How To Tell If You Are A Liberal or Conservative

Nicholas Kristof attacked the subject of differentiating liberals from conservatives. Any such attempt is bound to have some limitations considering that there are a wide variety of people falling under both labels, and to some degree the labels are fluid over the years. For example, Barry Goldwater spent most of his career as a conservative leader, considered himself a liberal in his later years and, while he wouldn’t fit in perfectly with either group, would be radically at odds with today’s  conservative movement.

For whatever it is worth, I’ll throw out Kristof’s way to tell if someone is liberal or conservative:

If you want to tell whether someone is conservative or liberal, what are a couple of completely nonpolitical questions that will give a good clue?

How’s this: Would you be willing to slap your father in the face, with his permission, as part of a comedy skit?

And, second: Does it disgust you to touch the faucet in a public restroom?

Studies suggest that conservatives are more often distressed by actions that seem disrespectful of authority, such as slapping Dad. Liberals don’t worry as long as Dad has given permission.

Likewise, conservatives are more likely than liberals to sense contamination or perceive disgust. People who would be disgusted to find that they had accidentally sipped from an acquaintance’s drink are more likely to identify as conservatives.

The upshot is that liberals and conservatives don’t just think differently, they also feel differently. This may even be a result, in part, of divergent neural responses…

One of the main divides between left and right is the dependence on different moral values. For liberals, morality derives mostly from fairness and prevention of harm. For conservatives, morality also involves upholding authority and loyalty — and revulsion at disgust.

This fits in well with George Lakeoff’s strict father view of conservatives. This mindset based upon upholding authority explains why so many go ballistic in response to criticism of government activities and see liberal dissent as subversive and unpatriotic, along with their tendency to compromise civil liberties to support authority.

15 Comments

  1. 1
    Betsy says:

    Here’s the best test: A liberal is someone that believes the Constitution is fluid, and every changing, and that the language within the Constitution can be amended without going through the formal amendment process, and can be changed by inserting words into it, or changing the meaning of those words in order to promote an agenda.  Our Supreme Court has done this consistently since the Civil War, and even before when it created even another party to it, “corporate person-hood” which is really what brought us where we are today, in global corporate socialism.  A change of administration simply means a change in the corporate ruling body and industry now according to how much money they spread on both sides of the aisle.  There party system is dead, and has been for quite some time.

    A Conservative views the Constitution as a contract, that can only be amended by the consent of the governed, and in going through the formal amendment process.  And since the 9th Amendment proceeds all those that came before, technically the remaining amendments are questionable – although quite a few are clearly Constitutional such as the13th, and granting women the right to vote after the wars in which many were left as property owners without husbands due to their losing their spouses due to governmental service.

    And the year 1913 is the crux of the matter, when the owners of the Federal Reserve actually became the true governing body – when the Wilson Administration unlawfully transferred the power to print our currency and monetary system to a private entity, thus privatizing our monetary system when they had no inherent Constitutional authority to so do.

    And now the Fed, which is owned by the European banking houses, wants control of the entire world economy, and the Muslim people are standing in their way – because the Muslim banks do not charge interest on debt, as it is forbidden under Old Testament law.  And until they tow the line, their goal of total control of the world’s economy cannot come to pass.

    So wake up, it doesn’t matter whether you are liberal or conservative – because it is the governing board of the Fed that is calling the shots.  And that is why little changes with a change in Administration – because the Congress and President simply continue to do the Fed’s work since they are beholden also to the bankers.

  2. 2
    Mike says:

    For as short and non-politically charged a test, it seems to have a ring of truth. I definately connected with that first question, no slapping of my father, even with his permission.  I go quite the other way with the faucet and cup sharing thing.   I would also say I believe in the morality of justice and put fairness as something “nice” but way down on the priority list in making most decisions.   To somewhat mimic a Bible story, if I get two kids to carry my groceries to my car for one dollar each, and when they both perform the work equally, I find in my wallet a ten and a five.  I give one a ten and one a five.  I’d say my action was  not very fair, but there was no injustice as they had both agreed to work for only one dollar.

  3. 3
    Ron Chusid says:

    Reading Betsy’s comment certainly does give some insight in identifying who is a conservative, even if not in the manner she intends.

  4. 4
    b-psycho says:

    1) yeah, why not?  I got his permission!
    2) depends on the conditions of the bathroom, not enough information.

    Ron: conservatives don’t typically attack the concept of corporate personhood.  What Betsy calls “corporate socialism” could more accurately be called capitalism (as in actually-existing capitalism).

  5. 5
    Ron Chusid says:

    There are aspects of Betsy’s post which are atypical of conservatives–as I noted there are a wide variety of both conservatives and liberals. Still, she definitely provides an example of some types of right wing thought.

  6. 6
    Betsy says:

    Ron Chusid said:

    Reading Betsy’s comment certainly does give some insight in identifying who is a conservative, even if not in the manner she intends.

    Certainly those that “liberally” construe the Constitution.

    I provided Madison’s quotes, and just where are the historical references for your going outside Constitutional provisions for some of the positions that are in most of these posts, since you truly are not “conservatives” since “conservatives” believe in “preserving” the Constitution unless and until it is lawfully amended.  That is the basic difference between a “liberal” and a “conservative.”  And I don’t know how old you are, but our schooling in this respect was apparently neglected, as was your American history classes.

  7. 7
    Ron Chusid says:

    Again, signs of a conservative. Of course many conservatives only back preserving the parts of the Constitution they like. The Bush years were hardly years in which the Constitution was respected or preserved. Incidentally, it was liberals (as well as some conservatives) who fought to preserve the Constitution. While Betsy’s arguments don’t hold up, the manner in which they are presented does show the true signs of at least one type of conservative.

  8. 8
    b-psycho says:

    Betsy, the Constitution and its stated spirit & purpose has been violated in one form or another since it was put in place. 

    Besides, though the Constitution does, on paper, provide guidelines, it isn’t as limiting as some portray it as.

  9. 9
    Ron Chusid says:

    Good article, such as this near the end:

    Libertarianism is not a fetish worship of liberty, nor is it clinging to our Constitution as an ideal document. It is intellectually dishonest to claim classical liberalism as our own and modern liberalism as some form of a bastard son, both movement can claim classical liberalism as an influence. Focusing on rolling back the clock to 1859 or 1800 is not libertarian, it is both radical and conservative in clinging to the past as better than our present condition.

    The part about clinging to the Constitution helps distinguish Ron Paul from libertarians. While his view of the Constitution might be quite different from what the founding fathers envisioned, he still comes closer to being a backer of (his interpretation of) the Constitution as opposed to libertarianism.

  10. 10
    Betsy says:

    “Ron: conservatives don’t typically attack the concept of corporate personhood.  What Betsy calls “corporate socialism” could more accurately be called capitalism (as in actually-existing capitalism).”

    Sorry, wrong again.  True conservatives do, neocons do not since they get campaign contributions from the Big Business donors and do believe in “corporatism,” and do not view corporations as property – which they clear are, since they can be bought and sold, and are not “people” in any respect.
    And appears you have been listening to neocon rhetoric for far too long.
    If you are speaking about someone such as Rush Limbaugh, the media has branded him a conservative, and he is clearly not in his views also of “corporatism,” and “capitalism” which is not at all mentioned in our Constitution, nor were corporations ever to have any “rights” at all.

    Seems you never studied the Boston Tea Party and what that dumping of the tea in the harbor, and the hatred those founders had for the East India Tea Party was all about, in that private/public “sovereign” merger.

    They also did not believe any non-U.S citizen had the inherent right to buy property or own land in this country, not until they were U.S. citizens – and would have been outraged at the selling off now of our assets and land to foreign interests.  Washington and Congress are acting as if they are CEOs of a mega-corporation, and that is why we are where we are.  They aren’t reading the Constitution at all, and treating the federal government as if it were a business, which it is not.  It is government.  Two entirely different “legal” entities.

  11. 11
    Ron Chusid says:

    Betsy,

    That was b-psycho, not me who made that argument.

    Comments such as “Seems you never studied…” are uncalled for. You do not know what anyone studied, and having a different interpretation of something than you is hardly evidence that someone did not study something.

  12. 12
    b-psycho says:

    Rush Limbaugh calls HIMSELF a “conservative” and is rarely ever challenged on it, but whatever.

    Doesn’t matter, the labels confuse more than they inform these days.  If the popular examples of conservative philosophy were provided by people like Daniel Larison, then I could see something to actually have a reasonable debate with.  Instead, anyone whose views go beyond “hooray for endless war & cronyism!” gets excommunicated. 

    If true conservatives are anti-corporatism, then true conservatives are, by definition, verging on extinction.

  13. 13
    Fritz says:

    Psycho — but not quite extinct.  And pretty good at snarky commentary.  Libertarian-types (which I guess could be called “true conservatives” or “true classical liberals” so you can really confuse people) are against private law (privilege).  Which corporations love — it cements their status and helps them avoid the creative destruction of the marketplace.

  14. 14
    leo says:

    It’s kind of funny.  Betty doesn’t realize how self-serving her original description sounds: in so many words, liberals are open to change while we represent the original truth.

  15. 15
    Eclectic Radical says:

    The liberal/conservative argument about the Constitution began almost as soon as Madison and Hamilton were busy articulating just what the Constitution should be in the Federalist Papers. Hamilton believed, from the beginning, that the Constitution was a guideline for a system of Republican government and interpreted the ‘necessary and proper clause’ with that in mind, and specifically intended judicial review as a means to determine whether or not written law stood up to the principles articulated in the Constitution.

    Madison believed the Constitution was not a working model for a system of government but a stone tablet from heaven which could not be altered in any way but the one prescribed.

    The problem is that the system of amendments was not intended to be a written codicil of all the rights American citizens enjoyed. The authors (or some of them, at any rate) believed the natural rights communicated in the Declaration of Independence and the plethora of rights that grow naturally from that foundation had been communicated in the Revolution and need not be communicated in the framework of government. However, several states did not wish to ratify unless there was some codification of rights. Other states initially opposed such codification on the grounds that in the unseen future, someone would try to claim that human beings only enjoyed the rights codified in the Constitution. Which has, of course, happened.

    The people who most strongly insisted the Constitution was written in stone, after its ratification, were (in most cases) the people most opposed to it before it was ratified. Afraid of any national government with authority over state governments, they wished that national government to be as weak as possible. Those who had seen the great need for the Constitution saw that it must be flexible.

    To say that conservatives represent the views of the founders and liberals do not is to ignore the fact that the founders fought the very same fight among themselves that we fight among ourselves today, with only cosmetic differences.

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