Conservatism as a Mental Disorder

Andrew Ferguson's newest piece titled "The New Phrenology" in the upcoming Weekly Standard is truly a must read.  Ferguson dissects the new class of social scientists -- the psychopundits -- and discounts the ways in which they have attempted, in the name of Science, to prove that the conservative mind is largely a problem of evolutionary biology -- in other words, a mental disorder of some kind.  Here is Andrew's opening paragraph:

We are entering the age of the psychopundit (we can thank the science writer Will Saletan for this excellent word). Thomas Edsall, for example, is a veteran political reporter widely admired by people who admire political reporters. He has become very excited by social science, as so many widely admired people have. Studies show—as a psychopundit would say—that Edsall is excited because social science has lately become a tool of Democrats who want to reassure themselves that Republicans are heartless and stupid. In embracing Science, the psychopundit believes he is moving from the spongy world of mere opinion to the firmer footing of fact. It is pleasing to him to discover that the two—his opinion and scientific fact—are identical. 

Ferguson then sets his sights on skewering a few of the psychopundits themselves.  According to a new book by psychopundit Chris Mooney,

Liberals are “more open, flexible, curious, nuanced.” Conservatives are “more closed, fixed, and certain in their views.” But don’t get the wrong idea: Mooney insists he is not saying “conservatives are somehow worse people than liberals.” That would be judgmental, and Science is clear: Liberals aren’t judgmental. “The groups are just different,” he goes on amiably. Indeed, he warns that the truths he reveals in his book “will discomfort both sides.” Fairness requires him to be evenhanded. On the one hand, conservatives won’t like the scientific fact that they tend to deny reality and treat their errors as dogma. On the other hand, liberals won’t like the scientific fact that all their well-meaning attempts to reason with conservatives are doomed. 

I have seen articles like Mooney's published every couple of months -- supposed proof through scientific research that conservatives are just mean, irrational, and hate the poor by nature.  Liberals, of course, are guided by facts; conservatives are guided by their irrationalities and passions.

The funny thing is is that a reliance on facts or science doesn't get to the core of anything.  The atomic bomb took much scientific knowledge to design and build.  But that technical knowledge alone does not tell us how to use, or maybe not use, that bomb.  Science originally understood knew its limits and was aware that it was only a section of the whole of knowledge and not the whole itself (Aristotle maintained that political science was the highest science one could study).

Ultimately, the modern scientific project undertaken by the psychopundits and their social science brethren is very damaging to a country that rests on abstract truths -- like the principle that all by nature are created equal -- that are applicable to all men and all times.