The Days of Whine and Madness

Commentary by Pete Winn, associate editor, Citizenlink.org

I laughed for five minutes or more when I came across the following story:

A study published in the Journal of Research into Personality by a University of California Berkeley professor found that, after tracking 95 kids for over two decades, those who were "whiny, insecure" kids in nursery school turned out later to be conservatives as adults. They were, to quote the author -- "rigid young adults who hewed closely to traditional gender roles and were uncomfortable with ambiguity."

Those kids whom the author, Jack Block, described as "confident" turned out liberal and "were still hanging loose, turning into bright, non-conforming adults withwide interests."

Hmm. Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha . . .

To be perfectly serious, I think I would have to know a whole lot more about how the study was conducted before I could pass serious judgment on its scientific validity -- and would need answers to questions such as: "Were these 95 kids the children of UC Berkeley professors, perchance, and, if so, wouldn't that kind of skew the sample?" or "Did they seriously control for all variables?" – but frankly, I don't think I'll even attempt to analyze this study scientifically. I'll let others make that determination.

I'm just going to laugh out loud.

I do think I understand what's going on here. I recognize the tactic. It feels to me very much that Professor Block is psychologizing -- or scientizing -- his personal bias. The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany used to do politicized science. They developed it into an art form.

There's always a message behind politicized science: It almost always involves debunking something you oppose, or labeling someone in order to dismiss or marginalize them.

If this is a politicized study, here's what the "message" seems to me to be: Conservatism is the outworking of a fearful, angst-ridden personality. Psychologically healthy people don't turn out to be conservatives.

But hey, why stop there? Why not take it further? "Conservatism is a form of neurosis."

Or, how about: "Conservatism is a form of mental disorder"?

Or, why not: "Conservatives are insane"?

Aha! I've heard this before.

It was a couple of decades ago in college. From time to time, at my alma mater, I would hear certain liberal students and professors utter things such as: "Those conservatives are deluded" or "You have to be crazy to hold to a conservative line."

But those liberals meant "deluded" and "crazy" metaphorically -- symbolically, if you will. They weren't saying that conservatives were actually, medically insane -- just that they thought conservative beliefs were, well, wacky.

This study seems to me to be a couple of steps on the continuum of thought back from "Conservatism is a neurosis," but it's still more hardcore than "Conservatives are crazy/wacky."

The problem here in the 21st century seems to be that we take our metaphors, our word pictures, a little too seriously.

The Russians used to do that. In fact, no one has done it better. Or to worse effect, to be more exact. In the early '80s, in a book called, "A Question of Madness," former Soviet historian Roy Medvedev and his brother Zhores painted a chilling picture of what they called "repression by psychiatry."

Both Medvedevs -- twins, actually -- were outstanding academics who were exiled and ostracized because they had become Soviet dissidents who opposed the Russian Communist regime.

Roy Medvedev was placed for a time in a psychiatric institution, not because he was insane, but because of his political beliefs; because he was a "person who opposed the system."

It takes a few steps to go from the idea that "Whiny kids turn out to be conservatives" to "No sane person can think conservatively" to "those who question the orthodox view (be it Communist in 1960s Russia, or liberal in 2006 in the United States) suffer from a mental disorder."

But if we try to start proving such things "scientifically," we can travel down that road way too quickly -- especially if there isn't something called common sense around to put the brakes on such "insanity."

That has me concerned a little.

Then again, I might just be whining too much.