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Old 10-15-2012, 07:09 PM
 
Location: Near Manito
20,170 posts, read 24,247,328 times
Reputation: 15284

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Quote:
Originally Posted by newenglandgirl View Post
They don't believe in education. The far right wing Christians don't believe in science and have little use for the humanities. They want to deregulate everything (free country and all that), don't care about others in legitimate need, could care less about our environment (polar caps? what polar caps? what toxins in the water, wink wink), and could care less about the arts and funding socially conscious programs. They are against public television and public radio, so that ells you a lot about how educated they are. It's kind of a "me and mine" world.
Conservatives seem to have been transformed into "far right wing Christians" in your analysis. This happens a lot when progressives become frustrated with their inability to find the right strawman to burn. (To be sure, it happens among right-wingers, too; liberals become communists, etc.) You are certainly free to make that kind of transference, but it discounts the validity of your analysis. Just as progressives are capable of independent thought on hot-button issues like abortion, immigration, healthcare, and foreign policy, so are those of a more rightish persuasion. Such independence does not necessarily equal the kind of selfishness which you ascribe solely to conservatives. In fact, I would hope that you admire independence of thought among your progressive compatriots, and not criticize them too vehemently ("me and mine") for having arrived at them individually, and holding on to them conscientiously.

 
Old 10-15-2012, 07:20 PM
 
Location: Eastern Colorado
3,887 posts, read 5,723,962 times
Reputation: 5386
Quote:
Originally Posted by newenglandgirl View Post
They don't believe in education. The far right wing Christians don't believe in science and have little use for the humanities. They want to deregulate everything (free country and all that), don't care about others in legitimate need, could care less about our environment (polar caps? what polar caps? what toxins in the water, wink wink), and could care less about the arts and funding socially conscious programs. They are against public television and public radio, so that ells you a lot about how educated they are. It's kind of a "me and mine" world.
so because they do not believe in the things that you do that means they are stupid? Just because someone would rather spend his time off fishing and drinking with his buddies instead of looking at what people call art these days, means nothing other then they understand fun. When people would rather go camping in the woods alone then going to a jazz festival, that does not make them stupid, but instead they enjoy something many are scared to even try.

Years ago I seen a movie, I do not remember which one it was, but they said something very telling. Depending on where you are standing at that very moment everybody can either be a genius or an idiot. I will not tell my IQ, but it is sufficient enough to have been recruited to join a certain organization, I am pretty damn book smart, however put me in the wrong scenarios and I look like the biggest fool out there, ask me to change a head gasket on a car, grease a tractor, drive a semi, put up a tent, and I am in serious trouble.

Enjoying the simple things in life, and working hard does not mean that someone does not have brains, even if they did not do well in school or dropped out at a young age. It just means that they have other priorities in life. Truth is some of the smartest people I have met can barely read and write, but they can drive a semi, they can drill that oil you use in your car, the can build you a house with straight walls and a good roof. They are also smart enough to hire accountants and bookkeepers to makes sure their net income is as little as possible.

Many of those same people are conservatives, because they are tired of the government taxing them to pay for those people who refuse to work, they are tired of government rules and regulations deciding what they can and cannot do, and are tired of hearing how someone needs the government help to do something. Most of these guys make $40-50-60 thousand a year, through their blood and sweat, and the get or take no hand outs, making them more then a little pissed off when they are paying taxes that go to people that refuse to work anywhere close to as hard as they have since the day after they graduated or quit school.

Most I know also do not mind helping someone with a hand up, or taking care of those with disabilities, or the elderly, but if you are healthy and can work, they will help you get a job, and maybe even give you the shirt off the back or gas money to get there, but that is about all because that is about the most they ever got, and if they can do it so should you.

Maybe they do not do as well as you or others do on that stupid test, but I guarantee you cannot spend a week doing their job. Maybe they do not enjoy the things you do, but I tell you most of them are very happy with their overall life, and do not care if you like them. Maybe they believe in religion, but I have yet to have one say anything to me about not going to church. At the end of the day I would rather be associated with this type of person as opposed to those that go to college for 10 years, make a little more money, and are always worried about impressing everybody else and worry about what I do with my money and time.
 
Old 10-15-2012, 08:17 PM
 
Location: SF
10 posts, read 9,161 times
Reputation: 19
Quote:
Originally Posted by jwiley View Post
so because they do not believe in the things that you do that means they are stupid? Just because someone would rather spend his time off fishing and drinking with his buddies instead of looking at what people call art these days, means nothing other then they understand fun. When people would rather go camping in the woods alone then going to a jazz festival, that does not make them stupid, but instead they enjoy something many are scared to even try.

Years ago I seen a movie, I do not remember which one it was, but they said something very telling. Depending on where you are standing at that very moment everybody can either be a genius or an idiot. I will not tell my IQ, but it is sufficient enough to have been recruited to join a certain organization, I am pretty damn book smart, however put me in the wrong scenarios and I look like the biggest fool out there, ask me to change a head gasket on a car, grease a tractor, drive a semi, put up a tent, and I am in serious trouble.

Enjoying the simple things in life, and working hard does not mean that someone does not have brains, even if they did not do well in school or dropped out at a young age. It just means that they have other priorities in life. Truth is some of the smartest people I have met can barely read and write, but they can drive a semi, they can drill that oil you use in your car, the can build you a house with straight walls and a good roof. They are also smart enough to hire accountants and bookkeepers to makes sure their net income is as little as possible.

Many of those same people are conservatives, because they are tired of the government taxing them to pay for those people who refuse to work, they are tired of government rules and regulations deciding what they can and cannot do, and are tired of hearing how someone needs the government help to do something. Most of these guys make $40-50-60 thousand a year, through their blood and sweat, and the get or take no hand outs, making them more then a little pissed off when they are paying taxes that go to people that refuse to work anywhere close to as hard as they have since the day after they graduated or quit school.

Most I know also do not mind helping someone with a hand up, or taking care of those with disabilities, or the elderly, but if you are healthy and can work, they will help you get a job, and maybe even give you the shirt off the back or gas money to get there, but that is about all because that is about the most they ever got, and if they can do it so should you.

Maybe they do not do as well as you or others do on that stupid test, but I guarantee you cannot spend a week doing their job. Maybe they do not enjoy the things you do, but I tell you most of them are very happy with their overall life, and do not care if you like them. Maybe they believe in religion, but I have yet to have one say anything to me about not going to church. At the end of the day I would rather be associated with this type of person as opposed to those that go to college for 10 years, make a little more money, and are always worried about impressing everybody else and worry about what I do with my money and time.
I agree wholehearted with your analogies and breakdown of a certain culture/ mindset that is often deemed by media as backwards. As a right-leaning Independent living in San Francisco, I have many liberal friends who unfortunately fit the liberal stereotype: someone intolerant of viewpoints other than those similar to their own, someone who is disdainful of so-called redneck-working class-truck driving-fishing/ hunting types. My liberal friends constantly mocking those whom they perceive to be hicks or rednecks or even simply those of lower social-economic status. A whole insulting conversation recently involved talking about "white trash" families who shop at Walmart, the cars they drive to go to Walmart, their lack of education, etc.... These are self-described liberals who talk a great deal about diversity, yet either send or are talking about sending their kids to mostly White/ Asian private schools here in San Francisco. They talk about the plights of inner city Black and Latino youths, but balk at sending their own kids to public schools with high Black and Latino populations. Furthermore, they often feel it's quite okay to assign racial stereotypes upon others by injecting race or ethnicity as the defining characteristic of a person. I am of Asian descent (mostly, but with some Russian thrown in), and I've not been made more aware of my ethnicity/ race than by the p.c. crowd. It's hard to explain, but those people who have experienced this will know what I am talking about.

As far as higher IQs, I don't believe IQs are causative to political persuasions. I know plenty of scientists, physicians, medical researchers, engineers, and high tech professionals who are very intelligent yet quite conservative in outlook. I myself have a background in both sciences and languages too, I consider myself extremely well-read too, but I am not your typical liberal San Franciscan by any stretch. I certainly don't look down at those who do manual labor for a living, those who shop at Walmart, or those who don't appreciate and attend opera/ symphony/ ballet on regular basis like I do. When I was in my early 20s I used to be very liberal and intolerant myself, as I've gotten more life experience (now 40 but looks 28 according to my dermatologist!) I find many things to not be what they are at face value, that it is better to look at things and people not with preconceived notions but on individual basis. That to me is what true tolerance is all about.
 
Old 10-15-2012, 10:43 PM
 
Location: Palo Alto
12,149 posts, read 8,381,289 times
Reputation: 4190
If you guys are so smart how come its the stupid Repubs that own everything and have all the money? At least according to the class-warfare rhetoric spewing from Obama today.

Must really tick you off that a bunch of stupid old white guys control all the wealth while you brainiacs work at Starbucks and dream of a new Huffy.
 
Old 10-15-2012, 10:46 PM
 
Location: Flyover Country
26,212 posts, read 19,425,000 times
Reputation: 21673
I don't need any study to confirm this, all I need is to read the comments on this forum to confirm this.

Not that I ever needed confirmation, just sayin'...
 
Old 10-15-2012, 10:48 PM
 
2,117 posts, read 1,872,946 times
Reputation: 1128
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eleanora1 View Post
What part of liberals don't oppose effective sex education do you not get? We're not the ones feeding our kids drivel that leads them to fail to understand how their bodies work. We're certainly not the ones denying a teenager an abortion so she isn't going to become an out of wedlock teen mommy with no future.

We don't tell our daughters that their only role in life is to marry and have children. We don't bury our children in religious nuttiness that was dumb two thousand years ago let alone today.

The only nonsense is your own. Liberals have lower rates of divorce because we marry when we're ready rather than because we're seventeen and knocked up and daddy's a religous extremist forcing us to go the altar with someone we barely know. My kids will get pregnant when they're good and ready and not because they've been told bs from some idiot in Texas school system who is afraid of the female reproductive system and knows nothing about it.

My kids will have college degrees, good jobs and children when they are good and ready for them. Their odds of being a welfare moron are considerably lower than the local dimwit in a red state who never reads anything but a two thousand year old book filled with myths.
You are a very angry person.
 
Old 10-15-2012, 11:03 PM
 
Location: Limbo
6,513 posts, read 7,515,122 times
Reputation: 6319
I dislike these kind of statistics. Honestly, you can make statistics say whatever you want them to.

I know some dumb as a rock conservatives and I know some dumb as a rock liberals. Still, there are genius' among us, and it makes me wonder: why don't have better people in office (out of the 300+ million of us) to represent us?
 
Old 10-15-2012, 11:04 PM
 
Location: Pluto's Home Town
9,982 posts, read 13,709,192 times
Reputation: 5689
I don't subscribe the we smart, you dumb line of dialogue.

However, I was thinking just today about how many people just don't have the education or intellect to see "the big picture." It is most people, right or left, to be honest. These are people who might be very good as a plumber, construction foreman, or deisel mechanic, but asking them to look beyond their own immediate needs to see how we develop a sustainable economy, protect the environment,etc. is too much. Most people just don't take the time to consider the impacts of their lives on a larger world. They just assume it is right. And if they only listen to people who tell them they are right, no thinking required, well they can do bad stuff. Like a person who dumps waste in a stream, paves over a prairie dog town, catches the last salmon, or cuts his own taxes while slowly bankrupting the government his kids will need.

Joe Six Pack is likely a great guy, and hardworking, but will not typically do the right thing for the planet, or the economy over the long term. Joe Six Pack is usually a republican if white, and a democrat if of color. They typically are just working dudes, and although good at what they do, largely oblivious about its effects on society as a whole.

The people who charted the course of society have usually been the professional and academic classes, which currently lean liberal, but used to have plenty of moderate conservatives too. The current GOP seems to disdain anyone who thinks for themselves, but I suspect it is a short-term abberation.
 
Old 10-15-2012, 11:25 PM
 
488 posts, read 411,229 times
Reputation: 238
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sci Fi Fan View Post
EDIT: I should have put this in originally. If you're a conservative who disagrees with the validity of the (enormous quantity of) studies, actually explain what is flawed in their methodology before blindly labeling them "junk science". Thanks.





Conservatives and Liberals Have Different Brains, Studies Show - ABC News
Intelligence Study Links Low I.Q. To Prejudice, Racism, Conservatism
Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice | Racism, Bias & Politics | Right-Wing and Left-Wing Ideology | LiveScience
Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice - Yahoo! News


According to the Pew Research Center:

30% of social conservatives have incomes >75k, 28% have college degrees.

41% of liberals have incomes >75k, 49% have college degrees.

(in case if you searched it, somebody trolled the wikipedia page on the topic and messed up the figures, but wasn't smart enough to mess up the more in depth chart near the bottom)




And please understand the difference between Democrat/Republican and Liberal/Conservative. Republicans are on average actually more likely to have college degrees than Democrats (although I may be wrong on this), but as a subgroup, self identified Liberals are by far the most educated people in the United States, followed by libertarians.
Because all 4 articles you link are by shoddy sources, except maybe ABC. Livescience and Yahoo! are hack jokes. The former likes to terroize and contradict health stories, akin to a more upper-crust National Enquirer for correctly-living health nuts and the latter is simply a money-starved Silicon Valley ad-fest with 'progressive' California madness as their entitled line of feel-good (non)thought. ABC wants ratings and Huffington is just Huffington...

Hilarious, the ranting 'progressive' liberals and their need to feel smug by any means, conjuring up factoids from click sites and!
 
Old 10-15-2012, 11:42 PM
 
Location: Pa
20,300 posts, read 22,151,291 times
Reputation: 6549
intellegence and Hi IQ's does not = common sense. If it did our country would not be in the position that it is in today.
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