B.K. Marcus for the Foundation for Economic Education: What’s probably obvious to anyone familiar with homeschooling is that it’s good for the emotional health of kids who don’t easily fit in. What is less obvious is the damage that a culture of conformity does not just to the oddballs in that culture but also to the kids who conform with ease — and to the liberty of the larger society.
For more than half a century, studies have shown that the need for social acceptance not only changes our behavior but can even make us perceive the world differently — and incorrectly.
In the early 1950s, psychologist Solomon Asch conducted a series of experiments on the dangers of group influence. When presented with simple problems that 95 percent of individuals could answer correctly when free of group influence, 75 percent of Asch’s test subjects would get the answer wrong when it meant concurring with the group.
In 2005, neuroscientist Gregory Berns conducted an updated version of Asch’s experiments, complete with brain scans to determine if the wrong answers were a conscious acquiescence to social pressure or if, instead, test subjects believed that their group-influenced wrong answers were correct. Not only did the subjects report that they thought their wrong answers were right, but the brain scans also seemed to confirm it. They showed greater activity in the problem-solving regions of the brain than in those areas associated with conscious decision-making. And the nonconformists who went against the group and gave correct answers showed heightened activity in the part of the brain associated with fear and anxiety. …
Groupthink, in other words, is dangerous to a free society. And we don’t always realize when we’re not thinking for ourselves.
The myth about black Americans and LGBT rights
Zack Ford for ThinkProgress: For many years, there has been a myth that African-Americans are more likely to be homophobic and thus more likely to oppose advances for LGBT equality. Conservatives have even tried to leverage this supposed wedge to slow the progress of equality. A new survey, however, not only debunks the myth, but also suggests that the black community is one of the LGBT community’s strongest allies. …
[The Public Religion Research Institute’s] massive survey focused on three general questions: support for marriage equality, support for LGBT nondiscrimination protections and support for “religious refusal” exemptions — allowing businesses to refuse service to LGBT people based on their religious beliefs.
Support for marriage equality was a bit low among black Protestants, with only 38 percent supporting and 54 percent opposing. But on the other two measures, black Protestants overwhelmingly supported LGBT equality. They favored nondiscrimination laws 64-31, and on the question of religious refusals, black respondents actually opposed exemptions at higher rates than any other racial group, including white respondents.
Scalia’s importance to the Second Amendment
Joseph Greenlee for the Federalist Society: The Second Amendment has suddenly been placed in jeopardy with the unexpected death of Justice Antonin Scalia, a stalwart defender of the Constitution.
Until just recently, throughout this nation’s history the Second Amendment had been largely overlooked by the Supreme Court. In 2008, in a 5-4 decision, the court held that the Second Amendment confers an individual right to keep and bear arms. In 2010, in another 5-4 decision, the court held that the Second Amendment applies to the states. This means that the court was twice just one vote away – Scalia’s vote – from allowing government to ban private gun ownership. This is why the importance of Scalia’s successor to the future of the right to keep and bear arms cannot be overstated. …
It is plausible that an anti-gun, or even simply unmotivated, Supreme Court will sit idly by as lower courts continually chip away at the Second Amendment while improperly upholding challenged laws under this weak intermediate scrutiny. It is also plausible that an anti-gun Supreme Court will affirm one of these improper lower court decisions, approving a Second Amendment analysis that could ultimately limit the right to keep and bear arms as protection for nothing more than a handgun in the home.
Compiled by Joseph Lawler from reports published by the various think tanks.
