Authority and Consent

Nick Kristof was just on Morning Joe talking about his latest column , which flirts with reverse causation on the issue of our mores and our political dispositions. But there is this interesting bit:

Studies suggest that conservatives are more often distressed by actions that seem disrespectful of authority, such as slapping Dad. Liberals don’t worry as long as Dad has given permission.

Rather than claiming that people who are conservative are apt to view authority as that which one cannot contract out of (this is virtually a definition of authority), obviously we should note that people who take authority seriously are more apt to be conservative. Because those who take authority unseriously — as something that disappears when we contract out of it (meaning we can contract out of it) — might be liberals, but they might also be libertarians. Or — ugh — liberaltarians. And there remains an apparently shrinking but vital cadre of libertarians who take authority seriously.