Conservatives are scared and whiny

For lack of anything better to post, and wanting to take an easy stab at the right, I present:

How to spot a baby conservative
Whiny children, claims a new study, tend to grow up rigid and traditional.

Remember the whiny, insecure kid in nursery school, the one who always thought everyone was out to get him, and was always running to the teacher with complaints? Chances are he grew up to be a conservative.

In the 1960s Jack Block and his wife and fellow professor Jeanne Block (now deceased) began tracking more than 100 nursery school kids as part of a general study of personality. The kids' personalities were rated at the time by teachers and assistants who had known them for months. There's no reason to think political bias skewed the ratings — the investigators were not looking at political orientation back then. Even if they had been, it's unlikely that 3- and 4-year-olds would have had much idea about their political leanings.

A few decades later, Block followed up with more surveys, looking again at personality, and this time at politics, too. The whiny kids tended to grow up conservative, and turned into rigid young adults who hewed closely to traditional gender roles and were uncomfortable with ambiguity.

The confident kids turned out liberal and were still hanging loose, turning into bright, non-conforming adults with wide interests. The girls were still outgoing, but the young men tended to turn a little introspective.

This is no surprise. Cons think everyone is out to get them - terrorists, muggers, gays, immigrants, communists, Muslims, murderers, thieves, liberals, black people... That's why they have to carry guns and ban everything they don't like.

Of course, the study is "biased" because it portrays cons in a negative light. [rolls eyes]