“US, UK research: Thick kids more likely to become bigots“.
Ouch. I’ve often thought that today’s conservatives weren’t the brightest bulbs on the whole, and wondered whether there was some causal link there, but to have it bluntly spelled out like that is pretty damning.
Maybe these studies should be publicized a lot more. Nobody wants to be labeled a dunce, so it might cut down on racism, homophobia, and Tea Party Republicans all at once. 😉
(I have to point out that this refers only to today’s conservatives. Conservatism was a respectable position twenty or thirty years ago, it has just been hijacked more recently by the anyone-different-must-be-destroyed crowd, and the politicians willing to pander to them.)
Glad you added that last paragraph, as one wouldn’t want to lump together good conservatives, like Winston Churchill, who was a pretty smart man, with people like George W. Bush and the Tea Party dim-wits who make the shrub look reasonable by comparison. 😉
I don’t know, or know of, any “good conservatives.” I simply know that the term “conservative” used to be an honorable political opinion, rather than the bigotry, racism, homophobia, and outright idiocy that has passed for conservatism in the last few decades.
That’s not conservativism, the preservation of existing society, it is radicalism, the attempt to make a society into a xtian theocracy. Frank Zappa used to say that about the Republicans, and people thought he was nuts (he was called that on CNN by one of their commentators for saying that), but I think he was right.
Though I should note that the late FZ was a little nuts in other ways. (Naming your kids “moon unit” and “dweezel”?!)
He was certainly different. 🙂
I can’t disagree with you, but I don’t think it’s a conscious attempt on most peoples’ parts. Most such people are just trying to make things like they were when they were younger, when no one talked about or acknowledged the things that now make them uncomfortable: people who are foreign, or atheist, or homosexual, or essentially different in any way. Since those things weren’t talked about or acknowledged, they didn’t exist, as far as those people were concerned.
Which might explain why it’s primarily dumb people who espouse such opinions. The turban-wearing immigrant living down the street, or the gay son of a neighbor, won’t stop existing because people don’t acknowledge their existence, and anyone with any level of intelligence knows that.
Well, they could always do like the Nazis did and stuff them all in ovens. That didn’t go over too well though in the end though.
That’s why irrational people have an advantage over the rest of us: they’re willing to do crap like that. Fortunately, the rest of us significantly outnumber them, so the only way they can get enough power to do that sort of thing is when we can be distracted and divided, then intimidated into silence — that’s how the Nazis came to power in Germany.