Lib-mus test

I've just discovered that I'm a political conservative.

According to the Science Magazine, people with conservative views react strongly to sudden noises and threatening images, whereas people with liberal views react in a calmer manner to the same set of stimuli.

Geez. All my life I've sought to define myself as a liberal, and here I am, turning out to be a closet conservative. 

Here's how the experiment went. Respondents with strong tendencies to support the death penalty, the Iraq war, military spending, and school prayer were tested against horrifying images and loud noises, and they were then recorded to have stronger physiological responses, like more blinking and perspiration. On the other hand, respondents with strong beliefs about abortion rights, foreign aid, gay marriages, pacifism and gun control turned out to have weaker reactions (a more calm response) to these stimuli.

What does that say about conservatives? That their gut reactions are driven emotionally? They react more violently to fear? That their beliefs are rooted in their fear? Interesting theories - but the researchers didn't want to make this correlation yet.

And so what does that say about me? I hate being startled by loud noises, and I avoid horror movies like they're horror movies - does that make me a conservative? Let me do a quick check of my strongly held values:

School Prayer: Nix. There's already too much interference by the Catholic Church in our state affairs, ok? And besides, we already make all those poor school kids memorize the national anthem and the Panatang Makabayan (which I've totally forgotten except for some fragments which will be totally useless if ever I lose my passport in a foreign country and I try to prove I'm a citizen before some supercilious embassy functionary.)Let's not make them learn some more useless stuff by rote.

Foreign Aid: Check. I'm all for sucking up all that foreign aid we can get from Europe, America and Australia. Except maybe for Japan, since all we actually get from their cleverly-packaged trade treaties are obligations to buy more Japanese goods and allowing the entry of Japanese rejects and waste. (Of course, I'm taking the concept of foreign aid in exactly the opposite way the researchers conceptualized it, but who cares - I'm from a donee-state.)

The Iraq War: Again, hmmm. No deeply held belief. But I do empathize deeply with all those mothers who've lost their sons in the war. Which might mean a nix.

Pacifism: Check. People can attest I want more people to make love, more love, and not war. In the same vein, I'm all for condom distribution.

Gay Marriage: Check. I support Ellen and Portia. (Did you know that Star Trek guy George Takei finally married his partner?)

Military spending: Hmmm. On an intellectual level, nix. But on a practical level, if it's for rooting out those terrorists that's made it so freaking difficult to travel, I'm all for it. Like, can we please go back to those days when we didn't have to take off our shoes at the airport, and we could bring cologne and spritzers inside the cabin?

Right to Abortion: Check. I support the right to bodily integrity and a woman's right to choose.

Death Penalty: Nix. Unless someone crosses me on a personal level, in which case I imagine marvelously inventive ways that they can shut up and die.

So let me see. My responses above show that I'm firmly in the liberal arena, with a tendency to cross over to the dark side if it will serve my personal interests. This doesn't mean I'm a conservative masquerading as a liberal, right?

I refuse to consider this possibility. Given my desperate need to define myself as a liberal, one possible way to address this conundrum is to label this experiment as shoddy science.

Or, I know. Maybe the researchers can create a third category. This is where they'll measure the responses of third world Asians with dangerous exposure to First World pseudo-intellectual liberal rhetoric. They could label them: the deviants. I could fit!