Steven Dutch, Natural and Applied Sciences, Universityof Wisconsin - Green Bay
First-time Visitors: Please visit Site Map and Disclaimer. Use"Back" to return here.
I will respond to questions and comments as time permits, but if you want to take issuewith any position expressed here, you first have to answer this question:
What evidence would it take to prove your beliefs wrong?
I simply will not reply to challenges that do not address this question. Refutabilityis one of the classic determinants of whether a theory can be called scientific. Moreover,I have found it to be a great general-purpose cut-through-the-crap question to determinewhether somebody is interested in serious intellectual inquiry or just playing mind games.Note, by the way, that I am assuming the burden of proof here - all youhave to do is commit to a criterion for testing.It's easy to criticize science for being "closed-minded". Are you open-mindedenough to consider whether your ideas might be wrong?
Let’s be blunt. If you line up all the stupidest, most mean-spirited, and most hypocritical people in the world, a disproportionate number of them will be conservatives. Liberals don’t find this surprising. They regard conservatism as inherently stupid, mean-spirited, and hypocritical, so they consider it natural that conservatives should be stupid, mean-spirited, and hypocritical. The occasional conservative who is intelligent, articulate, and ethical they regard as an interesting anomaly, like the dog walking on its hind legs: “one does not expect it to be done well, but the mere fact it is done at all is surprising.”
Conservatives tend to support traditional values, therefore people who have never questioned the ideas they learned as children are likely to style themselves “conservative.” So are people who are too lazy to re-examine their ideas or who don’t want to be bothered coping with issues, or too timid to deal with change, or too stupid to cope with intellectually complex ideas. No doubt about it: sloth is one of the deadly sins of conservatism.
So is greed. In the present American political theater, liberals favor social programs and the taxes to support them. Conservatives often oppose them because they consider the programs ineffective or counter-productive. They tend to oppose federal regulation in favor of local regulation or no regulation. But if you are just in it for the money, either lower taxes or freedom to make profits by running roughshod over everybody else, you’ll probably consider yourself a “conservative.”
People who are pretty quick to generalize about the undesirable traits of conservatives seem to assume that liberals don't have any characteristic undesirable traits of their own. After all, what can compare to Rush Limbaugh or Pat Robertson? Maybe James Carville? or Michael Moore? What are the deadly sins of liberalism?
Top of the list has to be envy. In fact, there’s even a term, “the politics of envy,” for the forces unleashed by envy. Envious people hate those who are successful and try to bring them down any way they can: heavier taxes, more regulation, prohibiting any decision making that might favor people because of their accomplishments. The envious assume that anyone who succeeds has to have done so by taking things from others, therefore they see it as just to confiscate the fruits of success. They regard rewards for success as “elitist.” They support any effort to erase the distinctions between the industrious and the lazy, the intelligent and the stupid, the success and the failure.
Hatred of the successful is a subset of what is probably the defining sin of liberals. If conservatives are often prone to an irrational fear of chance, liberals tend to be prone to irrational hatred of authority.
Let’s not forget lust, either. Ever notice how quickly sex bubbles to the surface in ostensibly intellectual discussions of values?
Conservatives are notorious for hypocrisy when it comes to sex. No sooner does some conservative achieve prominence by renouncing loose sex than it turns out he’s had an affair, sometimes even with an abortion attached. But there are three important points to make about hypocrisy. First, say what you will about Bill Clinton, nobody can accuse him of being hypocritical about sex. He believes he has the right to have sex with anything that can’t outrun him, and he lives out those values with complete consistency. You can only be accused of hypocrisy if you have standards to fail to live up to. No standards, no hypocrisy. Or maybe, no hypocrisy means no standards.
Another point about hypocrisy is this: Harrison Ford made a bazillion dollars playing the genial rogue who spouted cynicism, but whom everybody knew would come along at the right moment to do the right thing. Nobody ever calls someone a hypocrite for espousing a low set of values and living to a higher standard in practice. So accusing someone of hypocrisy always carries with it an implicit recognition that the values are sound. The indignation always comes because someone is pointing out our own flaws while not doing anything about his own.
The final point: if the values are sound, isn’t the nature of the speaker completely irrelevant? Newt Gingrich is a slimeball for dumping his dying wife, then emerging as a spokesman for traditional values. So what are we saying here? He’d be all right if he advocated disloyalty? That he’s wrong when he speaks out against illegitimacy?
Anger
Gluttony
Return to Pseudoscience Index
Return to Professor Dutch's Home Page
Created 21 January, 2003, Last Update 18 January, 2020
Not an official UW Green Bay site