"The stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt"

I've often read this quote from John Stuart Mill without really thinking much about it, other than that it seemed so obviously true.

I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.  -- John Stuart Mill

 Now we have empirical proof that this is true: a study published by Psychological Science.

 Abstract


Despite their important implications for interpersonal behaviors and relations, cognitive abilities have been largely ignored as explanations of prejudice. We proposed and tested mediation models in which lower cognitive ability predicts greater prejudice, an effect mediated through the endorsement of right-wing ideologies (social conservatism, right-wing authoritarianism) and low levels of contact with out-groups. In an analysis of two large-scale, nationally representative United Kingdom data sets (N = 15,874), we found that lower general intelligence (g) in childhood predicts greater racism in adulthood, and this effect was largely mediated via conservative ideology. A secondary analysis of a U.S. data set confirmed a predictive effect of poor abstract-reasoning skills on antihomosexual prejudice, a relation partially mediated by both authoritarianism and low levels of intergroup contact. All analyses controlled for education and socioeconomic status. Our results suggest that cognitive abilities play a critical, albeit underappreciated, role in prejudice. Consequently, we recommend a heightened focus on cognitive ability in research on prejudice and a better integration of cognitive ability into prejudice models.

The full study can be found here. This is rather scary stuff, I think; it means that no matter how you try to educate conservatives, there's not much chance they'll change their minds, because they prefer feeling safe, and sticking to the status quo, over actually thinking.

John Dean's book Conservatives Without Conscience also has an excellent take on this whole phenomenon. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about the conservative mindset. 

"Fear defeats more people than any other thing in the world"

Courage is knowing what not to fear. ~Plato

This weekend has been a time of tributes and remembrances. Countless people wrote down what they were doing on this infamous morning ten years ago, and how their lives have been changed. It's everywhere on the Internet and on the TV as well, I'm sure. Which is why I haven't turned the TV on all weekend.

But if you read one article about 9/11 this weekend, make it this one.

The writer is not a Dirty Effing Hippie. He's a retired Navy Chief Warrant Officer, and I daresay he might have a clue what he's talking about.

Today marks a decade now, since 911.  In that time, we went to war and seven thousand more Americans, some of our very best, died.  Tens of thousands more were maimed and scarred and damaged forever.  Hundreds of thousands of innocents died.  Entire countries were laid waste and we became a callous people who could look upon those devastated lands and say, well, you know they had it coming, all of those bastards had it coming including their goddamned children. We became a nation that tortures people and disappears people and detains people, including our citizens, indefinitely without trial or recourse in abject repudiation of the very spirit of our nation’s own founding – and we are unashamed of that and unrepentant.  We have become a nation where, as an American, you must put aside your freedom a dozen times a day. You must show your papers. You must submit to naked body scanners and you must allow unsmiling uniformed men with the force of secret laws behind them to grope the most intimate areas of your children and yourselves. Such has become the price of freedom in America. We have become a nation  where you – as an American – can be detained for a glance or a gesture or a careless word or for checking out the wrong book from the library or for worshipping the wrong God.  We have become a nation where the only acceptable response to uniformed authority is immediate and polite submission, talk back, question, stand pat on the rights of previous generations and you’ll be branded an enemy. We have become a nation that claims to revere liberty and justice, but believes those things canonly be had when secret agencies monitor our every email and our every communication without warrant or probable cause. 

The more I think about this, the righter it sounds. 9/11 bankrupted this country spiritually and morally, and still threatens to bankrupt us financially, which would lead to Osama Bin Laden whooping it up from his grave. He didn't have to do any of this to us--we did it to ourselves.

As Mr. Stonekettle says:

We should always remember the names of the fallen and hold them sacred.
But we need to stop covering ourselves in the blood of that day.

It's time--and past time--to move on.