Republicans: better informed, more intellectually consistent, more open-minded, more empathetic and more receptive to criticism than Democrats

From Gay Patriot:

Maybe it’s that because at least starting in college, we have to confront the biases of our professors, listening to, engaging with and responding to their arguments that we develop the appreciation of opposing arguments.

Yesterday, Bruce alerted me to a poll (which I had also noticed) showing how (compared to Democrats) broad-minded Republicans are:

Yet another new survey shows that Republican supporters know more about politics and political history than Democrats.

On eight of 13 questions about politics, Republicans outscored Democrats by an average of 18 percentage points, according to a new Pew survey titled “Partisan Differences in Knowledge.”

The Pew survey adds to a wave of surveys and studies showing that GOP-sympathizers are better informed, more intellectually consistent, more open-minded, more empathetic and more receptive to criticism than their fellow Americans who support the Democratic Party.

. . . .

Pew’s new study echoes the results of many other reports and studies that show GOP supporters are better educated, more empathetic and more open to criticism than Democrats.

Emphasis added.  In addition, more than twice as many liberals as conservatives “deleted friends from their social networks after disagreeing with their politics.”

And yet the perception persists that conservatives are intolerant troglodytes, lacking the understanding of their arguments of their ideological adversaries or unwilling to associate with those holding views different from their own.  Wonder why that is.

Continuing the line of thought via The Daily Caller:

….Conservatives recognize how liberals think because they share those intuitions, but liberals don’t understand how conservatives think because they don’t recognize conservatives’ additional intuitions about loyalty, authority and sanctity, Haidt argues.

[….]

For example, researchers have learned that Internet sites offering financial information, sports scores, online-auctions attract far more interest from Republicans than from Democrats, according to a 2010 study by National Media Research, Planning and Placement, based in Alexandria, Va.

In contrast, Democrats outnumber Republicans at online dating sites, job-searches sites, online TV and online video-game sites, said the firm.

This commercial data-analysis is often used by companies to identify and attract customers. For example, the firm also conducted a study of chain restaurants’ customers, which concluded that the customers of Popeyes, White Castle, Dunkin’ Donuts and Chuck E Cheese were mostly Democratic, while the customers at Cracker Barrel, Chik-fil-A, Panera and Bob Evans were mostly Republican.

The same restaurants study showed that the customers at Cracker Barrel, Panera and Bob Evans were the most likely to vote in elections.

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Number of Michigan IP Addresses on Jihadi Websites is `Staggering` ~ FBI

Via Creeping Sharia:

via Counter-terrorism official: No Hizballah training camps in metro Detroit | Detroit Free Press | freep.com.

Authorities are concerned how Hizballah might react in case Israel or other countries get into a conflict with Iran, which sponsors the terrorist group, said FBI Assistant Special Agent Todd Mayberry, who oversees counter-terrorism in Michigan.

….

One challenge is being able to keep track of so many potentially radical websites and differentiating what might be a legitimate threat from harmless talk. Estimating there are thousands websites that could have extremist activity, he said:

“If I gave you the number of Michigan IP addresses that are on some of these sites, it’s staggering,” Mayberry said.

Asked by a member of the Jewish Community Council of Metro Detroit about possible Hizballah support in Muslim-American communities, Mayberry said: “There are (some) people who see Hizballah as freedom fighters and as charitable.”

But at the FBI and other federal agencies, he said: “Our position remains the same… they’re terrorists.”

“If you give them (Hizballah) money, and I can show that you’re giving them money, you’re going to jail,” Mayberry said.

He added: “If you preach in your mosque or in…your home, where you espouse Hizballah rhetoric and you say how great they are and everything, you’re going to get a case opened…They are terrorists.”

“Everybody has their opinion…It’s a free country up and to a point. But they are a terrorist group…and until that changes,” the FBI will go after “anyone who supports them whether financially or with material support.”

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4 Myths about Black People That Obama Believes Deconstructed via Larry Elder

From video description:

In 2008 Obama mentioned the hardships that face the black community. The only problem is is that these bumper sticker mantras from the Left have no connection to reality/fact. Larry Elder plays a small portion from Obama’s recent appearance at the “teacher of the year award” and contrasts it with statements he [Obama] made in 2008. (Posted by: Religio-Political Talk)

For more clear thinking like this from Larry Elder… I invite you to visit: http://www.larryelder.com/

Gregory Koukl Interviews Stephen Meyer on a Myriad of Topics

Topics: censorship, theistic evolution, origins of life, junk DNA, and Francis Collins.

Stephen Meyer and Gregory Koukl talk specifically about three hurdles the theistic evolutionist must jum in order to reject Intelligent Design in the origin of life. The conversation ends with them talking about Francis Collins “evolution” to reject “Junk DNA” and the impact this has on his own theistic evolutionary stance. (Posted by Religio-Political Talk)

For more clear thinking like this from Greg Koukl see Stand to Reason: http://www.str.org/

Teachers Advocating Against 2nd Amendment ~ The NRA Was Started to Fight the KKK (Forgotten History)

Via Breitbart.com:

From Breitbart:

Jones College Prep, a Chicago Public Schools “selective enrollment” school, held “Social Justice Week” in March, a collection of events geared towards turning students into activists. See the schedule of events here.

According to a flyer on the school’s website:

Social Justice Week was created to promote community advancement through dialogue and community service based activism. Moreover, we hope to unify the voice of various JCP and community organizations in which to facilitate collaboration for the betterment of the community at large and promote a unified human rights advancement initiative.”….

[….]

On Wednesday of Social Justice Week, Black Star Project, a Chicago-based community organizing group, was brought into the school after school hours to teach students about “non-violent” protesting. Led by Phillip Jackson, former “Chief of Education” under former Mayor Richard Daley, the optional discussion was focused on students fighting back against gun crime.

Black Star Project, according to its website, is funded by Open Society Foundations (i.e. George Soros), Best Buy, ING and Toyota Motor Sales, among others.

But Jackson apparently had no interest in allowing students to come to their own conclusions on gun ownership.

Jackson’s co-presenter, Camille Williams of the Peace in the Hood movement, made several inflammatory statements about gun ownership and the National Rifle Association. She claimed the NRA is indifferent to gun violence….

[….]

At this particular session of Social Justice Week, no opposing views were offered.  It appeared only certain outcomes were being sought.  Jackson strongly encouraged the students to develop forms of non-violent protest. “I’m not telling you to do it, but if you were going to,” he said, leading the proverbial horse to the water.

“I’m just saying,” he said on several occasions.

Jackson then offered the idea of creating a symbolic graveyard on the school lawn of headstones featuring the names of Chicago residents killed with guns….

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Ann Coulter for Human Events:

….Apparently this has occurred to no one because our excellent public education system ensures that no American under the age of 60 has the slightest notion of this country’s history.

Gun control laws were originally promulgated by Democrats to keep guns out of the hands of blacks. This allowed the Democratic policy of slavery to proceed with fewer bumps and, after the Civil War, allowed the Democratic Ku Klux Klan to menace and murder black Americans with little resistance.

(Contrary to what illiterates believe, the KKK was an outgrowth of the Democratic Party, with overlapping membership rolls. The Klan was to the Democrats what the American Civil Liberties Union is today: Not every Democrat is an ACLU’er, but every ACLU’er is a Democrat. Same with the Klan.)

In 1640, the very first gun control law ever enacted on these shores was passed in Virginia. It provided that blacks — even freemen — could not own guns.

Chief Justice Roger Taney’s infamous opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford circularly argued that blacks could not be citizens because if they were citizens, they would have the right to own guns: “[I]t would give them the full liberty,” he said, “to keep and carry arms wherever they went.”

With logic like that, Republicans eventually had to fight a Civil War to get the Democrats to give up slavery.

Alas, they were Democrats, so they cheated.

After the war, Democratic legislatures enacted “Black Codes,” denying black Americans the right of citizenship — such as the rather crucial one of bearing arms — while other Democrats (sometimes the same Democrats) founded the Ku Klux Klan.

For more than a hundred years, Republicans have aggressively supported arming blacks, so they could defend themselves against Democrats.

The original draft of the Anti-Klan Act of 1871 — passed at the urging of Republican president Ulysses S. Grant — made it a federal felony to “deprive any citizen of the United States of any arms or weapons he may have in his house or possession for the defense of his person, family, or property.” This section was deleted from the final bill only because it was deemed both beyond Congress’ authority and superfluous, inasmuch as the rights of citizenship included the right to bear arms.

Under authority of the Anti-Klan Act, President Grant deployed the U.S. military to destroy the Klan, and pretty nearly completed the job.

But the Klan had a few resurgences in the early and mid-20th century. Curiously, wherever the Klan became a political force, gun control laws would suddenly appear on the books.

This will give you an idea of how gun control laws worked. Following the firebombing of his house in 1956, Dr. Martin Luther King, who was, among other things, a Christian minister, applied for a gun permit, but the Alabama authorities found him unsuitable. A decade later, he won a Nobel Peace Prize.

How’s that “may issue” gun permit policy working for you?

The NRA opposed these discretionary gun permit laws and proceeded to grant NRA charters to blacks who sought to defend themselves from Klan violence — including the great civil rights hero Robert F. Williams.

A World War II Marine veteran, Williams returned home to Monroe, N.C., to find the Klan riding high — beating, lynching and murdering blacks at will. No one would join the NAACP for fear of Klan reprisals. Williams became president of the local chapter and increased membership from six to more than 200.

But it was not until he got a charter from the NRA in 1957 and founded the Black Armed Guard that the Klan got their comeuppance in Monroe.

Williams’ repeated thwarting of violent Klan attacks is described in his stirring book, “Negroes With Guns.” In one crucial battle, the Klan sieged the home of a black physician and his wife, but Williams and his Black Armed Guard stood sentry and repelled the larger, cowardly force. And that was the end of it.

As the Klan found out, it’s not so much fun when the rabbit’s got the gun.

The NRA’s proud history of fighting the Klan has been airbrushed out of the record by those who were complicit with the KKK, Jim Crow and racial terror, to wit: the Democrats.

In the preface to “Negroes With Guns,” Williams writes: “I have asserted the right of Negroes to meet the violence of the Ku Klux Klan by armed self-defense — and have acted on it. It has always been an accepted right of Americans, as the history of our Western states proves, that where the law is unable, or unwilling, to enforce order, the citizens can, and must act in self-defense against lawless violence.”

Contrary to MSNBC hosts, I do not believe the shooting in Florida is evidence of a resurgent KKK. But wherever the truth lies in that case, gun control is always a scheme of the powerful to deprive the powerless of the right to self-defense.

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Party of Tolerance/Religious Left/Union Thugs Use Violent Biblical Language Referring to Scott Walker and Conservative Ideals

From video description:

Rev. T. Ray McJunkins of Springfield’s Union Baptist Church and USAction’s William McNary engaged in violent rhetoric to rile up a union crowd of thousands just yards away from an Illinois appearance by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. McNary challenged Walker to “knuckle up” while McJunkins said they’re going to “cut off his head,” likening Walker to Goliath.

`If I Wanted America to Fail` (UPDATED: Paul Harvey 1965, `If I Were the Devil`)

Via HotAir:

A provocative new video from the folks over at Americans for Limited Government promoting a new project focused on economic liberty and free market policies. It’s very well done, if perhaps a little on the long side. Watch:

All American Blogger points out that the original inspiration for this video above actually comes from Paul Harvey — the “Rest of the Story” guy from 1965. Here is is: