Are conservatives out of touch with reality?

When I talk to conservatives I often get the same feeling I get when I talk to religious fundamentalists; namely, that their minds are made up and that they are impervious to the facts. For example, I see conservatives as living in a bubble of faith, in which they see America, if not as God’s chosen instrument on earth, then as a model of human perfection, whose policies, leaders and military are beyond criticism or reproach. And anyone who says differently is a traitorous nay-sayer. In fact, any form of critical thinking is denounced as “liberal,” and any form of national self-criticism as “unpatriotic.”

I see conservatives as wedded to a kind of economic fundamentalism that views government as superfluous and government regulation as antithetical to self-correcting mechanisms free markets—even though these ideas have been soundly discredited by the recent financial meltdown, George W’s expansion and privatization of government, and the breathtaking corruption of crony capitalism under Bush.

In addition, I see conservatives as drifting further and further out of touch with reality because they place ideological purity above intellectual honesty. For example, when you look at Republican addresses to the party faithful, they are emotive and uncritical exercises in “us” versus “them” thinking. Moreover, conservatives seem to employ a kind of Orwellian Newspeak, which consists of code words that now mean the opposite of what they originally meant, and thought-stopping buzz words and cliches.

And, furthermore, their discourse tends to be loaded with cognitive distortions; e.g., black and white, “for us or against us” type of thinking; slippery slope, ad hominem, and “parade of horribles” arguments. Conservatives seem constitutionally incapable of systemic analyses. For example, they tend to view social and economic problems (like unemployment and poverty), as the personal moral failings of individuals. In other words, bad things only happen to people who deserve it.

And they drift even further out of touch with reality because they don’t keep up on what is going on, because dismiss the mainstream media as “biased” against them.