Why do people adopt different political ideologies? How can seemingly equal intellects, presented with the same facts and circumstances disagree so vehemently over how society should be structured? What psychological undercurrents guide people to adopt Conservative or Liberal political beliefs, and where did they come from?

The answer lies in a well known concept in biology, termed r/K Selection Theory. r/K Theory examines how all populations tend to adopt one of two psychologies as a means of adapting their behavior to the presence or absence of environmental resources. The two strategies, termed r and K, each correlate perfectly with the psychologies underlying Liberalism and Conservatism.

One strategy, named the r-strategy, imbues those who are programmed with it to be averse to all peer on peer competition, embrace promiscuity, embrace single parenting, and support early onset sexual activity in youth. Obviously, this mirrors the Liberal philosophy’s aversion to individual Darwinian competitions such as capitalism and self defense with firearms, as well as group competitions such as war. Likewise, Liberalism is tolerant of promiscuity, tolerant of single parenting, and more prone to support early sex education for children and the sexualization of cultural influences. Designed to exploit a plethora of resources, one will often find this r-type strategy embodied within prey species, where predation has lowered the population’s numbers, and thereby increased the resources available to it’s individuals.

The other strategy, termed the K-strategy, imbues those who pursue it with a fierce competitiveness, as well as tendencies towards abstinence until monogamy, two-parent parenting, and delaying sexual activity until later in life. Obviously, this mirrors Conservatism’s acceptance of all sorts of competitive social schemes, from free market capitalism, to war, to individuals owning and carrying private weapons for self defense. Conservatives also tend to favor abstinence until monogamy, two parent parenting with an emphasis upon “family values,” and children being shielded from any sexualized stimuli until later in life. This strategy is found most commonly in species which lack predation, and whose population’s have grown to the point individuals must compete with each other for the limited environmental resources that they are rapidly running out of.

Meticulously substantiated with the latest research in fields from neurobiology to human behavioral ecology, this work offers an unprecedented view into not just what governs our political battles, but why these battles have arisen within our species in the first place. From showing how these two strategies adapt in other more complex species in nature, to examining what genetic and neurostructural mechanisms may produce these divergences between individuals, to showing what this theory indicates our future may hold, this work is the most thorough analysis to date of just why we have two political ideologies, why they will never agree, and why we will tend to become even more partisan in the future.

“Reading Understanding Comics blew my teenage mind, and gave me a toolbox full of ideas that I still use today.”

— Raina Telgemeier

Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards Winner, 1994

The bestselling international classic on storytelling and visual communication.

Praised throughout the cartoon industry by such luminaries as Art Spiegelman, Matt Groening, and Will Eisner, Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics is a seminal examination of comics art: its rich history, surprising technical components, and major cultural significance. Explore the secret world between the panels, through the lines, and within the hidden symbols of a powerful but misunderstood art form.

A Moral-Cognitive Theory of Power

How deep does the rabbit hole go?

This seems to be the seminal question of our time. That conspiracies exist is self-evident. In the immortal words of Col. Gathers, “By the time God crapped out the third caveman a conspiracy was launched against one of them!” It is part of man’s nature to form groups, to create exclusive collectives, and to organize plans for mutual benefit. While it might be comforting to believe otherwise, there is no fine line demarking this quotidian form of socializing from more ominous confederacies. Criminals and businesses alike require oaths of loyalty and non-disclosure, and both are capable of unethical acts. For the victim of said acts, it matters little whether they were performed within or without of the aegis of the law; no more than it matters to the soldier whether he dies during a police action or a declared war.

The term ‘Conspiracy Theory’ is nothing but a comforting bulwark designed to avoid important questions. Widely believed to have been seeded into the public consciousness by the CIA following the Warren Commission as part of Operation Mockingbird, the term implies that there are limits to the conspiring which powerful organizations will engage in, and that to suppose otherwise is madness. Intelligence agents may lie, cheat, and steal to achieve their ends – but these ends are ultimately for good. Police might go undercover, traffic drugs, and lie during the interrogation – but only to bring the guilty to justice. Businesses might cut corners, exaggerate the benefits, and use psychologically manipulative tactics to sell their products – but at the end of the day their products will still offer the benefit they claim.

To assert that conspiracy theories are a priori false is tantamount to asserting that there is honour amongst thieves. That there are certain lines which nobody but a lone maniac would cross. That large organizations filter out the psychopaths, and prevent them from rising to the top. That somehow – even though all and sundry are demanding that nobody be held to an objective moral standard, while late-stage capitalism focuses with perfect myopia upon the bottom line – that somehow, in spite of all of this, we can trust our institutions to hold themselves in check.

Absorbing and compelling reading from beginning to end, AA -1025 Memoirs of the Communist Infiltration Into the Church is a must read for every Catholic today and for all who would understand just what has happened to the Catholic Church since the 1960 s.

In the 1960's, a French nurse, Marie Carre, attended an auto-crash victim who was brought into her hospital in a city she purposely does not name. The man lingered there near death for a few hours and then died. He had no identification on him, but he had a briefcase in which there was a set of quasi-autobiographical notes. She kept these notes and read them, and because of their extraordinary content, decided to publish them.

The result is this little book, "AA-1025 Memoirs of the Communist Infiltration Into the Church", a strange and fascinating account of a Communist who purposely entered the Catholic priesthood along with many others, with the intent to subvert and destroy the Church from within. His strange yet fascinating and illuminating set of biographical notes, tells of his commission to enter the priesthood, his experiences in the seminary, and the means and methods he used and promoted to help effect from within the auto-dissolution of the Catholic Church.

No one will read this book without a profound assent that something just like what is describer here must surely have happened on a wide scale in order to have disrupted the life of the Catholic Church so dramatically.