Many years ago, as a doctoral candidate in Sociology, I learned that it is possible to design a study to prove just about anything about people. Go for a particular sample, ask carefully-designed questions, calculate some data to highlight what you're looking for, and voila! You have "proven" what you set out to find.A disturbing trend of late has been the number of studies given publicity in the American (and world) press setting out to prove that conservatives are mentally flawed. One genre has it that "authoritarian personalities" (based on the work of Theodor Adorno) are drawn to conservatism, the GOP, or George Bush. Another genre has it that conservatives are actually crazy.(Of course, both sides play this game. Talk show host Michael Savage authored a best-seller titled Liberalism is a Mental Disorder. Charles Krauthammer, a Harvard-trained psychiatrist, posited that Bush Derangement Syndrome affected large numbers of people, causing irrational hatred and...(Read Full Post)