Momma, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Neo-Cons

Whiny, Insecure Children Grow Up To Be Conservatives

Confident, Outgoing Kids Grow Up To Be Liberals

So says a 20-year study conducted by researchers at UC Berkeley.

In the 1960s Jack Block and his wife and fellow professor Jeanne Block (now deceased) began tracking more than 100 nursery school kids as part of a general study of personality. The kids’ personalities were rated at the time by teachers and assistants who had known them for months. There’s no reason to think political bias skewed the ratings — the investigators were not looking at political orientation back then. Even if they had been, it’s unlikely that 3- and 4-year-olds would have had much idea about their political leanings.

A few decades later, Block followed up with more surveys, looking again at personality, and this time at politics, too. The whiny kids tended to grow up conservative, and turned into rigid young adults who hewed closely to traditional gender roles and were uncomfortable with ambiguity.

It feeds into my own non-scientific anecdotal observations that most ardent Bush supporters and neo-cons tend to be the kind of people who spent a good amount of time subjected to atomic wedgies and stuffed into lockers during their formative years.

He reasons that insecure kids look for the reassurance provided by tradition and authority, and find it in conservative politics. The more confident kids are eager to explore alternatives to the way things are, and find liberal politics more congenial.

In essence, the guy is saying that the tedious barkings of Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly source from the poundings they received in high school at the hands of those smarter and more athletic. Makes sense to me.

Based on these results, something tells me Ann “She’s A Maaaaan, Baby” Coulter never got asked to prom…maybe that’s why she’s such an invective fueled tightass.

Picture of a young Rush Limbaugh: