A couple weeks ago I wrote about a study that "showed" that liberals read more than conservatives. Now, another study has come out that says that liberals are also smarter than conservatives. William Saltean of Slate actually dissected the study's methodology, and I would recommend his piece for a thorough look at it.

My interest is of a different nature, as these studies seem to come out fairly regularly: why do "liberal" researchers feel compelled to continue doing these studies? Also, what is meant by "liberal?"

As noted before, today's liberals hijacked that once noble term and claimed it as their own. What we consider liberals are in fact progressives, itself a very nice term for a very nasty view of government. Conservative is actually a put-down, and in most parts of the world "liberals" are usually the ones for open markets and more freedom from government. The root of conservatism is to conserve; to conserve means aversion to risk and progress. Economic policies deemed fiscally conservative are in fact quite lieral, because they reward innovation and risk and accept the concept of failure. Liberal policy in America more and more skews towards guaranteed outcomes. As these names are now accepted in America, we have to use them, but it's still obnoxious.

Here is my question: if American liberals are so much smarter than American conservatives, then why do American liberals continue to embrace policies that have not only failed in America, they have failed globally throughout history, often with catastrophic results? Furthermore, why do Americans continue to vote for conservative policies regardless of who they put into office?

American conservatives lose elections only when they enact liberal policies. Democrats took back Congress because, in their minds, their policies are better. The actual reason they took back Congress is because conservatives - to say nothing of everyone else - were disgusted with the behavior of Republicans, specificially their inability to control non-defense spending. Although President Bush is domestically incompetent, he still has an approval rating near 40 percent, and we've had him for six years. The Donkey-controlled Congress hasn't even been in office for a year, and their approval rating is 18 percent.

If we really wanted to see who was smarter - impossible and pointless, I would note - I would say we take the leaders of all segments of society considered conservative and liberal special interests and administer them IQ tests. Conservatives get the heads of industry ("big business"), right-leaning religious movements, deans of business colleges and economics department heads. Liberals get famous trial lawyers, the heads of unions, famed educators, left-leaning religious leaders, deans of colleges in liberal arts and education. Also - and this is only fair - to the liberal side we add various actors, actresses, movie execs, television producers and at least three members of the New York Times, and why not, I'll spot you both Paul Krugman and Thomas Friedman, one an economist and the other a globalist. And, just for fun, we could get some all-star politicians. Since we're told that every single liberal to ever run for President is a genius, liberals get Bill Clinton - genuinely intelligent - and Al Gore - total moron, but sold as a genius. Conservatives always ballyhoo the intelligence of Newt Gingrich, so we get him, and since we are told that George W. Bush is dumber than a pile of dirt, we get him too, even though he's less conservative than Bill Clinton was when he was office, and Bill Clinton is no conservative. And finally, there are military figures. Occasionally we find a liberal military man - liberals get Wesley Clark. For the conservative, just pick a member of the Join Chiefs.

Now, what have we learned? Probably not much, which is sort of the point. Two of the smartest men I know are flaming American liberals, so I'm not the 'all liberals are stupid' type. I can also say that two of the smartest people I know - including a woman, thanks - are extremely conservative. I can also say that I'm so far to the right I veer back to the left at times, and I'm not exactly stupid. Furthermore, I can tell you that a close friend of mine in Stillwater is two IQ points away from being a Promethean, and he is conservative (by IQ, Prometheans are in the 99.9997th percentile, meaning about 10,000 Americans are eligible to join).

The larger question is why are these studies announced with whose smarter, whose better headlines? You don't see conservatives doing this. As Saltean pointed out at the close of his piece about the studies, they say nothing of how conservatives think, but they certainly reveal the mindset of liberal researchers.

The thing is, I don't need to be the smartest guy in the room. Liberal or conservative, I love it when I meet someone who I think is flat-out smarter than me. What is grating is smugness, that idea that those who think or believe one way are so much smarter than everyone else, or worse yet, so much better than everyone else. People with liberal politics are bad at this, as are atheists, as are the extremely pious.

[Smugness is defined in the down-the-nose look a nonbeliever will give a believer; those who have not read the slew of atheist books of late would find that Dawkins, Harris, Dennett and Hitchens bend over backwards to ensure the reader they're not saying they're smarter than them and that they welcome debate; all these thinking men, publicly, do welcome debate and have noted their warmest receptions have come from sincerely religious people. Harris's Letter to a Christian Nation is the most sincere in this atheistic self-awareness to come off as a smug asshole. This smugness I speak of is best-embodied by Ted Turner mocking Catholics who came to work on Ash Wednesday with crosses marked on their foreheads, and referring to Christians as "losers."]

Ultimately, what impresses me is not how smart a person is, but what they've done with the intelligence they've inherited. My self-esteem is not tied up in my intelligence, it's tied up in my work ethic. The phrase "educated idiot" is telling, because most people aren't so stupid as to not recognize when they're being talked down to by someone who obviously thinks they're smarter than they really are.

"Studies" such as these are the worst kind of research masquerading as gutter politics. I find it self-evident that the more a government is involved in the exchange of ideas, money, goods and services, the worse the society is. That I believe this may have something to do with my intelligence, but it has much more to do with having even a passive understanding in the mayhem Big Government Ideas have wrought on innocent people for millennia.