There's More Diversity Of Thought On The Political Right Than On The Left, According To Study. Thoughts?

Question

Chazmatazz269 · Accepted Answer

This fairly supports a lot of people’s anecdotal evidence, i think. It certainly coincides with dramatic shifts i’ve seen in the left over the last twenty years. They’re not the open-minded and tolerant party that they once were. The modern left is far more totalitarian than the modern right. The reason for that is simple. There are lots of ways to exercise our liberties, which is fundamental to conservatives everywhere. However, the modern left insists there’s a very narrow path to “progress”, and if you don’t agree with everything that they think and feel, you are their enemy. This position inherently makes “the right” a much larger group with much more diverse values and expressions of them.
The study was a big enough sample group and concise enough results to warrant further research. It will be challenged and repeated, expanded and repeated, then challenged again. However, it’s not likely to be published in any of the prominent publications. The Grievance Studies Affair proved that the kinds of minds those fields attract aren’t interested in research, however responsible and compelling, that contradicts their preconceived narratives.
Which, ironically, is further evidence of exactly what the results this study are indicating. Ell oh ell!

Lliam · Accepted Answer

I'm not surprised. That's been my personal experience.

I always had what I thought were liberal values - like 1960s-'70s liberal values. But I observed liberals starting to identify as strongly partisan, thinking less for themselves, and becoming more ideologically hive minded about 20 years ago. They went along with every single thing that the Democratic party said.
They went completely insane in 2016.

Around the same time, I started distancing myself from the ideologues. I encountered more people who identified as conservative and was surprised by their scope of opinions and willingness to agree to disagree on individual issues.
Some of those "conservatives" shared many of my old-fashioned liberal values.

alli-112 · Answer

Taking a look at this study briefly and I'm seeing a couple things right off the bat:

1. Their sample size isn't actually that big (around 400 people), their gender diversity is ok, but their racial diversity is heavily weighted towards white participants and potentially underrepresents other groups (both of which tend to be pretty relevant to current US politics). They also had way more democratic participants than republican. It's also not very clear what so of self-selection bias might be present based on where they drew their data from.

2. The survey itself what was used is actually incredibly short (only 8 items). This is hardly ideal if you're trying to thoroughly gauge attitudes on various subjects. Ideally you actually want to ask functionally similar questions multiple times with different wordings to prevent bias. It also only measure specific topics, rather than broader political attitudes.

3. At least personally, I find their figures to be rather confusing, especially considering the lack of labeling, key, etc. I genuinely can't guarantee I'm reading the data correctly, which is a problem.

Overall, I'd say it's not a particularly good study if you're trying to draw broad conclusion about national partisan behavior. Essentially it's too small, too vague, and not comprehensive enough.

But assuming we are correctly interpreting the data correctly, I wouldn't say I'm entirely surprised, but I also don't think it's entirely accurate.

I'm not surprised mostly based on the questions. In my experience, democrats tend to be democrats over shared values such as the ones noted in the survey used (supporting abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, welfare, environmental issues, etc). Republicans as far as I can tell are more of an amalgamation of everyone who disagrees with the democrats for some reason and doesn't classify as an independent. The idea that there might be a good deal of diversity of thought among contemporary republicans is reasonable, though I don't feel like I see it being represented in actual politics. If anything, it's reversed.

As for why I disagree, democrats overall tend to be a more diverse population in terms of gender, race, occupation/lifestyle, etc, so I suspect there are a lot of differences inside the democratic party that simply weren't captured in this study, though I think they are playing out in reality with democratic leaders struggling to find a common rally point to fight against conservatism.

tldr: study isn't actually that thruough/rigorous. Makes one point but seems to miss many others that are equally relevant.

OneViewpoint · Answer

I agree.

The Conservative brain will latch onto every batshit crazy conspiracy theory in the universe to deny reality. Flat Earthers. Libertarian anarchists. White Supremacy nutcases. Horse dewormer and UV light bulbs up your ass as a Covid cure. Jewish space lasers. Italian space lasers. Jews trying to replace Christians in the US. A secret Jewish cabal controlling the global economy from the shadows. Putin is a great guy, just misunderstood. Vaccines are a secret government plot to spread autism. FEMA is running secret govamint death camps. Jan 6th insurrectionists are not traitors and criminals, they are patriots and heroes. Mexico is gonna pay for the wall. China is gonna pay our tariffs. Ukraine is a secret Nazi regime. tRump is a genius. The Constitution was everything until it got in the way of a Fascist takeover. They are for freedumb. Their freedumb. Everyone else can go fuck themselves. Mexicans are all rapists and drug dealers. Progressives are all pedophiles. Alternate facts are acceptable.

Oh yeah, the Reich Wing has more diversity of thought all right. Too bad it's all batshit crazy, illegitimate, and based on asinine conspiracy theories unsupported by facts or science. Diversity of thought just isn't good enough. The quality of that "diverse thought" in the Reich Wing is absolute gutter trash.

Anonymous · Answer

Depends on the angle Left and Right are willing to take

Like, let’s take an issue like gun violence (only an example, don’t go at it)

The Left will no doubt be on board / open minded to stopping mentally distressed individuals from getting their hands on a weapon since people misuse weapons which lead to civilian causalities. The Right will no doubt be ‘Pro Gun’ to the point of blaming it on faulty doors, breakable windows, not enough bulletproof backpacks, and not enough teachers with guns.

That is one angle to see this, I believe we shouldn’t be poking fingers or attacking one another as “inferior” or “dumber”.
The Libtards will always throw crap at Republican’ts and Republican’ts will attack Libtards…. How about we hear from one another, see each other as wanting the best for this country, and come together to find solutions that benefit both sides through compromise? I believe when we reach the center of the aisle, we find common ground solutions.

Ignore the gun debate thing, this is about seeing each other as Americans and toning down the rhetoric to fix the issues of our country. From the economy to gun violence to plane failures to environmental damage to others.

exitseven · Answer

Mskes sense. Conservatives are usually the ones driving the trucks, building the houses, fighting fires and stocking the supermarket shelves. It takes more complex thought to actually perform an actual function thsn it does to wave a Mexican flag and burn a cop car.

Syntosi · Answer

Not particularly surprising. The right wing does not "believe" in anything. Its just a bunch of people pretending to be outraged over the newest culture war. The right wing does not form coherent beliefs on basically anything nor do they care if their beliefs has conflicts with other people or even their representatives. Their political identity is more important than their beliefs.

The left however actually believe in what they say. They are also more open-minded, which means they are open to learning and understanding new things. It is a pursuit of "truth" and as a result it will guide people to the same conclusions regardless of where their beliefs started.

Thanks for sharing this, its going to be very useful to show just how uninterested the right wing is about real issues and how focused they are on irrelevant culture wars and identity politics.

AviatorTom · Answer

That's probably true. Liberals have only one solution to problems... let government control things, while conservatives have many different solutions to problems... let the individual decide the action, with government support where appropriate.

Smegskull · Answer

And if you ran the same study in the 90s it would be reversed.
You aren't seeing diversity in the right or the left, you are just seeing which side the unaligned (actually diverse thinking people) are willing to sit with for now. As soon as the right start stepping on snek it will slither over to the other side that will make the same false promises of safety.

Political parties in and of themselves are detrimental to the whole proces and should be banned. They change the game from "Look at all these great things about me." to "Look how terrible the other team is."

Twalli · Answer

Liberals might coalesce around the same general ideas, because they're all shared. They're chosen by all leftists. Conservatives don't even know what their platform is. Each GOP president since Nixon has a different view. Under Nixon, Universal Healthcare was a foregone conclusion. So there's no clear view that all right wingers share. We saw those openly weeping in shame as Trump and Vance yelled at Zelinskyy. We saw those appalled at the treatment of Alex Padilla. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot showed up at the No Kings rallies.

Dargil · Answer

The left, What it as ended up to be is the left opposes anything that conservatives support. If conservatives support life, leftist support death.

AngryCarl2 · Answer

A lot of these studies tell you more about the people carrying out the study than anything in the real world. Of course we don't need a study to tell us radical leftists indulge in the worst kind of groupthink.

Anonymous · Answer

Well no surprise there. Today's left is the most closed-minded and intolerant group in western society.

Novemberr_ · Answer

The ideology of the left is clear and straight. It simply defends the human rights and tries to impose greater personal freedom on the folks unlike nationalist views. Briefly, political left doesn't need diversity as long as you figure out and accept its ideology what it wants to create for you since it highlights the prominent stuffs. It's all about equality, genuine thoughts and persistent solution advices for domestic problems, poverty struggle, gender and racial discrimination etc.

DonaldDarko · Answer

Except for the religious nuts, everything is cut and dried for them.

Dongie · Answer

Anyone can see that. Every person on the left speaks and it's the same across the board. Turn the cnn and msnbc on together and watch.

andreasderjuengere · Answer

I see only what I want to see... Plus: whenever ''STUDIES" are mentioned, I begin to laugh :)

CupcakeTheDestroyer · Answer

Considering how mainstream the extreme ideas are, I’m not surprised that there’s more “diversity” of thought there as those extremes are obviously not the norm.

Anonymous · Answer

People consider many different political fractions to be left. Liberals, Democrats, Labourists, Socialists, Communists, Greens etc.  They are quite diverse, and disagree in many things.

BCRanger10 · Answer

Yep. I'd say that's about right.

Anonymous · Answer

Without the race card, what else do liberals have?

FunkyMonkee · Answer

I completely agree!!

Anonymous · Answer

Thought or hate?

beefcakebradybatson · Answer

BS !!!

There's More Diversity Of Thought On The Political Right Than On The Left, According To Study. Thoughts?

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There's More Diversity Of Thought On The Political Right Than On The Left, According To Study. Thoughts?

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