> Evidence and logic were valued; appeals to traditional sources of authority were not.<p>I'm not a member of either major party, but I'm tired of people labeling the left as the party of 'logic and reason' and the right as the party of stubborn, mindless tradition. Both party platforms are bent to suit political whims, so ultimately, both parties are laughably contradictory in their values.<p>There's plenty of rational reason on the right. If you don't agree, read Thomas Sowell and I bet you'll be forced to reconsider.<p>As a side note, why the hell can't I copy text from the article? Very annoying. Had to search for text in the developer console just to copy the quote above.
I suspect liberals and conservatives will have different opinions of this. (They're smarter! They're brainwashed!)<p>However, it is worth breaking down what it means to be liberal or conservative.<p>It is odd that if you tell me an American's opinions on guns, I can give an above-chance estimate of their opinion on immigration, or abortion.<p>The real question is, why are liberals so liberal?
In my view, liberalism equates to a view that most people are trustworthy, and will do good things. Authoritarianism assumes people are bad and need to be controlled. Liberal/Authoritarian is somewhat independent of left/right, politically.<p>Highly educated people spend more time around other highly educated, and likely richer people, creating an environment where you view almost everyone as inherently good, and trustworthy.<p>Less educated people spend more time around other less well educated, and likely poorer people, creating an environment where you view more people as potentially dangerous.<p>I've been watching <i>The Century of the Self</i> recently. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self</a>
Let me propose another theory. In the awesome book "How not to be wrong" ellenberg walks through a scenario with dishonest roulette machines as a way to explain Bayesian Inference and shows how powerful your priori are in interpreting new evidence that you are shown. If you hold a non neutral viewpoint on something, natural variations of a neutral truth will take an extremely long time to adjust your view of reality.<p>It just so happens that most highly educated people get their initial priori set from the institutes of learning that have increasingly become sounding chambers for liberal ideologies. So its no surprise that it takes a preponderance of evidence to migrate those views back towards a neutral reality ( if in fact reality is neutral ). A similar situation can be established for rural and uneducated people. They get their priori set from their parents and peers who have a very distinct view of government and governance. All the other talk I see of reasons for the homogenization of the educated class into a specific political view just reads like chest thumping to me.
Should have a (2016) on it?<p>> The Democrats may find they need to give up a little of their wonkiness if they want resounding victories. It’s not in their long-term interest to be too much what Pat Buchanan once referred to as “the party of the Ph.D.s.”<p>Yeah, about that...
> alongside the perception that conservatives are anti-intellectual, hostile to science and at war with the university.<p>This seems like the main reason. Republicans have attacked the importance of education, trying to sell candidates "you want to have a beer with" instead of the traditional intellectual betters that the left would rather see running the country. Education is often a transformative experience that becomes part of your identity and when your identity is attacked, you react tribally and defend your tribe.<p>The interesting thing is that I see both sides wanting to make their sides feel superior through what they value as important. Democrats view that every race, gender and life choice is equally valued means that the most intelligent and most educated will naturally rise to the top and feel most important. The Republicans message of anti-intellectualism, racism, sexism, homophobia and such will make a whole different group of less educated people feel superior. But both groups have an underlying need to feel superior to others. That seems endemic to our species. It's just that as access to education increases, the educated are now a large enough bloc to use that attribute to satisfy that deep-seated need.
It's because the highly educated spend such a vast amount of time discovering how little they know that they realize their opinion is worth almost nothing... and through this learn to realize that everyone else's opinions are just as valid. This seems to be a very liberal stance. As long as you're not forcing your political beliefs on me, or anyone else, I'm okay with you.<p>I obviously can't speak for everyone, but I feel that people on the extreme ends of each wing are crazy selfish and want everything their own way without considering anyone else. It's not just that the highly educated lean towards liberal, it's also that those who spend the time and effort educating themselves tend to be much more moderate than those on either end of the political spectrum. The more moderate Republicans tend to appear more educated. The more moderate Liberals tend to appear more educated. The highly educated appear to be more readily able to find common ground and compromise with one another than those who are not so highly educated.
Makes me wonder if this will change soon. I mean, look at the whole 'alt-right' thing, the readership on sites like Breitbart, The Donald subreddit, etc. They're not made up of older folk with religious tendencies any more, but young college students/graduates posting memes on social media sites.<p>I think it's quite possible we could see highly educated people become more conservative in the foreseeable future. Especially with all the comments about protests and social media shaming and crazy professors...
The definition of liberal has morphed quite a bit over the centuries. I hail from the camp now known as "Classical liberalism"[0]. I value freedom and consider the government to be a necessary evil to be minimized.<p>From the other comments here, it seems we're all from the US, but I'd imagine if any Europeans chime in, they'll have a different take on the word liberal altogether.<p>[0]<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism</a>
You may as well ask:<p>"Why are parish school students so Christian". This is not to say that they viscerally <i>believe</i> in these qualities... oh nooo. It's just that if you want to play the game, you optimize for the environment (I may have picked that up from Alan Watts). Simple RL really.<p>Idiots, and loudmouths, on the other hand will get ostracized and have pots broken over their heads; one shouldn't be surprised if something one writes on a public forum will get one fired from school/work (may have happened to the younger me once). This is not the depressing thing though - no the depressing thing is that the rules of the game are never explained clearly. In this sense, the Western liberal dogma is essentially the Christian one of grovelling expiation. You know... one can be as bad in action, but words and "belief", expressed tirelessly over and over, are key to salvation [1]. Terrible, terrible messaging to the naive younglings.<p>This probably explains why some (generally poor) idiots in the Midwest send tons of money to "harvest Asia in the name of Christ" (well atleast to those in power), while jumping up an down to keep these "loved" people away from their neighborhood. Then there is the New Age movement, "meditating" and "yoga-ing" for "peace" "health" and "environment" (and lots of greens), while showing total disdain for the path [2]... Namast.. No, f<i></i>k you!<p>All this facade gets really really tiring.<p>[1] The laity in much of Asia believe in very similar things to be fair... although they don't get bonked on the head with a book everytime they are out of line.<p>[2] acharya: "Guru" lit. he who walks the path
Two things:<p>One, academia (for many reasons) tends toward liberal group think.<p>Two, interestingly, many of the most intelligent and successful (especially self made) people tend to be libertarian or conservative.
If you're smart enough, you'll get to a point sooner or later where you are no longer working class. You won't be getting paid a low hourly wage, nor will you be living paycheck to paycheck.<p>Once you are not working class, you'll gradually become very out of touch with working class issues and perspectives. It's nearly impossible to see life as an ongoing, harsh competition where everyone is hustling each day to survive, when you aren't living that way. You become liberal instead, like all your friends, and espouse egalitarianism and socialism.<p>Meanwhile, the working class remain staunchly conservative. They are competing for a paycheck every day of their lives. They have no extra money to give away, period. Handouts for people they consider to be lazy disgust them.<p>The upper class remain liberal. Harsh competition is just so low class, isn't it? So primitive, so gauche. Why can't we all just work together for a greater good? Handouts for the poor only help the most vulnerable among us. How could you be against that?!<p>It's an intractable polarization, in my opinion.
<a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/08/08/survey-finds-social-psychologists-admit-anti-conservative-bias" rel="nofollow">https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/08/08/survey-finds-...</a> might explain part of it.
>>> While there’s ample evidence of the professional class using its economic and educational capital to preserve its advantages — think of the clustering of professionals into exclusive neighborhoods, or the early immersion of professional-class children into a world of literacy, art and science — its move left is evident even on questions of economic redistribution. My own analysis of data from the General Social Survey shows that in recent decades, as class inequality has increased, Americans who hold advanced degrees have grown more supportive of government efforts to reduce income differences, whether through changes to taxes or strengthening the welfare system.<p>>>> On this issue, the views of the highly educated are now similar to those of groups with much lower levels of education, who have a real material stake in reducing inequalities. Even higher-income advanced degree holders have become more redistributionist, if less so than others.<p>One of the benefits of higher education is access to higher income. As a person reaches a certain level of income, his or her ability to entertain broader issues and discussions tends to become more and more disconnected from the impact of the policies that such issues would derive into. So it is easy for a liberal to say that "coal mines need to be put out of business," while sipping a late at a San Francisco coffee shop instead of being a poor miner in Kentucky. Or the liberal can say "we need more Somali immigrants" from the comforts of the New York apartment and not the small community in St. Cloud Minnesota.<p>So the answer for many liberals is that they are liberal because they can afford to be.<p>Now, social liberalism has given us interesting discussions and expanded the rights of the population at large. Think inter-race or gay marriage, for example. So in these cases, these educated elites have been able to articulate how these changes for the most part do not affect the rights or life style of others.<p>On the other hand, liberalism has also advocated for expanded role of the federal government without helping really address economic disadvantages in certain communities. I wonder if there is data to support the conservative notion that liberals are not job creators. It seems that there is a stereotype of the liberal elite as a person who has benefitted from cushy jobs in media, press or higher education.<p>The article "The smug style in American liberalism" is a good read for those interested: <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberalism" rel="nofollow">http://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberali...</a><p>The conservative viewpoint would say that the liberal likes this status quo because it is "easier" to maintain their status as elite with a population that does not value liberty and the responsibilities that liberty conveys. Obviously that is also a generalization, so it would be interesting to write an article about "Why are the Highly Educated so Conservative?" or as another commenter mentioned here "Why are the Conservatives so Conservative?"