How to Spot a Baby Conservative

Let the blogging begin: "Remember the whiny, insecure kid in nursery school, the one who always thought everyone was out to get him, and was always running to the teacher with complaints? Chances are he grew up to be a conservative.
At least, he did if he was one of 95 kids from the Berkeley area that social scientists have been tracking for the last 20 years.

The confident, resilient, self-reliant kids mostly grew up to be liberals."

...and it gets better...

"The whiny kids tended to grow up conservative, and turned into rigid young adults who hewed closely to traditional gender roles and were uncomfortable with ambiguity.

The confident kids turned out liberal and were still hanging loose, turning into bright, non-conforming adults with wide interests. The girls were still outgoing, but the young men tended to turn a little introspective."

"For conservatives whose feelings are still hurt, there is a more flattering way for them to look at the results. Even if they really did tend to be insecure complainers as kids, they might simply have recognized that the world is a scary, unfair place.

Their grown-up conclusion that the safest thing is to stick to tradition could well be the right one. As for their "rigidity," maybe that's just moral certainty.

The grown-up liberal men, on the other hand, with their introspection and recognition of complexity in the world, could be seen as self-indulgent and ineffectual."

It also has been my experience that the adventurers I recall from my early school days turned out to be liberals as adults. There are doubters, of course, but they tend to be either neo-con dick-bearing sluts or ultra-frightened righties who want to use any science or seems-like-science they can find to advance the rightie cause. For example, in another study:

"According to the authors -- social psychologists Sheldon Solomon (Skidmore College), Jeff Greenberg (University of Arizona in Tucson), and Tom Pyszczynski (University of Colorado at Colorado Springs) -- these findings suggest that arousing death-related fears can be an effective election strategy for President Bush and other leaders who emphasize the greatness of their own nation and the need to eradicate the threatening evil around us."

It's a fat fact, jack. And no matter the bleating from the righties, this dog does hunt.