The Toronto Star has dredged up a 2003 study by UC Berkeley Professor John Jost, the results of which indicate that “whiny, insecure” children have a great propensity to grow up to become conservatives. Liberals, on the other hand, start as “confident, resilient, self-reliant kids”.
On the surface it appears that duct taping whiny little blighters inside their nap-rugs might result in the Democrats regaining a Congressional majority. “Whine now you little bastard! Tom Delay can’t help you here!” But cooler Berkeley heads, where the term really means something, prevail.
So, rather than the almost new car smell and instant gratification of the “skrriiik” of that gray tape stripping off a new roll, and the small “shtucking” sounds during a 4 year old’s futile struggle to escape merely indicating further entrapment, we are driven to ask: Is the NRA more whiny than NOW? Are the ACLU and the AARP less whiny than the Heritage Foundation? Are conservatives more happy than liberals, a characteristic one might reasonably expect to correlate with confidence, reslience and self-reliance? (Yes.) Was this study a good use of tax dollars?
Professor Jost’s study seems to miscast the question of who is defined as a “conservative”, a “liberal” or even what the word “whiny” means. I mean, who is whinier for the nanny state to take on ever more control of everyone’s life than a Dennis Kuchinich voter? Who is less secure than someone who needs to be in front of news cameras 15 minutes out of every hour like Chuck Schumer or, on her good media days, Cindy Sheehan?
The Star neglects to mention that professor Jost suggests in his article that Stalin was a conservative. Ah Ha! Berkeley is a place where it is not at all unreasonable to find people who think communism failed because Stalin didn’t go far enough. He was too tied to traditional concepts like justice, and the value of the 23 million odd Kulaks who he starved to death. Talk about willingness to change. Stalin was your man!
I was afraid that Bill Clinton would have been asked to adjudicate the definitions here, but fortunately John J. Ray has already clarified this for us.
… conservatives have always resisted attempts to curtail their rights and liberties — particularly from the incursions of tyrannical governments. THAT is what has often made them resist change — as governments do have a habit of trying to curtail the rights and liberties of the individual. But to say that conservatives resist change for its own sake is something that only a Leftist would believe. Conservatives believe in liberty. Leftists believe in the State.
Read the whole thing at the link above.
The Star isn’t really fit for wrapping fish, unless the fish were caught in 2003.
H/T Dust My Broom