The key to understanding modern reactionary Republicans:

[soupkitchen]

They don't want their intelligence taxed.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. It's not just the repukes.

I know more than enough Dems, at the local, county and state level, who are exactly the same way. In their own manner they are as callous, clueless and fucking stupid as any mouth-breathing, frothing homunculus of the right.

[patrice]

3. Agreed. : - ((((((((((((((( . . . See my point below.

It just so HAPPENS at this point in our socio-cultural history Republicans have accrued a large enough of a group of persons with this personality type AND have hooked them up to what passes for power in this country.

[patrice]

2. That's it in a nutshell. There are personality types that AVOID certain types of mental challenge.

Maybe someday the human genome will lead us to the factors that result in high probabilities of certain types of behaviors that result in experiences such as the Holocaust and American Exceptionalism and Bush's War.

Personally, I think we will be able to lable those factors, if we ever identify them, as a group as

FEAR OF FREEDOM