LOL that blog post certainly didn't do anything to dispel the notion that conservatives are less intelligent.
I actually think of it like this: being liberal doesn't necessarily make you more intelligent, but being more intelligent makes you increasingly likely to be liberal. This is why the student bodies at all the top colleges in the US are overwhelmingly liberal. No, it isn't because the teachers there are lefties; the students were that liberal the moment they stepped on campus and smart people are much less likely to be manipulated than dumb people. Once you reach a certain level of intelligence where you are able to process news from a variety of sources and interpret it critically, you easily see that moderate liberalism is right on almost all issues where there is some notion of an objective right or wrong. This is why top colleges can be over 90% democrats.
Now if you aren't intelligent enough to understand the world, you could become either liberal or conservative. It really just depends on where you grew up and your experiences. It's sort of like taking a multiple-choice test with two possible answers. If you are bright and can understand the material, you will choose the liberal answer the vast majority of the time. If you are not smart enough to do so, you have to guess at the answer. Half pick the correct liberal choice while the other half picks the incorrect conservative choice.
The only intelligent conservatives either are libertarians who have simply done the mental gymnastics necessary to conclude that other human beings do not matter or are people who have been severely indoctrinated into conservative teachings at a very early age.
"[...] Religion is the essential reason conservatives give more, and religious liberals are as generous as religious conservatives. Among the stingiest of the stingy are secular conservatives."
This latter group would presumably include most libertarians.
Some of the stupidest and worst-informed people I've ever met have been liberals, and some of the most intelligent and thoughtful people I've met (and I've met quite a number) have been conservatives. I spent four years at Georgetown, which is probably one of the most politically active schools in the country, so I think I have a decent sample of both the left and the right (albeit biased towards the intelligent end - but not as much as you might think, trust me).
This isn't a particularly robust article, but the point he makes is probably correct - intelligence makes one more likely to go to university, and going to university exposes one up to far more liberal influence than conservative. It certainly matches my experience. My experience has also been that the vast majority of liberals move at least a bit to the right after they grow up and have to support themselves.
(No one's ever totally objective about this stuff, but for what it's worth, I'm a moderate, to the point that I didn't feel I could vote either way in the last election.)
I'm not from the US, so it seems to me the argument from the article falls down on "it perpetuates the established political order". Haven't there been both liberal and conservative parties in power in the past?
So you would still have to explain why universities would tend to be liberal.
Anyway, nothing good can come from this discussion here. I hope it'll be flagged to death soon.
Even the liberal US media is ridiculously conservative by European standards, so it's certainly a US-centric point they're making. Sadly, they won't figure that out and instead believe the US system is the one the world gravitates around.
Just because I, whose experience is limited to America, speak in America-relative terms doesn't mean I am ill-informed about the rest of the world or am exhibiting some kind of politco-centrism.
Coolidge might be the last conservative President. Barry Goldwater might be the last serious conservative presidential candidate. The Republican party has not much been for American conservatism (constitutionalism, states rights, extreme caution in affecting the social order) in practice since Nixon. The Republican party has been in practice very much about the established order.
>Haven't there been both liberal and conservative parties in power in the past? So you would still have to explain why universities would tend to be liberal.
Universities in the US aren't run by the federal government, and even if they were, the party in power wouldn't have any effect on the political leanings of campus staff/faculty. We're not China.
The reason university campuses tend to be liberal, I think, is that most of the people there are A) young and inexperienced; or B) a very specific and self-selecting subset of intelligent people (professors) who are not necessarily a representative sample of all intelligent people.
Somewhat OT, but it's better if you do vote. In such a scenario I generally vote Libertarian or Green as something of a protest/none-of-the-above vote.
If you can't vote "either way," and you don't vote, then you're effective voting for (or giving the vote to) the combined LeftRight party that you can't bring yourself to vote for.
If you can't be a participant, at least be a Jammer.
Considering history, voting is delusional. Might as well buy lottery tickets. You can't reasonably predict what candidates will do once in power based on what they say.
Besides, the political environment is essentially driven by the "madness of crowds". You are irrelevant. Better to remain detached and regard politics like the weather, something to be dealt with as necessary.
You're right, but given how little free time I have, the hassle of the paperwork for voting as an absentee (I'm still a student, just not at Georgetown) wasn't worth it to me.
My attitudes usually fall strongly in both camps (very conservative on law and order, very liberal on social issues/gay marriage/etc) but I see having a liberal outlook as being like having a scientific outlook.
Self-defined "conservatives", on the whole, appear keen to keep things as they are and not experiment with society or civic systems. Self-defined "progressives", on the other hand, seem more willing to try out experiments to see if they result in quality of life improvements.. this fits well with a scientific mindset, IMHO, so I'll probably always identify as idealistically progressive, even if many of my opinions become conservative due to experience.
Summary: For various reasons the general population skews conservative, essentially driving the correlation. "Smart people" probably don't much skew liberal.
This entire debate is stupid without defining what we mean by liberal or conservative.
In my experience, in the USA, this is nothing other than a vague cultural affiliation and it has relatively little content. Conservative oldsters love their Medicare. Liberal Silicon Valley types are enthusiastically anti-union.
I'd like to see a survey which pitches the ideologically driven (on the left and the right) against the pragmatic centrists.
Perhaps this is evidence that despite the attempts by the american right to re-define 'liberal' to mean what most europeans would call 'centrist' or even 'center-right', the american right is actually the one harbouring fringe, ideologically-driven politics, and those they see as liberals are actually the smart, pragmatic centrists.
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[ 0.26 ms ] story [ 58.7 ms ] threadI actually think of it like this: being liberal doesn't necessarily make you more intelligent, but being more intelligent makes you increasingly likely to be liberal. This is why the student bodies at all the top colleges in the US are overwhelmingly liberal. No, it isn't because the teachers there are lefties; the students were that liberal the moment they stepped on campus and smart people are much less likely to be manipulated than dumb people. Once you reach a certain level of intelligence where you are able to process news from a variety of sources and interpret it critically, you easily see that moderate liberalism is right on almost all issues where there is some notion of an objective right or wrong. This is why top colleges can be over 90% democrats.
Now if you aren't intelligent enough to understand the world, you could become either liberal or conservative. It really just depends on where you grew up and your experiences. It's sort of like taking a multiple-choice test with two possible answers. If you are bright and can understand the material, you will choose the liberal answer the vast majority of the time. If you are not smart enough to do so, you have to guess at the answer. Half pick the correct liberal choice while the other half picks the incorrect conservative choice.
The only intelligent conservatives either are libertarians who have simply done the mental gymnastics necessary to conclude that other human beings do not matter or are people who have been severely indoctrinated into conservative teachings at a very early age.
"[...] Religion is the essential reason conservatives give more, and religious liberals are as generous as religious conservatives. Among the stingiest of the stingy are secular conservatives."
This latter group would presumably include most libertarians.
This isn't a particularly robust article, but the point he makes is probably correct - intelligence makes one more likely to go to university, and going to university exposes one up to far more liberal influence than conservative. It certainly matches my experience. My experience has also been that the vast majority of liberals move at least a bit to the right after they grow up and have to support themselves.
(No one's ever totally objective about this stuff, but for what it's worth, I'm a moderate, to the point that I didn't feel I could vote either way in the last election.)
So you would still have to explain why universities would tend to be liberal.
Anyway, nothing good can come from this discussion here. I hope it'll be flagged to death soon.
Universities in the US aren't run by the federal government, and even if they were, the party in power wouldn't have any effect on the political leanings of campus staff/faculty. We're not China.
The reason university campuses tend to be liberal, I think, is that most of the people there are A) young and inexperienced; or B) a very specific and self-selecting subset of intelligent people (professors) who are not necessarily a representative sample of all intelligent people.
If you can't vote "either way," and you don't vote, then you're effective voting for (or giving the vote to) the combined LeftRight party that you can't bring yourself to vote for.
If you can't be a participant, at least be a Jammer.
Besides, the political environment is essentially driven by the "madness of crowds". You are irrelevant. Better to remain detached and regard politics like the weather, something to be dealt with as necessary.
"Show me a young conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains."
Self-defined "conservatives", on the whole, appear keen to keep things as they are and not experiment with society or civic systems. Self-defined "progressives", on the other hand, seem more willing to try out experiments to see if they result in quality of life improvements.. this fits well with a scientific mindset, IMHO, so I'll probably always identify as idealistically progressive, even if many of my opinions become conservative due to experience.
And to everyone who might call this an article, have your standards really fallen that low?
Summary: For various reasons the general population skews conservative, essentially driving the correlation. "Smart people" probably don't much skew liberal.
In my experience, in the USA, this is nothing other than a vague cultural affiliation and it has relatively little content. Conservative oldsters love their Medicare. Liberal Silicon Valley types are enthusiastically anti-union.
Perhaps this is evidence that despite the attempts by the american right to re-define 'liberal' to mean what most europeans would call 'centrist' or even 'center-right', the american right is actually the one harbouring fringe, ideologically-driven politics, and those they see as liberals are actually the smart, pragmatic centrists.