A look at populism: the right wing - tea party - version and the left-wing - Occupy - version.

[me b zola]

2. Competition vs cooperation

I think you nailed it by mentioning the underlying issues of the conservative mind, the us against them mind set. A singular behavior is evil if committed by a person not in their group, something to be exalted if committed by one of their own. They feel the need to have other people/groups of people "below" them on the food chain.

It often reminds me of the truck experiment. The object was to move your truck across a board as many times as possible withing a given amount of time. Two people had this task, on opposite sides of the board with a bridge in the middle. The Japanese subjects did well on this task as they cooperated with each other on the bridge so that they could move their trucks most efficiently to achieve the goal. American subjects, on the other hand, did poorly as they lost sight of what the goal was and were more concerned with blocking the other subject from moving their truck, their competitive frame didn't allow them to move their trucks across the board very well.

The conservative mind is more concerned about having more than the person next to them even if it means that everyone will have less as a consequence. Cooperation and compassion are not concepts that they understand and will fight tooth and nail against.