The Liberal Line

To Be or Not to Be Time-in-Schooled?

You are going to be hearing a left about it in the months and years ahead, so let’s get the facts straight: “Conservatism and Personality” is an 18-page article that appears in the current issue of the American Political Science Review. Its author is an industrious and—so he assures us, anyhow — “disinterested” young scholar named Herbert McClosky, who teaches political science at the University of Minnesota. The “findings” it presents are the result of a “research” “project,” conducted over a period of years by a “team,” no less, of investigators trained in the very latest “methods” of the so- called “behavioral sciences.” Its “findings,” like those of Adorno et al’s The Authoritarian Personality over the past years, will, over the next years, admirably serve the purposes of any Liberal who either a) wants to take his Conservative friends and acquaintances down a notch or two, or b) wants to reinforce his smugness about his own supposed moral and intellectual superiority. And, finally, it is tiresome beyond belief, which is why instead of urging you to go read it for yourself I am going to urge you not to—and tell you, in the following paragraphs, all that you will ever need to know about it.

WK

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Willmoore Kendall

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Alexis de Tocqueville

To Be or Not to Be Time-in-Schooled?

You are going to be hearing a left about it in the months and years ahead, so let’s get the facts straight: “Conservatism and Personality” is an 18-page article that appears in the current issue of the American Political Science Review. Its author is an industrious and—so he assures us, anyhow — “disinterested” young scholar named Herbert McClosky, who teaches political science at the University of Minnesota. The “findings” it presents are the result of a “research” “project,” conducted over a period of years by a “team,” no less, of investigators trained in the very latest “methods” of the so- called “behavioral sciences.” Its “findings,” like those of Adorno et al’s The Authoritarian Personality over the past years, will, over the next years, admirably serve the purposes of any Liberal who either a) wants to take his Conservative friends and acquaintances down a notch or two, or b) wants to reinforce his smugness about his own supposed moral and intellectual superiority. And, finally, it is tiresome beyond belief, which is why instead of urging you to go read it for yourself I am going to urge you not to—and tell you, in the following paragraphs, all that you will ever need to know about it.