science - Wiley Online Library

The authors regret that there is an error in the published version of “Correlation not Causation: The Relationship between Personality Traits and Political Ideologies” American Journal of Political Science 56 (1), 34–51. The interpretation of the coding of the political attitude items in the descriptive and preliminary analyses portion of the manuscript was exactly reversed. Thus, where we indicated that higher scores in Table 1 (page 40) reflect a more conservative response, they actually reflect a more liberal response. Specifically, in the original manuscript, the descriptive analyses report that those higher in Eysenck's psychoticism are more conservative, but they are actually more liberal; and where the original manuscript reports those higher in neuroticism and social desirability are more liberal, they are, in fact, more conservative. We highlight the specific errors and corrections by page number below:

Pg. 39

Consistent with our conceptualization of ideology as a set of interrelated attitudes, we specified a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to capture three latent attitudinal dimensions from a Wilson-Patterson (1968) inventory: social attitudes (e.g., Gay Rights, Abortion), economic attitudes (e.g., Foreign Aid, Federal Housing), and defense/military attitudes (e.g., The Draft, Military Drill; see online Appendix 1), with higher scores indicating the more liberal response.

Pgs. 40–41

First, opposite our expectations, higher Ρ scores correlate with more liberal military attitudes and more socially liberal beliefs for both females and males.

…Further, we find a positive relationship between Neuroticism and economic conservatism (rfemales = −0.242, rmales = −0.239). People higher in Neuroticism tend to be more economically conservative. What is intriguing about this relationship is that it is in the direction of what past theories would predict (Fromm 1947; Wilson 1973), but opposite with more recent evidence (Gerber et al. 2010; Van Hiél, Pandelaere, and Duriez 2004). That is, neurotic people are less likely to support public policies that provide aid to the economically disadvantaged (public housing, foreign aid, immigration, etc). Moreover, Neuroticism is unrelated to social ideology (rfemale = −0.016, rmale = −0.050). This finding suggests that neurotic individuals cope with their anxiety by supporting more “conservative” economic policies rather than “conservative” social policies.

…Thus, it appears that people who are motivated to present themselves in a socially desirable light also present themselves as socially conservative.

…The analysis above extends the existing personality and politics literature in several important ways. Opposite our expectations, Ρ (positively related to tough mindedness and authoritarianism) is associated with social liberalism and liberal military attitudes.

Intriguingly, the strength of the relationship between Ρ and political ideology differs across sexes. We also find individuals higher in Neuroticism are more likely to be economically conservative. Furthermore, Neuroticism is completely unrelated to social ideology, which has been the focus of many in the field. Finally, those higher in Social Desirability are also more likely to express socially conservative attitudes.

Pg. 46

…Ρ is substantially correlated with liberal military and social attitudes, while Social Desirability is related to conservative social attitudes, and Neuroticism is related to conservative economic attitudes.

The error is important for descriptive purposes, but the main thesis of the paper, analyses, findings and theoretical contribution remain unchanged. The goal of the paper was to explore the nature of the covariance between personality and attitudes, and to test whether the relationship between several personality traits and political attitude dimensions was causal or correlational. The analyses rely on the magnitude of the cross-twin cross-trait covariation, and second moment of data, and are agnostic as to whether liberals or conservatives are higher or lower in any given personality trait. Thus, the direction of the correlation between the personality traits and attitudes was not relevant for our research question and subsequent analyses. As such, the main conclusions of the paper are unaffected. Specifically we find a pattern of relationships that implies a non-causal relationship between personality traits and political attitudes.

All You Need Is Toleration : The Freeman : Foundation for Economic Education

All You Need Is Toleration : The Freeman : Foundation for Economic Education

Many newly minted libertarians have come out of America’s indoctrination factories feeling a mix of guilt and sanctimony. They’re still libertarians, but they admonish you to “check your privilege” and caution that you may unwittingly be perpetuating a culture of oppression.....Now if you don’t think this victimhood-industrial complex exists, ask Jonathan Rauch. In his 1993 bookKindly Inquisitors, he argued that free speech was quickly being lost to politically correct censors—especially in higher education. Twenty-plus years later, Rauch says, free speech in the academy is virtually dead:
Unlike most workplaces, universities are at the heart of intellectual life, and so the bureaucratization of speech controls there is more disturbing. In American universities, the hostile-environment and discriminatory-harassment doctrines have become part of the administrative furniture.
And for their student bodies, so also have diversity training, sensitivity seminars, and entire majors devoted to inculcating the victimhood ethos—all of which allows victim groups to justify a dangerous promiscuity with power. That’s one reason libertarians should take caution.
....
we libertarians already have a virtue that works. It captures the best of our humane concern for others and discards the bromides, the claptrap, the unearned guilt of the dangerously collectivist “social justice” movement.
That virtue is toleration.
Toleration is what separates libertarianism from competing doctrines, at least when it comes to society and culture. If some principle of non-harm orients our political compass, toleration is a moral guide.
....
What has liberated great swaths of humanity is not just the idea that people should be as free as possible; it’s the idea that in order for this great pluralist project to succeed, we have to embrace a virtue that allows us to coexist peacefully with others who may not share our particular ideas about the good life (values, religion, ethnicity, culture, or lifestyle preferences). Classical liberals have always accepted the idea that people are seekers and strivers looking for something. Of course there are a billion paths to happiness, life meaning, and well-being. Accepting that, we have to put the pursuit of happiness first, which requires admitting that we’re all different, one to the next, and we will take different paths.
Toleration starts with conscientiously agreeing not to obstruct another’s path.
Our toleration is also dispositional. A more robust toleration involves a mien of empathy, respect, and open-mindedness. It requires us not just to leave other people alone in their pursuits, but also to consider their perspectives and circumstances. The toleration of social justice is often not so tolerant. It requires conformity, censorship, and consensus.
So, if by “check your privilege” one means try to imagine what life might be like for someone in different circumstances, then great. If by “check your privilege” you’re accusing someone of being part of an oppressor class just because she hasn’t been designated a victim, then you’ve thrown toleration out with the bathwater. This formulation seems to mean your rights and opinions are invalid and you have no real complaints or suffering because you belong to X group. Or, more to the point: You are obligated to pay because people who look like you in some ways did bad things at some point.....What Liberal Toleration Is Not
Our conception does not require envy or guilt to operate. Nor does it require state censorship or wealth redistribution. It doesn’t require that we adopt cultures and communities we don’t like, but rather acknowledges that those communities and cultures will emerge. Our conception of toleration requires only acknowledgement of differences coupled with that disposition to openness.
Our conception of toleration does not accept the murky idea of victim classes. The problem here is the term “class.” Some member of a class may not be a victim at all. Besides, and more to the point, accepting the idea of victim classes implies that there are perpetrator classes—that if group X has frequently been discriminated against, or abused outright, then all members of group Y are liable for those actions (and, indeed, it’s fair to assume their perspective is tainted).
What’s more, the common acceptance of the idea of a victim class can perpetuate a psychology of victimhood among the members of that class, which holds people back. Some theories of social justice go as far as to require that non-members of the victim class accept that they are victimizers by default. While it is possible to institutionalize mistreatment of a group, justice requires us to dismantle the rot in that institution and to stop putting people into groups at all, not to violate other groups for the sake of abstract redress, or to handicap the excellent, or to reward something irrelevant such as someone’s race.
Proponents of the idea of victim classes view “social justice” as a vague cluster of goods, words, and opportunities to be filtered and apportioned equally among people by an anointed few. What isn’t vague, though, is the power they demand and the privilege they mean to extract. By contrast, proponents of liberal toleration require only that you treat individuals with respect, and first, “do no harm.”
Our conception does not hypostasize or collectivize people—treating them as automatically deserving either special consideration or zealous sensitivity, which is supposed to accrue by virtue of the ascribed group membership. Such collectivism lobotomizes individuals. It robs them of their identities and pushes them to accept identities fashioned by others. It strips them of their individual circumstances. It thins their sense of personal responsibility. And it ignores the content of their character.
Our conception does not demand a perpetual pity party, nor invent reasons to be offended, nor cause one to contrive an invisible latticework of injustice that extends up and out in every direction. Instead, our conception embodies the liberal spirit of “live and let live.” The more people who think that way, the fewer victims—real and imagined—there will be. Toleration needs neither rectitude nor guilt, so demonstrations of piety are also unnecessary. It's a position that can be held by those who think all people are basically good, or that all people are basically lousy. But that means setting aside the business of sorting out victims (the righteous) and oppressors (the sinful).
Finally, as our conception does not require the ubiquity of injustice, it allows for the flourishing of real community. Real community needs real toleration, free speech, and the inevitable frictions that come along with our colliding perspectives. It is from those frictions that better ideas and more favorable consensuses can emerge—at least if you believe John Stuart Mill and Jonathan Rauch.
Taking Back Toleration
The old adage says: To a hammer, everything looks like a nail. To someone who has been educated in the victimhood-industrial complex, everything looks like social injustice.
Toleration might ask more of us sometimes, such as that we not only acknowledge the differences among people but to try to see things from others' perspectives (empathy). Taking on that view helps us consider how we might reduce all the frictions and figure out the kind of people we want to be. This is not a political doctrine, however. It’s more like remembering the golden rule. It’s about respecting one’s neighbor—be he Sikh or freak or breeder. It’s about acknowledging what evil, intolerant people have done in the past, but also moving on from it.
Toleration even requires us to put up with—politically, at least—the ugliest forms of expression. As Rauch reminds us, “The best society for minorities is not the society that protects minorities from speech but the one that protects speech from minorities (and from majorities, too).” And that’s hard. One has to listen to different voices, taking into account the circumstances of time, place and person, as opposed to treating people as caricatures. Whatever one’s intentions, we must remember that a lot of evil has flowed from forgetting that people are individuals.
Of course, none of this is to argue that racism or sexism or homophobia doesn’t exist, or to deny that people have been mistreated throughout history for reasons that seem arbitrary and cruel to us. It is not even to deny that people are mistreated to this very day—often for those same arbitrary reasons. Rather, my argument is intended to show that a libertarian principle of respect for persons requires toleration, not identity politics.
The great thing about libertarianism is that it is a political superstructure in which most other political philosophies can operate. No other political philosophy features such built-in, full-fledged pluralism. The other basic political philosophies have built-in asymmetries. Progressivism does not tolerate libertarians living as they wish, but libertarianism tolerates progressives living as they wish (with all the caveats about voluntary participation.) And as Hayek said about the conservative: “Like the socialist, he is less concerned with the problem of how the powers of government should be limited than with that of who wields them; and, like the socialist, he regards himself as entitled to force the value he holds on other people.”
So progressives are intolerant of economic freedom. Conservatives are intolerant of social freedom. Only libertarianism maximizes varying conceptions of the good. Nothing under libertarian doctrine precludes embedded communities of any political stripe, and in a free society, we ought to tolerate these clusters as long as they guarantee a right of exit. Indeed, our only requirement would be that if any such community is to persist, it should do so in a matrix of persuasion rather than of coercion.
If we take back toleration, we have a moral high ground that is both appealing to younger generations and works to the benefit of all people. We don’t have to live with the contradictions of progressive social engineers or with conservatives’ half-hearted deference to individual liberty. By practicing real toleration, we can dispel all the various "isms" while leaving people their life plans.
And that’s good enough for libertarianism.

Progressives: They have eyes but cannot see

Link: http://us6.campaign-archive1.com/?u=75ae2ab12d2fbdd86a007efa0&id=c67f5835d5

On December 26, I wrote a post entitled “Gun control supporters count those who have died; Second Amendment supporters count those who will live.“  Or, as Bastiat says, gun control advocates’ “theory is confined to that which is seen; it takes no account of that which is not seen.”  Gun control supporters are able to count those who have died, but they cannot even begin to imagine those whose lives were saved or never threatened.  Point them to a story about an off-duty deputy who was able to stop a mall shooter, and they’ll simply say “his aim was bad, so he wasn’t going to kill anyone anyway.”  To them, a story without dead bodies is no story at all.  You and I, however, count the dozens who survived.

Crime rates in liberal cities shockingly higher than in conservative cities - Orlando Political Buzz | Examiner.com

Link: http://www.examiner.com/article/crime-rates-liberal-cities-shockingly-higher-than-conservative-cities (via shareaholic.com)

A few years ago, the Bay Area Center For Voting Research listed the most conservative and most liberal cities in the United States. They did this by looking at how every American city with a population of at least 100,000 voted in the 2004 presidential election. Every vote for George W. Bush was counted as a "conservative" vote, and every vote for John F. Kerry counted as a "liberal" vote. Ballots cast for third party candidates were counted similarly, with votes for the Libertarian Party and Constitution Party nominees counting as "conservative" votes, and votes for the Green Party nominee, the Peace and Freedom Party nominee, and Ralph Nader counting as "liberal" votes.

Cities with more conservative votes than liberal votes are considered conservative cities, and cities with more liberal votes than conservative votes are considered liberal cities. Cities with the highest percentages of conservative votes were deemed the most conservative cities, and cities with the highest percentages of liberal votes were deemed the most liberal cities. Simple enough.

The 15 most conservative and 15 most liberal cities are listed below, along with their violent crime rates.

The 15 most liberal cities in the US:

- Detroit, Michigan - 24 violent crimes/1,000 residents

- Gary, Indiana - 15 violent crimes/1,000 residents

- Berkeley, California - 5 violent crimes/1,000 residents

- Washington, DC - 13 violent crimes/1,000 residents

- Oakland, California - 16 violent crimes/1,000 residents

- Inglewood, California - 8 violent crimes/1,000 residents

- Newark, New Jersey - 11 violent crimes/1,000 residents

- Cambridge, Massachusetts - 5 violent crimes/1,000 residents

- San Francisco, California - 7 violent crimes/1,000 residents

- Flint, Michigan - 24 violent crimes/1,000 residents

- Cleveland, Ohio - 14 violent crimes/1,000 residents

- Hartford, Connecticut - 13 violent crimes/1,000 residents

- Paterson, New Jersey - 11 violent crimes/1,000 residents

- Baltimore, Maryland - 15 violent crimes/1,000 residents

- New Haven, Connecticut - 15 violent crimes/1,000 residents

The national average is four violent crimes/1,000 residents. Every one of the 15 most liberal cities in the US has a higher violent crime rate than the national average.

The 15 most conservative cities in the US:

- Provo, Utah - 2 violent crimes/1,000 residents

- Lubbock, Texas - 9 violent crimes/1,000 residents

- Abilene, Texas - 5 violent crimes/1,000 residents

- Hialeah, Florida - 4 violent crimes/1,000 residents

- Plano, Texas - 2 violent crimes/1,000 residents

- Colorado Springs, Colorado - 5 violent crimes/1,000 residents

- Gilbert, Arizona - 1 violent crime/1,000 residents

- Bakersfield, California - 6 violent crimes/1,000 residents

- Lafayette, Louisiana - 8 violent crimes/1,000 residents

- Orange, California - 1 violent crime/1,000 residents

- Escondido, California - 4 violent crimes/1,000 residents

- Allentown, Pennsylvania - 6 violent crimes/1,000 residents

- Mesa, Arizona - 4 violent crimes/1,000 residents

- Arlington, Texas - 5 violent crimes/1,000 residents

- Peoria, Arizona - 2 violent crimes/1,000 residents

Again, let's note that the national average is four violent crimes per 1,000 residents. You'll notice that eight of the 15 most conservative cities have violent crime rates at or below the national average. Only two of the 15 have violent crime rates that are twice as high as the national average. The most dangerous conservative city (Lubbock, Texas) is safer than all but four of the liberal cities.

So there is a clear correlation here: Cities with a lot of violent crime tend to vote Democratic, while cities with relatively low levels of violent crime tend to vote Republican. But what is behind this discrepancy? Is it that conservative cities have tougher anti-crime laws than liberal cities, which work to deter violent criminals? Is it that conservatives are more likely to be armed than liberals, so cities full of conservative citizens act as a deterrent against violent crime?

Book Review: Jonah Goldberg’s “The Tyranny of Clichés”

Book Review: Jonah Goldberg’s “The Tyranny of Clichés”

via Bookworm Room by Bookworm on 7/19/12

It took me a long time to read Jonah Goldberg's latest, The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas. This is not because it's a bad or a boring book but, instead, because it's a deep and thoughtful book. I went into reading it expecting a sort of cheerful factual romp, a la his Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning and, instead, got a cheerful philosophical disquisition. After I engaged the higher part of my brain, however, I was able to enjoy and appreciate Jonah's inquiry into the intellectual fallacies that liberals use to claim the moral high ground and shut down serious discourse.


Jonah's premise is a deceptively simple one: Liberals, he says, have a set of clichéd expressions or ideas that they whip out alternately as a shield or bludgeon whenever their policies come under attack. I say "deceptively simple," because most of us, hearing that, will say, "Well, duh! We knew that. Whenever liberals say 'it's for the children,' you know they're trying to raise taxes or lower the age of consent for abortions." That's all true, of course, but Jonah points to numerous more subtle liberal tropes that many of us conservatives, especially those of us who are neo-cons, actually think have substance. They don't. Using his trademark wit and erudition, Jonah telling explains how these expressions are conversational dead-ends, meant to convince conservatives and independents that conservative ideas are small-minded, mean-spirited, greedy, and unkind.


A trip through the book's Table of Contents is instructive, because you can see how many cultural paradigms Jonah attacks. Jonah's first three chapters should be read in one go, since they are intertwined arguments. They are entitled, respectively, "Ideology," "Pragmatism," and "No Labels." They all attack one thing, which is the liberals' self-righteous contention that, while conservatives are blinkered by evil, fascist ideologies, liberals deal with political and social problems in a purely pragmatic way, one that raises them above primitive ideology and demands a "no label" world, in which the liberals' ideology-free pragmatism is given free rein.


You and I have all seen this line of thinking in action. It shows up in news stories that identify a conservative think tank as "a conservative think tank," but just call a liberal think tank "a think tank," thereby implying that the latter is free of ideological bias. Indeed, the whole of our media and academic world is permeated with the assumption that the norm is Left, and deviations from the norm are Right. We understand the concrete reality of this line of thinking, but Jonah takes us on a factual and philosophical journey to appreciate the flawed intellectual thinking that nevertheless is so effective in shutting down debate.


In the "Ideology" chapter, for example, Jonah takes us with him on a journey that covers that appallingly flawed WHO World Health Report 2000; the origins of the entire notion of ideology, which is a fairly recent intellectual construct; Burke and the French Revolution; and the Left's premature 2008 eulogies for conservativism, on the ground that the taint of ideology had met its match in Obama.  This is a lot of ground to cover, especially for someone like me, who is not entirely at home in the world of pure abstractions.  Jonah's delightful writing style lightens the mental burden, but cannot make it go away entirely.


The chapter on Pragmatism (which has as its companion the later chapter on Science) talks about the way American Progressives, since the turn of the last century, have constantly jettisoned tried and true economic, social, and political ideas in favor of an unending stream of behaviors focused on socialist goals. Progressives justify this to themselves, and to intellectual wannabes across America by claiming that their death grip on the sciences (both social sciences and the physical sciences that they bend to social science ends) blesses them with a "pragmatism," that transcends the petty ideology to which middle Americans cling so fiercely (along with their guns and Bibles, of course).


This is not light fare. But by saying so, I do not mean to dissuade you from reading the book. It is to warn you, instead, that even someone with an authorial touch as deft as Jonah's still has to go very deep to excavate and expose the rotten foundations underlying so much modern Leftist thought. I don't regret the effort it took me to read this book, just as I don't regret a vigorous workout. When I'm in process, I'm simultaneously working hard and enjoying myself; and when I'm done, I have the slightly euphoric feel of someone who has accomplished something important and beneficial.


If you're not in the mood for the heavy mental lifting in the first three chapters, skip them and go to the later chapters that focus more on specific expressions, rather than entire oeuvres of Weltanschauung. (And yes, I am very impressed with my ability to use two fairly obscure foreign words in a single phrase.) By doing so, you'll learn how to counter the silly liberal who says that everything conservatives believe is a "slippery slope" leading to an American Taliban; that liberal political policies advance the amorphous cause of "social justice;" that ours is a "living constitution" when liberals want judges to interpret it their way, but a sacred, untouchable document when conservatives suggest the amendment process; that "youth" is truth; or that all of the Western world's ills begin and end with the Catholic Church.


Along the way, you'll run headlong into delightful witticisms that had me laughing aloud. For example, in the chapter entitled "Spiritual But Not Religious," Jonah tackles the fatuous lefties who claim that approaching an abstract God through a structured, moral doctrine is stupid and dangerous, but that communing with crystals and worshipping Gaia is an act of spiritualism that makes them much more sophisticated than mouth-breathing church-goers. Or, as Jonah said

I love having conversations with people who deride organized religion as so much superstition and magic, but who don't have any problems with superstition and magic when it is disorganized.

Jonah's formulation is a much wittier, deeper statement than my trite "wishes are the atheist equivalent of prayers." As I told Jonah when I met him, I consider him to be the smarter, better-informed version of my brain.


As you read the book, please pay special attention to the chapter on the "Middle Class," because it dovetails so perfectly with the current campaign and, even more, with Obama's fateful statement that "If you've got a business — you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen." When Liberals aren't bloviating about doing things "for the children," they're assuring us that all of their policies will save the Middle Class – a conveniently moving target, the center of which happens to be wherever a liberal policy drops the most taxpayer money. To the extent those policies occasionally drop hard cash in the laps of those who actually do work and strive, however, Jonah points out that it's not a good thing. Easy money destroys people's innate ability to build and do and make things happen. (In this regard, you might also want to read John McWhorter's Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America, which points out that it's probably no coincidence that black families began to implode precisely when well-meaning Great Society social workers headed out to black communities to urge them to get on welfare because the white government "owed" it to them.) Says Jonah:

The problem with the contemporary liberal approach is that it amounts to middle-class welfare. Not only can we not afford it economically, the middle class cannot afford it morally. To miss out on the opportunity to cultivate the [Adam] Smithian virtues is to eat the seed corn of social capital. Liberals to be sure don't see it that way. They see it as an effort to make life easier, to expand the realm of "positive liberty" that John Dewey envisioned and FDR hoped to implement with his "economic bill of rights." Here's Nancy Pelosi explaining how the Affordable Care Act (i.e., ObamaCare) would stimulate the economy: "We see it as an entrepreneurial bill, a bill that says to someone: 'If you want to be creative and be a musician or whatever, you can leave your work, focus on your talent, your skill, your passion, your aspirations because you will have health care. You won't have to be job locked.


Never mind that the causal link between socialized medicine and entrepreneurism is not exactly firmly established. The larger point is that the liberal vision of an advanced society is one where it is finally rich enough to liberal the middle class from their comfortable bourgeois lifestyles and to subsidize their conversion to bohemian ones. [snip] In other words they are going to win their centuries'-old war on the middle class by subsidizing the bohemian lifestyle to the point where it no longer pays to be bourgeois. It probably won't work in the long run. But in the short run, it will bankrupt us all, not only financially, but morally as well. (p. 203.)

On Twitter, Conservative (or Liberal) by Association - NYTimes.com

Link: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/21/on-twitter-conservative-by-association/ (via shareaholic.com)

Network analysis can do a great deal.

Active users of Twitter are revealing their political leanings even if they are careful not to post about politics, a group of researchers at Duke University says.
Their research stems from an effort to rank 2010 primary candidates by political ideology. The researchers — David B. Sparks, Frank J. Orlando and Aaron S. King — analyzed whom politicians were following on Twitter, and who followed them. They then ranked the politicians on a political spectrum from the far left to the far right; the results dovetailed with ideological ranking systems based on the politicians' voting records.

The research, which will be presented in April at the Midwest Political Science Association conference, also ranked public individuals and media organizations. Kelsey Grammer's Twitter account, for instance, consist largely of reposted messages from people calling for a reunion of the television show "Frasier." But the analysis still identified Mr. Grammer, who supported George W. Bush and has more recently thrown his energy into a conservative television network, as right of center. It plotted Katie Couric of CBS News as only slightly less liberal than the Daily Kos, a blog for Democratic political strategy. You can see the complete rankings of Congressional candidates, media figures and political organizations here.

This strategy did not prove useful when applied to corporations like Wal-Mart or Starbucks (or The New York Times) because their connections were too broad and not personal enough, Mr. Sparks said. But for individuals, he said, it can be quite telling.

Are Liberals Smarter and Nicer? Just Ask Academia

Are Liberals Smarter and Nicer? Just Ask Academia

via Big Journalism by Brad Schaeffer on 2/8/12

A recent Livescience.com article appearing in Yahoo! News highlighted a study by psychologist Gordon Hodson of Brock University in Ontario in which a nexus is supposedly found between being unintelligent and conservative and being racist. I presume then that, as conservatives and morons tend to be more racist, the dots between them are connected? The story not only provided an overview of the study but also links to other similar studies which appear to back up Hodson's conclusions. Well then, there it is. We always knew that liberals are smarter and more tolerant. We just needed a study to prove it.

Gordon Hodson

At best, psychology is an inexact science, as the human brain is the most complex system in the known universe, and to try to understand what makes it tick is daunting if not impossible. But layer on top of that the possibility that the researchers themselves may harbor a bias that leads them to subconsciously steer their studies towards reaching pre-determined conclusions, and you have the makings of a sham science project … with predictable results.
Hodson's complete study is not available for free online, so I readily admit I only know what has been made public. Apparently the researchers offered a list of questions which would measure participants' left or right leanings based upon the answers. For example, one measure in defining "conservative" is gauging one's level of agreement with the statement "schools should teach children to obey authority." Then they overlaid these results with responses to questions with overtly racial overtones such as "I wouldn't mind working with people of other races." I guess if you answer "yes" to authority and "no" to working with others not like you, you are a conservative racist. Conversely, if you replied "fight the power, maaan" and "I want my office to look like a rainbow, my brother," then you are a tolerant and cognitively well-adjusted liberal. Oh, if only the world were so simple.
But the world is not simple.  Even the questions I offer as examples have nuance. For instance, I was never taught by my Marine Corps dad (as conservative as they come) to unconditionally obey authority. In fact, he revered the Founding Fathers, for whom declaring our independence was an enormous thumb in the eye of the crown's authority. I was, however, taught to respect authority. There is a subtle difference. When it comes to blindly obeying, it depends on the situation. If it involves heeding police instructions at an intersection, then by all means I do it—unless I discover that the cops are beating a man to death with night sticks and demanding I join in.  As to working with other races, that depends on the individuals. Are they college-educated or street thugs? Are they going to speak a foreign language in my presence all day, making me uncomfortable? This applies to whites as well, though. Are they respectable or trailer trash? So it is not race per se that will make me choose the complexion of my co-workers but who they are. How does one distill these textured concepts into a questionnaire that may pigeonhole me as racist if I check box A instead of B?
Speaking of complexity and texture: to me, the salient feature of this article and only real admission that this study may not be fair, or even complete, is this parenthetical afterthought: "(These questions measured overt prejudiced attitudes, but most people, no matter how egalitarian, do hold unconscious racial biases; Hodson's work can't speak to this 'underground' racism.)"
Well, I can speak to it. "Underground racism" is an antiseptic term for  "how liberals behave as opposed to what they profess." One can insist until blue in the face that they are color-blind (and answer as such on Hodson's study earning them a gold star), but the moment they can afford to, they will move as fast as they can to an all-white neighborhood to raise their kids. They will insist  they do not see the world through multi-colored glasses, but when a presidential candidate calls Barack Obama the "food stamp president," immediately those whom I bet this study would label as the non-racists jump to the conclusion that such a statement is racially charged. It is not. It is a straightforward fact that more Americans of all shades have joined the food stamp rolls during Obama's watch than ever before. One can argue the economics underscoring this trend, but only those who either consciously or subconsciously associate food stamps with blacks would see racism in such a statement where none exists. So who are the true bigots again? I refer you to Bill Maher for an illustration of the concept.
"Underground racism" comes in many forms, some of which are quite insidious, such as  paternalism of the state. Also, there is that ever-so-subtle patronizing so common in liberal arts academia and mainstream journalism. For example, some can argue that those who oppose "Black History Month" could be racist. Yet, what does promoting such an idea say about those who envision and proffer it?  As black actor Morgan Freeman once said in a moment of racial clarity that has since abandoned him, only one who views the world through the prism of color would see 'black history' at all and not simply American history. Freeman asked the poster-child of elitist race-pandering Mike Wallace, who also happens to be Jewish, what month is "Jewish History Month"? There is none. Does Wallace want one? Emphatically, he replied no.Yet he defends Black History Month why, exactly? I wonder how Wallace and his peers would have scored on Hodson's study—a study in which the very definition of racism is, if not off-sides, then at least incomplete.
In a way, even well-intentioned academics could be falling victim to some odd cousin of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle with such studies. I find it somewhat unfeasible that a liberal (call it a hunch) who views conservative ideology with hostility could possibly create a study that does not have this bias seep into the methodology making truly impartial findings beyond reach. As anyone who has seen the liberal bias of  the mainstream media in action can attest (see Obama 2008 campaign), it is almost impossible to separate personal beliefs from such human nature studies far removed from the more precise physical sciences that attempt to link a political ideology to both intelligence and an ingrained, if unpleasant, human characteristic.
Another attempt to explain this human characteristic is provided by Ms. Pappas through a link to a piece about the various "isms" and their relation to societal rather than cognitive influences as studied by Georgia Tech psychologist Paul Verhaeghen. "There's one idea that people tend to associate black people with violence, women with weakness, or older people with forgetfulness because they are prejudiced. But there's another possibility that what's in your head is not you, it's the culture around you," Verhaeghen said in a statement.
To me there is a glaring problem with Verhaeghan's thinking at its core and reveals a pre-determined idea of what counts for an "ism" that surely influences his research. Whatever their origin, his examples  are not expressions of bias at all. They are associations based upon empirical fact, regardless of how uncomfortable or politically incorrect.
In the United States, blacks do commit an alarmingly disproportionate number of violent crimes relative to their population. It is therefore not 'prejudiced' to associate blacks, who though only 18% of the population commit half of all homicides, with violence more than whites, but rather a reflection of a sad reality. If I am prejudiced for saying this, then what of Jesse Jackson who admitted: "There is nothing more painful to me… than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery. Then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved."
And it is not a stereotype to label women as physically weaker than men on the whole. If you think otherwise then you have never watched a sporting event in your life. There is a reason why we have the WNBA, women's tennis, women's golf, etc. Again, that is just seeing life as it is, not as one would want it to be.
Yet again, one aspect of old age for many seniors is indeed memory loss (as I am starting to discover myself, unfortunately). Yet again, one aspect of old age is indeed mem—ach, you see?
So the question really comes to mind: how can one possibly make a study of what is "prejudiced" or not when its very definition I believe to be suspect or at least  in the eye of the one running the study. What one researcher describes as a "stereotype" I would argue is just recording what your own eyes see and what the data confirms. In some circles this is known as a reality check.
And based on his faulty notion of prejudice, in the end we see a supposedly impartial researcher's true left-wing agenda seep through in the conclusion he drws from his biased study. After deciding that what you see, hear, and read is making us bigots rather than observers, Verhaegan offers something that would make George Orwell cringe: "There's a reason for political correctness," he says. "At least, as studies suggest, it might be a good idea to not put stereotypes out there too clearly, because if you do, people will internalize them." Oh yes, we need even more stifled dialogue. Maybe that will get us to racial nirvana.
Do such studies ever leave liberals holding the short intelligence straw? Actually, in May 2010, the Journal of The American Institute for Economic Enlightenment did a study trying to find clues to economic literacy which included links to political ideology. It asked eight questions about economics such as "Agree/disagree: rent control leads to housing shortages" (Disagree=economically unenlightened). The results found that the least economically enlightened defined themselves as "progressive/very liberal." The most economically astute were "very conservative."
So what does this pro-conservative economics survey tell us? Are liberals, in fact, economic nit-wits? Well, I'm not sure, but I know I didn't read about it on and the ABC-affiliated Yahoo! News. And I highly doubt even if they did grudgingly report the findings, they would have led with something so damning as "As is to be expected, liberals are economically illiterate." One thing it could mean is that such surveys involving correlations between intelligence, racism, economics and politics could be as inexact as the science of psychology itself… and as prone to bias as the researchers clamoring for relevance—and perhaps, even, also seeking a bit of reassurance that their own left-wing political beliefs stem from a superior intelligence to match their attitudes.

A word from “Zeb” Zobenica

A word from “Zeb” Zobenica

via Power Line by Scott Johnson on 1/5/12

(Scott Johnson)
Reader "Zeb" Zobenica writes to comment on the OWS phenomenon:

Watching, and listening to, the #OWS crowd on TV provoked a "flashback" to the time I was readying myself to enter the corporate world.
I was a Marine jet pilot with an engineering degree, a wife, two young kids, a dog…and a cane. After sixteen months of "paint and repair" at a naval hospital following a plane crash, and an additional half-year of rehab, it was decided that I would never sit in an ejection seat again. It was time to meet a new challenge, sell myself to strangers…and put "grits" on the table with a pay check earned in the private sector.
While listening to the #OWS protestors, the realization that "these people are clueless" reverberated between my tinnitus-challenged ears. Memories harkened me back to the approach I used when confronted with job-seeking. Career change preparation included choosing where I wanted to live, proximity to extended family, salary considerations for a person with my education and experience. Research was done on several potential employers in the aerospace industry…corporate structure, plant locations, product lines, customers, hiring and layoff cycles, and an assessment of what I could contribute to their "war effort." Letters were written expressing an interest in their company and stating confidently the belief that I would be an asset to their corporation. The interviews that followed revealed a candidate in a gray business suit, tie, spit-shined shoes, hands and hair groomed, who knew something about the outfit he was hoping to work for, yet faced with the need to assure an employer that my gimpiness would not affect job performance.
Fast forward to #OWS. Is this what the self-esteem movement has produced? Everybody gets a Happy Face? Nobody keeps score? There are no winners and losers? Trophies are for showing up? This is a "me" generation on steroids. They pursued academic degrees that promised little or no return on the investment and now find themselves deeply in debt…Where was the parental advice? School counselors? Was there no consideration given to job opportunities in the field, salaries offered, or a perfunctory cost-benefit analysis performed? Did they not understand that, unless one's applying for a job in a tattoo parlor or a chop-shop, body paint and piercings are not frequently found in the market place? To most employers, such appurtenances suggest a person with issues, consumed with self, an in-your-face personality who may not play well with others. Real life has owners, bosses, and co-workers who are not impressed with ear lobes festooned with "bagels" nor with potential employees who make a habit of reminding others of their rights. The wise human resources manager avoids these sea-lawyers like the plague. Out-of-court settlements are now a cottage industry and it's wise to keep these entitlement-gurus off the company payroll.
Zuccotti Park, in microcosm, took on the characteristics of a bacterial colony in a Petri dish. The population starts small, there is space, and plenty to eat. As the numbers multiply, demand for nutrition increases, and the by-products of consumption began to accumulate, inevitably leading to a toxic environment and disease. Street lesson #1…every organism, whether biological or physical, in order to function, requires a source of energy and produces waste. Chardonnay and pasta become piss and crap; gasoline becomes exhaust. It must be dealt with. It is a local issue affecting those in the Petri colony. It is not of planetary concern. Once handed-off to Gaia, she is well prepared to process what is produced.
Free food, or for that matter, free anything, attracts freeloaders, even in a Zuccotti Utopia. The workload on the gourmet cooks increased and they soon felt put upon. The chefs, after toiling for 18 hours daily, said enough is enough. Street lesson #2…there is no such thing as a free lunch. There exists among our species lazy, slothful slackers who demand access to the fruits of someone else's labor. It's hard-coded in the DNA.
Societies require organization; divisions of labor; systems to produce, manage, and allocate resources, resolve differences, and provide security. This means some become money managers, others collect trash. Some become bureaucrats, others stand before them with hat-in-hand. Who, or what, determines which role individual utopians get to play? Merit? Muscle? Big stick? Bloods or Crips? Street lesson #3…life isn't fair.
"Give peace a chance? Can't we all get along?" Apparently not. Utopia had to come to grips with stolen laptops, broken drums, rapes, and murder. Street lesson #4…there is a reason that cities have police departments and nations have armies. "Kumbaya" is a song, not a policy.
It may be said, simply and forthrightly, that "life is about choices and choices have consequences." This common sense slogan was apparently not taught to the #OWS crowd along the way. They've shown the world their tats, tits, lobes, and asses. We've heard their bongos, read their signs, and smelled their garbage, 'grass', urine, and excrement.
We, the real 99%, are not impressed!
R.M. "Zeb" Zobenica
Capt., USMC (Ret.)

I thought you might enjoy that.

Liberal Fascism is the new black

Liberal Fascism is the new black

via Patterico's Pontifications by Karl on 10/3/11

[Posted by Karl]

Over the weekend Rep. Paul Ryan reviewed The Price of Civilization, the new book from Jeffrey Sachs, which apparently argues that America needs to adopt Euro-socialist policies, rather than learn from the misery inflicted by the worst of democratic socialism there.  Rather than rehash that debate, I want to focus on the totalitarian and liberal fascist aspects of the book Ryan mentions.

According to Ryan: "The Constitution imposes too many restrictions on government interference for Mr. Sachs, and we'd be better served if we moved toward a 'French-style' constitution that consolidated the executive and legislative branches and empowered experts to help us manage the 'complexity of our economy.' "  Ryan also notes that Sachs echoes the arguments of French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Utilitarian philosophy of Jeremy Bentham.  Ryan does not mention that Rousseau's theory of the general will is the forerunner of modern totalitarianism and Bentham's idea of Utopia was a prison under his total control.

It is worth noting that Sachs is not considered a fringe character.  He has been named one of TIME magazine's "100 Most Influential People in the World" twice and Vanity Fair magazine put him on its list of 100 members of the New Establishment.  Moreover, Sachs is hardly alone in indulging these sorts of thoughts on the left.

Ed Driscoll collects a few examples.  Gov. Bev Purdue (D-NC) recently suggested "we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won't hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover."  Former Obama budget director Peter Orszag wrote a piece for TNR arguing "we need to jettison the Civics 101 fairy tale about pure representative democracy and instead begin to build a new set of rules and institutions that would make legislative inertia less detrimental to our nation's long-term health."  (Ezra Klein's defense of Orszag shows the disdain for bicameralism or checks and balances you would expect from someone who finds the Constitution too old and confusing to be anything more than a political football.)  Lastly, Driscoll recalls NYT columnist Thomas Friedman's desire that we be China for a day (a proposal that would likely ensure that we were China for a very long time).  Although Driscoll also found a tantalizing video of Pres. Obama finding tempting the idea of acting on his own, you have to read the NYT to find Obama complaining that it would be so much easier to be the president of China.

But wait… there's more.  US Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) delivers a harangue that could have been titled, "All Your Wealth Are Belong To Us," and the video goes viral.  The left lapped up a relatively unvarnished argument that the people are slaves to the state.  When Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) was asked "Of every dollar that I earn, how much do you think I deserve to keep?", there is a reason she did not have an answer.  When Fareed Zakaria pines for the US to adopt a parliamentary system, he is in tune not only with Sachs, but also Woodrow Wilson, who was not a big fan of separated powers or checks and balances.  When a legion of lefty pundits argue that Republican "obstruction" of Obama's agenda shows that "the system is broken," they reveal an Orwellian contempt for the system of separated powers our Founders envisioned (and argued for in no less than five of the Federalist Papers) for the protection of our liberties.

This Fall, it seems that liberal fascism is the new black — and it likely will remain in style for the foreseeable future.  After all, progressives think they are losing and black is the color for mourning clothes.
–Karl

Liberalism's Death Croak

The American Spectator : Liberalism's Death Croak

While inspecting the body politic, one encounters one clear sign that Liberalism is dead. It is the condition of our political discourse. Polite commentators note that the dialogue is "rancorous." Some say toxic. Actually it is worse than that. It is nonexistent.

From the right, from the sophisticated right, there is an attempt to engage the Liberals. Budget Chairman Paul Ryan just did it by presenting a budget that cried out for intelligent response. President Barack Obama's response was to invite Chairman Ryan to sit in the front row for Obama's "fiscal policy" speech at George Washington University. There, Obama heaped scorn on an astonished Ryan and his work. He did not even mention Ryan's name. This is what Obama calls an "adult" debate?

....

Yet now something is different. I blame the Liberals. They do not engage their adversaries. They have been able to do this because they have controlled the public media, the Kultursmog. The smog reported their grotesqueries with the utmost seriousness. Thus if you were visiting from a foreign country you might think Glenn Beck a major force in American politics and you might be gravely frightened of Beck and of Fox News. But Beck is only an entertainer and he is leaving Fox News. Some say under duress. Sarah Palin and her whole family might sound like the Marcos family of the Philippines, but she is from Alaska and out of office.

Or take the recent imbroglio between Krugman and the Heritage Foundation. Heritage recently ran Ryan's numbers through a perfectly mainstream, non-political, economic model, the U.S. Macroeconomic Model developed by Global Insight. Krugman responded in a New York Times column by impugning Heritage's integrity, claiming Heritage used a model that would force the conclusions that Heritage wanted. Heritage's Bill Beach called Krugman out in an open letter. Now it has been over a week and not a peep of response from Krugman. As I say, Liberalism is dead, and its nigh unto totalitarian control of media has ended. Fox News, talk radio, and the Internet have arrived. Raise a toast to free speech.

In Praise of Alan Dershowitz

» In Praise of Alan Dershowitz: Is He America’s Last Honest Liberal? - Big Government

I’m not the least bit surprised that Professor Dershowitz has come to the aid of Governor Palin. Professor Dershowitz treats everyone with the utmost respect and civility. Why should the governor be exempt? 
I know this civility is commonplace because I have experienced it firsthand. Professor Dershowitz once plucked me from an obscure prep school, and after a debate in front of the school, offered me a job as a research assistant. There, next to him in his office and working together against the enemies of Israel, he treated me – an often brash, 17-year-old conservative, goyim – as an equal and a friend. Professor Dershowitz wrote me a glowing letter when I applied to college and I haven't the slightest doubt that his name on my resume has opened many doors for me. 
On domestic politics, Professor Dershowitz and I seldom agree. But he always disagrees respectfully, giving equal attention to all sides of a debate. His politics notwithstanding, Professor Dershowitz is the consummate gentleman-scholar. 
That’s why I hope that my old mentor and friend switches sides should Governor Palin, whom he has now defended, run for president. I am certain that Professor Dershowitz will disagree with Palin on a great many issues, but on one of the most important – standing for truth and defending America and her allies – Professor Dershowitz is as resolute as Governor Palin. Given President Obama's repeated hostility to Israel, perhaps it is time that supporters of Israel -- of all political stripes -- recognize this unique moment we have before Iran gets the bomb and act accordingly at the ballot box.

Economic ignorance on the left

From the Wall Street Journal:

 

Who is better informed about the policy choices facing the country—liberals, conservatives or libertarians? According to a Zogby International survey that I write about in the May issue of Econ Journal Watch, the answer is unequivocal: The left flunks Econ 101.

Zogby researcher Zeljka Buturovic and I considered the 4,835 respondents' (all American adults) answers to eight survey questions about basic economics. We also asked the respondents about their political leanings: progressive/very liberal; liberal; moderate; conservative; very conservative; and libertarian.

Rather than focusing on whether respondents answered a question correctly, we instead looked at whether they answered incorrectly. A response was counted as incorrect only if it was flatly unenlightened.

Consider one of the economic propositions in the December 2008 poll: "Restrictions on housing development make housing less affordable." People were asked if they: 1) strongly agree; 2) somewhat agree; 3) somewhat disagree; 4) strongly disagree; 5) are not sure.

Basic economics acknowledges that whatever redeeming features a restriction may have, it increases the cost of production and exchange, making goods and services less affordable. There may be exceptions to the general case, but they would be atypical.

Therefore, we counted as incorrect responses of "somewhat disagree" and "strongly disagree." This treatment gives leeway for those who think the question is ambiguous or half right and half wrong. They would likely answer "not sure," which we do not count as incorrect.

In this case, percentage of conservatives answering incorrectly was 22.3%, very conservatives 17.6% and libertarians 15.7%. But the percentage of progressive/very liberals answering incorrectly was 67.6% and liberals 60.1%. The pattern was not an anomaly.

The other questions were: 1) Mandatory licensing of professional services increases the prices of those services (unenlightened answer: disagree). 2) Overall, the standard of living is higher today than it was 30 years ago (unenlightened answer: disagree). 3) Rent control leads to housing shortages (unenlightened answer: disagree). 4) A company with the largest market share is a monopoly (unenlightened answer: agree). 5) Third World workers working for American companies overseas are being exploited (unenlightened answer: agree). 6) Free trade leads to unemployment (unenlightened answer: agree). 7) Minimum wage laws raise unemployment (unenlightened answer: disagree).

How did the six ideological groups do overall? Here they are, best to worst, with an average number of incorrect responses from 0 to 8: Very conservative, 1.30; Libertarian, 1.38; Conservative, 1.67; Moderate, 3.67; Liberal, 4.69; Progressive/very liberal, 5.26.

Americans in the first three categories do reasonably well. But the left has trouble squaring economic thinking with their political psychology, morals and aesthetics.

....

The survey also asked about party affiliation. Those responding Democratic averaged 4.59 incorrect answers. Republicans averaged 1.61 incorrect, and Libertarians 1.26 incorrect.

....

Mr. Klein is a professor of economics at George Mason University. This op-ed is based on an article published in the May 2010 issue of the journal he edits, Econ Journal Watch, a project sponsored by the American Institute for Economic Research. The article is at: http://econjwatch.org/articles/economic-enlightenment-in-relation-to-college-going-ideology-and-other-variables-a-zogby-survey-of-americans

 

‘Conservative Like Me’: Challenging Patrick Goldstein’s Willful Ignorance

This would be an interesting test to run. I wonder if there would be any takers...

‘Conservative Like Me’: Challenging Patrick Goldstein’s Willful Ignorance

For over a year, Big Hollywood contributors have been documenting Hollywood's intolerance towards all things conservative — both when it comes to our ideas being given a fair shake in the industry's product and, most importantly, the intolerance towards individuals whose beliefs stray from the liberal plantation. Again and again, people have come to us to share the stories of how their social and political beliefs hurt their show business careers in ways both big and small. And to their great credit, most of these individuals have said so on the record; with their names and faces prominently displayed in the upper left-hand corner of their Big Hollywood testimony.

Without fail, every single time someone tells their story here, the insulting snark hits from every corner of the web, dismissing out of hand our ever growing list of witnesses to this new blacklist. Sure, the Gawkers and the Farkers are entitled to their fun. They peddle in shallow superiority and there are plenty of buyers. Welcome to Al Gore's creation.

Lately, however, Patrick Goldstein, a film writer at the L.A. Times, has been taking his own partisan shots. Tuesday, after Jonathan Kahn came out in the Wall Street Journal, there was this:

[I]t's seems like quite a stretch to say that Kahn's politics have held him back. But that's what all too many conservatives do. They put the blame for their stalled careers on liberal Hollywood, when lack of marketable talent might be a far more likely source for the problem.

What's curious about this argument regarding Kahn needing "marketable talent" is how Goldstein willfully ignored this part of the WSJ story:

One person stunned to hear of Mr. Kahn's double life as a tea-party troubadour is top Hollywood record producer and Grammy Award-winner Walter Afanasieff. The two have worked on projects for years and are now midway through writing and producing an album for a young singer.

And what part of the following confused Goldstein?:

"And I'm just finding out about this now? Oh my God, I'm getting chills hearing it," Mr. Afanasieff says, when informed of his friend's sideline. "I mean, he's a member of a huge, Democratic, liberal organization called the Los Angeles entertainment business."

After digesting the news, he adds, "It's very wise he's going incognito."

Just to be clear: Goldstein writes about the entertainment business, Afanasieff works in the entertainment business. Goldstein thinks someone with a years-long working relationship with a Grammy-winning producer lacks marketable talent. Goldstein also thinks he knows more than a Grammy-winning producer about whether or not going incognito is wise for entertainment industry conservatives.

But "marketable talent" is a canard. When a well-known marketable talent like Andrew Klavan made claims similar to Kahn's, Goldstein didn't pause for a second to summon a different kind of wrist-flicking dismissal:

But where's the evidence that conservatives are denied jobs because of their political beliefs? For all the vague charges being bandied about, I've never heard any specific examples of suppression in action. If you're a conservative and can offer me chapter and verse, I will be happy to take up your cause.

So before I issue the challenge, let's start with a question:

Where's your curiosity, Patrick? Where's your healthy skepticism about the powerful? Most of the people that are talking about this are doing so openly. Not only are there more than one but they're telling the same story. Hmm? My understanding is that your job is to cover the film industry, to report and break stories, and yet your reaction to witness after witness after witness is never anything more than borderline contempt and complete disbelief.

Have you or anyone at the L.A. Times even bothered to try and contact Klavan or Kahn… Or anyone?

Of course not.

That kind of testimony upsets the comfortable narrative. Why, the very idea is too much for the progressive mind to bear. Conservatives aren't discriminated against, they discriminate!

This is what skeptical looks like.

Since you're obviously incapable of coming to grips with that, I'm going to challenge you instead to prove us wrong. No one's asking you to prove a negative. On the contrary, this challenge doesn't require you to rely on anyone not already in love with Hollywood.

THE PATRICK GOLDSTEIN 'PROVE BIG HOLLYWOOD WRONG' CHALLENGE

Your Test Subjects — Lefties Who Love Them Some Hollywood:

Now we both know that throughout Tinseltown there are hundreds of character actors who aren't quite stars but work pretty steady. We see them in bit parts on television, on the big screen and in commercials. We recognize their faces but don't know their names. And they're not rich, not by any means. But they have competent representation, a solid if unspectacular resume, and spend most of their days running around town to audition and take meetings with potential employers who see thousands of people a month and therefore won't remember the last time they met our test subject.

This will be your pool — a group of fairly established actors who live paycheck to paycheck. Mature adults who know how the world works.

Best of all, they're just like you: Liberals who love liberal Hollywood.

The Challenge — 'Conservative Like Me':

You will find ten test subjects who meet the above criteria and for the next two months they will document what it's like to go undercover as they make the employment rounds as open conservatives in Hollywood.

The Pitch:

Patrick Goldstein: Hi, I'm Patrick Goldstein with the L.A. Times. You have a sec?

Ken: For the L.A. Times? Course.

PG: This may sound a little unorthodox, but I'm looking for some willing subjects to help with an investigative piece we're doing. People like yourself who pick up a half-dozen one or two line gigs a year.

K: Obviously, I'm always looking for that featured role, but sure.

PG: You're familiar with McCarthyism, the blacklist and all that?

K: Insane times.

PG: Well, we want to find out if something similar to that is happening today. A number of people have gone on the record claiming that their political beliefs are costing them work in the industry–

K: That's terrible–

PG: –and we would like your help in discovering whether or not that's true.

K: Of course. What do you need me to do.

PG: For the next two months we'd like you to, in a way, go undercover–

K: Cool.

PG: Wonderful. Can you tell me a little bit about what a normal week is like for you, work-wise. How many meetings, auditions…

K: Well, pilot season's over, so things have slowed. A good day right now is two meetings.

PG: So 5 to 10 a week?

K: Give or take.

PG: Perfect. Your assignment is that for the next two months, whenever you're around people you don't already know in the entertainment business — especially people who can hire you — you're going to pretend that you're a conservative Republican.

K: *inaudible*

PG: Don't get me wrong, no one's asking you to be strident or obnoxious. Nothing like that. We'll have you slap a "Newt 2012″ sticker on your car, and once a week you'll spend the day wearing a Sarah Palin t-shirt and sit in the waiting rooms reading Sean Hannity's new book.

K: *throat clear*

PG: But that should be okay because people in your circle wear Obama t-shirts to meetings and auditions, right?

K: Well, yeah…

PG: Again, we don't want you to be obvious. Don't bring up politics unless someone else brings it up. But if they do bring up a particular issue, you'll politely disagree and take the conservative side. In other words, all we're asking you to do is be as openly and politely conservative as they are liberal. You are now pro-life, opposed to same-sex marriage, and a Global Warming skeptic.

K: Uhm.

PG: Nothing crazy. You're not a birther or calling Obama a Marxist or anything. In fact, we want you to be as thoughtful and considerate as possible as you explain why you didn't vote for Obama and why you think the health care bill is a debacle, the Iraq War was worth fighting, and how much fun you had at last weekend's Tea Party.

K: I should probably talk to my agent about this.

THE STORY:

The first story you could write is about the reaction to this proposal. Since it's only crazy conservatives who believe right-of-center beliefs hold them back, why would anyone object to playing an open conservative for a couple of months as they search for a job.

Then after you find ten subjects, have them keep a diary and write the final story about how wrong all those nutjobs at Big Hollywood are.

——-

This is what curiosity looks like.

My idea may not be perfect. But I'm not a journalist — and the last person who called me one got knocked on his ass — but you're looking for "chapter and verse" and I'm telling you that we've already done our job by getting our folks to go on the record. Now I'm daring you to do your job. Lay down the lazy snark and act like you work for a newspaper.

MEMO TO THE REST OF YOU:

All over the Internet I see people who claim to work in the industry laughing at those of us who believe holding openly right-of-center views can hurt a Hollywood career. If we're so wrong, try my Conservative Like Me challenge. Just take two months to prove us wrong by convincing your co-workers, bosses, potential employers, clients and potential clients that you've changed your political views.

Prove us wrong. Replace the Obama sticker with with a Jesus fish.

Prove us wrong. Tell your potential client you were listening to Glenn Beck on the way over.

Prove us wrong. Wear your Factor Gear.

Prove us wrong. Talk about the pro-life rally you went to over the weekend.

Don't be obnoxious, don't be rude, don't be strident… Just be one of us.

Oh, and that revulsion you're feeling at just the thought of pretending you hold a conservative belief…? That proves our point.

You lefties are all about empathy and sympathy and walking a mile in someone's shoes.

Until you put up you can all shut up.

Look what just got cited as a reference?

The Southern Poverty Law Center!

From Discover The Networks:

  •   Monitors the activities of what it calls “hate groups” in the United States
  •   Exaggerates the prevalence of white racism directed against American minorities
....
As part of the Intelligence Project, the SPLC website currently features a map of "Active U.S. Hate Groups." Deeming racism the the nearly exclusive province of the "radical right," Intelligence Project reports mostly ignore groups on the left. And although SPLC denounces extremist religious organizations like the Jewish Defense League and Westboro Baptist Church, no mention is made of any extremist Muslim groups. (In 2007, SPLC identified 888 separate "active hate groups" in the United States.)

To be sure, the link I was handed as evidence of the growth of hate groups was extremely sparse with respect to methodology.

Maybe if they spoke slower and used smaller words?

Gerard Alexander writes at the Washington Post asking why liberals are so condescending.

Every political community includes some members who insist that their side has all the answers and that their adversaries are idiots. But American liberals, to a degree far surpassing conservatives, appear committed to the proposition that their views are correct, self-evident, and based on fact and reason, while conservative positions are not just wrong but illegitimate, ideological and unworthy of serious consideration. Indeed, all the appeals to bipartisanship notwithstanding, President Obama and other leading liberal voices have joined in a chorus of intellectual condescension.

....

This worldview was on display in the popular liberal reaction to the Supreme Court's recent ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Rather than engage in a discussion about the complexities of free speech in politics, liberals have largely argued that the decision will "open the floodgates for special interests" to influence American elections, as the president warned in his State of the Union address. In other words, it was all part of the conspiracy to support conservative candidates for their nefarious, self-serving ends.

It follows that the thinkers, politicians and citizens who advance conservative ideas must be dupes, quacks or hired guns selling stories they know to be a sham. In this spirit, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman regularly dismisses conservative arguments not simply as incorrect, but as lies. Writing last summer, Krugman pondered the duplicity he found evident in 35 years' worth of Wall Street Journal editorial writers: "What do these people really believe? I mean, they're not stupid -- life would be a lot easier if they were. So they know they're not telling the truth. But they obviously believe that their dishonesty serves a higher truth. . . . The question is, what is that higher truth?"

In Krugman's world, there is no need to take seriously the arguments of "these people" -- only to plumb the depths of their errors and imagine hidden motives.

The thing is, conservatives generally believe liberals are mistaken.  Liberals generally believe conservatives are evil.  They are wrong, but in their case, it is by deliberate design.