Are aspies more likely to be conservative?
To make myself clear, I am not saying that conservatives must be against gay/women's/minorities/human rights, but that the people who are against such things are almost exclusively conservative.
I totally agree with you on that. Those are some of the main reasons I would never even begin to call myself "conservative". I'm very liberal.
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Some of those questions were pretty vague and I answered after reading the wording carefully to answer it literally. It probably skewed my results a bit. I was pretty close to the center although I think that's because I had very few strong agreements or strong disagreements.
There was no one on that list that was close to my spot but I was about halfway between Ghandi and Pope Benedict XVI.
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Another test people might want to try is the RWA (Right-Wing Authoritarian) Scale. This is at http://thorgolucky.com/RWA_Scale.htm. It's called "authoritarian" but is supposed to correlate very well with whether someone identifies as (politically) conservative.
Although I said that most Aspies are liberal, and the poll on this thread very much bears that out, I am not one of them. I certainly feel that I am very conservative, whether socially, morally, culturally - I mean I'm not very politically minded but my RWA scores put me not extremely so, but on the conservative side.
Another test that's supposed to correlate very well with political conservatism is the Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) Scale. But it is totally different from the RWA Scale, measuring a willingness to accept social inequality. I haven't found an online scoring system for it so far but I know my result in it would not be lower (i.e. could not have a lower willingness to accept social inequality). That would make me extremely liberal, then, but any liberalism in me comes from being an Aspie and desiring a fairer deal for Aspies and, in turn, desiring a fairer deal for anyone marginalised. The RWA scale is more about form of government, morals, crime and punishment etc.
It was at one point a special interest of mine to meet, via the Internet, Americans who were conservative. And I was able to meet a few. Unfortunately, because people I talked to online - conservative and liberal alike - were so ridiculously disloyal toward me, such connections didn't last.
Heh, the problem with merely making a division between American Liberal and American Conservative is the fact that by international western standards, the US itself is very conservative, so most non-Americans will be automatically placed on the left.
By US-standards, I'm very liberal.
By my own national standards, I'm a bit at the center.
By international standards...dunno. Probably a bit left of the center.
That said, I think there's a difference between being conservative in personality and conservative in political ideas. I think most aspies are conservative in personality in the fact they like routines and can be somewhat unsettled by lots of changes. Politically, I think it also depends on what people you grow up around.
Yay!
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Just because people are 'well off' doesn't automatically make them right-winger free-marketers. I know an aspie who is right-wing and catholic and lives in the ghetto suburbs of Dallas.
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Most people as poor as I am will be on the left somewhere. Plus anyone who needs more government services than average. Personally, I'm glad some people on the spectrum feel economically secure enough to be on the right. But I don't expect there'd be many of you.
Do you favor redistribution of wealth and income? You should be aware that thieves favor redistribution of wealth and income, but they make it a private matter. When governments do it, it is called compassion.
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"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint.
When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist."
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What is "conservative"? Conservative has in North America come to mean promoting a package of policies that cuts the social safety net, increases funding for militarism, and promotes religion and implements policies guided by in particular a heretical form of Christianity... promotes also the distribution of power towards management, towards the owners, towards creditors and against debtors, in favour of the banksters... and tries to compensate for these anti-popular policies with varying forms of populism that exploit wedge issues...
If you use your dictionnary definition of conservative, you will find that this zealous package of reforms is the opposite of that. Asperger people are supposed to be also more sensitive to injustice and the conservative package has a tendancy to promote this injustice by bolstering the most powerful at the expense of those with less power. The rise of this movement and its successes have coincided with a deterioration of things when it comes to the distribution of power in society here in North America.
I for one would have been perfectly happy to see the implementation of conservative policies and not have Mulroney show up vowing to make Canada unrecognisable after he was through with it as he vowed when he was elected in 1984, I would have been thrilled had the conservative thing been done and Canada not made a laboratory for some sinister zero-inflation experiment in the late 1980s and early 1990s... too often it seems that things were better before and they keep making it worse.
Aspies are a minority, which would make us more likely to be liberal, as well as eccentric, which would make us more likely to
be liberal (although there are plenty of eccentric conservatives). However, Aspies also are usually very analytical, logical, and cerebral
and less visceral and empathetic. These qualities would tend to make Aspies more conservative, as would the general Aspie tendency
to dislike change. So there's some truth to what many prior posters have said. Having said that, due to the fact that Aspies are more
politically aware and tend to have high I.Q.'s and be passionate toward things, I think that it is safe to say that Aspies are LESS LIKELY
to be political moderates and/or independents than N.T.'s are. Most Aspies are probably either liberal, libertarian, or libertarian-leaning
conservatives. I myself am a libertarian-leaning conservative Republican. I'm pro-life, generally pro-gun rights, pro capital punishment,
opposed to hate crimes legislation, pro mandatory HIV/drug tests in some situations (participating in contact sports and for certain jobs, respectively), opposed to distributing condoms in schools (although I'm fine with a 16 or 17 year old being able to purchase condoms at a convenience store), and pro teaching creationism in schools (I myself am a creationist, and I have NEVER believed in macro-evolution, even
in my pre-born-again days). However, I support legalized flag burning, gambling, prostitution, and pornography, and I oppose school uniforms, censoring the internet, and increased FCC regulation/fines of TV and the radio. I also support lifting the travel ban to Cuba (and probably the
trade embargo too). I'm undecided on whether or not drugs should be legalized, but I definitely don't think that drug users/possessers (as opposed
to dealers) should be imprisoned. I think that homosexuality (at least male homosexuality) is primarily biological. While I oppose gay adoption
and gay marriage, I support limited Civil Unions for gay couples (i.e. granting them some, albeit not all, the rights of marriage). I am pro legal immigration, but don't believe in granting amnesty (a.k.a. a pathway to citizenship) to illegal immigrants.
Economically, I am a free market, libertarian-leaning conservative, who opposes corporate welfare and farm subsidies. I'm moderate on the minimum wage, and support government-subsidized childcare and family leave. On every other economic issue, I'm conservative. Center-Right
on taxes and government spending (definitely to the right of Bush of gov. spending, who spent like a Democrat, if not worse), support eliminating the estate/death tax, pro free trade, generally for less regulation on businesses and banks, pro private property rights (i.e. against eminent domain and rent control), pro bankruptcy reform, pro employers being allowed to permanently replace striking workers, pro school vouchers, pro merit pay for teachers (and making tenure much harder to get and making it much easier to fire teachers), pro tort reform, pro market-oriented solutions in healthcare.
On foreign policy/national defense/counter-terrorism issues, I supported the Iraq War and the surge (with some reservations), support Missile Defense (i.e. Strategic Defense Initiative), support keeping U.S. involvement in the U.N. to a minimum, support enhanced interrogation techniques
on terrorists in some situations, and oppose shutting down Guantanomo. As I previously stated, I support lifitng the travel ban to Cuba, and I also support linking trade to China with human rights.
On institutional reform issues, I support term limits and the line-item veto, and I oppose liberal campaign finance reform (e.g. McCain-Feingold),
as I believe that it tramples first amendment rights without reducing the influence of money in politics. I oppose the so-called Fairness Doctrine
and Campus Speech Codes.
On environmental/energy issues, I take an "ALL of the Above" approach. I support drilling in ANWR and offshore (come to think of it, I wouldn't
mind drilling in Sarah Palin either, she's hot! ), and also support nuclear energy and clean coal technology. I don't believe in human-caused global
warming (its cyclical and has very little if anything to do with human behavior) and concomitantly don't support a cap and trade policy to limit carbon emissions.
ANY QUESTIONS?
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