Conservatism is Crazy, but Psychiatry is Here to Help: “For centuries, statesmen and philosophers have argued about just what modern political conservatism really is: aristocratic or meritocratic, orthodox or libertarian, reactionary or triumphalist. Finally, science has the answer: conservatism is madness. That, at least, is what four professors—Jack Glaser, Frank Sulloway, John Jost, and Arie Kruglanski—suggest in a study that got a great deal of attention in the last few months.” —The New Atlantis The paper attracted alot of attention in the lay press, headlined by campy histrionic comparisons of Bush with Hitler. Despite being more understated than that, the paper, whose authors are prominent enough in psychological academia to know better, had to be written more to be provocative than serious. It appers quite disingenuous of them to defend the paper on op-ed pages, as described in the article, with pained claims of innocence and surprise about pathologizing and, hence, offending anyone. While I believe that decreased cognitive complexity and flexibility, deep insecurity, and lagging moral development, make their bearers more suited to politically conservative thinking, and are characteristic of some conservatives (e.g. George W. Bush in spades), certainly the Right holds some appeal to some cognitively and emotionally sophisticated souls. Political psychology, which applies to populations or polities skills intended for and honed by analyzing individuals’ psyches, has always felt to me like a right shoe worn on a left foot. There is yet another false step, although I am not sure if it is that of Glaser et al or merely the New Atlantis rendition of their beliefs, in moving from inferring unconscious psychological roots of the political beliefs of subject such as Bush to labelling them as a variety of madness. In any case, call me crazy but I agree that “this stands as a powerful example of the misuse of science and the arrogance of expertise.”