For the past year or so, I have been investigating the causes of political ideology, and why it is that the left seems to have more will to power than the right. I think we can chalk yet another point to the idea that most ideological differences come from personality differences that lead to differences in worldview. One such difference is how groups react to problems in the world.
Right wingers often mock the left for so easily going over to what ever narrative is popular in "the current year." And while much of the advocacy is indeed worthy of criticism (like changing your Facebook profile picture to support whatever is on TV, as if that makes a difference) they mock this at their own peril. Because ultimately this kind of behavior comes from an ever present feeling among many liberals that they must DO SOMETHING! And while this sometimes results in things that make you roll your eyes, it can also result in politically effective activities like pressuring major institutions when they step out of line, or ruining a persons life when they express an idea ~40% of the population believes in. We can see quite clearly, in the United States at least, how much more impact leftists have on almost all important institutions. They have even captured the upper echelons of the military at this point.
Whereas the conservative when confronted with the negatively of the world turns inward, or attempts to address things locally. While this is personally beneficial--conservatives have far lower incident of mental illness than liberals do, have higher self reported levels of happiness, have more children, etc--this is a severe detriment in the marketplace of ideas. It's all well and good to be a positive role model and live a good life but when the overwhelming majority of the people who feel a constantly oppressive need to DO SOMETHING (and therefore have far more influence over major institutions than those who don't really care) disagree with you...good luck preserving your values. That conservatives have as much success as they do in the United States owes mostly to the truly insane ideas coming from the top 5% most progressive members of the left successfully used as rallying points such as cutting off mentally ill fifteen year olds breasts, forcing two year olds to wear masks for eight hours a day, or decrying all white people as evil. Conservatives own ideas about how the culture ought to be are scattered and were mostly defeated decades ago, and its difficult to imagine a less popular economic platform than cutting entitlements in such a fantastically wealthy (and unequal) country.
