Please don't call people racist because they disagree with you

[backscatter712]

107. I think a lot of the why is psychological.

There's a psychological phenomenon, call it a set of personality traits, that have been researched by Dr. Bob Altemeyer, which is called Right-Wing Authoritarianism.

By "Right-Wing", he doesn't mean Republican, or even traditional conservatism. He means a set of psychological preferences for tradition, for law and order, for following established conventions and authorities.

There are three specific traits:

1. Authoritarian submission - these people will submit to their authority figure of choice, obey, follow and defend him, no matter what he does, no matter how unethical. Look at all the people who willingly went down for Nixon.

2. Authoritarian aggression - they not only follow their authority figure, but they want to make YOU follow him too, and are willing to use force and coercion to make it happen.

3. Conventionalism. The conventions can be classic GOP church, god & country, apple pie & such, or they can also include Democratic conventions of following the Democratic party line. In the Soviet Union, there were lots of right-wing authoritarians who followed Communism.

Bob Altemeyer wrote a book about the phenomenon called The Authoritarians, which is intended for lay-people, and summarizes a few decades of research. Take a look:

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/