(no subject)

So I discovered today, whilst helping michiexile brainstorm about presents for his upcoming second wedding anniversary, that the traditional third-anniversary gift is leather.

Oh, I am so looking forward to next February 21st. :D

On IM just now

michiexile: Emma is a handgun, btw?
maradydd: Yep, my .40 caliber Sig Sauer P226.
michiexile: /me is SO tempted to ask whether there are also Sig Süss, Sig Salzig, Sig Bitter and Sig Umami.

Oh, well, that explains neocons then.

Tonight I'm reading Bob Altemeyer's The Authoritarians, and less than a chapter in, I already recommend it wholeheartedly. (You can download a PDF for free at that link.) Altemeyer is a psychology prof at the University of Manitoba, and he is a social scientist of the first water, emphasis on the scientist part: he is a stickler for the scientific method, and he's all about repeatability and achieving high confidence levels. The book fairly oozes methodology, and is also eminently conversational and readable, with a quirky sense of humour that suits me just fine. (If you like my corny jokes, you'll like his.)

Altemeyer's research for the last thirty-odd years has focused on the personalities of authoritarian leaders, but the first chapter focuses on "authoritarian followers" -- the people who support authoritarian leaders -- in order to provide a backdrop for the rest of the book. In it, he describes a poll he has used through much of his research, which examines the degree to which individuals are likely to follow traditionalist, or "right-wing" authoritarian leaders. (He uses "right-wing" specifically to denote traditional authority; a left-wing authoritarian leader is an authoritarian leader who uses his authority to incite revolution and overthrow traditional, entrenched power structures. "Don't forget to smash the state on your way out!")

What I just now found particularly interesting was an account of the results of this poll as applied to a representative sample of 1000 Americans and cross-referenced with polls (of the same group) on social and economic attitudes. I'll let Dr. Altemeyer talk now:

RWA scale scores (higher == more authoritarian -- Ed.) correlated highest with attitudes against same-sex marriage, abortion, drugs, pornography, women’s equality, unconventional behavior and free speech, and with support for the Patriot Act and America’s “right” to spread democracy by military force. In contrast, the relationships with economic issues (taxation, minimum wage, the public versus private sector, free trade) proved much weaker. The data thus indicate, as do a lot of other findings, that high RWAs are “social conservatives” to a much greater extent that they are “economic conservatives.”

So ... there's a strong correlation between thinking that people should sit the hell down, shut the hell up, and let the government decide what's best, and thinking that 19th-century attitudes toward human rights are okay ... but all bets are off when it comes to thinking about how the government should obtain and spend money?

Suddenly the last eight years make a whole lot more sense.

I miss Republicans. For that matter, I still miss Republicans.