Whatever the public perception that colleges are universally more Liberal (try proving that at Adrian College in Michigan), the reality is much more of a hodgepodge of beliefs and attitudes.
Beyond that, regardless of the personal acquaintances of various posters and regardless of the posturing and stereotypes offered to “define” Liberals or Conservatives by other posters, the world is filled with very bright and very dim people of every political persuasion.
A more interesting question might be “Why are colleges so thoroughly perceived as Liberal despite lots of evidence that the political atmosphere of each college is different? (Or not.)”
At the “Liberal” Kent State University, this past Spring, the student government chose to stop funding for the annual commemoration of the May 1970 National Guard shootings. Regardless of one’s views of the commemoration, that is not the action of a “liberal” student body.
Making sweeping generalizations seems to be something both liberals and conservatives are quite good at. Irishman makes a very good point. How can you tell who is more intelligent when there is no set definition of who you’re comparing to whom.
How did “more government, less freedom” get to be the proper definition of “liberal”? That’s pretty appalling. “Liberal” has the same root as “liberty”. What is the conservative position on medical marijuana, assisted suicide, gay rights, internet porn, etc.?
My definition of “liberal” is this: A willingness to periodically re-evaluate your culture’s prevailing assumptions in light of new knowledge and experiences, and to advocate for social change based on any new understanding of the issues.
During the civil rights movement, the liberals were those who re-thought the issue of race and concluded that racial discrimination was wrong after all. The conservatives were the racists.
During the American revolution the liberals were the Founding Fathers and the conservatives were the Tories.
Jesus and his followers were liberals who challenged the authority of the Jewish Pharisees and the Romans.
Eventually liberalism became associated with permissiveness.
Conservatism can be defined with one word: Tradition.
Maintaining an economic climate which rewards the successful entrepenuer with riches is an American tradition. So is private gun ownership and the whole “rugged individualist” thing. And of-course of-course, religion is all about tradition.
Sorry, this is the Straight Dope™. The propagation of Urban Legends (or National Rifle Legends)–even with good intentions–is a violation of the spirit of this board.
Please take the time to find out how and why the quoted statement is a gross distortion of the actual events that occurred in Germany under the Nazis and please refrain from posting mythology as fact in the future.
Even though I think I understand what “liberal” and “conservative” in the current American sense, when I try to enumerate the typical liberal positions, it starts to seem contradictory. It means a “social liberal”–more willing to stand up for the rights of the individual in terms of abortion (although not the fetus, ha-ha), opposing the death penalty, supporting minority/gender rights (affirmative action), freedom from the religion of others (keeping the 10 commandments out of schools), and freedom of speech–but wait a minute, less willing to stand up for the individual in terms of wanting to criminalize “hate speech” or control the sale of guns.
Despite these contradictions, it’s in their economic policies that I part company with the liberals.
Liberals are more willing to interfere in the economy in the name of protecting individuals but this entails sacrifices. For example, they institute job protections; while they ensure relatively high wages and less job switching for those already employed, they have the unintended effect of making jobs harder to find for the unemployed (note the comparatively higher rate of unemployment in France & Germany). Or they oppose superstores of the Walmart ilk in the name of protecting small business. Sure, it makes for a much nicer environment, but it drives up prices for the consumer. So the (surely unintended) result is that under these “liberal” policies, the unemployed have less rights and the consumer’s right to low prices is less protected. So the government spends more on social programs, raising taxes. (And then to pass the programs to help the poor, the middle class needs to be given a cut, but that’s another story).
Anyway, the “conservative” position is the mirror image of these, also contradictory, in terms of individual “rights” at least.
I totally agree. To come out of the closet: I’m a Liberal Arts college professor (and a goddam genius, of course!); I have no quibble with the “liberals” on most of their social program, although I’ve got my doubts about whether their “hate speech” and affirmative action really do much good. It’s the economic stuff that drives me nuts. But my Liberal Arts colleagues assume it’s what any sane person would believe. Too much time in the ivory tower, perhaps.
And who could possibly believe that people who take postmodernism seriously are intelligent?
What we in the US call conservatism has its roots in classical liberalism. I think a more useful construct than the left/right political spectrum is the north-south/east-west diagram used by the Libertarian political quiz (http://www.lp.org/quiz/).
I think we’ve gotten about as much milage out of this thread as we can, in GQ. Catch, Gaudere!
Personally, I like the way I saw it on a bumper sticker (in a college parking lot, as it happens): “Under the Republicans, man exploits his fellow man. Under the Democrats, it’s just the reverse.”.
Maybe we’re looking at it backwards – instead of saying, “smart people are more open-minded, and thus tend to be more liberal,” perhaps the correct answer is, “conservatives tend to be close-minded, and thus are dumber as a result.”
In any event, I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I can’t see how anyone can consider American conservative thinking – with its core emphasis on selfishness, greed, short-term benefits, and demonizing those different from oneself – to be a good thing. Don’t we teach our children not to act like this?
This is like my colleagues (one of them assumes that for anyone to make money, someone else must be oppressed. Who, pray tell, did the East Asian economies oppress to raise their living standards in a single generation?). Sure, liberals are open-minded socially–but not about economics & business.
see: http://www.public.asu.edu/~idrlm/interest.htm
E.g.,
[li]The Great Society was supposed to wipe out poverty, yet the poverty rate is about the same as it was 35 years ago. []Sex education in the schools was supposed to eliminate unwed motherhood, yet the rate of unwed motherhood has skyrocketed. []Federal aid was supposed to improve education, yet ETS re-scaled the SAT’s because scores had dropped. A huge percentage of 4th graders are essentially illiterate, according to recent NAEC tests. []Public spending on the poor was supposed to reduce crime (since “poverty causes crime”), but the crime rate today is higher than it was in 1960. []The death penalty “is not supposed to be a deterrent,” yet when the Supreme Court eliminated it, the murder rate soared, and when it was re-introduced in some states, the murder rate dropped.[/li]
All these approaches failed, but liberals continue to support them. Liberals have more good intentions, but Conservatives have more good results.
As for “demonizing those different from ourselves,” today that’s done more often by liberals than by conservatives, IMHO. E.g., the Republican Convention included both pro-choice and pro-life speakers; the Democrats had only pro-choice speakers. Or, read about the Hawaiian ACLU’s racist demonization of Clarence Thomas in http://www.opinionjournal.com from last Friday.
Regarding open vs. closed minded, today it’s more conservatives who are promoting new approaches (e.g. education vouchers, tort reform, welfare reform, lower tax rates) and liberals who are fighting to retain the status quo.
The issue of selfishness is interesting. Conservatives believe that selfishness is an inevitable human trait. The beauty of capitalism is that it’s structured so that greed motivates public-spirited actions. An economic system that ignores selfishness is bound to fail, no matter how nice it sounds. It’s like a ostrich sticking its head in the sand.
phartizan: “This is like my colleagues (one of them assumes that for anyone to make money, someone else must be oppressed. Who, pray tell, did the East Asian economies oppress to raise their living standards in a single generation?)”"
For a brilliant answer to this question read all of the relevant chapters in One World Ready or Not by William Greider (1996). The chapters on Thailand and Malaysia present an unforgettable (and open-minded) picture of the human costs of Asian industrialization. Greider’s analysis of globalization has been hailed even by people who strongly disagree with his economic views. BTW, Greider is an avowed liberal and probably one of the smartest journalists writing today. (Extrapolate from that what you will.)
I have met lots of smart conservatives in the IQ sense of the word but; IMHO most are either a) not broadly informed despite their intelligence and/or b) are disenchanted or embittered with liberals and/or specific liberal positions and have therefore have turned against them.
I think there used to be a conservative political agenda that one could embrace without being either narrow-minded or self-interested. Certainly there are conservative philosophies (e.g., Burke’s) that are well worth reading. But, IMO, things have swung so far to the right in US politics that the right’s agenda (and I would locate Prez Bush solidly with that agenda) is intellectually indefensable. I.e., the more one knows about what’s going on in the world, including the historical processes at play, the less one is likely to accept the ethics or wisdom of the Bush platform. (Sorry elfkin, but I guess I’m agreeing with your colleague in this respect). OTOH, I would say the same thing about many aspects of the Democratic platform. I was and remain critical of many Clinton policies. The hardest thing about being a liberal today if how few people recognize that Bill Clinton wasn’t much of a liberal.
P.S. I only read about 2/3 of p.1 of the thread; so sorry if I’ve repeated the substance of another poster’s remarks.
Liberal and Democrat are not necessarily interchangeable! After the Civil War, the Republicans were more liberal and the Democrates more conservative and this continued well into the 20th century. Democrat Strom Thurmond filibustered against the Civil Rights bill and I wouldn’t call him a liberal either.
Sounds pretty liberal to me. Jefferson was one of the all-time great liberals.
Challenging the assumptions the authority is based on is liberal, planting bombs isn’t. McVeigh was a radical because he wasn’t non-violent and his fears of the “Establishment” (think about the implications of that term and who uses it) were exaggerrated. If you were to demonstrate against restrictive PC campus speech codes, you would be a liberal in my book.
So what has that got to do with “liberal” being about more government/less freedom?
How so?
A better question is whether my definition is correct. Conservatism is not about tradition? Then what’s your definition of “conservative”? Make sure it encompasses anti-abortion, anti-gay, etc.
Of course I think it’s a good thing, ya jerk. I’m just explaining why it’s fits my definition of “conservative”.
Hitler, schmitler. How is that relevant? Another definition of “liberal” is “unrestricted”. I support concealed-carry because statistics show there is less violent crime that way. That’s liberal thinking. If you oppose any gun control because you think it’s an attack on your way of life, that’s conservative thinking.
In my list of historical examples, I forgot to mention that in the last days of the Soviet Union, the conservatives were the Communists and the liberals were the reformers under Yeltsin.
december*“The issue of selfishness is interesting. Conservatives believe that selfishness is an inevitable human trait. The beauty of capitalism is that it’s structured so that greed motivates public-spirited actions. An economic system that ignores selfishness is bound to fail, no matter how nice it sounds. It’s like a ostrich sticking its head in the sand.*”
Here, december, you seem to imply that liberals perpetuate “economic systems” that “ignore selfishness.” Can you name such a liberal? Or provide a link to such an economic system? I sure can’t.
Liberals do not disavow self-interest. Rather they make distinctions between enlightened self-interest and foolish and destructive self-interest. The concept of a social contract–in which people agree to impose certain limits on their own self-interest in order to live more peacefully and securely with their neighbors–is an example of a theory of enlightened self-interest. This theory has been around for about 500 years.
As to the “beauty of capitalism” and its alleged ability to turn individual greed into public-spirited actions. Well, that is indeed sometimes the case, as when a researcher eager to make his or her car payment discovers the cure for cancer. But as often as not greed can result in things such as the dumping of toxic chemicals in someone else’s water supply; or the selling of substandard tires to save on labor costs; or an insurance company’s decision to withhold certain benefits to persons whom they believe lack the resources to sue. All of these things, december, are part of the “beauty of capitalism.” (And, incidentally, if you read Book III of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, contrary to popular belief, he will tell you all about the dangers of unbridled greed.)
Most smart people, both conservatives and liberals, recognize the need for such unpleasant curbs on unbridled self-interest as taxes, laws, government officials and the like. The real question is one of degree. And, since judgements of degree depend on an informed position, factors such as intelligence and education generally influence one’s political opinions.
Much like wearing a condom in order to avoid pregnancy or disease, we often wish we didn’t have to pay taxes or obey laws; but we do so out of a sense of enlightened self-interest. Indeed, if we did otherwise we’d be sort of like ostriches sticking our heads in the sand.
Are you sure about that? According to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, the teen pregnancy rate has declined 19 percent since 1991, and the pregnancy rate for unmarried women overall has declined 9 percent since 1990. Only 47 percent of pregnancies among unmarried women end in live births. The trend in pregnancy rate per 1,000 women for all age groups since 1980 has indicated a steady-to-declining number except for two age groups: 30-34 and 35-39.
That doesn’t sound like “skyrocketing” to me. In fact, it sounds like improved sex education efforts throughout the 1990s, combined with continued access to abortion, have had exactly the effect intended. There also were widespread improved economic conditions throughout the 1990s; as an actuary, you know that more affluent people tend to have fewer children. If you want to examine specific populations (by income, by ethnicity, etc.) you might find numbers that support your statement, but it sounds like the overall picture is the opposite of what you state.
“Poverty causes crime” is a rather absurd reduction; I doubt you could find anyone who would legitimately try to argue it except for a conservative trying to create a strawman. On the other hand, you’d have a hard time finding an economist who would deny a strong positive correlation between poverty and crime.
In any case, the fact that the crime rate is higher today than it was in 1960 says little on its own. (I’m having a hard time believing you’re an actuary, really, the way you’re trying to cook numbers here.) For one thing, the crime rate has been steadily declining since 1992, the longest decline in history. For another, the crime rate peaked in 1980. For a third, there was a huge adjustment in the rate between 1958-63, when the dollar limit for larceny crimes was removed. Finally, given the fact that crime correlates highly and positively with population, population density, and other factors, demographic facts are probably sufficiently different from what they were in 1960 to account for many of the changes.
. . . and the state with the most executions (Texas) has one of the highest murder rates. Also, more information is need here. Did the murder rate soar in all 50 states? In only those states where it used to be used? Similarly, did it drop in all the states in which it was reinstated? What has been the state-by-state trend in murder rates from 1972-1976 (the period between the Furman and Gregg decisions) and from 1976-present for states with and without the death penalty?
In a 1999 article published in the journal Crime and Delinquency, authors John Sorenson, Robert
Wrinkle, Victoria Brewer, and James Marquart examined executions in Texas between 1984 and 1997. They speculated that if a deterrent effect were to exist, it would be found in Texas because of the high number of death sentences and executions within the state. Using patterns in executions across the study period and the relatively steady rate of murders in Texas, the authors found no evidence of
a deterrent effect. The study concluded that the number of executions was unrelated to murder rates in general, and that the number of executions was unrelated to felony rates.
Similarly, in a 1998 article published in Criminology, William Bailey speculated that if executions had a deterrent effect in Oklahoma, it would be observable by comparing murder rates and rates of sub-types of murder, such as felony-murder, stranger robbery-related killings, stranger non-felony murder, and argument-related killings, before and after the resumption of executions. Bailey examined the period between 1989 and 1991 for total
killings and sub-types of killing. After controlling for a number of variables, Bailey found that there was no evidence for a deterrent effect. He did, however, find that there was a significant increase in stranger killings and non-felony stranger killings after Oklahoma resumed executions after a 25-year moratorium.
Ernie Thompson, in a 1999 article in Homicide Studies, examined criminal homicides in Los Angeles before and after California’s execution of Robert Harris in 1992, the state’s first execution after a 25-year moratorium. Thompson found slight increases in homicides during the eight months following the execution.
In their book The Geography of Execution: The Capital Punishment Quagmire in America, Keith Harries and Derral Cheatwood studied differences in homicides and violent crime in 293 pairs of counties. Counties were matched in pairs based on geographic location, regional context, historical development, demographic and economic variables. The pairs shared a contiguous border, but differed on use of capital punishment. The authors found no support for a deterrent effect of capital punishment at the county level comparing matched counties inside and outside states with capital punishment, with and without a death row population, and with and without executions. The authors did find higher violent crime rates in death penalty counties.
Again, this statement on its own is meaningless. While the recentering of SAT scores is its own kettle of fish (and completely irrelevant as to the question of Federal aid for schools), there are a few relevant facts here:
The scores had dropped from an average of 500 for both math and verbal 50 years ago to 424 verbal and and 478 math in 1995. A drop, yes, but it’s not as if they plummeted.
As an actuary, surely you’re aware of the concept of variance collapse. The pool of students taking the SAT is a lot larger today than it was in the 1950s. The larger the pool, the lower the average and the lower the variance. It’s the same reason we don’t have people batting .400 in the majors anymore. Recentering the scores may have been in part a necessary reflection of the changing population of colleges.
The SAT might not be such a great yardstick for measuring anything useful anyway, aside from how well one performs on standardized tests.
If you’re claiming that the presence of Federal aid was responsible for the drop in scores, you’re gonna need a whole lot of cites.
Federal expenditures on education nationwide account for only 9 percent of total school spending. Much of that is spent on school lunches and HeadStart programs. Total Department of Education spending accounts for only 6 percent of total school funding nationwide.
The Department of Education was made a Cabinet-level agency by Congress in 1980. We had Republican presidents from 1980-1992. They had authority to veto any spending bills. Any Federal money spent in those years is on their hands.
pl I don’t want to hijack this thread into a debate over federal involvement in education. Suffice it to say that IMHO there is some evidence that the federal role has worsened education and little or no evidence that it has helped.
It would be smart to say, “This isn’t working; let’s try something else.” It’s dumb to keep repeating something that has proved to be ineffective or even counter-productive over a 30 year period.
This issue provides evidence that conservatives are more intelligent than liberals.
Are liberals smarter average? Well as long as their policies include supporting those who are too lazy to work with taxpayers money, along with saying it’s OK to kill a fetus but not OK to kill a murderer, I’d say no.