Healthy Fear

"Conservatives' paranoid alternate-reality can be explained by their brain chemistry."

So says the sub head under "Republican Fear Factor" on a blog I stumbled onto this morning. Salon.com reprinted an Alternet blog reporting a University College London brain study which purports to identify differences in the way conservatives and liberals process information neurologically. This study is linked with one at University of Nebraska - Lincoln which draws similar conclusions according to Chris Mooney, author of The Republican Brain.

The two studies point out that the part of the brain known as amygdala are active in the human response to troubling situations. Citing differences in the relative size of the amygdala between conservatives and liberals, Mooney concludes that this “new research suggests [that] conservatism is largely a defensive ideology — and therefore, much more appealing to people who go through life sensitive and highly attuned to aversive or threatening aspects of their environments.”

I am not a neurologist, nor do I play one on TV, but even I know that the brain is incredibly complex. Five minutes of research reveals that the amygdala perform a far broader suite of activities than just inciting fear. For example, according to one encyclopedia, "The amygdala is also involved in the modulation of memory consolidation. Following any learning event, the long-term memory for the event is not formed instantaneously." I would like to suggest that a smaller amygdala might explain the liberals' apparent inability to remember promises or learn from history. I will not wait for any of our (primarily liberal) universities to confirm that.

My point is not to play dueling brain study. I would actually like to embrace what Mooney is implying. As a believer, I am inherently and proudly conservative. I wish to conserve tradition, morality, family, the Constitution and an orthodox interpretation of the Bible. I am genuinely concerned about threats to these dear principles. The Apostle Peter openly warns that our "enemy the Devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour." That is what I hear in Mooney's conclusion. If we do not remain "sensitive and highly attuned" (Mooney) or "alert and sober" (Peter) we end up as lion lunch -- or as liberals.