Tag Archives: Liberals

January 25, 2012 · 12:23 am

Political Divisions Between Conservatives, Liberals Have a Genetic Basis

I’ve said this many times:  Conservatives look backwards with fear, while Progressive/Liberals look forward with hope.

Now there seems to be scientific evidence to back up my observations.

All I can say is, if it is Genetic and they can’t help themselves, I will try to be more understanding and accepting….

To do so, all I ask is that they accept the same Genetic basis for homosexuality and be equally as understanding and accepting…

Seems fair to me….

I encourage you to click the link and read the entire article from The Huffington Post:

If you walk away from holiday dinners fuming that conservative Uncle Morton just can’t see your point of view, or that liberal Aunt Betty just doesn’t get it, a new finding may make it easier to cool your jets. According to the study, conservatives and liberals pay attention to their environments differently, meaning the two sides of the political spectrum quite literally don’t see eye-to-eye.

Conservatives pay more attention to negative stimuli compared with liberals, the study found.

“They’re essentially monitoring things that make them feel uncomfortable, which does feel fairly consistent with conservative policies, actually,” study researcher Mike Dodd, a psychologist at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, told LiveScience. “They tend to confront things head-on that they view as threats, things like immigration and so on.” [10 Significant Political Protests]

Dodd was quick to note that the kind of stimuli a person pays more attention to does not make them better or worse than someone of another political persuasion. But the findings could suggest a biological basis for political views.

“Based on your biology, you might be experiencing and processing something in a fundamentally different way from someone else,” Dodd said.

via Political Divisions Between Conservatives, Liberals Mirror Reactions To Negative Stimuli.

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January 16, 2012 · 10:05 pm

The Evolution of One Southern Liberal or Some Thoughts on Martin Luther King Day

I’ve spent the day on planes traveling on a business trip, but I can’t let today go without commenting on Dr King’s day….

Airline travel is so exhausting, I’m taking the lazy way out and reposting a post from my other blog that I put up last year.

It’s still one of my favorites…

 

As we approach the Holiday recognizing the contributions of Dr. King, I always tend to think about where we were, where we are and where we have yet to go. To me, this is a day to stop and think. And remember.

As a Southerner of a certain age, I just can’t let this day pass without comment. I don’t see how anyone of my generation can.

I grew up in the South before integration and during the Civil Rights Movement. I’m not sure if I even spoke to a black person, other than our maid, before the schools were integrated when I was in the 5th grade. People seem to forget the South in the early 1960’s was like South Africa under apartheid. It was a very separate and scary place. Everyone–and I mean everyone– had their place and society tried to keep them in it.

I think the late, great Molly Ivins said it best. Molly once wrote: “I believe all Southern liberals come from the same starting point — race. Once you figure out they are lying to you about race, you start to question everything.”

That was certainly the case for me. Realizing the falsities of racism made it possible to question many things, including homophobia, and to grow into acceptance and happiness about who I am today. This realization made it possible to meet and get to know people who have made my life much richer than it would have been without them in it. It made me value the need to learn and explore ideas, people and places that many people I knew wanted to ignore or discount. It made me think and grow.

Dr King once said: “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” Well said. That was, and sometimes still is, our biggest danger.

But, thankfully, a lot of us asked questions. We still do. Some of us are still trying to learn and figure things out. We have come a long way but have a long way to go. That’s why it’s so vital we ask questions and don’t accept simple answers. That we get to know and talk to people who aren’t like us. We sometimes discover they really are like us. That leads to more questions…

Racism is still very much with us. Don’t ever think the Teabaggers aren’t about racism. They are. They just may not even be able to admit that to themselves. If they could ask questions, they would ask why they weren’t upset about George Bush taking us from a budget surplus to a horrendous deficit. Instead, they blame Obama…

You figure that one out.

I did.

 

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January 4, 2012 · 7:59 pm

Michele Bachmann vs Julia Sugarbaker

This is flying around Facebook right now, but I loved it so much, I wanted to repost it here….

It’s short and quite wonderful….

The Julia Sugarbaker character really sums it all up perfectly- at least from my perspective.

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April 12, 2011 · 10:40 pm

Reclaiming the Politics of Freedom | The Nation

Another great article from The Nation…

The Conservatives really are PR geniuses.  They also have Street Smarts.

The Democrats have to look to history to frame their arguments in ways that have worked before.  This article has some good advice….

They also have to get over their fear of the GOP yelling “class warfare.”  The Class War is already on and the Middle Class is losing….

We must also change the argument about government. Government need not be a source of constraint, as conservatives claim. Nor is it designed to protect citizens from the vagaries of the market, as many liberals claim—a formulation that depicts citizens as needy and passive and opens liberals to the charge of paternalism and condescension. When government is aligned with democratic movements on the ground, as Walter Reuther and Martin Luther King Jr. understood, it becomes the individual’s instrument for liberating herself from her rulers in the private sphere, a way to break the back of private autocracy.

In forging his realignment, Roosevelt was careful to identify the enemy not as a political party but an economic aristocracy. Throughout the 1936 campaign, he barely mentioned Alf Landon. Instead, he denounced the Liberty League and the businessmen it represented. Realignments in America are like that: Jackson railed against the Bank; the Republicans ran against the slaveocracy; Reagan campaigned against the liberal elite. Part of this is strategic: it’s easier to peel away voters from the opposition if you can show that it is not their party you oppose but the interests it represents, which are not theirs. But part of it is substantive, reflecting a conviction that the task at hand is not simply to defeat a party or win an election but to free men and women from a malignant social form. If we hope to forge a comparable realignment, we must stop talking about the Tea Party or even the Republicans and start talking about the business class that stands behind them.

via Reclaiming the Politics of Freedom | The Nation.

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April 8, 2011 · 3:27 pm

Brain structure differs in liberals, conservatives: study | The Raw Story

Well, I always knew I never really thought like a Conservative and now I know why…

I’ve always analyzed and dissected complex issues instead of going for the easy solutions….

I question everything.  I always have…

Fear isn’t something I consciously use in my decision but it’s clear the GOP uses it to drive and fire up their Conservative base…

Fascinating article from Raw Story:

 

WASHINGTON — Everyone knows that liberals and conservatives butt heads when it comes to world views, but scientists have now shown that their brains are actually built differently.

Liberals have more gray matter in a part of the brain associated with understanding complexity, while the conservative brain is bigger in the section related to processing fear, said the study on Thursday in Current Biology.

“We found that greater liberalism was associated with increased gray matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex, whereas greater conservatism was associated with increased volume of the right amygdala,” the study said.

Other research has shown greater brain activity in those areas, according to which political views a person holds, but this is the first study to show a physical difference in size in the same regions.

“Previously, some psychological traits were known to be predictive of an individual’s political orientation,” said Ryota Kanai of the University College London, where the research took place.

“Our study now links such personality traits with specific brain structure.”

The study was based on 90 “healthy young adults” who reported their political views on a scale of one to five from very liberal to very conservative, then agreed to have their brains scanned.

People with a large amygdala are “more sensitive to disgust” and tend to “respond to threatening situations with more aggression than do liberals and are more sensitive to threatening facial expressions,” the study said.

Liberals are linked to larger anterior cingulate cortexes, a region that “monitor(s) uncertainty and conflicts,” it said.

“Thus, it is conceivable that individuals with a larger ACC have a higher capacity to tolerate uncertainty and conflicts, allowing them to accept more liberal views.”

It remains unclear whether the structural differences cause the divergence in political views, or are the effect of them.

But the central issue in determining political views appears to revolve around fear and how it affects a person.

“Our findings are consistent with the proposal that political orientation is associated with psychological processes for managing fear and uncertainty,” the study said.

via Brain structure differs in liberals, conservatives: study | The Raw Story.

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