Bush Whacker

‘WHEN Tony Blair talked about the dark forces of conservatism in his party conference speech in 2000, little did we know that a couple of years later he would be palling up to one of the darkest of those forces.

A neo-con

A study, funded with $1.2m of US government money, has concluded that conservatism can be psychologically explained as a set of neuroses rooted in ”fear and aggression, dogmatism and the intolerance of ambiguity”.

Hitler, Mussolini, Ronald Reagan and right-wing talk show host Rush Limbaugh all suffer from the same affliction, it says.

And according to the Guardian, President George W Bush is also a textbook example, the telltale signs being his moral certainty and dislike of nuance.

”This intolerance of ambiguity can lead people to cling to the familiar, to arrive at premature conclusions and to impose simplistic cliches and stereotypes,” the authors argue.

President Bush said he hadn’t read the report, but was afraid the authors were pinkos and evil folks who should be wiped off the face of the world.

‘

Posted: 13th, August 2003 | In: Broadsheets Comment | TrackBack | Permalink