I'm Conservative and I have a normal IQ...!

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Nah, I think that one is a pretty equal opportunity offense, as a libertarian I get it from the left and right pretty equally.

Now if you want to break it down a little further and include bad faith, my experience has been that liberals have more of a tendency to assume bad faith, e.g. 'you want to cut taxes because you hate the poor', and feminists are the worst straw slayers, but it's not like I have data to support that or anything.

Checks and balances are needed I suppose. Glad to be in a free country where I'm free to speak my opinion and free to argue for my opinion.

I do believe you just contradicted yourself.

Apparently the straw man is not correlated with political views, whilst also being correlated with not being a libertarian - a political view in itself. Checkmate

(And yes, there is an ironic straw man hiding in that post too)

-"African countries suffer chronic poverty and illness because their people have lower IQs".
-"Black women are 'objectively less attractive'"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Kanazawa

Apparently, he gets liberals to admit to their racist beliefs that black people are inferior, and "need to be helped". And then tells them that they have higher IQ for believing such.

Truly funny.

No, I don't think conservatives are dumb. If you have an IQ of 130, you aren't dumb. Even bush probably had an above average IQ. I wouldn't say he is unintelligent just idiotic in some ways.

I tend to think of conservatives as being more authoritative though in general, which I don't particularly like.

I presume you mean above average . But your remark made me think about an article I have read about this issue. One of the points made is that American liberals are better with the abstract and American conservatives with the concrete. Now this does translate in higher IQ scores on average for US-liberals, because IQ-test are focused on the former and not the later.



Does this include spending on the military?



So he takes a possible definition of altruism and then proceeds to call it liberalism. Also are those private resources their own or those of others (this includes calls for higher taxes while at the same time making sure that their own income and property are taxed as little as possible).

If conservatives are more intelligent than liberals, how does that explain cretins like Louie Gomert, Michelle Bachmann, or Rick Perry? These people had somehow gotten themselves into office, where they spewed the most ridiculous idiocy, based on everything from xenophobia to the questionable evangelical theology they all share. I can only imagine the level of intelligence of the voters who put them in office.

If conservatives are more intelligent than liberals, how does that explain cretins like Louie Gomert, Michelle Bachmann, or Rick Perry? These people had somehow gotten themselves into office, where they spewed the most ridiculous idiocy, based on everything from xenophobia to the questionable evangelical theology they all share. I can only imagine the level of intelligence of the voters who put them in office.

What he meant, at least in my mind, was that straw men are used pretty much regardless of politics and where you stand on the issue. People use straw men all the time when they argue over all kinds of different things. He was observing that because of his unique political position, he has seen the majority of people argue against him and even though they consider themselves basically diametrically opposed to one another they all commit this same basic error of logic when debating with him.

The truth is folks, that many of the rules of logic are counter-intuitive to most people and they even find them annoying. As people on the spectrum I don't think I'm speaking a foreign language to you when I say that argument for the majority of people has social motivations and they often care little about the subjects themselves that are being argued. So they are either intellectually dishonest, form careless arguments, or they even specialize in forming the most persuasive arguments (logic be damned) like many lawyers excel in doing. Some of the most intelligent attorneys I've ever met couldn't tell you heads from tails when it comes to what it deductive or inductive, modal or planal, what all of the common fallacies are, or how to build on syllogisms to make a solid argument. Chances are they might not even know the technical definition of an argument: to support a position. Arguments are not browbeating, they are a clinical process.

What, was he idiotic simply because you disagree with him? Or was he idiotic because he became tongue-tied during speeches? The guy was an Ivy League graduate. Clearly he has above average intelligence.

Sure, I did acknowledge that I was straw manning him, I just saw the joke and went for it. I have a dislike for "libertarian exceptionalism" that underpinned the joke, but I was not attempting to construct an argument or even make Dox appear slightly foolish.

What do they do for their constituency, and who did they run against? If a guy says stupid things but is an effective representative, who are you to question the intelligence of those who'd support such a person? Doubly so given your own blatant partisanship. History is full of leaders with "problematic" personal beliefs and behaviors, but in the end we tend to focus on what they got accomplished, not the gaffes they may have made.

I don't believe you have to be stupid to be a conservative. That seems to be a bit silly. But I do think conservatives need to get out of people's personal business. The government has no place in such issues as drug control and abortion. When the government starts policing people from themselves we've entered dangerous territory.

I would definitely hesitate to say that the abortion issue is as clean cut as that. It has to be someone's business if the business of the other human being (or fetus, however you want to think of it) has no say in it. What about the other person involved. Regardless of your opinions on that it has to be recognized that there's a legitimate reason for everyone, conservative or liberal, to have some concern for that person's business if it involves a completely unrepresented person's business. We can't just cherry pick who the constitution applies to, there has to be some serious dialogue about the issue.

And since when did right wingers have the monopoly on intrusiveness? I've been ridiculed quite a few times for my beliefs by left wingers. Seems like there are just as many restrictions coming from them towards me as there are from anywhere else, what with this issue of being "politically correct" and environmentalism, freely expressing my religion and organizing with like minded people at school and other public places (let's not just turn our heads the other way when Christians are being discriminated against in colleges across the country simply for wanting to organize a group just like everyone else). Seems just as intrusive to me. Actually, it seems to me that we're never short on hypocrites whether they are "99 percenters" or they participated in McCarthy's "committee on unamerican activities".

IMO, playing the blame game is the opposite of constructive. You may have experienced conservatives in your personal business. I've experienced them and many other kinds of people in my personal business. People tend to just do that. And sometimes it's actually warranted. In society our own business can't always be our own.