Right-wingers should learn to use their intelligence

RIGHT-WINGERS ARE stupid and prejudiced. They eat their own young, worship pigs' heads and think The Da Vinci Codeis literature.

More biased claptrap from a notoriously liberal organ? Not quite. This information (well, the first part anyway) comes from the most impeccably conservative of publications. Last week, the Daily Mailtook time off from telling us that SpongeBob SquarePantsgives you cancer to ponder a controversial study by Canadian academics.

“Right-wingers tend to be less intelligent than left-wingers, and people with low childhood intelligence tend to grow up to have racist and anti-gay views,” the tabloid thundered.

The piece was written in an admirably dispassionate style. The report in Psychological Scienceclaimed that right-wing ideology offered a "pathway" for dim people to exercise prejudice against other races. Lack of cognitive sophistication led such dullards to seek simplistic notions of "order". Neither Peter Hitchens nor Simon Heffer was invited to contribute inflammatory rebuttals. There were no calls for a declaration of war against Canada.

The paper knew, of course, that its readers would provide all the necessary blood-riddled phlegm. "Might just be a fact in Canada which is chock full of lefties," an Australian reader remarked beneath the online version. Reaching for his caps lock, another commentator identified the researchers as "A BUNCH OF POLITICALLY CORRECT LEFT WING LOONS". Within a few hours, refugees from the Guardianhad arrived to offer the Daily Mailitself as supporting evidence for the scientists' claims.

The Mail's decision to highlight the report looks like accidental confirmation of the paper's cynical attitude to the "recent studies have shown" school of journalism. No other newspaper is quite so keen on scaring its readers with stories claiming that brown rice breeds tumours, video games inspire mass murder and tight trousers lower sperm count.

The editors – unlikely to call their own customers idiots – must have known that most readers would cast their eyes to heaven upon encountering yet another somewhat shaky scientific thesis.

After all, if Mailreaders believed all they were told they would eat nothing but rocks and would only venture out of doors when accompanied by armed Swat teams.

It is hard to take the bald thesis seriously. Consider prominent right-wingers such as Henry Kissinger, Enoch Powell or Margaret Thatcher. No sensible person would, for all their character flaws, identify any of these individuals as idiots.

But the right does have a case to answer. Aside from being morally repugnant, the holding of prejudiced views does indicate a certain resistance to rational thought. Opponents of the US civil rights movement struggled to find any balanced argument against the abolition of discriminatory legislation. Sure enough, though there was turmoil, the integration of southern luncheon counters did not bring anarchy to the republic.

It would be a class of bigotry to suggest that all right-wingers – or even most – hold unsavoury views towards racial minorities or gay people. Condoleezza Rice (no dummy) and Colin Powell (rarely seen with a bucket trapped on his head) would certainly baulk at any such suggestion.

It cannot, however, be denied that the left does have a happier record in these areas. Just note how vigorous the current candidates for the Republican nomination have been in appeasing their base vote when discussing gays who want to marry or join the army. Rightly or wrongly, the cause of anti-racism is seen as a left-wing concern.

It is also worth noting how suspicious right-wing parties are of seeming too educated or urbane. In the post-war period, the Republicans gave the presidency such intellectual titans as Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and George W Bush. To be fair to those men, none (no, not even George) could be classed as certifiable imbeciles. But the party could, when proposing somebody for the world’s top job, surely have found candidates with a little more intellectual firepower.

Let’s leave the issue of dim leaders to one side. Here’s the more important question: must conservative economic policies (not to my taste, but reasonable to hold) always occupy the same manifestos as reactionary social policies (oppressive if you’re a gay couple hoping to get married)? Is there an unbreakable connection between the desire for less government and the need to keep the neighbourhood white?

Of course not. British prime minister David Cameron actually included an argument for gay marriage in his last speech to the Conservative Party conference. Increasing numbers of politicians manage to balance relaxed attitudes to social matters with unreconstructed economic carnivorism.

If the Daily Mail's report is to be believed, the Canadians were not arguing that a desire for lower taxation and support for a free-market economy identify you as a moron. Their point is that racists and homophobes are more likely to be half-wits. The challenge for conservatives is to ensure that such views are no longer seen as immovable colours on the right-wing spectrum. Can that really be so difficult?