Some Politics May Be Etched in the Genes

[HuckleB]

Some Politics May Be Etched in the Genes

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/21/science/21gene.html

"Political scientists have long held that people's upbringing and experience determine their political views. A child raised on peace protests and Bush-loathing generally tracks left as an adult, unless derailed by some powerful life experience. One reared on tax protests and a hatred of Kennedys usually lists to the right.

But on the basis of a new study, a team of political scientists is arguing that people's gut-level reaction to issues like the death penalty, taxes and abortion is strongly influenced by genetic inheritance. The new research builds on a series of studies that indicate that people's general approach to social issues - more conservative or more progressive - is influenced by genes.

Environmental influences like upbringing, the study suggests, play a more central role in party affiliation as a Democrat or Republican, much as they do in affiliation with a sports team.

The report, which appears in the current issue of The American Political Science Review, the profession's premier journal, uses genetics to help answer several open questions in political science.

..."


Does this mean researchers can now focus on treatments for "fascist personality disorder," or a sub-diagnosis of OCD, with obsessions and compulsions specific to right wing ideology? Or will Republicans turn their gay-retraining camps into liberal-retraining camps?

[TroglodyteScholar]

1. Nonsense (eom)

[LaurenG]

2. So does this mean

that some people are born inherently EVIL?

[HuckleB]

6. Well, I wouldn't go that far.

Some people might have a predisposition to evil, though.

;)

[Tesha]

19. Maybe some are born without souls?

The sci-fi author Sheri S. Tepper speculates in her series "The True
Game" that some are born without souls. In that series, the midwives
cull out the commonfolk's babies who are born soulless, but the
upper crust often doesn't use midwives, so their soulless kids
survive (to become just like neocon Republicans).

Maybe it ain't fiction?

Tesha

[Teaser]

3. Liberals need to have more kids

whether politics' origin is largely social or largely genetic, liberalism gets outgunned in terms of reproduction. Our adversaries are baby machines. At the very least, we need to breed more.

However, this study doesn't really explain why there has been a profound shift away from liberalism in terms of the publics "voting politics", in the last few decades, which would tend to falsify the genetic hypothesis.

[D-Notice]

4. I really doubt this:

over here in the UK our last election, my parents both voted for the BNP (Nazis); my sister & I both voted for the Lib Dems (the anti-war, pro-civil liberties party).

[LiberalEsto]

5. Fascist personality disorder

ROFL!

The poor babies can't help that they're sociopaths -- they were born that way! Awwww.
:rofl: :spray:

[Kingofalldems]

7. Who was it that said

"All conservatives aren't stupid but all stupid people are conservative"? Whoever it was summed it up nicely.

[HuckleB]

8. John Stuart Mill

"Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservative."
-John Stuart Mill

[HuckleB]

9. More great quotes:

"Suppose you were a heartless bastard, and suppose you were a Republican, but, .....I repeat myself."
--Mark Twain

"All conservatives are such from personal defects. They have been effeminated by position or nature, born halt and blind, through luxury of their parents, and can only, like invalids, act on the defensive."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

:)

[Conker]

10. I like that Mark Twain quote.

[Orangepeel]

11. Is the Twain quote legit?

I have no real reason to believe otherwise, except that I didn't think that republicans were necessarily heartless bastards in Twain's day. I thought that came later. :shrug:

[PlanetBev]

14. The Twain quote has been altered

PBS had a four hour documentary on Twain a couple of years ago. The used the quote, but he said the word "Congress", not Republicans.

[Orangepeel]

16. Ah, that makes more sense. Thanks (eom)

[Deja Q]

12. Not politics. BEHAVIORS. Politics is bafflegab and bribery, period.

As is the bulk of that article. Bafflegab.

[5thGenDemocrat]

13. Hence my screen name

I'm actually a seventh-generation Democrat, most likely. My family lived near Andy Jackson and presumably voted for him in 1832. Great2-grandpa (1stGenDem) served with the CSA (under Simon Bolivar Buckner) for about three weeks before and during the 1862 Battle of Fort Donelson (he was taken prisoner about six miles from where he lived). There weren't many Republicans in the Kentucky/Tennessee border region in 1862, and none in the Garrett family.
Grandma G's dad, Augustus Elias (2GD), was a Democratic ward leader in Bay City, MI from about 1894 to 1910. Grandma Garrett (3GD) hated Richard Nixon passionately ("They'll put that man in the ground with a corkscrew," was one of her quotes I remember), and reminded us constantly that no working-class voter should EVER vote for the GOP.
Dad's mom and dad were a mixed bag. She was a Republican (and, interestingly enough, closely related to US Grant -- who took G2-grandpa Garrett prisoner at Fort Donelson), he was a white-collar UAW electrician and a Dem to his bone marrow.
Dad was a liberal Republican -- one of the most socially adept persons I ever saw. Everyone was his friend until they gave him a good reason not to be. He was smart and funny and looked a bit like John Garfield.
He stole my mom (4GD)'s little pinko heart and they had five kids. All are Democrats. At least one is further to the left than I am.
So -- there HAVE been Republicans in our woodpile. But the bloodline has been predominately Dem and the Republican genes have been bred out -- albeit not totally.
Of the ten nieces and nephews, all of whom are old enough to vote now, I'd say seven or eight are center-to-liberal. My nephew Ryan, now in his second tour in the USAF, is a Republican (but, again, a moderate one). Fortunately, he's married to a swell gal -- exotic (she is half Cree Indian and pretty as all get out), smart, a good mom and, yes, a liberal.
So there's hope for a seventh (or is that ninth?) generation of solid Democrats here, too. Same as it ever was.
John
Doing our part to keep Michigan blue.

[MGKrebs]

15. Identical twins get surveyed so much,

I wonder if their behavior is affected by knowing that every facet of their lives is red meat for social scientists. Like, does an identical twin sometimes, perhaps even subconsciously, deviate in behavior or beliefs from their twin just as a reaction? I know when I first learned about astrology, I tried pretty hard to NOT be too much of a Virgo.

[William Seger]

17. Conservatism is 10% Nature...

... and 90% brain damage.

[siliconefreak]

18. I believe it

This makes sense to me. Some people are naturally more compassionate, and others believe that "greed is good".

To argue that its nonsense because you voted for one candidate and your parents voted for another is missing the point - or maybe making the point. We are predisposed to having certain feelings, emotions, etc., and all of those things affect which political party we best identify with.

[daleo]

20. Some genetic component wouldn't be surprising

But it should be kept in perspective. For example, the article says that on one issue identical twins have a .66 correlation, while fraternal twins have a .46 correlation. Assuming that they are using the term correlation in its standard statistical sense (i.e. squaring the correlation coefficient gives the pct of variance explained), about 43% of the time you could predict the response of one twin by knowing the response of the other for identical twins, while this would only be true 22% of the time in fraternal twins. Even with identical twins (the same DNA) well over 50% of the variation is unexplained, and with fraternal twins nearly 80% of the variation is unexplained. So, this would imply substantial environmental factors are at work in shaping political orientation. It is no wonder families argue about politics.

"On school prayer, for example, the identical twins' opinions correlated at a rate of 0.66, a measure of how often they agreed. The correlation rate for fraternal twins was 0.46. This translated into a 41 percent contribution from inheritance."