sincere question about self-professed conservatives and available information

[steve2470]

I've been here over 6 years now, and have consistently been impressed by the overall quality of intellect of the posters here and the information the left has.

My question: Barring the self-professed conservatives who have obvious financial reasons to proclaim conservatism, do many conservatives have all the information available (and use it and know it) that the left does ? Ignorance of the facts has been frequently cited as causation for conservatism. Thanks for your time.

[rfranklin]

1. They have an emotional affinity for a different set of "facts"

provided by Fox News, Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck and others. It is about a mindset, not about facts that can be ascertained by scientific methods.

[rucky]

2. When you share your information with them...

they reject the source altogether.

Can't quote the NYT or even Reuters. Liberal media.
Foreign press is out of the question, unless it's a business journal of some sort.
Can't cite government source material. Not to be trusted.
Can't cite scientific studies that aren't funded by special interests, apparently.

Meanwhile for them, there's FOX news, of course, but what really sticks in my craw is the "source material" from the Right Wing think tanks. Seems they spend most of their time giving educated conservatives a seemingly reasoned justification of their bullshit world view. When the think-tank lovin' conservatives use this information in debate, I can't tell if they're being fooled or they're just trying to fool me. It takes a lot of work to pick their shit apart, and I think they're counting on us not doing that. I usually end up rejecting those sources altogether, citing their track record and sources of funding and whatnot. But when I actually do dive into the materials they publish, they do a slick job as a self-contained piece. They just don't hold up to confirmation from other sources outside their own echo chamber.

[Anakin Skywalker]

3. The teabaggers don't care much for science. That kind of says it all.

[SmileyRose]

4. There's 2 kinds of conservatives from what I've seen

1. Fiscal conservatives. Who are pragmatic and careful with money. Frugal types who think what cash we have would best be used to benefit the most Americans possible and we should get the best bang we can for the bucks. These are people who believe in hard work AND a hand up. Every fiscal conservative I know believes in single payer universal medical care primarily because it would give us the best quality for the total money spent.

2. Republicans. Who come in all sorts of flavors, all of which seem genetically predisposed to dishonesty, intellectual laziness, manipulation and greed.

[jody]

5. It's my experience that ignorance is not limited to right or left but sampling from just one side

could lead to biased inferences that either left or right is more informed than the other.

[CJCRANE]

6. "Fox News fans misinformed, study finds".

"On the question of a link between Saddam and al-Qaida, a frankly startling 67 percent of the Fox News primary-source crowd believed this to be true. It's a claim that was one of the centerpieces of the Bush administration war policy but has never been proved, and, as PIPA asserts, is now largely dismissed by the intelligence community (and lately the White House itself).

It is probably no great solace to NPR and PBS that 16 percent of listeners glued to them also believe the Saddam-Osama link. But last time I checked, 67 percent was more than four times greater than 16 percent."



I actually found this quote on freerepublic! (by Googling).

But here's an alternet article about the same study:

The Hazards of Watching Fox News

http://www.alternet.org/story/16892