The Paradox of the Free Market Liberal

[SimpleDon]

An interesting article in the Times. The Paradox of the Free Market Liberal

The article says convention is that personality affects our political ideology, we have "the “rigidity of the right” model. It holds that people differ from one another in terms of whether they are closed-minded and prefer what is familiar, or are open-minded and prefer diverse experiences." That "those with a conservative personality — which is thought to be implemented by basic neurocognitive and structural brain differences — are likely to gravitate toward a broad-based conservative ideology, both culturally and economically. A conservative personality, the view posits, makes you favor the stability and continuity of traditional cultural norms, and it makes you favor right-wing economic policy because that sort of policy will not disrupt the prevailing economic hierarchy." This is not without controversy, the right charges ideological bias. But the research has turned up a more basic flaw in the model.

They interviewed 70,000 people in 51 countries. They found that "people with a conservative personality did indeed tend to adopt culturally conservative attitudes on matters like abortion, homosexuality and immigration. On this count, the rigidity of the right model seems to be valid."

But that

... a conservative personality might actually pull people in two directions with respect to their economic attitudes. Prioritizing order and stability will lead to a yearning for the security that left-wing economic policies aim to provide — but having such a conservative personality will also lead to cultural conservatism, which, if a person is politically attentive, might indirectly lead to favoring economically conservative policy as well. Why? Political messaging.

Political messages often promote the view that right-wing economic preferences naturally fit with right-wing cultural preferences under a broad “conservative” banner. These messages define what constitutes an ideologically consistent package of preferences, and make people more likely to adopt a consistent ideological bundle. They make you say, “If I am culturally conservative, I should also be economically conservative.”

Our cross-national evidence was consistent with this argument: Over all, having a conservative personality made people lean to the left economically — with an important exception. Among people who were both highly attentive to politics and from countries in which left-right ideological conflict was prominent, like the United States, having a conservative personality was associated with holding right-wing economic views.

What does all of this mean for ideological conflict in the United States? For one thing, we must be cautious about accepting claims that a broad ideological conflict, pitting culturally traditional and free-market conservatives against culturally progressive and redistributive liberals, is a natural consequence of personality differences. There’s nothing natural about it: Such a conflict has more to do with the political messages that Americans receive about the nature of politicians’ ideological conflict.

...

In the short form conservatives in the US are the products of political messaging, propaganda. That absent the messaging conservatives who crave stability exhibit somewhat leftist economic policy leanings.

Does this explain the "Keep the government's hands off of my Medicare" signs at Tea Party demonstrations?

 

[Davka]

The shift appears to be linked to Nixon's Southern Strategy, and later to Reagan's Religious Right. Conservative Christians used to vote Democrat, because the Democratic Party espouses economic views which are consistent with Biblical (New Testament) teachings. But when liberal social policies such as Civil Rights, Women's Rights, Reproductive Rights, Sexual Rights, and so on began to be more and more common and central to Progressive thought, the Right used these positions to insist that the Left was against God, Country, and Apple Pie.

Conservative Christianity has been fully co-opted by the GOP. Luckily, Conservative Christianity is also on the wane, as more and more Christians realize that persecuting the disenfranchised doesn't exactly line up with Jesus' teachings.

 

[SimpleDon]

The shift appears to be linked to Nixon's Southern Strategy, and later to Reagan's Religious Right. Conservative Christians used to vote Democrat, because the Democratic Party espouses economic views which are consistent with Biblical (New Testament) teachings. But when liberal social policies such as Civil Rights, Women's Rights, Reproductive Rights, Sexual Rights, and so on began to be more and more common and central to Progressive thought, the Right used these positions to insist that the Left was against God, Country, and Apple Pie.

Conservative Christianity has been fully co-opted by the GOP. Luckily, Conservative Christianity is also on the wane, as more and more Christians realize that persecuting the disenfranchised doesn't exactly line up with Jesus' teachings.

I think that you have explained how the Republicans did the messaging. This is an explanation of why the Republicans had to do the messaging. The Dixiecrats were solid members of the New Deal economic coalition. According to this the Republicans not only had to ween them off of the progressive, redistributive, New Deal economic policies, they had to overcome their natural tendencies to opt for social stability and to resist change. All in order to get the Dixiecrats' support for changing economic policies to redstribute money to the already wealthy.