Many conservatives have a loose relationship with facts. The right-wing denial of what most people think of as accepted reality starts with political issues: As recently as 2016, 45 percent of Republicans still believed that the Affordable Care Act included “death panels” (it doesn’t). A 2015 poll found that 54 percent of GOP primary voters believed then-President Obama to be a Muslim (…he isn’t).

Why are conservatives so susceptible to misinformation? The right wing’s disregard for facts and reasoning is not a matter of stupidity or lack of education. College-educated Republicans are actually more likely than less-educated Republicans to have believed that Barack Obama was a Muslim and that “death panels” were part of the ACA. And for political conservatives, but not for liberals, greater knowledge of science and math is associated with a greater likelihood of dismissing what almost all scientists believe about the human causation of global warming.___

  • oce 🐆
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    1 day ago

    I feel like your point of view and the one of this video is based on the USA’s Republican Party, which is considered far right rather than just conservative in Europe.
    There’s plenty of traditional right/conservative parties in Europe who defend democracy, liberal economy, but socially conservative, for example German’s CDU (Angela Merkel) and its equivalents in other EU countries.

    • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
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      1 day ago

      liberal economy, but socially conservative,

      I addressed this point here:

      Those people are only small c conservative because of identity politics, and don’t subscribe to capital C Conservatism as an ideology.

      Someone who wants to roll back social welfare and corporate regulation would be considered a conservative. Anti-immigrant sentiment, while bad for many reasons, isn’t incompatible with liberalism.

      • oce 🐆
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        1 day ago

        Again, I feel like this is your point of view and maybe the one from the USA left. I think what you call capital C Conservatism is far right in EU. Although it’s true that part of the traditional right in the EU have started to ally with the far right, as the far right keeps scoring higher in the elections every year.

        • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
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          1 day ago

          I guess if we accept European conservatism (as you describe it; I’m basically taking your word for all this) then it’d have to be designated as an exception. However, the things I wrote apply to most strains of conservatism, because it’s still baked into the very core of the ideology. European conservatives get out of this conflict by being extremely centrist rather than taking firm conservative positions.

          Like most political parties in Germany, the CDU and the CSU to a lesser extent has turned to centrist policies after German reunification. This has led to an emphasis on economic liberalism and social justice (in the tradition of Catholic social teaching) compared to firm conservative positions. However, the party’s claimed conservative feature remains a non-defined iridescent term, oscillating between national and social manifestation.

          -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism_in_Germany#Modern_conservatism