The Corner’s John Derbyshire on the "Whiny Babies Grow Up To Be Conservatives" Study:

From the report on that study: "Remember the whiny, insecure kid in nursery school, the one who always thought everyone was out to get him, and was always running to the teacher with complaints? Chances are he grew up to be a conservative. At least, he did if he was one of 95 kids from the Berkeley area that social scientists have been tracking for the last 20 years. The confident, resilient, self-reliant kids mostly grew up to be liberals."

Doesn’t EVERYBODY from the Berkeley area grow up to be liberal? I must say, though, they have me dead to rights. I was indeed whiny and insecure in the nursery-school years. But then, I grew up to be a liberal, and only changed teams after age 30. So this study proves… what most of these bogus "studies" prove: diddly-squat.

Nobody ever said it was a direct progression from whiny insecure baby to whiny blowhard conservative.

But thanks for proving the point.

UPDATE:  The Corner’s Jonah Goldberg adds his two cents:

Here’s a question: since the single best predictor of political orientation is the orientation of your parents, how many parents of this sample were liberal? My guess is — as Derb notes — is most of them. Perhaps the conservative kids have conservative parents and the whining is a red herring?

Who SAYS the single best predictor of a child’s political orientation is the orientation of your parents?  If anything, children grow up to have the OPPOSITE political orientation of their parents (call it the "Alex Keaton Effect", if you will).  Although in truth, I don’t think one can generalilze one way or the other; hence, it is not the "single best predictor".