funny how i always suspected this

It's that lack of flexibility.

What one person might perceive as a lack of flexibility, another would say it shows resolve and stick-to-it-ness. It all depends on how you look at it. Bending to whatever way the wind blows does not always result in sound policy.

Pick a path and stick to it? Sure. Here's a path full of broken glass and thorny bushes. I don't recommend you go in there naked, but you can do whatever you like. You just keep on keeping on.

Of course any sane thinking person would avoid a dangerous path like that if possible, but sometimes the hard path cannot be avoided. This has nothing to do with ideology or political thinking or one's level of intelligence.

Since you want to make an analogy of this, let's consider a current dilemma that our leaders face. They know a financial meltdown is in the making and there are two ways it will go depending on what actions are taken. Both courses are unpleasant. One would be to tank the dollar and have a severe but short lived depression from which the US and the world will recover from in about 6 months. The second is a long drawn out depression which would be mild in comparison but would take at least 4-6 years to recover from. So lets bring this back to your question and add the alternative. You need to get to some destination/goal, the shortcut is the path that you mentioned would take less than an hour to pass through from which at the end the worst that would happen is getting lots of cuts and scratches over your body that would heal or the second path takes you through a hot dry desert, but it is the long way. You would have to suffer for a whole day and there is a real but slight chance the journey might kill you. If you survive it, however, you wont have any injuries. Whatever path you choose you must be committed to it.

Don't assume that the best course of action avoids any painful consequence. No belief system has a monopoly on choosing what is best. There are very few true black and white choices in life. Making blanket prejudicial statements about a person's way of thinking is wrong and frankly when people make such black and white statements it is insulting to my intelligence.

Sane thinking person? : Philippine–American War, Watergate, Iran-Contra, East Timor, Escuadrón de la Muerte, Iraq (Current and past), waterboarding one man 6 times a day for a month, and many others. There was a lot of "stick-to-it" attitude in those. There have also been a lot of what you would call "painful consequences" from those actions.

Those things happen because most of our leaders be they liberal or conservative are corrupt and serve those that line their wallets. War couldn't have been declared on any country without a majority of our leaders from both lines of thinking signing off on it. Follow the money.

Follow the money? The vast majority of donations made by the weapons manufacturing, oil, gas, and coal industries goes to conservative representatives. Those same representatives run around starting wars and/or turn a blind eye to shady, and downright inhumane, business dealings overseas all in the name of a "free market" ideal.

War was never declared. A war has not been declared by the US since WWII.

Just the same, the appropriations for the military must be voted on and so even without declaring war, silence on the matter is the same as agreeing with with actions taken. Liberals are just as much on the take as republicans are.

I bet just as easily as you found that, you could find another website saying the complete reverse with their own experts to back it up. The internet is an "iffy" place for statestics at best.

> with their own experts to back it up.
>> experts to back it up.
>>> back it up.
>>>> it

True, but this appears to be a digital version of a peer-review article; I'm not sure I agree with their methods as cited in the abstract, but it does suggest a strong correlation.

Are you conservative? o_<

now that's fun

so, Conservatives are STUPID.

which seems to the whole point of the article, however I found this as the last sentence in the abstract outline:
Conservatism scores have higher correlations with economic and political measures than estimated IQ scores.

I am conservative leaning toward moderate and I have an above normal IQ. What that site doesn't say is how much of a deviation there is between liberal and conservative minds. The difference could be statistically insignificant. Polling techniques can be flawed unintentionally or by design. A good example was the exit poll I was asked to complete last presidential election. It was designed so that no matter how I answered it to make a particular political side look better than the other and thusly I refused to answer. Without someone paying for the full report there no way to tell for sure. Based on my own experience, I question any study coming out of the college system as they are predominantly liberal run/biased.

Does this imply that intelligence is correlated to a "non-zero sum" conception of the universe?

I'm astonished no one has posted this quote yet:

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative."
-John Stuart Mill

To quote John Connor, "If we stay the course, we are dead! WE ARE ALL DEAD!"

Yeh, and anyone with a propper education can tell you how easy it is to do a skewed study.

An intellegent person will tell you that neither side of the coin is the answer, but a combination of the two.

http://www.pjtv.com/video/Klavan_on_culture/_Why_Are_Conservatives_So_Mean%3F/1949/;jsessionid=abcybdvbQ23-ofhyJ_Ggs

A short very interesting and enlightening video that I feel better explains conservative ideals that are often misunderstood or maligned.