Throwaway Ideas No. 1 and 2

Monday, 10 February 2003

It's been a while since I've dropped in to Dissecting Leftism, John Ray's continuing inquiry into the psychological and social origins of the virulent social disease of Leftism. Apparently, he's had a fair bit of correspondence on this subject, with several like-witted readers e-mailing their own theories of the origins of Leftism, ranging from family environment to, most recently, the assertion that it's easier for a young man to get a root out of a left-wing woman.

This sort of thing invites speculation on the social and psychological origins of conservatism, especially during bouts of insomnia. During last night's, I started to wonder about the childhood influences which might guide the (allegedly normal) progression from a soft-headed, sentimental (and possibly libidinous) attachment to left-wing beliefs in early adulthood to a more conservative, libertarian senility. I think the key is in those incidents one sometimes sees in the supermarket where a toddler throws a tantrum when mum tells the check-out operator that she doesn't want the Kinder Surprise that junior has surreptitiously slipped into the supermarket trolley.

To put it bluntly, the more successful you were as a child in getting your way through obnoxious behaviour, the more likely you are in later life to adopt an unconditional belief that the protection of your personal freedom of action is the most important political value, and to resent to the point of moral outrage any government limitation on your ability to get your way through similar obnoxiousness. The more often your parents rewarded bad behaviour by giving you what you wanted, the more likely it is that you will be attracted to a political ideology which asserts your right to be rewarded for bad behaviour.

There is an easily foreseen objection to this theory: there are bound to be conservatives out there who will maintain, very sincerely, that their childhood was nothing like that described. For these critics I have but two words: selective memory. Some younger conservatives might resort to checking their recollections of a well-behaved childhood with their parents but these (especially rusted-on Randroids) should bear in mind that their parents' testimony that they were pretty normal kids should be taken with a grain of salt, given that their failure to instil a proper sense of community in their spawn is strong evidence of parental ineptitude.

This theory of the childhood origins of rightism has at least as much to reccommend it as psycho-social theories of the origins of leftism: it is equally rigorous, has the same solid basis in fact and makes exactly the same contribution to intelligent political debate. The only fault I can find with this post is that it's 49 days too early.