Everyone knows by now that Ronald Reagan and Adolf Hitler were practically genetic copies of each other. Well, now it seems that we can include Stalin, Kruschev and Castro into the ranks of the "politically conservative". This article from WorldNetDaily explains it all and, wouldn’t you know it, it involves a researcher from the University of California at Berkeley.
You get a sense of what the article's subject (a piece in the American Psychological Association's Psychological Bulletin entitled "Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition") is all about from the opening paragraph:
In a study that ponders the similarities between former President Ronald Reagan, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Rush Limbaugh, four American university researchers say they now have a better understanding of what makes political conservatives tick.
Of course. In order to find out what makes conservatives tick we have no need to look any further than the four men mentioned above.
There's more:
Underlying psychological motivations that mark conservatives are "fear and aggression, dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity; uncertainty avoidance; need for cognitive closure; and terror management," the researchers wrote"
We are, however, reminded later in the text that these aren't necessarily BAD things:
(Professor Jack) Glaser (UC Berkeley) allowed that while conservatives are less "integratively complex" than others, "it doesn't mean that they're simple-minded."
Now there's a backhanded compliment if I ever read one.
Next comes the setup:
The researchers also contend left-wing ideologues such as Joseph Stalin and Fidel Castro "might be considered politically conservative in the context of the systems that they defended."
Never mind that the systems that Stalin and Castro defended and the one that Reagan defended were polar opposites!
And here's the clincher:
The researchers acknowledged left-wing ideologues such as Stalin, Castro and Nikita Kruschev resisted change in the name of egalitarianism after they established power.
So Stalin, Castro and Kruschev redeemed themselves "after they established power" because of their strong belief in human equality while the likes of Reagan never did see the error of his ways. Their motivation for "resisting change" became a noble goal while Reagan continued his ways of "fear and aggression" and his "endorsement of inequality."
Lest any of you conservatives take offense at this study, the researchers would like us to know that their findings "are not judgmental" and that:
the research could be viewed as partisan because it focused on political conservatism, but he (Glaser) argued there is a vast amount of information about conservatism and little about liberalism.
You be the judge.
