Many people often note that the Conservative intelligentsia dislike Sarah Palin. I know why, but it requires a more detailed knowledge of the reason Conservative and Liberal politics evolved within our species. Basically, there are two reasons to be Conservative – the intellectual reason, and the psychological reason. To more fully understand this, you will need to read the first chapter of the book The Evolutionary Psychology Behind Politics, located free, here:
The underlying premise of this entire website is that in other species in nature, the species divides into two psychologies for evolutionary reasons, and these psychologies are how the Conservative and Liberal psychology began within our species. Liberal philosophy lies where the primitive, r-selected psychology meets our modern intellects. It yields an intellectual framework supportive of competition avoidance, promiscuity, low investment single parenting, and earlier age at first intercourse. Conservatism, by contrast lies where intellect meets the K-selected psychology, and this produces an intellectual support for the K-type traits of competitiveness, monogamy, high investment two-parent parenting, and abstinence until monogamous marriage.
In the book, we use the Cuttlefish example to show how these psychologies exist side by side in more primitive species. Off the shores of Australia, Cuttlefish gather to mate. One group of males, descended from K-selected stock, competes for mates which they seek to monogamously monopolize. They flash patterns on their chameleon- like skin, they wrestle, and the winner gets to mate, while the losers do not. As a result of this K-type competitive selection prior to mating, this squid-like organism has evolved into a five foot long behemoth with a skin that is like a LED television – capable of projecting nearly any image upon itself as camouflage.
As males compete however, other males lurk nearby. These males, descended from r-selected stock, reject the competitive scheme. They actually dress up as a female, making their skin look like a female’s pastel color pattern, and pulling in their tentacles so they are small and stubby like a females. While the big competitive males compete, this transvestite male swims right by them, unnoticed due to it’s female disguise, and it then mates with the real female, before taking off to mate promiscuously again.
In the book, we maintain that this r-type anticompetitive psychology is the evolutionary origin of Liberalism, and that even today in our species, Liberal males continue to strike an effete pose as a means of conflict avoidance, while they seek a sexually unselective, promiscuous society as a means of eliminating the competition for mates. They even seek to eliminate all competition, whether violent and war-like, or economic, through either Marxist means or through simple economic redistribution from successful to unsuccessful. From support for single-parenting, to support for promiscuity, to support for early sexual education for children, there is not an r-type trait Liberals do not embody.
The final piece of background is that we are the most advanced species on this planet for a reason, and that reason is that we are the most competitive, K-selected species extant.
Now we are a highly K-selected, competitive species, living in a population where resources are not only limited, they are only available in sufficient quantities to support our populations if we produce them. As a result, the K-type, competitive/Conservative urges work for us. Take gun control. John Lott’s More Guns, Less Crime showed, disarm the populace, crime increases. Let the populace carry firearms, crime decreases. Since we are a K-type, competitive species, living in a K-type, Competitive environment, K-type, Competitive urges are the best adapted to keep our society running smoothly.
The net effect of all of this is to create two reasons to be Conservative. One reason arises intellectually. Examine the issues intellectually, and you find that Conservatism works. Competition works. Look at the facts, read the books, and you can make the case, intellectually. This is the intellectual Conservative’s motivation.
But the other reason people are Conservative is the most prominent in our species. It’s the deeply imbued K-type, competitive psychology. Maybe the K-type competitor hasn’t digested every writing of Ludwig Von Mises. Maybe he can’t quote John Locke, or even recite the Declaration of Independence. But this K-type competitor is driven, fiercely, to be free, to have the outcomes of hard fought economic competitions honored and not redistributed, and to see children raised carefully by loving, monogamous couples, consisting of competitive males who have been carefully selected by loyal females.
The intellectual Conservative has studied the movement arduously, but he knows little of what it is about, and may often not even hold the competitive psychological drive. Go to a dinner for Conservatives, and let some Liberal jackass come in with a gun to shoot it up. You and I, and even Sarah Palin will go for our guns to drop the miscreant. Unarmed K-type Competitors will even bum-rush him, rather than die cowering. Killing him is something we will want to do desperately. George Will? David Brooks? They will likely be driven to flee and hide, probably under the nearest skirt. They don’t have the K-type Competitor drive. They support Conservatism because they are smart enough to know it is the best option, but they don’t have the urge inside of them. Indeed, being proficient at violence for self defense is “icky,” and unintellectual. We know that lacking the ability to defend oneself with violence is irresponsible, stupid, and a failure to develop fully as a man. But they can’t override their r-type, anticompetitive, conflict averse urges. Better to stick their head in the sand than confront the bogey man.
So there are two wings to the Conservative movement. Those who think about it, and those who feel it. George Will will deride Sarah Palin as unintellectual, and he will view you as unintellectual, and he would tell me I was unintellectual (a microsecond before I delivered a hammerfist to the top of his head, dropping him unconscious where he stood). But they are not the movement. They are just the people who have studied it arduously because they don’t feel it inside of them, and they want to understand.
This is why Rush Limbaugh is such an oasis in the desert to Conservatives. He is the K-type competitor. He doesn’t stare at us over Charlie Gibson grannie glasses, and tell us about an intellectual assessment of Milton Friedman. He is a geyser of the K-type competitive psychology. He is the Conservative’s Old Faithful, blowing for three hours a day. Likewise for Ronald Reagan. Look at the extemporaneous interview he gave to Reason magazine here. This was a guy who breathed freedom, and was driven to it by more than a cold assessment of it’s “relative superiority” to oppression. Did he understand it intellectually? Of course. But there was far more motivating him that that.
And this is the problem. The Conservative Intelligentsia is not of the K-type competitive psychology. Guns scare them. Marriage isn’t that important. Rampant promiscuity and female hypergamy has no effect on either women’s overall happiness or our society, and single parenting is fine for children. Some government oppression is a good thing, and sometimes the little people need to be told what to do for their own good. Maybe the Constitution can even be bent “for the common good.” Each election, they select a candidate, and it is some Liberal-lite tool, who they prefer to the “unintellectual” true Competitor. It’s Bush 1, it’s Ford, it’s Dole, it’s McCain, it’s Romney.
And each election, the rest of the movement has to either hold it’s nose and vote for a pretender, selected by people looking in at the movement from the outside, or take the whole movement down in protest.
I don’t want to knock intellectualism. We should all know the facts, and check our instincts against logic. But when someone makes an intellectual assessment that freedom is good, that is all that motivates them. If they fail to protect freedom, “Ah well, it sounded good.” When someone is imbued with an instinctual urge to be free, see their countrymen free, and they see the intellectual argument as well, you have Ronald Reagan, Rush Limbaugh, or maybe even Sarah Palin.
So basically the problem is we have a battle between two groups within our party. One thinks that their study of the movement gives their opinion more weight than the naturals, while the naturals, though less detail driven, are actually more a part of the movement than the intellectuals, and will always adhere to the ethos far more, and satisfy the movement far more, that any intellectual pretender ever could.
