Re: When even a Republican can see it....

In message <ddfr-DB59A3.21213315062007@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, David
Friedman <ddfr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes
In article <GwS2+fmId0cGFwho@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Brett Paul Dunbar <brett@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

...

(quoting me)

Again,
consider the controversy over vouchers. It's the left (not extreme left,
but left of center) that wants to make sure everyone is taught the same
things and is afraid of letting parents with non-standard views bring up
their own children with those views.

On the whole the right is more social conservative than the left as
high-RWAs are generally highly socially conservative they tend to be on
the right.

How do you know?

Experience. Opposition to socially liberal legislation has tended to
come from the Conservatives. Opposition to lifting the ban on Gays in
the military to the Human Rights Act the Freedom of Information Act and
to the Civil Partnership Act all cam from the more extreme parts of the
social conservative wing of the Tories. Labour also has a social
conservative element it however is less extreme and much less vocal.



As I've repeatedly pointed out, the test used to measure the degree to
which people are high RWA, in the book being discussed, is biased
towards giving high RWA scores to people on the right, degree of
authoritarianism held constant. So how do you know whether high RWA's
(defined by the definition the author gives, not by the test he uses)
tend to be on the right or not?

One argument that may be relevant is the idea that children should be
exposed to a range of views and sources of information. The suspicion
that some of the home-schooling parents might be teaching socially
damaging things. There is also the concern that parents might simply not
be competent.

Lots of different arguments are offered against home schooling and
vouchers, but one of them is the one I described. Sometimes it's made
explicit, in the form of "in order for the society to work, we need a
common set of beliefs."

A conflict arises between the parents right to chose the education they
want for their children and the right of the child to receive an
education that best suits then to succeed as an adult. A child who grows
up to be either anti-social or ignorant is not likely to fulfil their
potential.

A fine argument against public schooling.

One thing about school is it does involve contact with those outside
your family's immediate social circle. Which can be helpful in several
ways one is getting the child used to the idea that it is legitimately
possible to disagree with your parent's views. Another is if a child is,
for example, being sexually abused the education system does tend to
include things about unwanted touching not being normal and provide an
avenue of complaint entirely outside parental control. Having an adult
non-relative in a position of authority with a continuing relationship
with a child can be rather useful for a child in danger.


Or in other words, I think you are assuming your conclusion--that
government run schools do a better job of teaching than either private
schools or parents.


State schools do a rather better job than some parents. Even if only
because some parents do an almost unbelievably bad job. Some private
schools have been very bad the same is true of some state schools. Hence
Britain has introduced a system of inspection in order to deal with the
inadequate schooling.

Which of these claims do you disagree with:

1. The test used in the book tests for political beliefs as well as for
authoritarianism, for the reasons I have several times explained.

It is a test for both political attitudes and authoritarianism.

Thank you. My view as well.

Expressed as a table:

Authoritarian Libertarian
Social Conservative High RWA Moderate RWA

Social Liberal Moderate RWA Low RWA

The only people who score high are both social conservative and
authoritarian. Social conservatism and political conservatism correlate
they aren't however identical. Exactly what the test measures has
drifted a little over time.

But if you agree that an authoritarian liberal (social or political--I
think the argument is stronger for the political) will score on the test
as less authoritarian than an authoritarian conservative, why do you
keep treating the distribution of scores as if it were evidence of how
authoritarian people actually are?


An authoritarian left-winger is more likely to be found at the more
socially conservative end of the left, who would score as relatively
high-RWA hence the soviet communist loyalists scoring as high RWA once
it was possible to conduct surveys there.

He's talking here about submission to "the established, legitimate
authorities in their society." In our society, some of those are
socially conservative, some socially liberal, some are popular with
political conservatives, some with political liberals. The New Deal
occurred before most living Americans were born, so its massive shift of
authority to the government is part of "established, legitimate
authority"--and a good deal of left/right disagreement is over whether
that was a good thing and should be extended or a bad thing that should
be cut back.

On several of these issues the RWAs tend to be generally supportive of
these institutions (compared to other right wing groups they are more
likely to be beneficiaries), but may support directing the aid
differently, e.g. targeting child benefits preferentially towards
traditional married families at the expense of single parents and
unmarried couples.

Economically this group are not especially conservative and actually
tend not to have any strongly held economic views, to the extent that
they do have economic views they tend to be protectionist. This is the
bit of the right most hostile to the views of the bit of the right you
form part of.



Again, look at his explanation of why he is using the word "right." By
that definition, an employer who engages in affirmative action in places
where that is approved of by the authorities is "right," an employer who
discriminates against blacks where that is illegal is "not right."

And note that, in the post before the one I am responding to (I think),
you were yourself fooled by the author's misleading labeling of what he
is testing. You first asserted that a union member unwilling to cross a
picket line would be demonstrating LWA not RWA--because supporting
unions is an attitude more popular with the left--then noted that one
would expect an RWA to act that way. In other words, you alternated
between the definition of RWA/LWA that the author is actually using,
based on political beliefs, and the definition he pretends to be using,
based on deference to established (vs insurgent) authority.


I don't think I did assert that actually, I didn't intend to.

Which half didn't you assert? The relevant exchange was:

--
(me)
Suppose you replace his question about obedience to religious authority
with one about whether union members, when a strike is called, should
decide for themselves whether it is justified and cross the picket line
to keep working if they decide it is not. That's just as good a test of
whether you defer to authority--but I predict it would result on people
on the left scoring higher and people on the left scoring lower than
with his version. Similarly with my other example.

(you)
Technically that would then be a test for LWA, a different and rarer
thing. Actually as high RWAs attach a very high value to group loyalty
they are likely to feel that if their union has called a strike then the
membership are morally obliged to observe it (especially if they are a
member of that union).
---
So you are first saying it would be a test for LWA, then agreeing that
it would be a measure of high RWA.

I thought I had deleted that; it was poor editing on my part.

Still it can be supported by both high LWAs and high RWAs it really
depends on context and who you consider the establishment under the
specific circumstances. During the 1984-85 Miner's strike a high RWA
miner might strike because the union leadership had told them to
(without holding a ballot) while a high-LWA Socialist Worker's Party
supporter might support the strike as it was attempting to overthrow
Thatcher's government.

---

I think the only example of a high-LWA I mentioned

"Technically that would then be a test for LWA" (quoted just above from
you)

was alternative
medicine groupie who's views are determined by an excessive distrust of
conventional medicine and a credulous attitude to alternative and
traditional medicine. Noam Chomsky might be another example, from what
little I know of his rather bizarre political writings [1] he seems to
like anyone who is anti-American and treats their assertions with the
utmost credulity and simultaneously treats anything asserted by the US
as ipso facto a lie. Many conspiracy theorists would also be high-LWAs.

I'm not raising the question of LWA's in this discussion. My whole point
is that the claim that his test measures RWA as he has defined it is
false, and the terminology (RWA/LWA) deceptive, whether deliberately I
don't know.

It looks like he originally defined right and left in a classically
political way and over the several decades he has worked in this area
what he is actually measuring has narrowed and drifted a bit, to the
point where it has become specialist jargon with a meaning related to
but not identical with the colloquial meaning.


...

A high-RWA in a trade union, or who primarily identifies with their
social class is likely to support a strike a high RWA who identifies
with the employer, also an established authority, is likely to oppose a
strike.

Hence my question would show left of center people, on average, to be
more RWA than they really are, right of center to be less--the mirror
image of what more than half is questions do.

RWAs are notably inconsistent rarely being good at seeing things
from an opponent's point of view.

A pattern I have found very common among people on the political left,
although of course not only among them. More generally, whatever your
political views, you will see that pattern as more common among those
with opposing views, for reasons that I think are obvious.

High-RWA is a predictor at being worse at it on average and worse in
characteristic ways. (See below)

Sort of like there are certain grammatical errors characteristic of
creationists: They tend to say "Scientist say <whatever>" when the more
correct construction would be "Scientists say <whatever>". I don't now
why this should be, but there it is




...

The test is aimed at finding right-wing and social conservative views
these correlate well but not totally.

The author claims the test to be aimed at neither of those. His
claim--see the quote above--is that he is measuring the degree to which
people support the established authorities in their society. Doing that
is neither right nor left wing, neither socially conservative nor
socially liberal--it depends on what the established authorities in that
society are like on the relevant issues.

You are describing what he in fact is doing, which is inconsistent with
what he says he is doing in a way that appears designed to produce bogus
results--to let him "discover" that right-wing and socially conservative
people are authoritarians. If his definition of RWA was "right-wing and
socially conservative," discovering that right wing and socially
conservative people were RWA wouldn't be very interesting.


What you are assuming is his conclusion is actually part of his
definition. It is a controlled variable not a dependent variable. He is
isolating a specific large group of socially conservative authoritarian
followers and then studying them to find out what other characteristics
they have. Chapter 3 starting at pg 75 giving some of these other
characteristics.


pg 80-81

As I said earlier, authoritarians’ ideas are poorly integrated with
one another. It's as if each idea is stored in a file that can be called
up and used when the authoritarian wishes, even though another of his
ideas --stored in a different file-- basically contradicts it. We all
have some inconsistencies in our thinking, but authoritarians can
stupefy you with the inconsistency of their ideas. Thus they may say
they are proud to live in a country that guarantees freedom of speech,
but another file holds, "My country, love it or leave it." The ideas
were copied from trusted sources, often as sayings, but the
authoritarian has never "merged files" to see how well they all fit
together.

It's easy to find authoritarians endorsing inconsistent ideas. Just
present slogans and appeals to homey values, and then present slogans
and bromides that invoke opposite values. The yea-saying authoritarian
follower is likely to agree with all of them. Thus I asked both students
and their parents to respond to, "When it comes to love, men and women
with opposite points of view are attracted to each other." Soon
afterwards, in the same booklet, I pitched "Birds of a feather flock
together when it comes to love." High RWAs typically agreed with both
statements, even though they responded to the two items within a minute
of each other.

But that's the point: they don't seem to scan for self-consistency as
much as most people do. Similarly they tended to agree with “A
government should allow total freedom of expression, even it if
threatens law and order” and "A government should only allow freedom
of expression so long as it does not threaten law and order." And
"Parents should first of all be gentle and tender with their children,"
and "Parents should first of all be firm and uncompromising with their
children; spare the rod and spoil the child."



pg 83-85

You can also, unfortunately, find a considerable amount of hypocrisy in
high RWAs’ behaviour. For example, the leaders of authoritarian
movements sometimes accuse their opponents of being anti-democratic and
anti-free speech when the latter protest against various books, movies,
speakers, teachers and so on. They say leftists impose restrictions for
“political correctness.” I know some who would. So I wondered if
ardent liberals’ desire to censor ideas they disliked was as strong,
or stronger, than that of right-wing authoritarians. I asked two large
samples of parents of university students to give an opinion in the
following twelve cases.

Should a university professor be allowed to teach an
anthropology course in which he argues that men are naturally
superior to women, so women should resign themselves to inferior
roles in our society?

Should a book be assigned in a Grade 12 English course that
presents homosexual relationships in a positive light?

Should books be allowed to be sold that attack "being patriotic"
and "being religious"?

Should a racist speaker be allowed to give a public talk
preaching his views?

Should someone be allowed to teach a Grade 10 sex education
course who strongly believes that all premarital sex is a sin?

Should commercials for "telephone sex" be allowed to be shown
after 11 PM on television?

Should a professor who has argued in the past that black people
are less intelligent than white people be given a research grant
to continue studies of this issue?

Should a book be allowed to be published that argues the
Holocaust never occurred, but was made up by Jews to create
sympathy for their cause?

Should sexually explicit material that describes intercourse
through words and medical diagrams be used in sex education
classes in Grade 10?

Should a university professor be allowed to teach a philosophy
course in which he tries to convince his students there is no
God?

Should an openly white supremacist movie such as "The Birth of a
Nation" (which glorifies the Ku Klux Klan) be shown in a Grade
12 social studies class?

Should "Pro-Choice" counsellors and abortion clinics be allowed
to advertise their services in public health clinics if
“Pro-Life” counsellors can?

I hope you'll agree that half of the situations would particularly alarm
liberals, and the other half would raise the hackles on right-wingers.
Would low RWAs want to censor the things they thought dangerous as much
as high RWAs would in their areas of concern? It turned out to be "no
contest," because in both studies authoritarian followers wanted to
impose more censorship in all of these cases- -save the one involving
the sex education teacher who strongly believed all premarital sex was a
sin. How can this be?

It happened because the lows seldom wanted to censor anyone. They
apparently believe in freedom of speech, even when they detest the
speech. Some low RWAs may insist on political correctness, but the great
majority seemingly do not. Authoritarians on the other hand,
spring-loaded for hostility, seem all wound up to clamp right down on
lots and lots of people. So when authoritarians reproach other people
who call for censorship, the reproach may be justified. But a lot of
windows probably got broken in the authoritarians' own houses when they
flung that stone. [3]

[3] Why do high RWAs want to censor, for example, a racist when they
themselves are prejudiced? Because they don't know they are, so
a racist is a socially condemnable outsider to them.
Furthermore, experiments show authoritarian followers are turned
off by blatantly racist appeals. A skilled demagogue knows you
play the "race card" best by disguising it as something else,
like law and order.
--
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Brett Paul Dunbar
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