Conservatives Without Conscience

conservative,” J. J. Ray, a social scientist based in Australia, offered a few substantive comments, but none of his American peers (conservative, moderate, or liberal) thought he should be taken seriously. Ray wrote a response to the study for David Horowitz’s FrontPageMagazine.com, taking a surprising low road for a purported academic, in calling the Jost et al. study the work of “Academic Fakers.” (See J. J. Ray, “Academic Fakers,” FrontPageMagazine.com (August 27, 2003) at http://www. frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp? ID=9544.)

67.

Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, and Sulloway, “Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition.”

68.

Ibid., 342–44.

69.

Jost, “Media FAQ’s: Answers by John Jost.”

70.

Jonah Goldberg, “They Blinded Me with Science,” National Review Online (July 24, 2003) at http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg072403.asp.

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 Wall Street Journal column from a year earlier that has nothing whatsoever to do with conservatism or the study. See Collin Levey, “Anti-Semitism Goes PC: The Latest Campus Cause: Solidarity with Arab Terrorists,” WJS.com Opinion Journal (April 11, 2002). Had Limbaugh read the study he would have learned that the authors made a special effort to seek out and incorporate results obtained in twelve different countries, including Israel. They found with Israeli university students that intolerance of ambiguity scores were indeed significantly higher among moderate and extreme right-wing students compared with moderate and extreme left-wing students. How Limbaugh can read tolerance of anti-Semitism into the Jost study defies comprehension.

72.

Arie W. Kruglanski and John T. Jost, in collaboration with Jack Glaser and Frank J. Sulloway, “Political Opinion, Not Pathology,” Washington Post (August 28, 2003), A-27.

73.

Ibid. Kruglanski and Jost wrote: “It’s wrong to conclude that our results provide only bad news for conservatives” (emphasis added). In short, they acknowledge their news was bad for conservatives, but they had bad news for liberals as well; namely, that the 9/11 terrorist attacks had increased threat and death anxiety, which gets conservative juices flowing. In times of high uncertainty, the unambiguous good versus evil message of a conservative leader plays well.

74.

Jack Block and Jeanne H. Block, “Nursery School Personality and Political Orientation Two Decades Later,” Journal of Research in Personality (2005).

75.

Ibid.

76.

Austin Bramwell, “Defining Conservatism Down,” American Conservative, vol. 4, no. 16 (August 29, 2005), 7.

77.

Society Desk, “Weddings: Sarah Maserati, Austin Bramwell,” New York Times (September 7, 2003), 9-17. (They were married on September 6, 2003.)

78.

See David D. Kirkpatrick, “Young Right Tries to Define Post-Buckley Future,” New York Times (July 17, 2004), and http://www.townhall.com/phillysoc/Gala40th.htm.

79.

Sarah Bramwell, May 1, 2004, speech to the Philadelphia Society, at http://www.townhall.com/phillysoc/bramwellchicago.htm.

80.

Perry Bacon, “Yale panelists spar over speech and sexuality,” Yale Daily News (November 17, 1999).

81.

Austin Bramwell, “Pleading the Fourteenth,” American Conservative (January 31, 2005) at http://www.amconmag.com/2005_01_31/article2.html.

82.

A University of Oregon history professor, Peggy Pascoe, pointed out that the “arguments white supremacists used to justify anti-miscegenation laws—that interracial marriages were contrary to God’s will or somehow unnatural—are echoed today by the most conservative opponents of same-sex marriage. And supporters of same-sex marriage base their case on the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, echoing the