A conservative in a liberal domain?

Inspired by the liberal gun ownerthread, I’d like to ask if their is a comparable situation on the left? Some activity or maybe a profession where almost everyone is as liberal as can be but occasionally a right winger can slip in?

Scientist?

The “hard” sciences are not as strained as the social sciences. I knew a faculty member in psychology who is one of the lone conservatives in the department.

I am a conservative who belongs to multiple environmental groups, I keep my politics quiet in the meetings.

I had a very conservative friend who was pro choice. We didn’t come to a parting of the ways, he passed away. He said that would want any baby of his but that he understood the argument that it was not his decision to make. Whoa! How refreshing.

He was also pro national healthcare. But still very business oriented, church, God, no sex 'til you’re married, pull yourself up by the bootstraps, and that you should turn to your family before you turn to the gov’t for support and shelter.

I think his national healthcare stance came from his studying the financials of it as a CPA. He also had a sister in the U.K. so he had the opportunity to see how it worked for them. He is actually the person that got me thinking socialized medicine is smart.

I never did press his abortion stance because that’s more personal.

I hear that a lot of doctors are conservative Republicans, even though you’d expect health care to be a mostly liberal-folk field.

Every now and then, I think there is a conservative who gets employed in the media/journalism field.

And a lot of engineers are conservatives, too, especially in aerospace, IIRC.

A lot of academia is so heavily slanted that conservatives more or less pretend to be “normal”. And some universities’ definition of normal can be wildly left-wing.

That’s the thing about being “pro-choice”; it’s possible to support abortion being legal, while still hoping that people won’t choose it.

In fact, understanding how bad a choice an abortion is, is part of why I don’t believe women choose it as a matter of convenience.

Media I can understand being thought of as mainly liberal, but why do you think doctors or engineers would be mainly liberal?

No.

Just. No. Not even remotely close to the actuality of the situation. #firsthandexperience

Reality has a liberal bias, it is probably best to prepare students for that.

Nonsense. Reality has a bias in everything. There are realities that favor liberals and realities that favor conservatives, and by and large each person focuses on the reality he favors.

The one I keep running into is conservation organizations. There are some pretty much on the right politically but for the most part they have become our best liberal property.

Maybe it’s not seeing the forest for the trees, but antivaxing seems like more of a left wing thing, but some in the Christian homeschool crowd like it too. There are of course lots of examples where the far left and far right unite, but the ratio is more equal (Prohibition, woo, etc.)

It really helps in this to realize that politics are not a binary or single-dimension continuum.

this intrigues me, could you or would you elaborate? Which organizations have you encountered that are conservative yet the best liberal property? What is it about them that makes them such good liberal properties?
I am truly curious, not trying to be confrontational in this.

pssstt…He said “conservATION organizations”.
:slight_smile:

and yeah, he’s right; tree-hugging is almost exclusively a liberal domain.

I had the same reaction before re-reading.

I would imagine something like Ducks Unlimited would trend conservative - they’re an organization devoted to conservation of wetlands and wildlife, but with the goal to ensure there are enough ducks to shoot. Which seemed odd to me at first but actually seems very responsible upon further consideration.

I won’t presume to answer for someone else, but double check the wording. Environmental groups are generally considered to be of the left. But many hunters’ and/or anglers’ groups are very-pro environmental conservation, and may find themselves better allies with these groups than unrealistic “left” wing groups like PETA (or worse).

Every doctor of mine who has mentioned politics has been a Republican.

Doctors tend to make more money than average, and there seems to be a correlation between conservationism and wealth.

Environmental issues can really be one big battleground even within an organization. For example in the Sierra Club we all wanted to protect wild areas but all for different purposes. For example I wanted mountain bike trails and some of the others thought that was bad because mountain bike trails and riders are intrusive into a pristine wilderness.

And the thought of limited hunting is a big fight.