I have a theory about the cause of conservatism. This comes after growing up with my mother and father, living some small distance from Orange County, California, and eventually having to blog every day on politics. So the theory is surely worthless.

Still, the impetus to develop an explanation for the existence of right-wingers is understandable. They’re crazy. There must be a reason for this.

So I have a theory about it. And the heart of it is this idea: Conservatives are more born than made. They are strange by their nature. The organization of their brains determines their fundamental perspective on the world.

At first, this seems a crazy idea, even one crazy enough to be conservative itself. The brain is so complex, how can there be a single thing that determines so much of an individual’s personality? For anyone who’s familiar with extremist conservatives who demand political purity, right down to what the believers must eat, this is a fair question.

Well, here’s my answer: The right-wing brain’s fundamental perspective on the world is fear. It’s what informs all their attitudes and generates all their politics. It’s why otherwise sane people attack minority groups, obsess on weapons and the military, start wars both foreign and domestic and generally tear the country apart. It’s also why they are far more likely to commit high crimes and misdemeanors (cf: Nixon, Richard). Fear is a maddening disease.

So this is not surprising:

Using a large sample of related individuals, including twins, siblings, and parents and children, the researchers first assessed individuals for their propensity for fear using standardized clinically administered interviews. Looking at subjects who were related to one another, the researchers were able to identify influences such as environment and personal experience and found that some individuals also possessed a genetic propensity for a higher level of baseline fear. Such individuals are more prepared to experience fear in general at lower levels of threat or provocation . .

The research indicates a strong correlation between social fear and anti-immigration, pro-segregation attitudes. While those individuals with higher levels of social fear exhibited the strongest negative out-group attitudes, even the lowest amount of social phobia was related to substantially less positive out-group attitudes.

By using siblings and twins, Rose McDermott et. al. found a genetic component for social fear. And found a correlation between fear and antipathy toward outlier groups. Immigrants and foreigners.

“It’s not that conservative people are more fearful, it’s that fearful people are more conservative. People who are scared of novelty, uncertainty, people they don’t know, and things they don’t understand, are more supportive of policies that provide them with a sense of surety and security,” McDermott said.

You can see how this obsession with “surety and security” devolves into panic when confronted with gays, or atheists, or Teamsters. Or electric cars, or fluorescent light, or free-range poultry . .

A January survey of 1500 adults by the Pew Center tells us that distrust in the federal government is at an all-time high. 53% of the respondents say the government threatens their personal rights:

I’m not surprised, and you’re not surprised. Right-wing media have been shrieking about the imminent deaths of America and its patriots ever since Barack Obama took office. A consistent coast-to-coast effort like that should have measurable public effects. But how much of the perception can be traced to conservative hysteria? Pretty much all of it:

The growing view that the federal government threatens personal rights and freedoms has been led by conservative Republicans. Currently 76% of conservative Republicans say that the federal government threatens their personal rights and freedoms and 54% describe the government as a “major” threat. Three years ago, 62% of conservative Republicans said the government was a threat to their freedom; 47% said it was a major threat.

By comparison, there has been little change in opinions among Democrats; 38% say the government poses a threat to personal rights and freedoms and just 16% view it as a major threat.

There’s virtually no connection between what the government does and how its perceived. Almost all the movement in polling can be rooted in partisan right-wing politics.

After September 11th, the Bush administration signed the Patriot Act into law. The legislation enabled the federal government to intercept your phone calls, monitor your e-mails, obtain no-knock warrants against you and your living quarters, and pore over your library reading lists. The government later argued it had the right to kidnap and imprison anyone it deemed an enemy outside its borders, even American citizens, and then try them in extra-civilian courts. You would be hard-pressed to find any other era in American history where the government so damaged personal rights.

But look at the concurrent yes/no polling vis-a-vis bad government: 30/67, 32/63 and 45/54. While the Bush administration trampled all over the freedoms of its citizens, conservatives were unconcerned. But now that the anti-torture politically moderate lecturer on constitutional law, Barack Obama, is in charge, they’re howling about the necessity of civil war to defend themselves. They don’t even know how or why the government is dangerous, they only know they hate it and the President as well.

Gina Miller comes across a 2012 post featuring her and she doesn’t like it:

False Reporting on your site

I stumbled on a false quote attributed to me on the Sick Horses site, and I demand this be removed from your site: http://sickhorses.com/2012/03/29/gina-miller-trayvon-martin-came-from-a-sub-culture/

This ignorant misquote completely takes the meaning of my column out of context and attributes to it words I never wrote that are mixed in with words I did write–not to mention the Photoshopped image of my picture and Trayvon Martin’s image.

I never said, “It’s no surprise somebody shot Trayvon Martin.” NEVER. And, the rest of my words in the quote are doctored with other words that were not in my piece.

Delete this post immediately.

Gina Miller

Here is the offending material:

Pictured (l to r): elegant & eloquent, ugly & unintelligible

Shorter Gina Miller, Renew America:

“It’s no surprise somebody shot Trayvon Martin. Black people have become a sub-culture that glorifies incoherent music, anti-social behavior, despicable dress, and even its own unintelligible speech.”

Alright Gina. Let me explain the concept of the ‘Shorter.’ This is where I read something awful written by you and I do my best to understand what it is you’re trying to say. Then I compose a spirited synopsis and post it on my site. While it may look AS IF you had written it, the readers are aware that I have not in fact quoted you. Quoting the bloggers of Renew America is really not very funny. It is traditionally appalling. In the rare instance where I do quote somebody in a ‘Shorter,’ I make it clear. Like:

Pictured (l to r): geh basher, feh slasher

Shorter Verbatim Gina Miller, Renew America:

“America’s foundation is hanging by a thread, and the homo-radicals are wielding hell-sharpened scissors.”

See? I crossed out ‘Shorter.’ Because you wrote:

The militant homosexual campaign against our society is one that seeks to destroy the Christian moral foundation upon which this nation was built. That foundation is hanging by a thread, and the homo-radicals are wielding hell-sharpened scissors.

In all of these ‘Shorter’ posts (see here) I provide a link back to the source. This would be a silly gesture were I aiming to misrepresent anybody. And by now you should know I am not a “reporter,” I do not do “reporting.” So I am quite journalistic-ally unrestrained in offering my obnoxious opinions regarding your obnoxious opinions.

Now to particulars: I believe I did a pretty fair job in representing your reaction to the Martin murder. In “Trayvon mania highlights diseased culture of the left,” you began this way:

The ignorant, irrational mania being stoked by the black race hustlers in the wake of the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin is disgusting.

Call me crazy, irrational and pushed around by “black race hustlers” will you? I don’t think so. And usually standing in opposition to your targets, were you of sensible mania? Your mangled screed went on like this, denying that there were good reasons to be angered by the blasting of an unarmed teenager. This was disgusting:

Today, we see far too many young, black people — and “white” people, too — who are facing a bleak future, because they have chosen to become a sub-culture of America — a sub-culture that glorifies violent, incoherent “music,” anti-social behavior and despicable dress, and even its own unintelligible speech. How can many of these kids of today expect to be accepted and propelled ahead in the workforce when they insist on rejecting something so simple as proper dress and behavior?

No one appreciates being called a “sub-culture,” so you can go to hell. You were also insinuating that Martin and his ilk comprise a national Untermenschen incapable of behavioral norms and common decency, and that this is what understandably precipitates their deaths. I don’t know why people like you exist in the world. Have you ever thought of disappearing? You might find it refreshing.

So I mock you for being callous and indecent. That’s what the blog is for. What’s your blog for? Misanthropy? Just guessing.

The modern American Egyptian saint. Hail or crucify? Let’s get him.

Obama to Condemn Christian Filmmaker Before United Nations

We don’t like the religious and we’re not so hot on movies either. We’re urbane. We are the space age people of doing buggery and drugs in shrinking spaces. Where are the priests? I’ve got some urbanization to do.

Not only are we seeing the White House and State Department call more attention to the Mohammed-mocking “Innocence of Muslims” than any terrorist network ever could’ve hoped for . .

The White House? This?

On September 17, about 500,000 Lebanese protested in Beirut at a rally where Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah made a rare public appearance, calling for sustained protests against the film, calling the protests the “start of a serious movement in defense of the prophet” . .

On September 18, a female suicide bomber drove a car filled with explosives into a mini-bus with foreign aviation workers in Afghanistan, killing at least nine people, reportedly including eight South Africans and a British woman and possibly also a number of Afghans.

The White House’s fault? They can barely run a presidential campaign. They can round up maybe 10,000 people, but only with months of planning. I don’t think so.

. . but the President’s indefensible scapegoating of the film and filmmaker to draw attention and blame away from U.S. security failures apparently knows no bounds . .

My God, between the media and the Obama White House, we are finally witnessing Orwell’s “1984″ blossom to life.

1984: The Breit Bartening. It opens with the Pope of one country. He films a documentary about the Prophet of another country. No one knows about anything ’til a great blogger —–> #WAR. The peasants are screamed into protests of submission. Or submissions of protest. The media rub their hands and broadcast it all. Everybody dies. It’s pretty much The Ghost and Mr. Chicken.

The bodies of Ambassador Stevens and three others killed in the attack on the Benghazi consulate were flown home recently. The President and the Secretary of State were present at a somber reception at Andrews Air Force base.

It was an “amazing ceremony,” [Chris Matthews] insisted. After an Obama clip, he said, “There was a moment in American history right there. Last week, when Obama spoke at the Democratic National Committee down in Charlotte, he said, ‘I am the president.’ Well, this week, he showed what it means to be president.”

Matthews’ commentary drove Brent Bozell crazy.

“This was a moment for pride? . .

If George Bush had been president, the arrival of these four caskets would have been painted as a sickening sign of failure and incompetence, of public servants needlessly losing their lives because the White House couldn’t piece together their intelligence reports. Matthews would have railed against Bush and “Cheeney” for failing to protect their diplomats in unstable Arab nations. Now it was time to tingle over the unified Democrats instead.”

I recall George W. Bush being president when three thousand people were killed by the bad Muslims. And the failure to save those lives was unequivocally Bush’s fault. He knew exactly who Osama bin Laden was. He knew Al Qaeda were planning to kill Americans. He knew a spectacular attack was imminent. But he never did a thing to prevent it.

Yet among the wingnuts you still hear crap like this:

“President Bush had at Ground Zero probably the most important moment in, uh, maybe in American history. It was when this wounded nation watched their commander-in-chief stand on that rubble and say they will hear us, we are going to avenge this . .”

Bush literally stood on the bodies of the people he failed to defend and did a tough guy routine. It was one of the most appalling spectacles in American history. But to fans like Bozell, Bush and his bullhorn beat the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Factually speaking, it was really Condoleezza Rice who liked it better than the moon landing, but why quibble? When Bush’s incompetent National Security Adviser can weigh in on Bush’s incompetence with tingling awe, we’re way out of reality-based Chris Matthews’ league.

Conservative racism knows no bounds, and it never sleeps.

During the Creston Classic Rodeo on Saturday afternoon, [Mike] Hayhurst made a joke over the public address system about Michelle Obama that reportedly went like this: Playboy is offering Ann Romney $250,000 to pose in the magazine, and the White House is upset about it because National Geographic only offered Michelle Obama $50 to pose for them.

And it is wholly clueless. Given the children and women in attendance, you’d assume a clown would know better than to harangue the unsuspecting crowd with caveman politics. They’re only nibbling on candy or sipping cool Pepsis in the Summer heat, fer gosh sakes. But no:

Several people who attended the event emailed The Tribune and said they heard racist and offensive remarks during Saturday’s bull-riding event. For example, Gretchen Ross of Cayucos said she heard the rodeo clown compare a black bull to President Obama, asking what they have in common.

“Besides the obvious?” was the answer, Ross said. “A couple of good points and a lot of bull in between.”

She added: “My son and I were offended by that. I thought it was disrespectful to the audience.”

Ross and her husband, Michael Foster, also recalled a comment that referenced actress Lohan’s time behind bars, and said Hayhurst joked, “We need Obamacare like Nancy Pelosi needs a Halloween mask.”

Hayhurst is nothing more than what he appears to be. Instead of simply saying “Sorry,” he saw the controversy as a good time to flash his wingnut badge:

“Thanks to the Founders and defenders of our great nation, we are afforded our free speech rights . . “

Cram it, clownie.

After National Review’s lumbering ginger bitch, Mark Steyn, wrote a pissy post about Sandra Fluke, I criticized him. Here he was:

. . she has concluded that the most urgent need facing the Brokest Nation in History is for someone else to pay for the contraception of 30-year-old children.

Sandra never “concluded” that. But this is about contraception, so she’s a child. Don’t you know anything about the national debt? That’s adult stuff.

Anyway, Steyn read the post –

More fan mail re: #SandraFluke column: thumpandwhip.com/2012/09/08/mar…

— Mark Steyn (@MarkSteynOnline) September 9, 2012

. . and now I’ve got a thousand ginger twats saying I’m stupid.

Abortion and contraception are the only technology we have to manage pregnancy? The ONLY TECHNOLOGY we have to manage pregnancy?? We have no other sort of technology related to pregnancy at all in this world? So “managing” pregnancy means nothing but preventing or ending it?

Once you’re accidentally pregnant, the technologies are pretty lame. Don’t you think? There’s a morning-after pill, I suppose, but that’s cold homicide buddy.

Way to take something out of context. Mark’s point was that contraception is not the job of a federal government. If Sandra cannot afford the $4 pill then maybe should try the old tried and true “just say no” approach to birth control

Way to take something out of context. Sandra was talking about Georgetown’s healthcare plan. It costs students $1800 a year, but it won’t cover birth control. Even though it would likely save the plan money. Strange, don’t you think?

Back in days of yore they used that outdated model of keeping penises out of their vaginas but what is a middle aged student about to start a career in her mid-30′s supposed to do today?

Back then things were smarter. We used to lobotomize certain people. We used to drown others. We used to hang other others.

Your arguement is incoherent at best and again as other posters have mentioned proves the point that liberals want daddy government to protect and care for them cradle to grave.

Oh, youe . .

1.) “Please Mark instruct us. Tell us educated people what we should do with our lives.”

Now there’s irony for ya…

2.) “Tell us educated people”

Based on the quality of your writing and the coherency of your argument, I’m not sure “us” is an appropriate word choice there.

Subjectivists. Ouch my tuxedo ears. I could have pleased the crowd with a “we,” but then I’d be a fool. Wouldn’t I? This is so National Review, it’s pitch perfect.

The only coherent thought in this article is when she quotes Mark. I fear that this is written by another college uneducated 30 year old…

Hey! I’m a dood dammit.

First I must comment on how incoherent this commentary was. It made little sense, and the maligning of the English language indicates someone who learned English from rap albums. Second your point about contraception, well let’s jaunt over to the more enlightened Europe, where the evil white, christian( sorry too few of those), yuppies are barely reproducing at all, as in the case of the vampire sex is merely healthy excersise, and reproduction is strictly for the realm of the living.

Heeeeeee’s Mr. Coherent, doot-do-dooo. Yikes. Somebody call filmmaker Martin Excersise, there’s a Euro-vampire treatment he’s gotta read.

Steyn is addressing his comments to rational adults. That’s why you missing the point.

I not miss point! I get point! Very good point!

How far you’ve fallen if the greatness of a man is to be measured by his enemies.

You came all the way to my blog to say this. Telling. Anyway, thank you Steyn ye ginger bitch for sending me your dullards. This was entertaining graffiti. And now, some hot dogs.

The GOP have been quick with the public relations hand-wringing and furrowing of bald pates after Rep. Todd Akin’s bizarre comments. Over the weekend Akin offered this dodge for the need of an abortion after rape:

“First of all, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to try to shut that whole thing down.”

Plenty of Republican bigwigs, including National Review, have called for him to exit his Missouri Senate race. The thinking among the right-wing is that the gender gap among voters, especially after Rush Limbaugh’s sluttening of politics, is sizable and will only grow worse as long as a target like Akin hangs around.

But what about the rest of the wingnuts? What’s the point of exiling your drunken uncle from the family gathering when the whole clan is berserk? Since when are the rest of the Republican intelligentsia above poor stupid Todd Akin?

Take Bryan Fischer for instance. It’s his job to be the stupidest asshole on the internet. Everybody agrees on this, Bryan particularly and proudly. So after he says this, why is he welcome in the GOP?

“What Todd Akin is talking about is when you’ve got a real, genuine rape. A case of forcible rape, a case of assault rape, where a woman has been violated against her will, through the use of physical force, where it is physically traumatic for her,” Fischer said on his radio program.

Not a sort of snuggle-crime. Or an argument over the rules of slap-and-tickle. Really?

“Under those circumstances, the woman’s body — because of the trauma that has been inflicted on her — it may interfere with the normal functioning processes of her body that lead to conception and pregnancy. There’s a very delicate and complex mix of hormones that take place that are released in a woman’s body and if that gets interfered with it may make it impossible for her or difficult in that particular circumstance to conceive a child.”

Bryan’s been important enough a wingnut that virtually any presidential candidate has to kiss his ring before pursuing the evangelical vote. So he’s not going anywhere.

Thus the hypocrisy? Because he’s powerfully insane. He’s got so much of the speaking-in-tongues crowd behind him that he’s allowed to be as brutally insulting and idiotic as he likes. Akin’s equally dumb but he’s only a politician.

Paramount among equals, Chris Loesch. He understands biology, too, and you people have got everything all freaking wrong.

Akin was all “medically correct.” We take this for granted because Twitter warriors are very science. Anybody who gives his life over to shouting in short sentences is likely sensible and carrying an acute background in the molecular mechanics of human biology. If that isn’t true none of his colleagues particularly cares and no one’s more or less upset about anything of current note.

Another mass killing:

The shooting at the Sikh Temple in Oak Creek about 10:15 a.m. Sunday that left at least seven people dead, including the shooter, and three people injured is being treated as a domestic terrorist incident, Oak Creek [Wisconsin] Police Chief John Edwards said.

Oak Creek police officers who responded to a 911 call about the shooting were helping a victim when the shooter ambushed one of the officers, shooting the officer multiple times.

A second Oak Creek officer returned fire, killing the shooter, Edwards said.

This brings back bad memories. Remember this?

Balbir Singh Sodhi was gunned down on Sept. 15, 2001 in Mesa, Arizona. The turban-wearing Sikh was killed outside his gas station. Sodhi’s killer spent the hours before the murder in a bar, bragging of his intention to “kill the ragheads responsible for September 11.” He has been convicted and sits on death row.

Now today. Raw Story:

More information is coming out about what led the FBI to declare Sunday’s Sikh temple shooting an act of domestic terrorism.

According to the Los Angeles Times, tattoos plus “certain biographical details” were the source of that conclusion. A representative of the Sikh congregation, Kanwardeep Singh Kaleka, told CNN that “members described the attacker as a bald, white man, dressed in a white T-shirt and black pants and with a 9/11 tattoo on one arm.”

There has already been widespread speculation that the shooter may have intent on committing an anti-Islamic hate crime but confused Sikhs with Muslims because of their turbans. Kaleka pointed out that “maybe it’s because the ladies were fortunate enough to dodge it out, but so far most of the people I’ve heard have been shot and killed were all turbaned males.”

Waiting for Pam Geller to tell us this is still Mohammed’s fault.

Today’s award-winning National Review braaap comes by way of Jonah Goldberg. If this weren’t him, it would be satire of Jonah delighting in duncery. Turns out Jonah’s a doughy big boy who can do things for himself. Take it away, Stephen Hulking…

Raaaaaaacists!
By Jonah Goldberg | July 27, 2012 1:57 P.M.

Dan’s post on Jonathan Chait’s entry into the “if it’s bad for Obama, it’s racist” games is a keeper. What I love about this stuff is that liberals tend to insist how racism is not only repugnant to them, but alien to them. And yet, they continually demonstrate a sensitivity and acuity for spotting it that even real racists seem to lack.

Liberals tend to insist they’re opposed to the killing of people. Yet every time there’s a stabbing, who is it that complains? Yup, the same bunch. Even more so than the murderers themselves. C’mon.

They’re like people who claim to be nose deaf (if you prefer, anosmic) who nonetheless insist they can pick up an exotic scent from miles away (“A lactose intolerant armadillo has grown flatulent over by the old Miller farm . . .”).

I did not make this up. This really is Goldberg. Ahem, contemplate all the things you’d miss (like this) if your peepers went mute. I don’t even want to noggin smell the idea. To be tasted of mitts and sighted of gob, it is to live. (P.S. Lemur snacks fart fart.)

I don’t think liberals appreciate how much conservatives laugh at this stuff.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

This is good. It is news.

“I’m taking my dog for a walk and guess what I see right over the tree line right above my head is a drone,” said [Joseph] Farah, adding that the drone was low in the sky and sounded like a lawnmower.

You know it’s getting weird when the flying lawnmowers are here.

“I don’t live in the city, I don’t live in a populated area, I live in one of the most rural places you could possibly live in Northern Virginia and there could only be one thing that this drone was spying on and that would be me, that would be my property because there’s just nothing else around except woods and deer,” said Farah.

You know you’re being watched when the surveillance drones are here.

Farah joked that the drone was probably stalking him because he was a terrorist, given the fact that a recent report funded by the Department of Homeland Security put out by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism listed Americans who are “reverent of individual liberty” as “extreme right-wing” terrorists.

You know you’re being stalked when the terror drones are here.

“The liberty lovers out there really have to stick together….or we’re going to hang together as our founders said,” warned Farah, expressing his concern that patriots who resist the increasing levels of control being asserted over their lives by big government would be “hunted down” by a re-elected Obama administration.

You know you’re being lynched when the usurper drones are here.

“Look – this is the first term – if he’s re-elected it’s going to be war – they will be at war – we will be hunted down like dogs, keep that in mind, that’s what the stakes are,” said Farah.

You know you’re being hunted when the battle drones are here.

California, that’s us. Unemployment is pegged over 10%, the state government’s poorer than a fruit picker, the mention of the word ‘water’ in polite society starts fistfights, and, beginning about a month from now, the Santa Ana winds will turn greater Los Angeles into gunpowder in a potter’s kiln. There are so many good reasons for the bleedinghearts at National Review to worry about us.

If Californians did not have enough problems already, they are about to be deprived of delicious, fattened liver.

Jesus, now this.

As of July 1, when Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 2004 “Force Fed Birds” act finally took effect, California became the first state in the nation to ban foie gras.

No more tortured goose organs for you. The fates. They are cruel.

Some, like the newly founded Coalition for Humane and Ethical Farming Standards (CHEFS), say the law goes too far. “It would lead to the widespread production and sale of contraband, black-market foie gras that would be dangerous to animal welfare and customers,” the CHEFS website states.

Because CHEFS are all about animal welfare. Similar arguments were forwarded the author by GNASHING BIRD MAGNETO. Now, here’s how the Review tie up this piece. No ma’am, I’m not making this up:

These birds are only the most recent job creators pushed out of the Golden State.

When the attorney general deports the Hell’s Angels, the morticians lobby will collapse.