PrintNovember 2, 2010
Genetics and Politics
Evidence continues to mount indicating that political attitudes may develop more as a result of innate genetic/neurological factors than from environmental forces or intellectual effort. One source qualitatively linked political attitudes to whether an individual's right or left lobe of the prefrontal cortex of the brain is dominant in processing information.
Left-lobe dominant individuals tend to be logical and realistic and sequentially reason to conclusions. These individuals seem likely to make up most of the politically conservative population. Those who are right-brain dominant, intuitive thinkers and see the world through a more emotional lens appear to function as political liberals. This is the brain laterality factor in the political arena and has a reported basis relatable to distinctive differences in neurotransmitter system chemistry.
Other work has provided indirect evidence consistent with brain laterality as a likely factor shaping political opinion. Educators have found that:
The left side of the brain deals with things the way they are -- with reality. When left brain students are affected by the environment, they usually adjust to it. Not so with right brain students. They try to change the environment! Left brain people want to know the rules and follow them. In fact, if there are no rules for situations, they will probably make up rules to follow!
Just substitute politically-aware voters for students and remember that left-brain indicates probable conservative bias and right-brain as most likely liberal.
A more recent, and presumably more scientifically rigorous, study done jointly at UC San Diego and Harvard University found that "people with a specific variant of the DRD4 gene were more likely to be liberal as adults." Social factors were also involved but the genetic aspect of the bias is highly significant for at least two reasons. One is that a genetically-rooted bias is almost certainly immune to change by force of logical argument or "re-education". As a result, arguments intended to change another's political attitudes are wasted effort as most politically-engaged conservatives eventually learn to their dismay.
A second and more ominous reason is that politics-as-genetics raises the specter of eugenics. Specifically, political "purification" by means of genocidal eugenics becomes a potential threat. Routine in vitro identification of the "wrong" genetic make-up could become the basis for mandatory abortion under any regime with utopian ambitions. Since political "re-education" is impossible, only "genetically correct" fetuses might be allowed to remain viable. Such genetic engineering would end any need for gas chambers, mass starvations or messy killing fields.
An abortion industry of near assembly-line proportions is already a well-entrenched centerpiece of Leftist orthodoxy. Genetically correct abortions could easily become a natural extension of this industry.
