Gary R. Johnson

Gary R. Johnson is an American political scientist who studies the evolutionary origins of political behavior. Johnson has argued that government and politics are natural phenomena found widely in nature. He has likewise argued that patriotism is a functional necessity in any stable biological or social system, and that patriotism is generated in large-scale human societies through the orchestration of psychological mechanisms that evolved originally under very different conditions. He says that loyalty to ethnic groups—as well as the nationalism that often grows out of such loyalty—is achieved through orchestrating these same mechanisms.