Ideological identities and wise reasoning

This post continues the comment portion of the last post on liberal and conservative identities. The comments here primarily focus on the summaries drawn by the research authors on those participants who self-identified as conservatives. The conservative participants equated conservative beliefs with American values. Many equated liberals with socialism or as heading toward socialism. They saw the liberal outgroup as un-American. Although none of the self-identified liberal participants used the word socialism, many conservative participants thought socialism was a threat. Conservatives saw political conflict in the United States as a battle between two ideologies, American and non-American. They perceived themselves as defending America against an un-American liberal aggressor.… Read the rest