Science: Liberals are Far More Intolerant than Conservatives and Moderates

The science comes in the form of a Pew poll on the use of social networks, which finds that despite their aggressive claims to be tolerant, loving, harmless lightworkers, liberals are the most intolerant bunch around.

Politics can be a sensitive subject and a number of SNS users have decided to block, unfriend, or hide someone because of their politics or posting activities. In all, 18% of social networking site users have taken one of those steps by doing at least one of the following:

• 10% of SNS users have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone on the site because that person posted too frequently about political subjects
• 9% of SNS users have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone on the site because they posted something about politics or issues that they disagreed with or found offensive
• 8% of SNS users have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone on the site because they argued about political issues on the site with the user or someone the user knows
• 5% of SNS users have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone on the site because they posted something about politics that the user worried would offend other friends
• 4% of SNS users have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone on the site because they disagreed with something the user posted about politics

Of course, that means that 82% of SNS users have not taken any steps to ignore or disconnect from someone whose views are different – or have not encountered any views that would prompt such a move.

Liberals are the most likely to have taken each of these steps to block, unfriend, or hide. In all, 28% of liberals have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone on SNS because of one of these reasons, compared with 16% of conservatives and 14% of moderates.

The finding is so shocking you could knock Ace over with a feather!

Liberal intolerance for the opinions of others has been on full display over the past week or two, in the Rush Limbaugh saga. Rush said a couple of words that leftists found usefully offensive, so they have responded not with calls to love their errant brother in humanity, but in a very energetic campaign to destroy his reputation, and his livelihood, and even toss him in jail.

All, over two words, but really, over an opinion that the Media Matters hive mind finds objectionable. The words were just fulcrum levers, and they have turned that conflict of opinion into a modern, secular version of the Inquisition. Liberals’ tendency to be intolerant leads very naturally into this kind of overkill, because they combine it with self-righteousness and a rigid secular piety. That secular piety is probably most visible in today’s college campus speech codes, which literally spell out what freedoms of speech students must give up in order to obtain a modern education. But it shows up in all sorts of interesting places. What does “GCB” really stand for again? Oh, right.

Today’s liberals would be aghast at the accusation that they’re a bunch of Torquemadas reborn, but spend a few minutes debating with them in any liberal web site’s comment room, or here until they inevitably start issuing personal threats or threadjack, and what they are will be clear soon enough.