Dude! Joe's Jottings, Mostly Junk

The fact is that the set of policy positions that we tie together and label "liberal" and "conservative," rather than being a coherent and consistent set of positions that all flow from a shared philosophical premise, often have little connection to one another at all. There is no intrinsic reason why someone should not, for example, want the government to do more to prevent the imprisonment of innocent people and support school vouchers. But the first position is considered a liberal one and the second position is considered a conservative one, so we'd be surprised to find someone who held both of those positions simultaneously. Yet lots of people do. Are they therefore liberals or conservatives? Why would it matter?

The only reason those groups of disparate positions tend to be held by the same people who travel under the same label is because most people tend to borrow their positions on subjects they haven't thought much about based on group identification. If someone considers themselves a liberal but they know little or nothing about global warming or evolution or the meaning of the 9th amendment, they will tend to assume that the position held by most other liberals is the correct one, and the same is true of those who think of themselves as conservatives. Taking positions based on group identification is the single most common form of cognitive shortcut that we take.

But thoughtful people can, of course, reach their own conclusions on each distinct issue and end up with a list of positions that transcend that simple left/right dichotomy. And this can be a very disturbing thing for people who think only, or mostly, through the cognitive shortcut of group identification. Those who define all of reality as a simple battle of left vs. right rarely know how to handle such people [...] .