It is not a smear piece. It is saying "Population A has a higher likelihood of believing logically questionable assertions than Population B, let's figure out why." It's not a new exploration. The research dates back to the Vietnam War, at least as reported by Dan Pink in Drive (2009). The causes may be semantic, in that liberals have looser alliances and allegiances and therefore are more investigative of their beliefs. Fundamentally? Liberal beliefs are aligned with objective truths while conservative beliefs are aligned with ideology. Ideology is not beholden to fact. Therefore, conservatives are less concerned with facts.Conservatives will probably be elated by these findings. But for others, Kahan’s conclusions are likely to be quite controversial, especially since he packages them alongside a critique of a leading strategy to communicate the reality of climate change, namely, by emphasizing that 97 percent of scientists agree that humans are causing global warming. Kahan thinks that’s a way of pushing conservatives’ political identity buttons, rather than tapping into their knowledge.
I would add the caveat: In this country, in this political system, at this time. In other times and places it has been the other way around. The Joke deals with why the Communists couldn't afford to have even a slight sense of humor (because ideological purism crumbles under its own weight the minute any chinks in the armor are exposed). I think conservatism in America fits that paradigm at this moment. Modern small l liberalism is basically data driven, and this is driving the ideological inheritors of Reagan's Evil Empire worldview deeper and deeper into their caves, so much so that even the conservative ideas of yesterday (e.g. the ACA) are now some giant liberal conspiracy. I think rd95 is taking exception because he knows many conservative people who are just people, and refuses to believe that any group who is bound only by a common set of ideas can be lumped together with such a broad and horrible descriptor such as "tends to believe lies." I would like to weigh in and assuage his concerns by saying that is not conservatism per se that gives one this quality. It's blind belief in ideas whose maxims have not been able to stand empirical testing and are now disintegrating. Right now that describes republicans/conservatives perfectly. Edit: But this is exactly why we should fear republicans so much right now. Crumbling ideology is what leads to totalitarianism. Remember that at first, the Soviets allowed elections in Central and Eastern Europe, because they were somewhat confident that the people would elect the proletariat. After the people discovered what a sham Bolshevism is, they rejected it, at which time the USSR started imposing their will militarily (e.g. in Hungary and Czechoslovakia).Fundamentally? Liberal beliefs are aligned with objective truths while conservative beliefs are aligned with ideology. Ideology is not beholden to fact. Therefore, conservatives are less concerned with facts.
Your caveat is flawed and has no basis in truth. If you're "conservative" you wish to slow or halt social change. If you're "liberal" you embrace social change. Science is the practice of turning unknowns into knowns and expanding the boundaries of the human sphere. You can want conservatism to be about anything other than the refutation of progress but it's in the definition, man. Communists? The Joke is a book about a man trapped by a 100-year-old discredited ideology propped up by violence. By the time of the Prague Spring Marx was 80 years dead.
As an aside I was trying to untangle weather Republicans are ideological or just partisan before I read this piece. Relatively mainstream republican rhetoric against the FBI sounds more like Huey Newton's Black Panthers than anyone that would slap a blue lives matter sticker on the back of their vehicle. Balanced budgets haven't been the issue of any importance since they took power. Roy Moore and Donald Trumps free pass on sexual improriety from a party that claims to want to preserve family values above all is another example. These were just the three striking examples of republican abandonment of ideology in favor of partisanship. I don't know where this fits into the discussion exactly but questioning Republican dedication to ideology is where my mind was at today. I don't know enough actual Republicans anymore to know if they are dumb as stumps or not. I've known smart ones and dumb ones aplenty. I know a bunch of dim bulb Democrats here in liberal land. You could cherry pick yourself a bushel off any corner, but I guess Portlandia already did that.
Partisan. 100% partisan. Republican and Democratic rhetoric, for most of the 20th century, was about economic policy with social policy thrown in. Mostly, political parties were aligned based on what we thought we should do with our money. Then LBJ passed civil rights and pissed off the Southern Democrats enough for them to become the Dixiecrats. Then Lee Atwater and crew discovered that there were racist votes up for grabs and said "we hate darkies, too! Come fly your flags, rebs!" and all of a sudden the divide was social as well as economic. In order to get the numbers, the economic Republicans have to throw sops to the social Republicans and as the Democrats have moved right, the Republicans have had to dig deeper and deeper into the social bag to keep up their membership. The biggest threat to moderate Repubicans isn't Democrats, it's the Tea Party. It's the Freedom Caucus. Republicans don't fear Democrats. They fear primary challengers. And the primary challengers are winner-take-all. When George Will drops his Republican Party membership, the ideological heart of the party is gone.