Letters to the Editor

• Shooter Mis-Fires Again and Again and Again...

  [Read the article: The right-wing brain in action]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  First Shooter says:

  LWA is really RWA?

  ...

  Actually, the part I liked best was the wiki entry for right wing authoritarianism....

  It(RWA) is not an ideological measure, but a social psychological one that, in spite of its name, is not necessarily associated with right-wing political views. The nature of the RWA scale leads to predictions that High RWAs will tend to support the current political authority, regardless of the ideology expounded by those in power. For example, it was predicted, and confirmed that in the old Soviet Union, high RWAs were supporters of the Communist Party because it represented the established authority even though it would be described as a left wing Party. (The Authoritarian Specter)

  Translation: We've decided that ANY authoritarian behavior, even by left-wing individuals, will be called right wing authoritarianism.

  Actually, no. The scale and the name were created first, to study authoritarianism directly, here in the West, where ideology and social psychology coincide. It was only after years of research, primarily in Canada, where Altemeyer lives, that some studies were done in the Soviet Union, where they clash--but only institutionally, as a result of the fact that Stalin killed off all the anti-authoritarian Communists, especially those who believed in the withering away of the state.

  As for LWA, it's actually a totally different construct, which Altemeyer also studied, in which people follow leaders who attack the status quo. He created this construct specifically to test the hypothesis that there were authoritarians on the left as well as the right here in the West. He found that there were not. Virtually no one scored 50% on the LWA, while people regularly show up scoring 90% or more on the RWA scale. Interestingly, Many of those who score highest on the LWA scale are not leftwing at all. They are anti-Semite conspiracists and others who also score very high on the RWA scale--meaning they scale much higher on the RWA scale. Altemeyer speculates that these mixed highs explain both the occassional presence of authoritarian leaders on the left, and their frequent migration to the right--folks like the original generation of neocons, for example, or more recently David Horowitz.

  I'm glad you liked the passage, though. Since I wrote it.

  The truly wonderful part is the Altemeyer categories describing most of humanity. That could be a problem for liberals with those traits, but that's taken care of by describing everything bad as Right Wing Authoritarianism. Mercy, it doesn't get more convenient than that.

  Sorry to burst your bubble, Shooter, but:

  (1) All of humanity has some traces of RWA. It's a scale.

  (2) However, the same is not true of those commonly referred to as RWAs, who make up only about 20-30% of the population. Those who score in the top 25% are referred to as high-RWAs in Altemeyer's research, which, like all empirical research, requires more precision than everyday speech. The figure is quite plausible, however, as Altemeyer has noted that it's roughly the percentage of people who supported Nixon to the very end, when it was obvious he was acting as a law unto himself. High-RWAs are also just called "RWAs" for short.

  (3) Still, it's quite natural for you to assume that everyone's a RWA, since that's one of the traits of RWAs--they assume that they are perfectly normal. When asked where they would fall on the RWA scale, they place themselves in the middle.

  (4) Among everyday liberals there are a fair number of RWAs. While Republicans as a group score higher on RWA than Democrats, the differences are relatively modest. The differences among the three Canadian parties (the old Progressive Conservatives were around when Altemeyer's original research was done) are more pronounced, but still found a fair sprinkling of high-RWAs among the social democratic New Democratic Party (not at all like the American "New Democrats"). However, Altemeyer found that the higher up you go, the more pronounced the differences become. RWAs can rise very high in the GOP. In the Democratic Party, not so much.

  (5) In short, there is nothing convenient in Altemeyer's findings. You have projected your own highly arbitrary and inconsistent modus operandi onto Altemeyer's work. But it doesn't accurately describe either his findings or his methodology. It's your fantasy, nothing more.

  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."

  Actually, no. Overall, liberals are smarter than conservatives, for the simple reason that they value critical thinking. But that's not what this is about at all. This is much more detailed and specific.

  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.

  Actually, a solution was offered: Don't waste our time trying to convince folks like you, spend it analyzing folks like you, and educating those who might otherwise be taken in.

  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.

  (1) That's not exactly what Iran is doing. But then, you don't do nuance, right?

  (2) That's one of the main reasons why it's important to cultivate a better sort of "enemy." Before BushCo went off on Iran, the moderates had the initiative over there. But he sure took care of that!

  Speaking of no solutions...

  Permalink Sunday, April 8, 2007 08:12 AM