It’s Bush’s Fault

For decades now, American liberals have been the favorite whipping boy for almost any pundit assigning blamed for almost any problem afflicting the United States. Now, right-wing author Dinesh D’Souza is out with a new book reprising how the liberals were the reason that al-Qaeda struck at New York and Washington on 9/11.

In this guest essay, Ivan Eland dissects D’Souza’s argument. For the full story on another case of false scholarship, go to ConsortiumNews.Com.

Actually, as we have reported here before, Osama was most likely madder at the Bush family than he was at American liberals or America in general. Although D’Souza’s “most obvious” solution does seem tenable: A more humble U.S. foreign policy.

We’ve suspected it all along…now there’s more research to back it up.

Confident, resilient, self-reliant kids mostly grow up to be liberals, while insecure kids look for the reassurance provided by tradition and authority and find it in conservative politics, according to a recent study published in the Journal of Research Into Personality.

Confident kids turned out liberal and were still hanging loose, turning into bright, non-conforming adults with wide interests, according to Kurt Kleiner, a Toronto-based freelance science writer who covered the study’s release in the Toronto Star.

“The more confident kids are eager to explore alternatives to the way things are, and find liberal politics more congenial,” the study concludes. “The girls were still outgoing, but the young men tended to turn a little introspective.”

“In a society that values self-confidence and out-goingness, it’s a mostly flattering picture for liberals,” Kleiner writes. “It also runs contrary to the American stereotype of wimpy liberals and strong conservatives.”

Similar work by John T. Jost of Stanford and colleagues in 2003 drew a political backlash. The researchers reviewed 44 years worth of studies into the psychology of conservatism, and concluded that people who are dogmatic, fearful, intolerant of ambiguity and uncertainty, and who crave order and structure are more likely to gravitate to conservatism. Critics branded it the “conservatives are crazy” study, but hey, we say if the shoe fits…

Jost welcomed the new study, saying it lends support to his conclusions. But Jeff Greenberg, a social psychologist at the University of Arizona who was critical of Jost’s study, was less impressed, Kleiner reports.

We say the truth is in front of your eyes. Just look inside the White House….