Understand the liberal-conservative divide, before it’s too late!

A political message from Tom Tancredo:

ZOMG! They’re gonna kill you in your beds at night KABOOOOMMMMM!!!!!1!!!

Someone had to say it.

What kind of person would make this kind of argument, and what kind of voter would buy into it? A cynical fear-mongering manipulator, and an awfully scared bed-wetter, respectively.

I have moved on from my “Bad Person” theory of political conservatism, and am now working on a new model. Here it is.

Let’s say there’s a guy over there that you don’t know, who looks kind of different.

• You might think, “Watch out for that guy. He might try to beat you up and steal your wallet.” You’d be a conservative.
• Or you might instead go up to the guy and say, “Hey, cool shirt.” In this case, you’d be a liberal.

Fear of perceived threats v. openness to experience. I think it goes a long way toward explaining the difference between the two political tendencies.

And the reason conservatives have had their victories in the last decade is that they’ve been very successful at joining with a third group of people: the people who would go up to that guy, beat him up, and steal his wallet.