"The primary driver of the ideological differences are in whether you believe more in self reliance or group reliance. Conservatives center around rural and more outlying areas, whereas liberals are often more concentrated in population centers. "

I think this is an interesting tangent. (first noting that the study did not say conservatives are dumb).

The self reliance vrs group reliance only describes one aspect of conservatives. Many conservatives tend to be very structure oriented, dogmatic, and authoritarian. Demanding that someone else stand for a flag, take their hat off indoors, or pump gas for a girlfriend who wants to pump her own gas doesn't really jive with "self reliance."

Are they related?

Is a conservative self reliant because he's for self reliance, or is he self reliant because he grew up in an age and area where self reliance was the norm and its what he thinks is the "right way to be" because its what he's used to? I don't know the answer to that, but I think its an interesting question.

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
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That's kind of what I'm getting at.

In the earlier post I think I replied to the wrong user handle by mistake, but the idea is the same. Posting stuff about how one side is supposed to be smarter or dumber doesn't help reconcile any differences or help us at least live together with those differences.

I just take a look at election maps and see lots of blue around population centers, including cities, and more red the more rural it gets. I'd assume the initial push for this idea began hundreds of years ago.

People in cities have rapid response police pretense. Rural folks have longer response times from Sheriffs, to this day. I'd totally assume the rural person would feel a need for a gun in the house. A real feeling there of "I've gotta take care of this myself".

People in cities are used to paying in to communal services to make things "flow better" in a more compact and busy area. It doesn't work at all in NYC or Paris or other places to NOT have public transit. Also, I'd imagine lots of larger centrally located churches probably used to (and do) help folks there. Maybe back in the day they thought "let's leverage the capability of the city government apparatus to be more effective" and modern social welfare began to spread until it reached the state and national levels seen in the US today.

You wouldn't get that kind of thing in towns of 50 to 500 people strung out over miles and miles of farmland. The logistics just wouldn't be the same. It would probably have been more neighbor to neighbor and relative/family to family.

So then you get into the whole disagreement of what social welfare looks like.

Etc.......ad nauseam

Agreed. Obviously Boolean algebra is hard for a lot of folks... a conditional statement and its contrapositive are either both true or both false, as are the inverse and converse together, but the inverse/converse don't necessarily track directly w/ the original & contrapositive.

Alles klar?

So let's see ~ You haven't actually read the study, but are still pretty confident it's crap because *their side* is the biased one...?

I always forget which is which. =P

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485

This. We as a society have not just become polarized, but feel the need to vilify those that don’t see things exactly as we do. You see it with the right with the vile statements they made about McCain after his death. I’m no fan of his either, but geez, people were dancing on his grave and saying some pretty vile things. That doesn’t further your goals, it makes you look like a loser. Same goes for the left. I mean, there is no way anybody outside of California sees Feinstein as moderate let alone conservative, yet she was pushed to the left because she isn’t liberal enough. Nobody can compromise anymore, and politics is a zero sum game.


Moderate right and moderate left may like what the opposite side has to say on some key issues, maybe even important ones, but it becomes a zero sum game that says if I like the Democratic Party’s stance on the environment, I’m endorsing their view of unrestricted abortion. Or maybe I’m a Democrat with pro-life leanings, but voting for a Republican means endorsing their less gay friendly agenda.


Maybe I’m a pot smoker or criminal justice reform. My local candidate regardless of political party is solid on that front, but is a reliable vote against gun rights (Democrat) or not supportive of common sense reforms (Republican). So we find one party pretty much in in the tank with little compromise on 6 out of 10 things we support, but maybe we value those 4 things more than the rest and just cannot in good conscious support the other party.


It’s a zero sum game and destructive to our nation.

The difference here can be attributed to cognitive dissonance. I have NO issues calling out the dregs of either political party. I voted for Trump, because he was better than the alternative. I didnt vote for him in the orimary, but once he was the candidate, he was the better choice.

He had me at “I’m not Hillary”.

Sure, you could call me biased. When I read article after article about the fact that something like 95% of the folks in the social sciences identify themselves as liberals; that many in the social science field are decrying that very lack of diversity of thought; that study after study turns out to non-replicable; that many studies are engineered from the beginning to make conservatives look bad; when these folks don’t do similar studies that show the same effects in liberals....yes, I tend to be biased in that I assume that when I read an article like this, I am generally skeptical due to those sorts of things. Same reason many folks are skeptical of studies on global warming paid for by skeptics of global warming that purport to not show evidence of global warming. You could call that biased, or perhaps just well informed on the subject.

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Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

Forgive him . He's well known as the village idiot around here.

You know I'm very liberal...but it might be worth reading the article, rather than the globe and mail report of it. The article actually doesn't support what you wrote.

Could do the same thing with respect to believing idiotic health conspiracy theories, and use this to show that liberals are stupid because they are (far more) likely go buy into them than the right.

I’m very liberal also. But, most leftists think that means something it doesn’t (hint - they’re not really liberals).