July 22, 2020
Thomas Edsall’s column in the Times today started out as follows:
“In the continuing debate over whether liberals or conservatives are more open minded, whether those on the left or the right are more rigid in their thinking, a team of four Canadian psychologists studied patterns of “cognitive reflection” among Americans.
They found that a willingness to change one’s convictions in the face of new evidence
was robustly associated with political liberalism, the rejection of traditional moral values, the acceptance of science, and skepticism about religious, paranormal, and conspiratorial claims.
Those who ranked high on a scale designed to measure the level of a respondent’s “actively open-minded thinking about evidence” were linked with the acceptance of “anthropogenic global warming and support for free speech on college campuses.”
Conversely, the authors — Gordon Pennycook of the University of Regina, and James Allan Cheyne, Derek J. Koehler and Jonathan A. Fugelsang of the University of Waterloo — found that an aversion to altering one’s belief on the basis of evidence was more common among conservatives and that this correlated “with beliefs about topics ranging from extrasensory perception, to respect for tradition, to abortion, to God.”
My reaction:
Is this something new? On the following pages I’ve reproduced some (pretty old now) definitions of Liberal and Conservative.
Liberal has always meant generous of spirit and open-minded. Basically, intelligent.
Conservative has always meant crabbed, closed-minded, averse to change. Basically, stupid.
You can go through almost any modern commentary and substitute “intelligent people” for “liberals” and “stupid people” for “conservatives” and all will make newfound sense.
For your reading pleasure, I’ve also included two bonus definitions.
The first is Tory – since that’s what most New World Conservatives really are – people who don’t really subscribe to the American notion that the accident of our birth, no matter how lofty, cannot be made into a personal accomplishment.
The second is Tax and Spend Liberal. I had to make this one up, although you hear it bandied about by stupid people.
MOE
M.I.C.H. – Modernity, Intelligence, Complexity, Humanity