Re: Conservatism and the best laid plans of mice and men (was: Red Baiting Labor Studies)

[Jurriaan Bendien <bendien@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mr Shemano:

Thanks for the humour, I haven't gone out today. I am not aware that you are
a conservative, other than in the sense that we are all conservatives in
some aspects of our lives, or at some point in time when we run out. If you
read the story that you posted yourself, you will see that the title is
"Researchers help define what makes a political conservative"", which is not
the same as a comprehensive definition, and indeed suggests that the
researchers themselves are conservative in their research approach. I cannot
tell from the story what questions they specifically asked in their
research, or what their method was. The presumption of burrowing
hermeneutically through 50 years of research literature about the psychology
of conservatism, is that there is some static "essence" of the conservative
mindset to be found, but that presumption is suspect. A socialist would have
to analyse the meaning of conservatism, with reference to what conservatives
say and do within the political situation and class relations obtaining at
the time, i.e. relate mentalities to social, political and material
conditions. A much more useful piece of research in cognitive science I am
reading is George Lakoff, Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives
Think (2nd edition, U of Chicago Press, 2002). There is no basis for your
accusation that I am claiming that, in general, conservatives are ignorant
projecting immoral suckups. At most, that is one implication that might be
drawn from my polemical comments.
I did not swear, I attempted a characterisation.  I was criticising David
Horowitz, whose dastardly and repugnant statements I have encountered
before, and I was referring to the utterances of Rightwing Thinktanks,
slightly polemically. The way Americans think and evaluate a person, is not
how people in other countries think and evaluate a person.

J.