Shooter- The truly wonderful part is the Altemeyer categories describing most of humanity.

Liberal - You haven't read it at all. Otherwise you wouldn't make that mistake. You're simply picking up on the name.

Very true, so I've read all of Rosenberg's comments for this thread. Sorry, no changes in my critique. This is just another, more academic sounding version of "liberals are smarter than conservatives." Yet for all the laudatory language of how a four dimensional solution is superior to a two dimensional solution, no solution is offered at all. It's just another political broadside bashing conservatives. Or perhaps it's so nuanced that we "lower beings" and the enemy for that matter just don't recognize "solutions" when offered. Heh.

And that brings up the inherent problem with nuance. If the enemy doesn't respond to it, what good is it? The current case in point being Iran's telling the UN to get lost regarding their nuclear program. What else do the cognitively superior have to offer? Sending Pelosi to legitimize the power that invaded Lebanon and killed it's political opponents? No wonder the Iranians let the Brits go. They see who is winning and it's not us.

Is it superior to surrender the field of battle while losing? Fundamentalists won't care, they will have won. Meanwhile, the superior intellects haven't come up with anything better to address our problems than "Run Away!". You can put lipstick on the proverbial pig, but it still won't make muslim grocery store clerks in Minnesota scan packages of pork. LOL.

-- Paul Dirks

I suppose if your going to identify 1/3 of the world as "the enemy" then indiscrimante bombing and perpetual warfare makes sense.

Have you got a source for that thought, or are you just making stuff up again?

If you happen to trash your own army and completely sell out your ability to influence events in the world by mirroring the worst behavior of your enemies, well then so much the better.

What? You have some other alternative to life or death? This should be really, really, nuanced.

After all, the creator of universe is on our side...right? right?

They think their God is greater than ours, what do you think?

Let me put it to you this way. While you're making enemies, we'll make friends. Fifty years from now, the loser buys the drinks.

-- William Timberman

Define winner and loser. Would the winner be praying to Mecca five times a day? Like I say, the only unilateral way to peace is surrender. Is that what you have in mind as a winning strategy? Just asking because I haven't heard any sort of strategy from your side other than blaming conservatives for all ills in the world.

If Senator Leahy has aides confiscate press releases from conservative organizations in his hearing room, that's RWA?

Clinton's declaration of war on Iraq was RWA?

The EU telling Microsoft to share it's secrets is RWA?

Remind me again, what isn't RWA?

Economic Left/Right: 2.50

Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 0.82

From what I've seen so far, that makes me the most centrist of the lot.

If you are only slightly authoritarian as your score would indicate, then why do you advocate so strongly for authoritarian policies?

I'm not trying to play gotcha, I genuinely would like to know.

-- Jonathan Hoag

Consider that I'm being measured against folks that the test considers extreme. I'm not outside the mainstream, the bulk of commenters here are. One only needs to look at the pride with which extreme scores are touted.

There is also the disconnect between how one would like life to be like, versus what actually works, albeit imperfectly. That alone is what I consider the primary divide between liberals and conservatives. We both want the same things essentially, but differ on how, or even whether, a particular goal is achievable.

Of course, the liberal vision is the one America was founded on. And so one of the conservative's favorite fallbacks is the claim that conservatives want the same thing, only they are just more realistic. It was this "realism" that said, "unfortunately, blacks just aren't equal to whites," and that liberals were "unrealistic" to support black equality. It said the same thing about women as well.

And how many fifths of a white person were blacks originally counted as? When did women get the vote? That liberal vision in 18th Century America? George Will said it well.... It reads "pursuit of happiness," not "delivery" of happiness.

Rosenberg --

Especially since the barbarism is overwhelmingly in the eye of the beholder. Iraq, of course, is the cradel of civilization. They didn't invade us. We invaded them. In violation of the UN Charter, which under our Constitution is the law of the land. We are responsible for Abu Ghraib. Yes, they lived under a dictatorship, whose leader we helped bring to power. But.....

Yes, they lived under a dictatorship, but.... How elegant, how banal.

"Barbarism is in the eye of the beholder." This is the declaration of someone who declines to judge anyone on the basis of their actions. Except of course, those who guarantee his speech.

So rape rooms, actual torture, killing of civilians by the hundred thousand is less barbaric than deposing the dictator?

I've called the UN a despot protector before, and apparently Rosenberg agrees with sentiment. Protecting American citizens, and simultaneously relieving Iraqis of totalitarianism is apparently more noxious than one man depriving an entire country of all the liberal ideals of our founding documents. Tsk.