CONSERVATIVE MINDS
Jonah Goldberg does a number on the Ann Coulters of the left. I don't mean entertainers like Michael Moore. I mean supposed intellectuals who can't make the most elementary political distinctions.
In this case, the faux intellectuals are big-shot academics who lumped together everyone ever called a "conservative" (e.g., Hitler, Reagan) and then tried to find patterns in the "conservative" personality. Political bias (and ignorance) aside, the basic statistical methodology is ridiculous, since it assumes that "conservative" is an objective and consistent category like "male" or "45-year-old."
As someone who believes social science can and does discover new truths about how people live and think, I find this sort of idiotic research particularly appalling. It teaches the general public that social science is bullshit. (It also demonstrates that university press offices can be really stupid about what they choose to publicize.)
And, of course, I've written a whole book arguing, with copious examples, that--far from defining "liberal" and "conservative" minds--attitudes toward social and economic change cut across the traditional left-right spectrum.