Monday, June 2, 2008

Must be all those shades of gray...

Conservatives more honest than liberals?
The Examiner
June 2, 2008 ~ Peter Schweizer


The headline may seem like a trick question — even a dangerous one — to ask during an election year. And notice, please, that I didn’t ask whether certain politicians are more honest than others. (Politicians are a different species altogether.) Yet there is a striking gap between the manner in which liberals and conservatives address the issue of honesty.

Consider these results:

Is it OK to cheat on your taxes? A total of 57 percent of those who described themselves as “very liberal” said yes in response to the World Values Survey, compared with only 20 percent of those who are “very conservative.” When Pew Research asked whether it was “morally wrong” to cheat Uncle Sam, 86 percent of conservatives agreed, compared with only 68 percent of liberals.

Ponder this scenario, offered by the National Cultural Values Survey: “You lose your job. Your friend’s company is looking for someone to do temporary work. They are willing to pay the person in cash to avoid taxes and allow the person to still collect unemployment. What would you do?”

Almost half, or 49 percent, of self-described progressives would go along with the scheme, but only 21 percent of conservatives said they would.

When the World Values Survey asked a similar question, the results were largely the same: Those who were very liberal were much more likely to say it was all right to get welfare benefits you didn’t deserve.

The World Values Survey found that those on the left were also much more likely to say it is OK to buy goods that you know are stolen. Studies have also found that those on the left were more likely to say it was OK to drink a can of soda in a store without paying for it and to avoid the truth while negotiating the price of a car.

Another survey by Barna Research found that political liberals were two and a half times more likely to say that they illegally download or trade music for free on the Internet.

A study by professors published in the American Taxation Association’s Journal of Legal Tax Research found conservative students took the issue of accounting scandals and tax evasion more seriously than their fellow liberal students. Those with a “liberal outlook” who “reject the idea of absolute truth” were more accepting of cheating at school, according to another study, involving 291 students and published in the Journal of Education for Business.

A study in the Journal of Business Ethics involving 392 college students found that stronger beliefs toward “conservatism” translated into “higher levels of ethical values.” And academics concluded in the Journal of Psychology that there was a link between “political liberalism” and “lying in your own self-interest,” based on a study involving 156 adults.

Liberals were more willing to “let others take the blame” for their own ethical lapses, “copy a published article” and pass it off as their own, and were more accepting of “cheating on an exam,” according to still another study in the Journal of Business Ethics.

Now, I’m not suggesting that all conservatives are honest and all liberals are untrustworthy. But clearly a gap exists in the data. Why? The quick answer might be that liberals are simply being more honest about their dishonesty.

However attractive this explanation might be for some, there is simply no basis for accepting this explanation. Validation studies, which attempt to figure out who misreports on academic surveys and why, has found no evidence that conservatives are less honest. Indeed, validation research indicates that Democrats tend to be less forthcoming than other groups.

The honesty gap is also not a result of “bad people” becoming liberals and “good people” becoming conservatives. In my mind, a more likely explanation is bad ideas. Modern liberalism is infused with idea that truth is relative. Surveys consistently show this. And if truth is relative, it also must follow that honesty is subjective.

Sixties organizer Saul Alinsky, who both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton say inspired and influenced them, once said the effective political advocate “doesn’t have a fixed truth; truth to him is relative and changing, everything to him is relative and changing. He is a political relativist.”

During this political season, honesty is often in short supply. But at least we can improve things by accepting the idea that truth and honesty exist. As the late scholar Sidney Hook put it, “the easiest rationalization for the refusal to seek the truth is the denial that truth exists.”


I guess we can file this one right next to the previous study showing conservatives are more generous and give more to charity than liberals...

18 comments:

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

What do these studies say about centrists? Certainly that we have a great sense of humor, right?

IrOnY RaGeD said...

Got new drapes, hope nobody minds...

Rustyridesagain said...

If you need a chuckle go check out LC.All the usual suspect's are there picking BHO's vice president.Deluded Mike is anti Hillary for anything including dogcatcher.
I have'nt yet seen it,but its been reported that people have seen Barry walk on water.I would'nt mind having a really bold Cab with my dinner tonight but I only have bottled water.....wish Barry was close by.

IrOnY RaGeD said...

LOL, Yeah Rusty I've been watching.

They sure shot Lydia down about Hillary being VP.

Rustyridesagain said...

You know Volt,I find it amazing that 2 years ago Bill and Hil were gods to the libs,all the lemmings on LC did was compare Bubba's record to Bush.Now its as if the Clinton's are radioactive,talk about throwing your former hero's under the bus.
By no means am I a big McCain fan,but I dont think Obama is that strong a candidate,if only the republicans had picked someone else,thats neither here nor there,it is what it is.
Could you imagine what it would be like if in fact McCain won,there would be liberals jumping off roofs all over america,Christ,they would burn down Diebold's offices just for the hell of it,Keith Olbermann would blow his brains out on national T.V. (not really a bad thing),Susan Sarandon would move out of the country and deluded Mike would dig a hole and bury him self.

IrOnY RaGeD said...

I know what you mean Rusty.
A couple of years ago all of them defended Hillary and especially slick Willie through thick and thin.

I can't stand McCain and wish we had a better candidate, but it might almost be worth having him elected just to see how nuts the left will actually get.

Right now I'm with Rush on this one. The Republican party is going to have to lose big and we'll have to rebuild it from the bottom up before we start getting decent candidates again.

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

Where's Mike? He hasn't abandoned us totally, has he?

Rustyridesagain said...

Will,Mike is much too busy over at the echo chamber trying to pick BHO's running mate,while he's doing that he's also trying to come up with a solution to the high gas prices......so you see Mike has his hands full at this moment.

Rustyridesagain said...

Oh yea....speaking of having his hands full,he's also gazing at those 20 year old posters of Lydia,you know the one's his mom let him hang on the wall...oops Mike...look out mom coming into your room!!!!

Rustyridesagain said...

I'm sorry,Mike is really a tuff guy,he's the guy that protected his last (and only)girlfriend from that lout in Las Vegas.....yea that Mike is a REAL man.

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

I was thinking maybe Mike as the running mate, with Cliffy as Defense Secretary and Larry over at State. What do you think, huh?

IrOnY RaGeD said...

Hey Rusty, did you catch Cliffy's latest rant at LC?

clif said...

"I had one deployment to a combat zone,

I can't think of how hard it must be for many of these incredible young people to be returning on their third or fourth deployment..."


also, when rebutting another veteran on different board he said this:

"Yo david , I’m a 100% disabled Desert Storm vet and My older daughter..."

And lets not forget his original account:

"I stood in the desert after the end of combat in 1991 and looked around at the death and destruction that we had done to so many of saddam's troops, one scene still haunts me, It was where a low ranking enlisted soldier had been captured by an Iraqi republican guards officer and senior enlisted, they shot the soldier in the back of the head, and almost immediately were killed by some sort of US cluster bomb. I thought it was ironic that they killed a man for trying to escape the Hell that is war but ended up being killed almost in the same moment, I thought it was poetic justice until I remembered Pvt Eddie Slovic from WW2, something changed that day, I started seeing the ghost images of the "enemy" in their fighting positions, the caves they dug in the ground to escape the bombing by the US Air Force, the bomb craters next to tanks where they died, I could imagine in my mind the horror they must have felt being bombed from the air but if they tried to get away they would end up shot."



So, this guy did ONE frickin tour of duty?

Had an epiphany about a WWII deserter?

And obviously since he got "100% disabled" and was medically retired, he didn't even serve ALL of that one.

And now he knows more about the whole situation than the joint chiefs of staff?

Can you say "Blue Falcon"??

IrOnY RaGeD said...

Hey Will!

Didn't see you there.
Let's leave Cliffy and Larry where they are...LOL

Rustyridesagain said...

Col.Klink is almost as sad a case as Mike.Poor Clif spent 13 years as a supply officer handing out underware and socks to his fellow soldiers,I thank him for his service but he was either drummed out or did the old fall out the truck trick and now collets what for lack of a better word is a welfare check each month.
If you read the sadsacks postings (when he is'nt cuttin and pastin)he really has a deep seated anger towards any present officer,the only military people old Klink speaks well of are the ones who got booted out (like him)and now bad mouth the service they took an oath to serve.

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

Voltron, sorry about that Utah Savage brush-up. I e-mailed her directly and smoothed it over. She's basically a good egg but, yeah, you're right, a tad on the thin-skinned side. If you ever read her blog, you'll find out that she does have some mental health problems and possibly that was at play here. If you check out my latest post, you'll see that we're having a little difference of opinion on the blogger Tomcat (Politics Plus). Feel free to weigh in.

IrOnY RaGeD said...

No need to apologize Will.

She didn't hurt my feelings or anything, and you certainly didn't.

Even though I'm pretty positive I'm right about most things, I accept the fact that others may have differing opinions.

LOL

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

I try to listen to other's points of view, too. Your info on the oil industry, for instance, made me re-evaluate my position there. I think the only time I really exploded was when the Cornell folks accused McCain of being a coward/traitor. That was beyond politics, I thought.

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

Voltron, I just left a bomb over at politicsplus.blogspot.com The guy (Tomcat) was throwing around that Nazi innuendo again. I couldn't help myself. Check it out.