Dissociating freedom from equality requires a distinctive cognitive bias

Evidence

As for equality and freedom, I think it takes a special kind of mind to disconnect the two. If you are seriously “less equal” than others (like most of the animals in Animal Farm), you do not have the freedoms the “more equal” people have. Hence both values, freedom and equality, were forcefully asserted in the Declaration of Independence. But we know Highs have that “special kind of mind” which can, and does, disconnect all kinds of things that are closely connected.’ — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 3602

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The psychological capacity to hold freedom and equality as unconnected values — and treat that disconnect as evidence of a ‘special mind’ that systematically severs connected things — is a compact and genuinely paradigm-shifting observation about authoritarian cognition.