On Wingnuts

From The Monkey Cage comes this report of academic research, which finds the wingnuts on both sides tend, as opposed to more centrist people, to be:

• less trusting of institutions
• more paranoid and conspiratorial minded
  
• less tolerant of ambiguity
• more Manichaean (in religious terms--seeing life as a struggle between Satan and God)

And finally: "The far left and the far right also resemble each other in the way they pursue their political goals. Both are disposed to censor their opponents, to deal harshly with enemies, to sacrifice the well-being even of the innocent in order to serve a ‘higher purpose’, and to use cruel tactics if necessary to ‘persuade’ society of the wisdom of their objectives. Both tend to support (or oppose) civil liberties in a highly partisan and self-serving fashion, supporting freedom for themselves and for the groups and causes they favor while seeking to withhold it from enemies and advocates of causes they dislike."