PolicyGuy

Friday, August 29, 2003


Psychology of Liberalism
I've still got that Berkeley study of the psychology of conservatism, and plan to ... sometime ... get to it. Meanwhile, Ben Stein does a quick take on the psychology of what is today called liberalism. In brief, conservatives are risk-takers (entrepreneurs, willing to strike out on their own and take responsibility for their economic well-being); liberals are risk-adverse (regulators, wanting a government rule for a lot of things). Cheap, perhaps, but it could be as good as the Berkeley study.

"Justice Louis D. Brandeis'?s metaphor of the states as "laboratories" for policy experiments ... had almost nothing to do with federalism and everything to do with his commitment to scientific socialism. .... To this day, it continues to inhibit a truly experimental, federalist politics." -- Michael S. Greve

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