It’s pretty easy to point to closed-minded Liberals–my exwife is one. Anything to do with the Abrahamic religions was evil, everything pagan was green and good. Any aversion to homosexuality, even if was just on the level of aesthetics, meant you hate fags and were therefore a despicable human being. Accumulating anything like personal wealth is wrong and greedy–this includes things like emergency savings. I’m just picking on her, but I’ve known lots of people who held beliefs like this and would suffer no explanation of opposing positions, and would certainly not validate them. That’s pretty closed-minded.
That said, I think it’s entirely viable to view religion of any kind as limiting; that we as a society could bridge many gaps just by being more charitable with money and tolerance; and that we could do worse than to remember Plato’s often ignored thought:“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.” Simply acknowledge that there are roughly 7 billion ways to view the world and one’s role in it, and as many sets of priorities.
I consider myself a liberal simply because I lean a bit to the left socially. For the most part I want everyone to just leave everyone else alone to do their thing and experience this planet in a way that brings them joy. I think that’s fairly open minded. To the extent social conservatives can hold true to their own beliefs and not foist them upon others I think they too can be open-minded.
Some liberals are very open minded, others can be more closed minded than conservatives. I have seen some liberal leaning folks who are completely intolerant of any view point other than their own. These individuals tend to look at other people with differing view points with a patronizing, condescending air as if everyone not in agreement with them were unenlightened dolts.
I’m with Trinopus. I think there’s a weak correlation. I think the most open-minded people are more likely to be liberal because part of being liberal is willingness to try new things and buck tradition. Closed-minded people could easily be liberal or conservative. Since they don’t think for themselves, they’ll just adhere to whatever value system they grew up with, which could be anywhere on the spectrum of political belief.
Spot on. I view the majority of American voters as being closed-minded in their political views (left or right). Closed-minded liberals tend to think more government and/or more money is the solution to every problem, no matter what. Their conservative ilk would tend to believe that government always makes the problem worse, and/or that certain religious beliefs are more meritorious than others.
Easy now! I reseve breath-taking irresponsibility for drinking only, not for social structure. To some extent it makes a great deal of sense to ‘force’ all members of a society to participate in ponying up for the maintenance expense of that society. Libertarianism has some great sentiments (see, open-minded) but I’m not sure they can be applied practically in a real world that involves being able to come into contact with other human beings. Probably food for another thread.
I checked boxes 2 and 3, but not 4. While are close-minded liberals and open-minded conservatives, it’s pretty obvious that conservatives, by and large, demand far more conformity of belief of each other on a much wider range of issues than is true for those of us on the left. So there’s a pretty decent correlation between conservatism and closemindedness.
But to use one example I’ve often cited, let’s remember that it wasn’t REPUBLICANS who booed Bob Dylan off the stage at Newport for daring to go electric. It was good leftists, who were wedded to the notion that folk music had to be stark, simple and traditional.
You’re going to get a lot of people here asking you about Cameroon.
As for the OP, my experience is that open mindedness is often in the eye of the beholder, but as a general rule I would say liberals tend to be more so than conservatives. It’s in the nature of the outlook. Of course, libertarians have them both beat!
I’d guess that there is a positive correlation between “open-minded” and “liberal” (granted, these are vague terms), but that the correlation isn’t 1.00. More like 0.60 or so.
Since you threw in “self-proclaimed,” I had to go with option four. Otherwise, I’d have voted that open-minded people are more likely to be liberal, but not the other way around.
And, no, I didn’t vote for #2, as it contradicts #4.
The most closed-minded group of people I have ever encountered in my life were the students, faculty, and inhabitants of the surrounding city at the University of California at Berkeley. There was more rigid orthodoxy of thought than in Mao’s China (where many apparently wished they actually lived). The most open-minded group of people I have ever encountered in my life have been the students, faculty and inhabitants of the surrounding city at the University of Oregon at Eugene.
Both populations called themselves strongly liberal and were of the same general demographic and political dispositions.
To some extent it makes a great deal of sense to ‘force’ all members of a society to participate in ponying up for the maintenance expense of that society. Libertarianism has some great sentiments (see, open-minded) but I’m not sure they can be applied practically in a real world that involves being able to come into contact with other human beings. Probably food for another thread.