Are people conservative because they are wimps or because they are intellectually stupid?

[samsingh]

I can't make up my mind. I'm beginning to think they are both. They're also perpetually scared.

Being scared turns them into conservatives as they think they are protecting their property and keeping it out of the hands of others.

Being intellectually inferior (e.g. stupid), they can understand that they are wrong and backing policies that only hurt them (witness the idiots voting for Romney who will do nothing to enrich the lives of anyone below the top 10 percent of the top 10 percent).

Being wimps, they act like crybabies when the left has no choice but to fight back and fight hard (witness the poor crybabies on the news channels complaining about the President's mean commercials calling Romney out to release his tax returns like any other prospective candidate has in recent memory).

i think repugs are scared, stupid, and wimpy.

16 votes, 1 pass | Time left: Unlimited
	Repugs are scared
	1 (6%)
	Repugs are stupid
	4 (25%)
	Repugs are wimpy
	0 (0%)
	Repugs are all three
	11 (69%)
	1 DU member did not wish to select any of the options provided.
Show usernames Disclaimer: This is an Internet poll

[sadbear]

1. I'd like to believe they're stupid, but...

deep down, I have a feeling they're just scared (of a lot of different things.)

[Quantess]

2. They aren't all alike, though.

Something many of them have in common is willfully ignorant.

[RKP5637]

3. I think they are all 3, but most reasonably intelligent people can

often overcome scared and wimpy, especially when logical reasoning is presented to them. Therefore, although I think there is a component of all 3 involved, I tend to weight "stupid" more heavily.

And, although you did not list it, I think some people are basically conservative because of brain function ... there have been studies on this. Google it some if not familiar with the studies ...

That all said, some people are just plain F'en stupid, and many with high IQ's can fall into this category.

[Initech]

4. My theory is that they all scored low on South Park's TMI scale.

Thus turning them into the maniacal, psychotic, women hating, homophobic raging maniacs that they are.

[turtlerescue1]

5. Individually one or more of the three.

But I think afraid and closed-minded and self-righteous. Byrd's words: Deceived me into thinking I had something to protect.(My Back Pages)

Yet some of them are herd cows letting someone else make their decisions and being okay with that.

[RKP5637]

6. Herd cows! Excellent description! n/t

[retread]

11. I hate it when people do this and here I am doing it!

Not the Byrds' words but Bob Dylan's.

However, regardless the author, very apt.

[turtlerescue1]

19. You're right

but I had it on a Byrds' album.

[Speck Tater]

7. Other: A large percentage of ordinary Republicans

vote they way they do simply because they don't really pay attention to what's going on. They're not really stupid, just easily mislead as a result of their own inattention.

[samsingh]

8. they certainly are self-absorbed, looking our for their own interest, and afraid that someone will

take their money or something. Which goes back to they're afraid.

[Speck Tater]

9. Well, I can't really disagree with that.

The Republicans I know (all family members) are certainly on the paranoid side. Or at least borderline hyper-vigilant.

[samsingh]

10. exactly!

[Proud Liberal Dem]

29. That sounds like my mom

she has a strange overriding fear of "different" despite, when we talk about actual policies, she seems like she understands- on some level- that Republican policies aren't necessarily all that great for most people like her/us.

[PassingFair]

12. 4 S's

Scared
Stupid
Superstitious
Selfish

Any of the above, or any combination of the above,
and you could be dealing with a Republican.

[DefenseLawyer]

13. I think most are sociopaths

to some degree.

[Dirty Socialist]

38. Only 4% of People Are Sociopaths

But most sociopaths are Republican, IMO. According to studies, either you're sociopath, or you're not.

I think a lot of Republicans are not stupid, but politically they think with their reptilian brains, which include base survival instincts and fight-or-flight syndrome.

I think that the top of the Republican Party (like Limbaugh, Norquist, Rove and Cheney) are infested with Sociopaths.

[begin_within]

14. Selfishness is the root of it.

[FSogol]

16. Exactly. Selfishness.

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." John Kenneth Galbraith

[standingtall]

15. A mixture of

Greed, Racism,Selfishness and stupidity. They constantly vote against their own interest. They've been convinced automobile workers make to money while at the same time believing Ceo's cannot make enough. They worship millionaires. They believe one day they will be millionaires. The reality is most people will never be rich, but considering the average republican voter is about in their 60's it just makes it even more stupid. The selfishness comes into play when repukes propose destroying medicare, and social security.

They will say anyone over 55 we will not touch your benefits. but anyone under that age is screwed. Then they rush to the voting booth to vote for repukes, because they got theirs, and screw everybody else.

[Walk away]

28. That about sums it up except for the really stupid ones....

who think they are the ones being used by the folks who "want something for nothing" (code for black or brown skinned). I am meeting a lot of them lately. I had a neighbor arguing with me about the Democrats wanting to raise his taxes and give the money to people who don't want to work for a living. Then I find out he has been on unemployment for two years because his wife worked and he stayed home to provide free child care! When I suggested he was getting something for nothing he simply couldn't make the connection.

[Tace]

17. Morally Depraved

From what I've been reading on this thread, it appears that we've missed the option of "depraved."

I was raised by two right-wing nutters, and I can tell you that, while "all of the above" is true, it misses the crux of the apostrophe.

Modern Republicans and their followers are morally depraved.

[samsingh]

18. i should have put that in.

[MadHound]

20. They are *gasp* human beings,

I've known conservatives who were intelligent, and certainly not wimps, nor scared of life. I've known Democrats who were indeed stupid, wimps and scared of life.

In short, we are all human, exhibiting human traits. Human frailties and foibles aren't politically based, they are simply, ultimately all too human.

One other thing I also know that there are conservatives who say the very same thing you did about Democrats and liberals.

We're all human, let's not let that get lost in the mix.

[samsingh]

22. the facts speak for themselves - rush avoided the draft, John Kerry volunteered to go to Viet Nam

look at the crying from the conservatives that they are being treated harshly by the Democrats in this election cycle. Where were these so-called high road conservatives when John Kerry was being Swiftboated or when coulter spews her venomous bullshit about liberals?

repugs and conservatives, for the most part, are gutless, stupid, liars and hypocrites.

[bigwillq]

21. Most are a combo of all 3 (nt)

[eridani]

23. Stupid and wimpy, no.

Why did you leave off "sociopath"?

[samsingh]

25. sociopath is very accurate as well

[ellisonz]

24. Whiners. n/t

[GusFring]

26. selfishness and fear. They're highly educated repukes. Hell, Sununu went to MIT.

[Live and Learn]

27. I vote for psychopathic and\or ignorant. nt

[The Second Stone]

30. People vote what they think is right and/or their interest

The fact that an outsider like me thinks that most conservatives vote against their own interests out of poor critical thinking skills combined with being successfully propagandized into those thinking patters is really just my opinion. It's their right to do that. If I want it changed, I need to see that people are better educated with critical thinking skills and then provide counters to the propaganda. It's a democracy.

As for the 1%, some of them do actually have conservatism in their personal selfish best interest. But many of them actually think the right thing to do is vote Democratic, like Warren Buffet.

[Populist_Prole]

31. 'I'm with stupid'. Here's why

For the same reason a few others have said so far: All those other flaws can be mitigated or kept in check by intelligence. Being uninformed, willingly or otherwise just lets other human failings take the forefront and have a life of their own.

Anecdotally, the conservatives I know ( some are friends, some are co-workers ) who are so, due to lack of depth of thought/critical thinking or just plain mental laziness ( not necessarily "stupid" ) I can tell this because I've engaged them in discussion enough times, over a long enough period to come to my opinion on the matter.

[Mz Pip]

32. Authoritarian personality types

come in all levels of intelligence.

While there certainly are authoritarian left people out there, most authoritarians seem to be conservative.

To paraphrase John Stuart Mill - Not all conservatives are stupid but most stupid people are conservative.

[slackmaster]

37. Authoritarianism is certainly not exclusively under the umbrella of conservatism

We see extremely authoritarian "progressive" ideas posted constantly on these forums.

While there certainly are authoritarian left people out there, most authoritarians seem to be conservative.

It depends on where you look. On DU most authoritarians are pretty far to the left.

A Chinese co-worker once said to me "A left jack-boot up your ass feels no better than a right jack-boot up your ass.

He's a smart man.

[samsingh]

40. thats true

[slackmaster]

33. Michael Shermer's column in the latest Scientific American explores the question

In a nutshell, the tribal nature of parties and the divisiveness of our politics can be explained in evolutionary terms.

...Why are we so predictable and tribal in our politics? In his remarkably enlightening book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (Pantheon, 2012), University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues that to both liberals and conservatives, members of the other party are not just wrong; they are righteously wrong—morally suspect and even dangerous. “Our righteous minds made it possible for human beings,” Haidt argues, “to produce large cooperative groups, tribes, and nations without the glue of kinship. But at the same time, our righteous minds guarantee that our cooperative groups will always be cursed by moralistic strife.” Thus, he shows, morality binds us together into cohesive groups but blinds us to the ideas and motives of those in other groups.

The evolutionary Rubicon that our species crossed hundreds of thousands of years ago that led to the moral hive mind was a result of “shared intentionality,” which is “the ability to share mental representations of tasks that two or more of [our ancestors] were pursuing together. For example, while foraging, one person pulls down a branch while the other plucks the fruit, and they both share the meal.” Chimps tend not to display this behavior, Haidt says, but “when early humans began to share intentions, their ability to hunt, gather, raise children, and raid their neighbors increased exponentially. Everyone on the team now had a mental representation of the task, knew that his or her partners shared the same representation, knew when a partner had acted in a way that impeded success or that hogged the spoils, and reacted negatively to such violations.” Examples of modern political violations include Democrat John Kerry being accused of being a “flip-flopper” for changing his mind and Republican Mitt Romney declaring himself “severely conservative” when it was suggested he was wishy-washy in his party affiliation.

Our dual moral nature leads Haidt to conclude that we need both liberals and conservatives in competition to reach a livable middle ground. As philosopher John Stuart Mill noted a century and a half ago: “A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.”

For full column see http://www.michaelshermer.com/2012/06/the-science-of-righteousness/

[Laura PourMeADrink]

34. wimpy doesnt fit to me ...should be greedy or stupid

[chknltl]

35. How the right wing brain works

(This article is likely germane here).

"There really is a science of conservative morality, and it really is vastly different from liberal morality. And there are key lessons to be drawn from this research."

http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/154607/how_the_right-wing_brain_works_and_what_that_means_for_progressives/?page=entire

[JustAnotherGen]

36. Intellectually Lazy

Lack curiousity, love authority

[samsingh]

39. they have no empathy