Healthcare Matters

There has been a recent barrage of articles that make the case that liberals are smarter than conservatives. Actually, let me be more clear: the most equitable of these stories state that smarter people, as defined by IQ, tend to identify themselves as liberal more often than they do conservative. Hmm.

Because the pedigree of the underlying data being cited is questionable at best (For the record: Sources cited by  The Huffington Post may be the gold standard in this context), our guest post this morning comes from a fellow who boldly decided to dive into the shallow end of this pool. And unlike the others, he admits to shooting from his hip.  Jeffrey Ellis of The Thinker Blog easily met our entertainment standard this morning with his post, “Who is more stupid: Liberals or Conservatives?” I hope you enjoy his gambit as much as I did:

____________

First, just to be clear, I’m using present-day America concepts of Liberal and Conservative here. Although there are no widely accepted definitions, here’s my comparative characterization of Liberals and Conservatives:

–Liberals believe that rights arise from the artificial (i.e., from laws and government), whereas Conservatives believe that rights arise from the natural (i.e., from either the natural state of being human or from a “higher power”).

–Liberals push for progress, whereas Conservatives prefer tried and true methods and institutions.

–Liberals prefer social and economic equality over liberty; Conservatives prefer liberty over social and economic equality. Both claim to be in favor of both liberty and equality, but they define them in different ways:

• Liberals are in favor of equality of outcomes; Conservatives are in favor of equality of opportunity.

• Liberals believe in positive rights, i.e., rights to things, like education, health care, affordable housing, etc. Conservatives believe in negative rights only, i.e., rights to not have things done to you, like crime, confiscation of property and wealth, impediment of free speech, etc.

–Liberals generally believe in the benevolence of government and human beings; Conservatives are suspicious of power, believe humans to be corruptible, and view government as a necessary evil.

–Liberals stress interdependence and the importance of community and society as a whole over the individual; Conservatives are advocates for independence and individuality, and dislike collectivism.

It occurs to me that it is possible to be conservative in some ways and liberal in others. Libertarians, for instance, are often characterized as being fiscally conservative (in favor of free markets and limited government) and socially liberal (e.g., in favor of gays having the right to marry).

Second, let’s define stupidity and what it means to be stupid. Most definitions of stupidity are of the form “a poor ability to understand or to profit from experience” or a “slowness/dullness of mind” or “lacking in intelligence or reason.” In short, stupidity is an antonym of intelligence.

Stupid people in general can expect to fare better in an egalitarian society which would provide for their needs than in an individualistic society where they must take responsibility for themselves; consequently we might expect that those stupid people who vote in their own self interest would be Liberals. Those Liberals who uncritically put their faith in big government to solve complex problems while avoiding unintended consequences may very well be stupid, too, as they have not learned from the government’s abysmally poor track record (war on poverty, medicare and social security going bankrupt, housing market collapse caused by government interference in the markets, etc).

And yet… Conservatives have gun-toting rednecks, who tend to reside in the left half of the IQ bell curve. (Yeah, I said it.) Also, religious fundamentalists who reject science and fact in favor of unfounded and often delusional beliefs (e.g., creationists) tend to be Conservatives. And those who are Conservative but still believe the Republican party is in favor of small, limited government may just be stupid as well, given recent history. (But then, Liberals are at least as stupid for believing in the benevolence of government and human beings, given all of human history.) And Conservatives who believe in “tried and true” methods over progress for no other reason than “that’s how we’ve always done it” can count themselves stupid as well, as far as I’m concerned. (However, those who prefer “tried and true” methods because they have been shown to work better than anything else that’s been tried are being prudent, not stupid.)

So…  it seems there’s plenty of stupid to go around.

____________

I’ve previously cited John Goodman’s (The Healthcare Blog) new law of human nature that says our collective IQs drop by 15 points whenever we talk about healthcare reform. That would suggest that many of us may have the answers to healthcare reform in our heads, but just can’t express them without getting relatively stupid –or would that be silly?

—Tom Finn