Inductivist

The verbal tricks of liberals show real audacity. You always hear how conservatives are divisive because we oppose things like abortion and gay marriage. Up until 40 years ago, practically everyone--even the irreligious--believed that traditional views of marriage and family were authoritative. Everyone took them for granted.

Then liberals came along, claimed that the institution was oppressive and antiquated, and they proceeded to tear it down. The truth is only obvious: THEY are the aggressors here. And when we start fighting back after getting smacked around, we're called divisive. Only verbal tricksters as deceptive as liberals could get away with walking up to you, punching you, and then crying about what a bully you are.

Here's the nostalgic first verse of "I Wish Things Were Simple Again" by Country/Western legend Merle Haggard:

I wish things were simple like they used to be,
When cowboys rode horses, and were heroes to me.
My Mother was a lady, and my Dad was a man,
And I wish things were simple again.

As a follow-up to the last post, here are the mean traditionalism scores by race/ethnicity (sample size = 3,725):

Mean traditionalism score

Amerindian 9.11
Black 9.00
Norwegian 8.65
Asian Indian 8.64
German 8.52
French 8.46
Scottish 8.44
Mexican 8.43
Irish 8.34
English 8.14
Polish 8.06
Italian 7.88
Swedish 7.66
Jewish 6.88

The gap between Amerindians and Jews is one full standard deviation--a very large difference.

Heritability for traditionalism is about .6.

The World Values Survey asked respondents when prostitution is justified. Answers ranged from never (1) to always (10).

I combined the eight Muslim countries surveyed and calculated the mean: it is 1.7, indicating that people in these countries feel that selling sex for money is practically always wrong.

Next, I calculated the mean for the ten Western European countries in the sample. Their mean is a middle-of-the-road 4.1.

Finally, I found that the average for Americans who go to church at least weekly is 1.8, and for those who never go it's 4.3.

Social conservatives typically align themselves with the West against the Islamic world in the "clash of civilizations," but it needs to be recognized that in some respects we have more in common with Muslims than Europeans and many secular Americans. Our fight with liberal degenerates is not limited to the U.S. If Europe had any cultural conservatives, I'd happily team up with them, but I think they've gone the way of the dodo.

The overwhelming majority of Muslims, by contrast, are traditional. We need to work with them to fight against liberal cultural imperialism in their countries.  I wouldn't wish the humiliation of gay marriage on my worst enemy.           

In case you folks haven't seen this, here's a very interesting world cultural map based on the World Values Survey:

"This map reflects the fact that a large number of basic values are closely correlated; they can be depicted in just major two dimensions of cross-cultural variation.

"The World Values Surveys were designed to provide a comprehensive measurement of all major areas of human concern, from religion to politics to economic and social life and two dimensions dominate the picture: (1) Traditional/ Secular-rational and (2) Survival/Self-expression values. These two dimensions explain more than 70 percent of the cross-national variance in a factor analysis of ten indicators-and each of these dimensions is strongly correlated with scores of other important orientations.

"The Traditional/Secular-rational values dimension reflects the contrast between societies in which religion is very important and those in which it is not. A wide range of other orientations are closely linked with this dimension. Societies near the traditional pole emphasize the importance of parent-child ties and deference to authority, along with absolute standards and traditional family values, and reject divorce, abortion, euthanasia, and suicide. These societies have high levels of national pride, and a nationalistic outlook. Societies with secular-rational values have the opposite preferences on all of these topics.

"The second major dimension of cross-cultural variation is linked with the transition from industrial society to post-industrial societies-which brings a polarization between Survival and Self-expression values. The unprecedented wealth that has accumulated in advanced societies during the past generation means that an increasing share of the population has grown up taking survival for granted. Thus, priorities have shifted from an overwhelming emphasis on economic and physical security toward an increasing emphasis on subjective well-being, self-expression and quality of life....

"A central component of this emerging dimension involves the polarization between Materialist and Postmaterialist values, reflecting a cultural shift that is emerging among generations who have grown up taking survival for granted. Self-expression values give high priority to environmental protection, tolerance of diversity and rising demands for participation in decision making in economic and political life. These values also reflect mass polarization over tolerance of outgroups, including foreigners, gays and lesbians and gender equality. The shift from survival values to self-expression values also includes a shift in child-rearing values, from emphasis on hard work toward emphasis on imagination and tolerance as important values to teach a child. And it goes with a rising sense of subjective well-being that is conducive to an atmosphere of tolerance, trust and political moderation. Finally, societies that rank high on self-expression values also tend to rank high on interpersonal trust.

"This produces a culture of trust and tolerance, in which people place a relatively high value on individual freedom and self-expression, and have activist political orientations. These are precisely the attributes that the political culture literature defines as crucial to democracy."


Where do you fall on the map? I might not sound like it, but I'm a moderate on the traditional/secular axis, but I'm more of a worrier than most Western Europeans, and feel we can't afford the luxury of very much self-expression when disaster might be right around the corner.