Why Liberals Don’t Understand The “Republican” Brain
A reprint from an article I published some time back and had planned on reworking and editing prior to publishing it here. Enjoy
Liberals have tried just about everything they can think of to stamp out conservatives and conservative ideology. Over the past few decades they have attempted to implant twisted and fallacious left wing values into the minds of the most gullible of America’s citizens by appealing to their emotions rather than their intellect, an intellect for which they apparently have little respect. Their tools have included a rapidly declining system of education as well as a friendly media which they use to distribute false information designed to further a sense of alienation and division between the various groups. They demonize and denigrate those who dare to disagree with them while claiming to represent tolerance and equality.
The election of left wing dream candidate President Obama seems to have further emboldened these anti-American forces. It seems that the newest tactic to be deployed in their on-going war to eliminate any vestige of intellectual honesty and logical thought, otherwise known as conservative thought, is to suggest that their emotional rants have a scientific basis. If one didn’t know better one would have to believe that numerous scientific studies have recently been completed proving the superiority of the “Liberal” Brain. There are a number of problems with this conclusion.
Prior to addressing the topic of the article, it seems appropriate to point out some additional facts in terms of the studies themselves. From the number of articles that pop up in a google search one might miss the fact that many of those articles reference and build on the hypothesis of one writer, Chris Mooney, a self-proclaimed liberal author and activist. If one looks even more closely one finds that it turns out that many of the articles supporting Mr. Mooney’s theses are written by Mr. Mooney himself.
This is not to suggest that there aren’t any other studies, nor to suggest that other liberal writers have not taken up the same banner and erroneously claimed that their biased and prejudiced “findings” are supported by rigorously conducted scientific studies. Although a point by point refutation of the claims being made by liberal scientists, and their willing accomplices in the media, will have to wait for a future article, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that even the methodology of some of these studies is subject to serious question. The main focus of this article is to point out why the liberal mind finds it so hard to understand the conservative mind, and why what is essentially a liberal problem of misinterpretation becomes a conservative problem due to the liberal bias of the media.
In the interest of time and focus, this article will make no effort to dispute either the methodology or the actual data in the studies currently under review. The specific data I will be focusing on is, in my view, representative of the kind of data being presented in the various studies, and my remarks can address the process by which that data is being misinterpreted. I will thus be accepting the data as it was presented by either the scientists or writers involved, but without the corresponding liberal value judgments and conclusions which I maintain are completely untrue. In addition, I will be presenting what I consider to be valid reasons supporting my contention that there is a reason the liberal brain has a difficult time understanding the conservative brain, while the reverse is simply not true.
The labels attached to the conservative brain by liberal commentators are often the same ones used to describe maturity. Liberal commentators tend to define “open mindedness” and “openness to experience” in their own terms and equate the lack of those things with negative values. This is, in my view, the mark of an immature mind. It is the complaint of a child who is angry with a parent for not being “open-minded”, per his definition, because the parent has denied a particular request based on his additional experience and knowledge.
Teenage rebellion is nothing new, as it normally represents the transition from childhood status to the more responsible status of adulthood. On the other hand neither is there anything new in recognizing that the parent was at one time also a teenager and thus may be well aware of the pressures and stresses related to being a teenager. What many of those teenagers may only realize later in life is that their parents may also bring additional insights to the table as a result of decades more experience living life. It’s true that, as a general rule, youth may be more open to all kinds of new experiences than their parents, but what they may be missing is that those new experiences of which they speak are not new experiences to their parents.
Likewise, when liberals accuse conservatives of being close-minded, unwilling to listen, or slow to change, they are simply evidencing their own immaturity. The aforementioned liberal complaints against conservatives completely ignore the fact that the liberal tendency to jump off a cliff in order to determine the length of the drop might not be the best response under the circumstances. By the same token, the fact that a conservative is unwilling to entertain a new idea which is being presented and argued by a liberal does not necessarily provide evidence of close mindedness, but may simply reflect the fact that the so-called new idea has already been considered and rejected. The far more common occurrence in those kinds of discussions is for the liberal to evidence close-mindedness by rejecting the argument of the conservative without even giving lip service to listening while at the same time complaining that the conservative is unwilling to change based solely on the liberal’s emotional investment in the “new” idea. To put it bluntly, it’s not a new idea. It was a bad idea then, and it’s a bad idea now, based on any number of historically and societal factors.
The point I am trying to make, just using this one example, is that youth is always attracted to higher risk activities and ventures while at the same time often discounting the experiences and hard won wisdom of others. There is a reason that certain behavior is considered to be “high risk” and the more you have to protect, the less willing you are to bet it all on one spin of the wheel. As I have suggested in other articles, the best governments are those divided between a loyal opposition of liberals and an incumbent leadership of conservatives. Truly loyal liberals have a role to play by bringing new and innovative ideas to the public’s attention. Truly loyal conservatives have a role to play as gatekeepers insuring that we are not simply jumping off the cliff.
In conclusion, the reason that liberals cannot understand conservatives is easily understood when one realizes that it is the same reason that children often cannot understand their parents. The reason that conservatives can understand liberals, even when they do not agree, is because they have those characteristics which the liberals malign and misrepresent.
I plan on addressing the liberal/conservative brain issue from various other perspectives as time permits. Thank you for your interest.
Edited to include additional links related to the topic.
http://www.wallstreetdaily.com/2011/04/21/democrat-or-republican-brain-sca/
AaronInvestigates 