Conservatism Quotes

“When members of different groups meet and get to know one another as individuals, they often come to understand each other’s perspectives and feel greater empathy.”
― Christopher Armitage, Conservatism: America's Personality Disorder

“A metaanalysis covering 515 studies across 38 countries (over 250,000 participants) found that greater intergroup contact consistently correlates with lower prejudice”
― Christopher Armitage, Conservatism: America's Personality Disorder

“It’s a sobering dynamic: a media ecosystem that drapes itself in the mantle of righteousness, defending God, country, and freedom, yet, in practice, often preaches a gospel of resentment over mercy. The data and studies above paint a clear picture of how algorithmic amplification, parasocial loyalties, fallacious arguments, and distorted moral framing all interlock to produce an audience high on indignation and low on compassion.”
― Christopher Armitage, Conservatism: America's Personality Disorder

“siege. It’s not that conservative viewers are inherently cruel people; rather, their information diet has for years saturated them in messages that immigrants are criminals, invaders, or cultural pollutants. Under such messaging, empathy isn’t just withheld; it’s actively replaced with suspicion or outright antipathy.”
― Christopher Armitage, Conservatism: America's Personality Disorder

“Moral psychologists note that while liberals build their moral worldview largely on Care (empathy for the vulnerable) and fairness, conservatives employ a broader palette, notably including loyalty to in-group, respect for authority, and sanctity/purity alongside care.”
― Christopher Armitage, Conservatism: America's Personality Disorder

“Viewers can think, we uphold morality (by loving God/country/etc.), therefore our stances (even the punitive or bigoted ones) are morally justified. This self-sanctification enables a form of group hypocrisy blindness: cruelty doesn’t count as cruelty when we do it, because we’ve already established that we’re the “good guys.”
― Christopher Armitage, Conservatism: America's Personality Disorder

“Moral licensing is a cognitive quirk whereby doing something “good” gives a person psychological permission to do something bad afterward without feeling immoral.”
― Christopher Armitage, Conservatism: America's Personality Disorder

“maneuver, responding to any criticism or atrocity with “but what about [X]?”, pointing to someone else’s wrong to excuse or downplay the issue at hand.”
― Christopher Armitage, Conservatism: America's Personality Disorder

“Conservative talk shows and podcasts actively cultivate this intimacy. Listeners often describe hosts like Tucker Carlson or Ben Shapiro as if they’re dependable friends “telling it like it is,” a dynamic seen clearly in podcast fandom.”
― Christopher Armitage, Conservatism: America's Personality Disorder

“Another ingredient in this ecosystem is the powerful parasocial relationship that audiences form with rightwing media figures. Parasocial bonds are one-sided”
― Christopher Armitage, Conservatism: America's Personality Disorder

“This grotesque accusation, suggesting that teachers mentioning two moms in a storybook, or doctors providing transgender teens with hormones, are tantamount to pedophiles prepping victims, has become mainstream in conservative discourse.”
― Christopher Armitage, Conservatism: America's Personality Disorder

“The United States, driven by its conservative factions, now has the highest maternal mortality rate in the industrialized world, worse even than some developing countries, a grim distinction directly linked to empathy-absent policymaking.”
― Christopher Armitage, Conservatism: America's Personality Disorder

“The empathy deficit treats the fetus as the only life that matters, rendering the woman an invisible afterthought, or even an adversary to punish.”
― Christopher Armitage, Conservatism: America's Personality Disorder

“Overall, Texas’s maternal mortality rate rose 33% from 2019 to 2023, even as the national rate fell by 7.5%. Such numbers should be flashing red lights for anyone with a conscience.”
― Christopher Armitage, Conservatism: America's Personality Disorder

“Black women face a staggering 3.3 times higher pregnancy-related death rate than white women, reflecting how racism and empathy deficits intersect.”
― Christopher Armitage, Conservatism: America's Personality Disorder

“As we’ll see, such policies often double down on punishment over compassion, treating affected individuals as symbols of sin or disorder rather than as human beings in pain.”
― Christopher Armitage, Conservatism: America's Personality Disorder

“Dead Planet Economics.” It’s an ideology that prioritizes short-term economic notions (like cutting regulatory costs or maximizing fossil fuel extraction) at the expense of long-term planetary livability.”
― Christopher Armitage, Conservatism: America's Personality Disorder

“In effect, “small government” votes have translated to “pro-pollution” outcomes. Let’s connect the dots with a few facts:”
― Christopher Armitage, Conservatism: America's Personality Disorder

“In other words, hearts often open faster than minds: appealing to emotions and moral imagination works better than cold statistics when it comes to changing views on immigrants.”
― Christopher Armitage, Conservatism: America's Personality Disorder

“others. They are good people in their own narrative, but they are navigating the moral world with a compass that skews away from universal compassion.”
― Christopher Armitage, Conservatism: America's Personality Disorder

“This book’s thesis, that conservatism is an empathy disorder, is not an insult but a diagnosis.”
― Christopher Armitage, Conservatism: America's Personality Disorder

“In light of these findings, it becomes understandable, though still tragic, how decent individuals can support or tolerate inhumane policies. It’s not necessarily because they are secretly evil or malicious; it can be because their moral-emotional tuning doesn’t register certain harms as morally urgent. They have, in essence, an empathy deficit disorder that has been socially and culturally reinforced.”
― Christopher Armitage, Conservatism: America's Personality Disorder

“Conservatism, as a sociopolitical syndrome, entails an empathy impairment, a restricted ability or willingness to care for others universally.”
― Christopher Armitage, Conservatism: America's Personality Disorder

“then one will feel less guilt or sorrow about those people’s troubles. Dehumanization or devaluing of out-groups is a mechanism through which empathy is shut”
― Christopher Armitage, Conservatism: America's Personality Disorder

“Someone with high SDO believes in hierarchies and dominance, thinking it’s natural or good that some groups are on top (the “dominant” group) and others are at the bottom, and they often support policies or attitudes that maintain these group inequalities.”
― Christopher Armitage, Conservatism: America's Personality Disorder

“This is a remarkable confirmation that, in real measurable terms, individuals who lean conservative are statistically more likely to admit to a lack of compassion for others.”
― Christopher Armitage, Conservatism: America's Personality Disorder

“empathy. If one views empathic concern for others’ suffering as a cornerstone of morality (as we do), then a moral outlook that downplays that concern can be described as an “empathy disorder.”
― Christopher Armitage, Conservatism: America's Personality Disorder

“conservatives are not utterly devoid of empathy, but their intuition is more likely to also ask, “Is this person one of us or an outsider? Are they behaving appropriately or flouting authority? Is the situation just or fair according to rules?”
― Christopher Armitage, Conservatism: America's Personality Disorder

“When confronted with a scenario of someone being harmed, a liberal’s moral intuition screams “This is wrong, someone is suffering!”
― Christopher Armitage, Conservatism: America's Personality Disorder

“Conservative participants in these studies did not score low on Care/Harm in an absolute sense, they do recognize compassion as a moral good, but they did not elevate it above the other concerns. Liberals, by contrast, tend to rank Care and Fairness as far more important morally than Loyalty, Authority, or Purity.”
― Christopher Armitage, Conservatism: America's Personality Disorder