liberal: confident :: conservative: whiny bitch

For years (at least since September 11, 2001), I've been calling the GOP the "Whiny Bitch" party, as well as the Projection Party and the Home of the Scared. Because, after all, isn't it obvious? They ARE a bunch of Whiny Bitches, they excel in the art/disease of psychological projection, and they are, almost across the board, extremely scared people.

But I always had a little nagging sense of unfairness. Could I be wrong? Could this just be my prejudice?

NAH. This month's Psychology Today has an article saying that, in a 2003 study involving 22,000 participants:

People who were conservative at age 23 had been described by their nursery school teachers as easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and vulnerable at age 3. [C]onservatives have less tolerance for ambiguity, a trait they say is exemplified when George Bush says things like, "Look, my job isn't to try to nuance. My job is to tell people what I think," and "I'm the decider." Those who think the world is highly dangerous and those with the greatest fear of death are the most likely to be conservative.

Liberals are higher on openness, which includes intellectual curiosity, excitement-seeking, novelty, creativity for its own sake, and a craving for stimulation like travel, color, art, music, and literature. As kids, liberals had developed close relationships with peers and were rated by their teachers as self-reliant, energetic, impulsive, and resilient.

Until now I hadn’t realized that people actually responded positively to Bush saying, “I’m the decider.”