Article from "Psychology Today" Suggests and Supports the Claim that Racism and Conservatism Lead to Low Intelligence

 

(Top: Flag of Nazi Germany; Bottom: Flag of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, aka. the Soviet Union)

                                              

  

(Top: Flag of the Italian Social Republic, aka. Fascist Italy; Bottom: Flag of the People's Republic of China)

If there were such a thing as a historical axis of evil, these nations would be at or near the top of the list for being totalitarian or authoritarian states at some point in their history.  When most people think of the term "totalitarianism" or "authoritarianism" in relation to a type of government operating within a nation, they tend to immediately think of Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler and the Soviet Union under such despots as Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khruschev, and Leonid Brezhnev.  There are two nations that come to mind for me personally that some people in the United States tend to forget: the Italian Socialist Republic under the control of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, and the People's Republic of China, founded and governed by Mao Zedong from 1949 until his death in 1976.  The type of terror invented and engendered by the dictatorial rulers of these nations was staggering:  in the 20th Century alone, the Soviet Union killed off more than 100 million citizens through famine, political persecution, government bureaucratic purges under the direction of Stalin, and in the two major wars the nation fought either as the Russian Empire under Tsar Nicholas II during World War I where estimates show as many as three million deaths were sustained against the onslaught of the German and Austro-Hungarian armies, as well as the "Great Patriotic War," or better known as World War II, where the Soviet Red Army lost as many as 30 million troops by some estimates to the Germans.  China under Mao Zedong was just as culpable of the lack of respect for human life when one considers some of its policies that were implemented during the Great Leap Forward beginning in 1959, which was successful during the first year but, afterward, poor crop yields due to bad weather conditions and deforestation in order to build "backyard furnaces" to produce pig iron without replanting trees led to widespread famine and soil erosion, resulting in the deaths of as many as 63 to 70 million deaths; this is not to mention the deaths incurred as the result of the Chinese Civil War that lasted from 1933 through 1949 or the at-least eight million deaths that were caused by Mao's purging Chinese society and government of those who were educated, perceived as disloyal to the cause of communism within the state, as well as the elderly who were considered too old to contribute to the collective of society, known to the world as the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976).  Nazi Germany persecuted Jews, communists, gypsies, minorities, and in general, anyone perceived as incapable of helping propagate what Hitler wanted to establish as "the master race."  Italy was not far behind, doing much the same thing as Germany, only getting started over ten years earlier.

Of course, there have been other monarchs and dictators during the world's history that persecuted its people.  In the Roman Empire, there were the emperors Nero and Caligula; in Russia during the 16th Century, there was Ivan the Terrible; from 1797 through his ultimate defeat at Waterloo in 1815, France and all of Europe were dominated by the obscure yet ambitious Corsican general who rose from the position of an artillery general until he became supreme leader and, in 1805, the self-coronated emporer of France, and thus relegated the French cause of a republican government whereby the people had a voice in politics back to pre-revolutionary conditions by the name of Napoleon Bonaparte.  But one thing was missing from all of these leaders save for maybe Napoleon, and that is a cult of leadership, the rabid following of a nation's population en masse from which the dictator derives his mandate and thus his power.  This sort of phenomena of a cult of leadership did not manifest itself until the Russian Revolution during the 1910's, when the Bolsheviks (communists) overthrew and assassinated the royal family, thus ending more than 300 years of Romanov rule.

It was at this very point in time, the beginning of the 20th Century, that the terms "right-wing" and "left-wing" first appeared in the peoples' of the world's popular vernacular and lexicon.  The concept behind communism was certainly nothing new; in 1848, two German social, economic, and political philosophers named Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels co-authored The Communist Manifesto to express their displeasure with the rising tide of capitalism within Europe, particularly with the advent of factories, which on the continent began some 30 to 40 years earlier. (In Great Britain, it is estimated that their Industrial Revolution began as early as 1750.)  Marx and Engels wrote of a growing class struggle between the wealthy owners of production and the middle-class, or the bourgeoisie, and the poor and underprivileged workers who were the victim's of the bourgeoisie's manipulation of the working conditions and of their hard-earned wages, or the proletariat.  The main criteria for such a struggle is that the targeted society must already be industrialized, which most of Europe and America were,  and that there had to be a massive gap in income differential between the wealthiest citizens and the poorest.  The proletariat would unite, and in theory, overthrow the greedy, tyrannical bourgeois bosses and thus bring about a utopia whereby "the dictatorship of the proletariat" would rule supreme; there would be no poverty nor wealth, as everyone, according to the 2nd Planck, would submit all of their earnings in the form of an income tax to the the new government which, in theory, is run by a selection of comrades appointed by the proletariat, and redistributed equally among the people of the commune.  The concept of "motivation" would be replaced, according to Marx and Engels, by the desire to maintain a stable, peaceful society predicated upon the principle that while one may give all of his or her earnings, he or she really gives nothing because they are exchanging wealth for greater equality, peace, and harmony under a centralized government of comrades-in-arms.  It should be noted that this new thing called communism disallowed the practice of religion, instead promoting atheism, as the communist philosophy was very humanistic in nature, therefore meaning that people created the conditions of this new and exciting Utopian society, not any deity or set of deities.  

While the entire platform of The Communist Manifesto cannot possibly be discussed and analysed within the confines of a simple paragraph, it bears acknowledging that Marx and Engels were sages in their day. However, in 1873, Marx stated that communism as he explained it could never work because of the great advances within society, as well as the growth of income in all economic classes within capitalist-driven Europe and the United States, as the poor in capitalist societies would be financially more stable than any lay member of the proletariat.  However, this did not stop the imaginations of dreamers from flying ad infinitum. As was mentioned, the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Russian royal family in 1917.  The promise of equality to all Russian workers worked like a charm, but there was just one catch: while Russia had begun industrialization domestically in the 1880's, one has to remember that the nation was 130 years behind Great Britain in terms of its initial dalliances into an industrial revolution, and nearly 80 years behind the rest of Europe and the United States.  Tsar Nicholas II had just ordered a national transcontinental railroad to be constructed that would stretch all the way from the European part of the continental divide west of the Ural Mountains east into Siberia; most other Western nations had had railroads for many decades.  Russia, it should be noted, always lagged behind the rest of the Western world in nearly every social and technological advance, as the empire, under the direction of Tsar Alexander II, finally banned the practice of serfdom by the Russian nobility/boyars in 1861. (Russia redefined slavery in 1723 as serfdom under Peter the Great.)  Thus, the main source of revenue for the government was derived from agriculture, significant in that Russia became known as one of the "bread baskets of the world" due to its fertile soil in the prairie-like areas which are also extremely flat, such cash crops as wheat and barley grew and flourished.  Yet, it is also this very same Russia that had managed to remain staid in its very conservative ways (and by "conservative," I am referring to the philosophy of Edmund Burke, who believed in the sovereignty of monarchs) where the first communist revolution occurred, where the population, still humiliated by the crushing defeat to the Japanese naval forces during the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, would suffer further indignities in both loss of nationalist pride, economic posterity, as well as the massive numbers of men in uniform.  Most of all, the majority of the population lost all faith in the monarchy, thus paving way toward the first popular revolt against a government since the French Revolution from 1789-1797. As is typical of leftists, particularly extreme leftists, the Bolsheviks (communists) preyed upon the fears of the masses and redirected the conflict from "Russia vs. Germany" to "the Russian peasants and commoners vs. the Imperialists."  It worked beautifully, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which officially was established in 1917 and resulted in the surrender of lands lost in World War I to Germany as part of the new communist government's agreement it reached with the Germans in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, was established and would last until December 31, 1991, where under the weight-crushing economic decay rendering the government impotent and incapable of adequately providing basic necessities for its citizens due to overspending on the military, the last vestiges of communism on a large scale died with hardly a whimper.  

The new Soviet Union was the first truly left wing government in the history of the world.  It was also the first totalitarian state.  However, right wing extremism would spawn an identity as a result of the loss by Germany in World War I.   Adolf Hitler was an Austrian citizen who served in the German army as well as a failed artist.  He blamed people of the Jewish faith for the German's loss in the war since he felt that because so many Jews controlled major banks during that time, they played a role in the financial disaster the German government experienced with regard to its capacity to pay for war provisions and supplies, as well as the soldiers' wages.  This hatred built up over the course of the next 16 years.  He formed the Nazi party in 1920, and his first major political demonstration, which also was his first attempt at throwing a coup d'tat,  was the Beer Hall Putsch (1923), where he led his Nazi followers in a march on the Burgerbraukeller beer hall while German state commissioner Gustav von Kahr of the old Weimar Republican government  delivered a speech.  This attempt at a coup failed, and Hitler was jailed for his efforts.  By 1933, however, Hitler manipulated the political system enough to win the Chancellor position within the Reichstag, his first major inroads into the government despite only winning 33% of the votes.  This was achieved under some questionable circumstances, namely the fire at the actual Reichstag building, which Hitler blamed on the Dutchman named Marinus van der Lubbe, a young, communist bricklayer who was unemployed and had recently arrived in Germany to apparently carry out political activities against the German government.  Hitler used this as political capital, and took power.  For the next 12 years, Hitler would rule Nazi Germany with an iron fist and an authority unrivaled in the history of world politics with the exception of the leaders of the  Soviet Union.  

It is only fitting, therefore, that the two most extreme forms of leftist (the Soviet Union) and rightist political philosophies (Nazi Germany) took hold within the first half of the 20th Century.  It seems as if the 20th Century was the century of the great political and social experiment, for if the late 17th through the 18th Centuries, or what was known among intellectuals in Europe and America as "The Enlightenment," gave birth to today's modern democratic-republican political ideologies, namely Locke's classical liberalism and Burke's classical conservatism, plus whatever it is one would like to call Jean Jacques Rousseau's ideas from The Social Contract (1762), then the 20th Century was when these ideas would be put to the test and into practice.  Also fitting, too, are that the main ideologies stemming from the Enlightenment as well as Marxism would be the mitigating factors in the conflict between the world's most powerful and influential nations during the two world wars, particularly World War II, would be a "who's who" of these philosophies.  It was during World War II that the nations that were considered extremely right wing -- Germany, Italy, and Japan -- tried to conquer the world and eliminate any specter of opposition crossing its path and failed to meet that particular nation's standards for social and/or genetic perfection.  Then there is the Soviet Union, who by virtue of its victory over Hitler's German armies in "The Great Patriotic War," created half of what would become a "new world order" by transforming the nations of Eastern Europe -- Poland, Czechoslovakia, eastern Germany, Hungary, and Finland -- into communist satellite states to serve as a buffer between a democratic Western Europe and itself.  The United States, who along with Great Britain, liberated the Western part of the continent, dominated politics in that region.  The U.S./British alliance and the Soviet envoys met in Berlin, which was located in the east on the Soviet side of Germany, and formed zones whereby a specific nation's military would control traffic, trade, and maintain law and order within it.  It is at this point that the world as we know it today began, for it is because of the initiation of the Cold War, which would last until 1991 when the Soviet Union disbanded, that the United States was permanently drug out of its comfort zone as an isolationist state into one of the world's two greatest superpowers, and served for the next 46 years as "the arsenal of democracy."  (Some historians will argue the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union actually ended in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall.)

After the above history lesson, then, we finally have gotten to the article I wish to discuss.  The article, titled "Do Racism, Conservatism, and Low I.Q. Go Hand in Hand?", was written and published by Dr. Goal Auzeen Saedi on April 22, 2013 in the medical journal Psychology Today, addresses from the outset the issue of liberal media outlets and even some psychology journals suggesting that conservatism, which is usually  linked with racism, can often be conducive to low cognitive function and thus, low intelligence.  To this, I can only cringe, because it takes no acts of reasoning, conceptualizing, or analyzing to contract yourself to the government of society using the premise of consent of the governed, or the mob rule of the collective, and be as Rousseau adamantly insists, "forced to be free" should you resist what he calls "the sovereign" and its directives.  Nor does it take much in the way of esoteric intellect to simply relinquish your rights as guaranteed to you by the Constitution after the government, no doubt run by Democrats, promises to take care of you.  There is also the issue of this republic being founded upon the principles of capitalism stretching back to the first settlements in Jamestown and Plymouth, and the inevitable economic inequities that are pervasive simply because, to put it quite bluntly, social Darwinism exists, has always existed, and will always continue to exist because some people are more intelligent than others in their penchant for creative ideas, marketable ingenuity, and finally financial prudence and pragmatism, and the liberal Democrats just love to exploit this in their attempts to defeat the conservative Republicans in the battle of "political chicken."  It is also no secret that liberals like to pull out the "race card" to use as political leverage against conservatives by saying that because the conservative politicians within government will typically oppose expanding government's bureaucracy, which to liberals means that employing more minorities would created more jobs and thus garner them more votes, they are obviously racists for not wanting to give the black and Hispanic population demographics opportunities at making a living when the real reasons the conservative lobby refused to support the expansion of governement is because growing the bureaucracy not only creates more debt and results in borrowing more money from treasury bonds, it usually results in the infringement on some constitutional rights, and it usually results in increased taxation that at first will be promised to the American people that only the wealthiest 2% of Americans will bear the brunt of said act, but will ultimately trickle down to the lower income brackets, particularly the middle-class.  The liberals in state and federal governments will also accuse the conservative legislators and executive of racism should they refuse to support further subsidizing the incomes of minorities. Strangely, during the Reagan administration, all income brackets experienced growth in economic prosperity, including the poor, and while the income gap between the wealthiest Americans and the poorest skyrocketed, it is worth reiterating that the poor and middle-class income dramatically increased in terms of income and relative wealth and economic well-being, including those of minorities, and the unemployment rate improved from around 10% in 1982 to 4 to 4.5% when Reagan left office in 1989.  Still, as former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said in a rebuttal with a Labour party Member of Parliament (MP), the liberals are so concerned about lowering the income gap between the richest citizens and the poorest that they would actually not mind if the poor became poorer as a result!  I find it interesting how the plight of black and Hispanic citizens has worsened in the past four-plus years, yet President Obama has managed to convince them in dialogue similar to what one black minister at the church the president attended on Easter Sunday said, "They (the Republicans) would have us go back to sitting at the back of the bus!" that the Republicans, who only control the lower house of Congress and, up until 2011, controlled both houses and the White House, cheated the poor minority segment of the population when it was the Democrats running the political discourses and creating public policy in Washington. It is sad to have to admit that such gross fear tactics work, and that is why the greatest politicians in U.S. history are the members of the Democratic party from 1933 to the present.  Class warfare does a number on an opposition that only offers great liberty and opportunity for economic growth through what I like to term as "hand ups," not "hand outs" and appeals to the intellects of the American people by referring to them as intelligent, sentient individuals rather than a collective of mindless zombies incapable of make decisions and thus turn to government, who most likely is violating the Tenth Amendment of the Bill of Rights, to create a series of legal guidelines and what amount to "common law" statutes and mandates in order to dictate how society will operate.  Much like Marx's vision of pure communism, the liberal Democrats like to give credit for the achievements of the people due to their acts of ingenuity and creativity on themselves instead as they pontificate the omnipotence and supremacy of the state over sovereignty of the people who vote them into office.  Those who challenge this logic are castigated and ostracized for thinking for themselves, for the liberals in political office hold in great disdain any and all people who are educated and independent thinkers. Most minorities in America, unfortunately, do not think for themselves, but rather blindly and careless strip themselves of their liberties in order to guarantee that they will receive subsidies because of the liberals telling them they are oppressed by the conservative white man of society, that the majority of the population should pay reparations for over 250 years of slavery, which ended in 1864, because of the sins of their forefathers; to not do so is an act of racism, something that liberals claim can only  be described of politically conservative peoples.  Of course, if a conservative calls a liberal a racist because he tries to keep the black and Hispanic poor impoverished by simply expanding the amount of money in which the subsidies compromise, the media simply calls it an act of political desperation.  The double standard is as astounding as it is hypocritical, but that is what conservatives can expect of liberals.

Dr. Saedi, who authored the article, talks very frankly about this phenomena and is very clear about where his political loyalties lie based on the implied content of the text, for none of his or any of the researchers whose studies he cites with great glee can prove or provide the objective reader any claim or conjecture  that is correct  because it is all merely a theory imbued with inherent flaws.  He begins by discussing a graphic he saw on Facebook.  It looks like this (Unfortunately, the pictures and words are terribly small, but if you can identify any of the gentlemen who were pictured in the graphic, you might develop a feel for what it is implying, especially considering the source.):

When Saedi found the source of the graphic, it read Too Informed to Vote Republican, a liberal mouthpiece campaigning to smear the conservative movement in America by making an assumption that virtually all conservatives are xenophobes, particularly of Middle Easterners and other nationalities where a significant demographic of the population practices Islam.  What these liberals do not take into account is that with the exception of the Oklahoma City bombing and the bombing at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, and, if you count these as such, the handful of attacks on abortion clinics (e.g. Eric Rudolph), the most severe and notable terrorist attacks this country has ever endured came at the hands of Middle Eastern terrorists who practiced the most radical form of Islam since those attacks on U.S. soil or territory have resulted collectively in the deaths of thousands of Americans.  I look at it this way: if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, chances are, it is a duck.  Sadly, since I am a conservative "simpleton," I often resort to cliches to illustrate my points.  I bet Benjamin Franklin is rolling in his grave right now, as he was the author of a publication filled with cliches, titled Poor Richard's Almanac. 

And now, back to the article that borders on political libel.  Saedi, by this point curious, recalled a study he read after the attacks on September 11, 2001 that suggested a correlation between conservatism and low intelligence.  This study was confirmed, according to him, in the well-established psychological journal Psychological Science.  If I had to guess, the study was probably conducted by a public university professor receiving federal funding in a liberal state and may have even received a fist full of dollars more to skew the study's findings, yet another example of American taxpayer dollars at work, this time being used for political capital.

The researchers Hodson and Busseri (2012), according to Saedi, perpetuate this concept by disclosing in their findings that lower intelligence in childhood often is a leading indicator of greater racism in adulthood, with these being "mediated" and thus partially explained through conservative ideology.  They also concluded that said subjects often suffer from low abstract skills, which are related to "homophobic attitudes which were mediated through authoritarianism and two groups of intergroup contact."  

So, according to scholars more learned and intelligent than me, my apparent lack of reasoning skills that are an inherent and apparently a genetic trait, are related to me hating homosexuals, and that is assisted somehow by authoritarianism, and then these shrinks throw in the psychological medical term "intergroup contact"?  Well, okay. I guess social Darwinism is a topic worth discussing, but riddle me this Dr's Hodson and Busseni: have not the liberal establishment in America worked tirelessly to end the pestilence of intolerance of these two things -- 1) intolerance toward those with intellectual disabilities, which you two seem to be drawing a lot of attention to by basically screaming loudly that one's political opinion causes what is tantamount to mental retardation?  Man, mental retardation is such an ugly pair of words!, and 2) as part of propagating a culture of acceptance, should you not be avoiding stereotypes related to your political opponents and, instead, looking to find something good about them to build upon the phenomena that is intellectual diversity in society by not perpetuating a myth?

Let us continue, shall we?  Saedi, perhaps inconspicuously, supports some of these findings by ironically backing off the vociferousness of the gross generalizations by saying that this study neither suggests that all liberals are geniuses nor that all conservatives are ignorant, but rather implies that for those "who lack the cognitive ability to grasp the concepts of the world, strict right-wing ideologies may be more appealing."  Then he says that one Dr. Brian Nosek of The Huffington Post -- which is a left-leaning publication with more liberal journalists and editors than I can shake a stick at --  explains it as follows:

"...ideologies get rid of the messiness and impose a simple solution.  So, it may not be surprising that people with less cognitive capacity will be attracted to simplifying ideologies."

This is an ironic statement.  I usually do not brag about my intelligence, but I have tested out on many I.Q. tests as intellectually gifted.  My average score ranges between no lower than 133 up to my personal best of 150, with most scores typically ranging between 138 and 146.  I am a member of the International High I.Q. Society, testing into that organization with a score of 141.  But if these reports are true, and they no doubt must be because some pretty elite psychological professionals with a liberal-bias say so, I suppose all of the "proven intelligence" I have is all for wrought since I am a right wing conservative with Libertarian leanings.  

There is still more.  Saedi continues  his foot-in-mouth disease by way of the computer when he elaborates on how studies have shown an association between aggression, America, and the news.  He cites that a study by researchers at Cornell University (which must mean it is valid because, after all, Cornell University is Ivy League) and The Hebrew University (well, well, a university run by Jew, who, as a demographic of our society that despite conservative politicians' most sincere attempts at developing and cultivating a healthy relationship and excellent rapport with Israel, the only state on Earth whose national religion is Judaism, tends to vote as a block for Democrats) indicated: 

"American news watchers who were subtly or nonconsciously primed with American cues exhibited greater accessibility of aggression and war constructs in memory, judged an ambiguously aggressive person in a more aggressive and negative manner, and acted in a relatively more aggressive manner toward an experimenter following a mild provocation, compared with news watchers who were not primed."  

And thus the BS rages on.  It is so easy to derive mistruths and engender derogatory remarks from a media outlet like The Huffington Post that, while not exactly materializing in form as the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) news agency  Xinhua, it does exists to serve as a mouthpiece for what is undoubtedly the most powerful political movement (liberals) and party (Democrats) in America today. Sure, there are conservative media outlets and colleges/universities, but they are few and far between.  For example, I can think of about three major conservative or Libertarian radio political commentators who are wildly popular but who also face the wrath of the liberal establishment for their beliefs: Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, and Neal Bortz.  I can also conjure up one --  and only one -- cable news network that tends to be right wing in scope (Fox News Network).  As far as colleges that are conservative, most of those are your Christian liberal arts schools who do not receive the funds major state public universities do to commission research to make an impact on the American perspective of life. Yet, because of the presence of a great set of unifying forces on those campuses -- the established religions upon which the colleges were founded -- and the focus on the individual rather than the collective in all matters academic and social, most students receive better educations at those universities, though due the high cost of attending those schools, most people cannot afford to attend them, and thus most liberal arts colleges are smaller than many high schools.  What this means is that liberals control the vast majority of political, social, intellectual, and cultural verbiage and materials that consume society, and because this is true, American society is inundated with such concepts as "I do not have a job, so I will rely on the government to give me welfare checks," or "Look at how revealing that outfit is on her!  She is so sexy," or "Those mean old Republicans!  They do not want to support taxing the rich more because that would mean it would narrow the playing field between the rich and the poor and therefore the rich would cease donating money to their campaign funds," or "George Clooney is so smart!  He is coming out and saying that all guns should be confiscated so that America will be safer!  He is also a great actor and is popular; he's gotten so far in his life, so he must be right, as he is a sage," and so on. When an adult balances his or her checkbook and attempts to keep tabs on his or her personal finances, society usually calls this an act of personal responsibility.  When conservatives within the government attempt to maintain a responsible fiscal bottom line by trying to avoid overspending on superfluous social programs in order to keep as much of the American taxpayers's hard-earned money in their pockets, its called by the predominant liberal faction as "social irresponsibility" because government should be spending more money to redistribute the wealth to others who are poorer regardless of whether some of the impoverished have ever attempted to work or not, thus lowering the purchasing power and economic viability of the wealthy and middle income classes.  And remember, liberals especially like to give a lot of tax dollars collected by the IRS to low-income minorities rather than working to create jobs for them in the private sector.  Since most conservatives disagree with this practice, they are called "racists" by the liberal faction, and this is a known fact.

To conclude the article, Saedi says that the moral to the story is simple: "Excessive exposure to news coverage could be toxic as is avoidance of open-minded attitudes and ideals."  So, essentially, not following the news is good for the general population because in reality, it keeps the average person ignorant of the issues plaguing society today.  As a quote at the top of my blog homepage says:

"Knowledge will always govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."

- James Madison to W. T. Barry; August 4, 1822, Epilogue: Securing the Republic.  

And Madison was 100% correct in his assessment.  If Saedi, as a psychologist, honestly is advocating for the general population to turn off the cable news channels and cease reading newspaper articles either online or in print, he is basically saying that it is okay to be oblivious of the issues.  While the general population under such a directive would be obeying it, the liberals in government will create all sorts of new laws that are  violations of the Tenth Amendment, that also violate the spirit of at least three other of the amendments within the Bill of Rights (First, Second, and Fourth Amendments), and will no doubt have so many socialist programs boiling in the cauldron that they will almost certainly feel happily compelled to raise taxes and use that money to not only pay for their socialist agenda of government programs, but also to redistribute the collective wealth of the American people.  Liberal politicians always look to prey on the ignorant and unintelligent in this country.  The very idea that conservatives do so well opposing their philosophy and policies themselves should indicate that the political right-wing establishment is not lacking in intelligence, especially when they have intellectually justified that the jobs they have created in the past for poor minorities that pay well to be more for the social well-being of America than the liberals simply giving a "hand out" and promising to subsidize them with taxpayer dollars, which do not legally belong to the government, is an act of disrespect and negligence in the investment of interest in really improving the outlook on their lives, which is tantamount to institutional racism.

And so, there you have it.  Saedi, the typical liberal journalist, whether he or she is in the business of reporting the news, serving as a war correspondent, a satirist, covering the wide world of sports, or in his case is explaining medical phenomena, writes one of what apparently exists of many articles that are based on some strictly "scholarly clinical research" that perpetuates a gross stereotype.  I assume he is a therapist because of the journal for which he writes, so this particularly baffles me, and yet at the same time, does not either.  I have seen many different therapists during the course of the past 11 years.  Some were very nurturing, while others had a very cold and distant approach to their method of treating me.  However, I have never had one so judgmental and, yes, prejudicial as this one would be should he be charged with the task of serving as my paid confidant.  Psychologists or therapists, whatever one wants to call them, are supposed to be a rock of support for patients and anyone in general needing assistance in combating stress or mental illness(es).  I find it most interesting that Dr. Saedi and the researchers he cited were anything but.  Every medical professional is required to recite the Hippocratic Oath upon becoming a doctor, swearing to help any and all people needing medical attention.  However, I do not think this man would do that in any other way than disingenuously for if he were to treat me and then consequently discover my political beliefs, I would be afraid he would try to brainwash me as part of my treatment program to convert me to the left.  He would probably try to convince me that I am a racist because of my beliefs in self-accountability rather than in receiving subsidies from the government, including in the case of minorities, that this thought process leads to overly-aggressive behavior and hostility toward minorities and homosexuals, and lastly, he would probably say that I have a  "closed-mind" with regards to the rest of the world.  

I wonder what today's psychologists, should they be broadly represented by people like Dr. Saedi, think about the Founding Fathers?  It is interesting that the concept of American nationalism and the word "patriot" meant to these researchers signs of lower intelligence.  I have always been of the belief that the majority of the world's population love the country in which they reside so long as it serves them and not the other way around.  To perpetuate this myth that such things as conservatism, nationalism, the word "patriot", etc., suggests such things as low intelligence, racism, homophobia, and aggressiveness to be horrifying, shameful, judgmental, and in taking the words right out of an old friend's mouth when he referred to me as this very thing, to be nothing more than an egregious example of sheer abject racism.  Yes, I called a liberal-laced article and its proponents worldwide "abjectly racist."  Finally, it is my opinion that the conservative politicians of America are the proponents for real racial equality and social equality, as well as social advancement.  To me, the liberals want to keep the poor poorer so longer as it satisfies their quest at narrowing the income gap between the wealthiest Americans and the poorest.  This is also the case with black and Hispanic Americans as well, for so often this segment of the population is planted down at the bottom with little hope for advancement because of the very liberals who swore to them that if they vote for them, they (the liberals) would support them socially.  I have every reason to believe that ever since the Reagan administration, the plight of the poorest Americans, including those of the black and Hispanic communities, has improved when the Republicans are the dominant party of the executive and legislative branches of the federal government, while when the Democrats are in power, the nation's per capita income plummets for everyone because taking money from the rich and middle-class workers and redistributing it evenly does not create economic growth or opportunity while their economic policies are causing massive inflation, but rather fpsters dependency on the government whereby large portions of the population are relegated to the government's soup ladle.  The Republicans have created jobs for black and Hispanic citizens within the private sector; the Democrats merely try to perpetuate the dependency I have already told you about by redistributing the wealthy, taking income tax dollars from the rich and middle classes and spreading the wealth down to the idol bums of society, whether or not they are minorities or white, all in quest of social economic equality.  This is a very prevalent characteristic of the most extreme form of left-wing politics, or communism.  Yet, as been established ad nauseum but still needs to be repeated over and over in order for the American working man to firmly have a grip on this concept, the maddening issue that minorities in this country want to believe the Democrats when they say they will take care of them rather than the party that created the opportunity with which they could get a good job despite the record that proves to the contrary.  This, to the Democrats, is racism because the Republicans did not just give them other people's money.  In other words, conservatives (Republicans) are racists because they do not promote irresponsibility like the liberals (Democrats) do. And because of this, conservatives are not, according to the talking heads writing articles for these leftist journals such as Psychology Today that irresponsibly perpetuate a myth based strictly upon conjectures derived from prejudiced opinions, people of "open-minded attitudes and ideals."  We are racist and lacking in intelligence, and the myth has been accepted as the truth and gospel across "the fruited plain."

Some of the most intelligent individuals in the history of mankind over the past 165 years have without a doubt been leftists of varying extremes.  Two such individuals I mentioned above are Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels.  Their concept of a world devoid of social and economic inequities, organized religion, and their collective desires to create a Utopian world based on humanistic principles seemed like a dream that, while reviewing  history carefully and avoiding committing the egregious sin of revisionism by deeming these ideas as bordering on naivety, was destined to come to fruition with the poor working conditions and pay wages of factory workers as the capitalist model's weakness.  However, when applied and put into practice, this system failed primarily because people are selfish creatures not conducive to naturally being gregarious, generous, and benevolent to others without first catering to the self as the ultimate individual of necessity.  Also, since the concept of communism calls upon what Marx and later Mao reinforced as "the dictatorship of the proletariat" to govern a truly perfect, communist society, the same concept of selfishness is applied here: the powers that be became their own social class, an oligarchy with more economic resources than the average lay proletariat that, according to Marx and Engels, was supposed to serve as the government by virtue of the commune's expectation that each cog of the collective, or what conservatives would refer to as "the individual," be giving of what they have in order to provide for the greater good of that commune (One can easily derive today's popular liberal vernacular when they utilize the term "community" and compare it to the Marxist definition of "commune," which is the root word.  Whether or not a liberal ever admits to this or chooses to throw the one-liner at the conservative observer stating, "You are perpetuating a stereotype!" most of the liberal ideology originates from three sources: The Social Contract (1762) by Rousseau, The Communist Manifesto (1848) by Marx and Engels, and lastly the theory of macroeconomics whereby the government manipulates the rate of inflation, the ownership of the means of production, and levels of unemployment developed by British economist John Maynard Keynes.  Each of these individuals who so influenced government economic policy for leftists have come under intense scrutiny over the course of time, their ideas skewered for being disruptive toward the concept of living independently rather than in a collective, not giving oneself to the government based on a perceived "social contract" one is, in theory, naturally bound by rather than being "forced to be free," nor supportive of the idea whereby government manipulates the economic infrastructure of the nation rather than applying free-market principles to allow the rate of inflation to peak and wane naturally, as well as the rate of unemployment.)  There is a famous line from George Orwell's novel Animal Farm that says, "All animals are created equal, but some animals are more equal than others," which can be found near the end of the book when a couple of the animals on the farm looked on in horror at the the farm's leader, Napoleon, as he was standing on his two hind legs after many years earlier swearing off humans as enemies to all animals by drilling into the social consciousness of the animals that those who stood on two legs were bad, while conversing with Mr. Jones, the former owner of the Manor Farm, at the end of the novel.  Thus, we find that the left-wing establishment, as it existed in places like the Soviet Union with communism, has failed in every scenario it has ever existed.  While Western Europe has no communist nations, nor has it ever, the majority of those nations -- Great Britain, France, Germany, etc., -- are socialist in nature.  Great Britain suffered through economic malaise during the 1960's and 1970's due to such socialist policies within the economy based on Keynesian principles, with many corporations such as Jaguar, Rover, British Airways, etc., being owned and operated by the government.  In 1979, Conservative party leader within the House of Commons Margaret Thatcher won the general election and began a stretch of 11 years serving as Britain's Prime Minister.  While members of the Labour party reviled her, Conservative party members revered her; she cut income taxes, privatized many industries over the course of her premiership, and curtailed the political power of labor unions in order to decrease their hold on the government and the economy greatly, to the point where they have not recovered yet from her hard-line policies.  Her policies brought about an increase in private ownership in Britain from 8% in 1979 to 25% in 1990, when she was forced to resign.  Wealth increased nationally 80% during her premiership due to the increase in housing prices and the rise in income.  While at first she had difficulty controlling the increasing unemployment which reached over three million by 1982 for the first time since the 1930;s, by 1987 that, too, was decreasing.  Like President Ronald Reagan here in the U.S., Thatcher followed free-market principles of such notable economists as Milton Friedman to guide her convictions that a market free(r) of government regulations and intervention is an economy that will be more likely to prosper. Likewise, what transpired in the United States under Reagan were the following: the economy grew by a third, unemployment dropped to about 5.3%, and all income brackets experienced an increase in economic standing because Reagan also practiced and preached free-market economic strategies, as well as cutting the federal income tax by 30% across all income levels. Sadly, both Reagan and Thatcher did not believe in forking out subsidies unduly to those who would not work since their plan was to create jobs for the unemployed, and because they did not cater to the idle poor whose intent was (and is today still) to sponge off the federal government whether they were minorities or not, they were labeled as racists. In Reagan's case, there are many liberal publications portraying him as an "intellectual dunce" as well as poking fun at his age.  Later on, the liberal press suggested that his Alzheimer's Disease, which was diagnosed in 1994, had actually originally surfaced during his presidency.  This is an excellent example of the bigotry the liberals in all Westernized nations exhibit, including the U.S. and Great Britain.  The sad thing is the liberal lunatic fringe has safeguards in place should conservatives decide to be "the pot(s) that called the kettle black" and expose them for the hypocrites they are, and they nearly always work to near perfection, too.

Here is my "take home message" to you: magazine journals such as Psychology Today that serve as little more than  a cabal of liberal psychologists' forum for political libel are to be used as personal ammunition against the conservative movement's political enemies in order to fuel the fire that hopefully someday will bring the socialist infidels of this nation to their knees.  Also, to those of you who know people who (might) read this and have no real political affiliation, share with them this great piece of wisdom: Do not believe everything you read or are told.  Doing so will mean you are nothing more than one of the mindless puppets of the liberal movement or any other malevolent force detrimental to the health of society, and therefore your opinion might be swayed unduly due to a hyperbolic statement and a political stereotype being perpetuated.  Next, there is one last piece of logic I will share with you that I have always found to be true without any exceptions to the rule: Stereotypes are generalized perceptions that often contain at least a grain of truth.  Most stereotypes are cruel, and some, such as the article in the psychology journal covered with great attention to detail in today's blog entry, are completely and utterly fallacious because the charges that were brought forth by the liberal psychologist against those who are conservatives politically can neither be proven nor confirmed to be true by any real authority.  And finally, there is an old say say that if you have to make your rounds and tell everyone you encounter how intelligent you are because you are either "this-or-that," you are probably lying to yourself and to others, and you certainly are an arrogant piece of work.  A little humility never hurt anybody, for it is one of the more virtuous traits a person can possess.

(Above: This is the picture I mentioned above over which an old friend of mine, a liberal Ph.D., student, referred to me as being a "racist" because I was promoting a stereotype by showing a political cartoon depicting a person living in a rural area or community being a law-abiding citizen, and a guy who appears to be an urban thug serving as the criminal.  My experience in life has taught me one thing about stereotypes: there is always at least some truth to one.)