I promised that I would write today about Asperger's and religion, but I find that I have more to say on Asperger's and politics. So I'll save my promised post for tomorrow. My apologies to those who were sitting on the edges of their seats waiting for my stirring commentary. But you'll like this post too, I promise.
I guess that my thesis in yesterday's post was this: Republicans are committed to helping autistic people as much as Democrats are. Consequently, unlike a lot of Aspies I have known, I see no contradiction between being a right-wing Republican and having Asperger's.
My topic today is the political preferences of Aspies themselves. Believe it or not, there have been a number of prominent conservatives and Republicans with Asperger characteristics. According to British psychiatrist Michael Fitzgerald, one of them was Sir Keith Joseph, a mentor to Margaret Thatcher who has been dubbed the father of Thatcherism. The July 12, 2006 issue of The Independent states, "Sir Keith Joseph, the father of Thatcherism whose free market principles are still followed to some extent by Tony Blair, had a form of autism that is reflected in his political philosophy, a psychiatrist believes" (see Political Autism?).
Another one may have been Richard Nixon, who was intellectually brilliant and yet displayed a lot of social awkwardness. Some have argued that Thomas Jefferson was an Aspie. Despite his liberal religious ideas, I put him on the right because he rejected a strong central government in favor of reserving power to the states. And then there is Vernon Smith. He is a Nobel economist, a researcher at the conservative George Mason University (which is where conservative economist Walter Williams teaches, when he's not subbing for Rush), and a scholar for the libertarian Cato Institute. And he has talked openly about his Asperger's.
Why do I point this out? There are a number of reasons. First of all, I like to collect seemingly trivial information, in this case, the names of prominent conservative Aspies. That's a symptom of AS. Some Aspies memorize baseball statistics.
Second, there is a strong part of me that rebels against liberal Aspies, the same way that I've always resisted liberal academia. There are many Aspies who act as if having AS automatically entails being a liberal, and I want to scream that such is not the case. For example, Tony Atwood is an expert on Asperger's, and he characterizes Aspies as people who are "usually renowned for being direct, speaking their mind and being honest and determined and having a strong sense of social justice" (emphasis mine).
Well, people will tell you that I am blunt to a fault, honest, and determined. The readers of James' Thoughts and Musings have probably gotten that impression. But I don't agree with "social justice" as the left defines it. I think that much of what carries the label of "social justice" today is actually socialistic injustice. And I am not alone in my view. There are even Aspies who would agree with me.
Aspies can actually have a variety of political persuasions. One blog post, AskAnAspie: Right-wing Aspies?, tries to argue this point, but it doesn't go far enough. It says that Aspies can be libertarians, liberals, atheists, or churchgoers, and it tries to connect those ideologies to Asperger's. Here are a few quotes:
"1) There are a lot of Aspie libertarians. (I'm deliberately using a small 'L' there, plenty of them have issues with the actual Libertarian party.) It's basically a grown-up version of the Aspie childhood rejection of 'Because I said so' arguments by adults.
"2) There are a lot of Aspie hard-core liberals. I put myself in this category. Aspies tend to have a very strong sense of fairness, and if they don't take the libertarian path of constantly defending their own rights, they often wind up working towards defending the rights of other people. And they tend to find concepts like racism and homophobia to be illogical, which they are."
My problem with the list is that it excludes social and cultural conservatives. Maybe it was trying to include them under the label of "churchgoers," but it could have been more explicit if that were its intent. As I think back, I did enter conservatism through a libertarian door. Maybe part of that had to do with the "Because I said so" arguments of adults, at least on a subconscious level. But a lot of my libertarianism came from watching TV and reading. On TV, there were bad kings who showed their badness by raising taxes. This happened on the Smurfs a few times. It was definitely a major theme in Disney's Robin Hood. So I came to see taxes as a bad thing. I also read the speeches of Ronald Reagan and the thoughts of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, and I concluded that more government means not only higher taxes, but less freedom as well. I initially accepted the other parts of conservatism (e.g., social and cultural conservatism, the military-industrial complex, the national security state) because they were part of the conservative package, but I came to believe in them as well.
But, back to my argument. I think that an Aspie can also be a social and cultural conservative. This post implies that Aspies are inclined to throw out tradition because it doesn't make sense, but that isn't necessarily the case. Sure, Aspies like logic and reason, but they also want order. I don't consider myself homophobic, but I maintain that redefining marriage to mean anything and everything will throw society into greater chaos. I believe that strong families and traditional moral values keep society on track, and they are also beneficial. The sexual revolution is not only immoral--it is destructive. People today think that they can have sex with whomever they want, without consequences to themselves and society as a whole. Not only do they divorce sex from love, but they also have kids whom they have no intention of raising (assuming that they haven't killed them in the womb first). So I wouldn't be surprised if there are Aspies who prefer order to this chaos!
I know that this post was rather scattered, but hopefully you got something out of it. Have a nice day!