Jost and his collaborators developed their working definition of “conservative” by reviewing dictionaries and encyclopedias along with the literature of historians, journalists, political scientists, sociologists, and philosophers from the mid-1950s (which, according to most conservative scholars, generally marks the beginning of the modern conservative movement in the United States) through the end of the 1990s. The study placed apt parameters on its inquiry while focusing on those who would be considered conservative under most any characterization. Their survey of the usage of the term “conservative” over roughly a half century revealed “a stable definitional core and a set of more malleable, historically changing peripheral associations.”[67] While its core meanings were considered to include “a resistance to change” and “an acceptance of inequality,” its peripheral meanings were more complex, because not only did they change with time, but in some cases they overlapped the core meanings. For example, the study found the peripheral focus of “conservatism in the United States during the 1960s entailed support for the Vietnam War and opposition to civil rights, whereas conservatism in the 1990s had more to do with being tough on crime and supporting traditional moral and religious values.” In addition, the authors provide examples of people who became conservatives for reasons having nothing to do with the identified core meanings, yet who later accepted those aspects of conservatism “because of their association with likeminded others.”[68]
The heart of Jost and his collaborators’ findings was that people become or remain political conservatives because they have a “heightened psychological need to manage uncertainty and threat.”[69] More specifically, the study established that the various psychological factors associated with political conservatives included (and here I am paraphrasing) fear, intolerance of ambiguity, need for certainty or structure in life, overreaction to threats, and a disposition to dominate others. This data was collected from conservatives willing to explain their beliefs and have their related psychological dynamics studied through various objective testing techniques. These characteristics, Dr. Jost said, typically cannot be ascribed to liberals.
Right-wing talk-radio hosts, conservative columnists, and conservative bloggers generally dismissed Jost’s study, although apparently few could be bothered to read it. Jonah Goldberg of the National Review wrote a lengthy piece about it, but managed to focus on such irrelevancies as Alec Baldwin, Viagra, Napoleon, and what he calls “the left’s medicalization of dissent.” Goldberg described the study as “gassy, insubstantial, malodorous…cow flatulence.”[70] Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter offered characteristic attacks, with Limbaugh mixing name calling with false and misleading information before dismissing it.[71]
After being hammered by conservatives for several months, Jost and his collaborators responded with a Washington Post op-ed piece, noting that their critics remained conspicuously less than familiar with the actual contents of their study. Notwithstanding commentary to the contrary, the Jost group pointed out that they had not, in fact, implied that conservatism was “abnormal, pathological or the result of mental illness.” Nor had they claimed that conservatives themselves were insane, sick, or strange.[72] At the same time, they were not claiming their study was welcome news for conservatives.[73]
The difficulty of identifying in oneself such psychological factors as fear, intolerance of ambiguity, need for certainty or structure in life, overreaction to threats, and a disposition to dominate others does not mean that such dynamics can be summarily rejected. These characteristics are, in some cases, not only easily recognized by others but are discernible through psychological testing. A study published subsequent to Jost’s confirmed the findings of his group. It is an unprecedented survey of nursery school children, commenced in 1969, that revealed the personalities of three- and four-year-olds to be indicative of their future political orientation.[74] In brief, this research suggests that little girls who are indecisive, inhibited, shy, neat, compliant, distressed by life’s ambiguity, and fearful will likely become conservative women. Likewise, little boys who are unadventurous, uncomfortable with uncertainty, conformist, moralistic, and regularly telling others how to run their lives will then become conservatives as adults.[75]
Austin W. Bramwell, one of the best and brightest of the new generation of conservatives, laments the great quantity of information about conservatism that has little quality, as he explained in the magazine for traditional conservatives, The American Conservative. Bramwell says that “whereas 50 years ago the American Right boasted several political theorists destined to exert a lasting influence, today it has not one to its credit.” He adds that “conservatism has reached an unacknowledged consensus about the outcome of the theoretical debates of the ’50s and ’60s. The consensus holds, first, that someone has discovered the Holy Grail that will vindicate conservatism once and for all, otherwise why be a conservative in the first place? Second, it holds that, whatever the Grail actually is, it does not do any good to describe it with too much specificity. These beliefs contradict each other, yet the conservative consensus has proved remarkably stable.”[76] This is a highly accurate assessment of conservative thinking.
Who is Austin Bramwell? To begin with, he is Sarah Bramwell’s husband.[77] Sarah is another well-credentialed young conservative, a former chairperson of the Conservative Party of the Yale Political Union, a former senior editor of a Yale University journal of conservative opinion, a former associate editor of the National Review, a former deputy press secretary to Colorado’s Republican governor Bill Owens, and a featured speaker at the fortieth anniversary of the Philadelphia Society, which has been described by the New York Times as “a prestigious club for conservative intellectuals.”[78] The Bramwells were married at the Episcopal Church of the Heavenly Rest in New York, so they do not appear to be conservative Catholics or evangelical Christians. Austin, at twenty-six, became the youngest member of the board of trustees of the National Review, taking his seat when founder Bill Buckley relinquished control of the journal in June 2004. Austin had written for National Review throughout his years as an undergraduate at Yale and at Harvard Law (2003), where he was an officer in the school’s chapter of the Federalist Society. After clerking with Judge Timothy M. Tymkovich of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit (a Bush II appointee who sits on the bench in Denver), Austin joined the trusts and estates division of the prestigious New York City law firm Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy. The Bramwells’ intelligence is conspicuous and their dedication to conservatism has been steadfast. The Bramwells are the future of American conservatism. Where do these young conservatives believe conservatism should be focusing its energy?
67.
Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, and Sulloway, “Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition.”
70.
Jonah Goldberg, “They Blinded Me with Science,”
71.
Ann Coulter, “Closure on Nuance” (July 31, 2003) at http://www. townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/ac20030731.shtml. When attacking the Jost study Rush Limbaugh based his comments not on the study, but on a press release written by Kathleen Maclay, who works as a publicist for the University of California, Berkeley. Limbaugh called the study “shockingly tolerant of anti-Semitism,” but there is nothing in the Maclay press release or in the study that is, in any fashion, directly or indirectly anti-Semitic. When Limbaugh posted this program on his Web site, he hyperlinked his reference to “anti-Semitism” to a
72.
Arie W. Kruglanski and John T. Jost, in collaboration with Jack Glaser and Frank J. Sulloway, “Political Opinion, Not Pathology,”
73.
Ibid. Kruglanski and Jost wrote: “It’s wrong to conclude that our results provide
74.
Jack Block and Jeanne H. Block, “Nursery School Personality and Political Orientation Two Decades Later,”
76.
Austin Bramwell, “Defining Conservatism Down,”
77.
Society Desk, “Weddings: Sarah Maserati, Austin Bramwell,”
78.
See David D. Kirkpatrick, “Young Right Tries to Define Post-Buckley Future,”