Social Psychologists, living sheltered lives behind academia’s ivy covered walls, seemingly will not stop until conservatives are either re-educated and get with the “progressive” program, or resting in a thorazine haze within some institution. I would not be shocked to find conservatism included in a future edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. In 2003 a couple of UC Berkeley Psychologists co-wrote a paper (link is to PDF document) for the American Psychological Association describing conservatism as deriving from a personality driven by authoritarianism, dogmatism, and intolerance of ambiguity. Conservatives, these psychologists asserted, require closure, have a regulatory focus, and demand terror management. People, whom I’m sure these academics would be described as “right-wing extremists,” provide ideological rationalization for social dominance and system justification. In short: “The core ideology of conservatism stresses resistance to change and justification of inequality and is motivated by needs that vary situationally and dispositionally to manage uncertainty and threat.” In 2009, a team led by psychologist Kenneth E. Vail, went beyond the “conservatives are defective” thesis by asserting that conservatism can be fixed. If “compassionate values primed” then people are more likely to embrace so-called progressive values. In other words, our

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