Social expectation? Peer pressure ?
This rings the most true to me as a reason why white men tend to become more conservative with age. LarryAndro is also correct that Republicans use fear to energize their constituencies. In fact, fear is pretty much all the Republicans have in their bag of tricks. Unfortunately, it’s a good trick, so they don’t really need anything else.
As to why blacks, broad-stroked, don’t become more conservative with age, I believe it is because blacks don’t have the fond memories of yesteryear that whites do. For many blacks, especially from my grandfather’s generation, life has been an unending struggle to push open the doors to opportunities that have been systematically closed to them as far back as memory serves. My grandfather on my mother’s side, who had no formal education to speak of, worked, literally, until the day he died as a skycap at LaGuardia airport in New York. The stories he used to tell me of his life’s experiences made me physically ill, yet he could always point to things that were better now (then) for blacks than 30, 20, 10, even 5 years earlier. His hope and belief was that with continued pressure and struggle, things would continue to become better for blacks. I’m pleased to say he was right. I’m the first person in his lineage to have gone to college, for which he was eternally proud.
My father, on the other hand, who is white, comes from a line of college-educated librarians and teachers, none of whom were remarkable in any way as far as I’m concerned, but who were the epitome of the academic middle class in the North Eastern US, with all the benefits such status accorded, whether deserved or not. My grandfather on my father’s side, died a bitter, unpleasant old man, with a comfortable home, a wife, children, and grandchildren who, for the most part, loved him, money in the bank, a small stock portfolio, and not a damned thing to be bitter about.
My point is, at least anecdotally speaking, whereas whites, in very general terms, tend to look backward to a better time, blacks, again, generally, have little choice but to look forward for the same thing.
“Come on, man.”
“I don’t know…”
“Everyone’s doing it.”
“Yeah, vote GOP. What are you, a chicken?”
There’s an aspect of this that I think is being overlooked in this thread: we grow more cynical with age. What if young people are liberal in the same basic ratio as older people, but in older people conservatives are more likely to vote and in younger people it’s the liberals?
If you’re young and conservative, your idealism is related to maintaining tradition. Ergo, by being young and idealistic you may not feel as strong of a drive to vote since you like how things are or have been in the past.
If you’re young and liberal, your idealism is related to changing things. So you are more likely to vote, because your entire political view is associated with change.
When you grow older and you become less idealistic, if you’re conservative this is going to come out as fear about things going in the wrong direction. Suddenly, it’s imperative that you vote and stop the decay! But if you’re liberal, the main thing driving you had been that idealism. Now that you see that even “your” politicians can be corrupt or ineffective, it gets harder to keep caring.
For liberals who are minorities and women, there’s concern about backsliding and losing (or never gaining) rights. So even as they age they keep voting. But an older white male liberal has an easier time of accepting that cynicism and becoming more apathetic about voting. Some people change political views as they age, but for the most part it might not be that older white males are becoming conservative. The liberal ones might simply become jaded.
Black people and women may be reliable Democratic voting groups, but that doesn’t necessarily make them liberal. A lot of black Americans hold very conservative religious views and generally the black community is not considered to be very accepting of homosexuality (for example).
I also do agree that conservatives tend to be a little more cynical than liberals and that sometimes is a consequence of experiences people have had over their lives. I can remember when we were teenagers that my friend was in favor of gun control. After he was mugged in his 20s, he became an advocate of the group Pink Pistols (slogan: “Armed gays don’t get gaybashed”). I think having experienced the mugging did make him a lot more cynical about people than he had been before. Before he had been very trusting of strangers. Afterwards, he suddenly realized in a very concrete way that there are predatory assholes in this world (and in his view he needed to protect himself from them with a gun).
I also agree with the idea that it’s easy to be a fiscal liberal when you’re a kid with no money. When a person has worked their way up a few tax brackets, it’s not surprising that some people resent the government taking a chunk of their money to fund programs that may be well-intentioned but misguided or inefficient (if even that).
One saying I’ve heard that seems to summarize the generalization is “If you’re not a liberal at age 20 you have no heart, if not a conservative at age 40 you have no brain.”
FYI, I believe that’s usually attributed to Winston Churchill. I know this because I know someone who uses it as some sort of “proof” that he must be correct in being very conservative and that I’ll eventually see things his way when I get older (never mind that I’m neither a Democrat nor a liberal, but that’s not really part of this discussion).
Anyway, to the OP, I do believe this tends to be true, and I think the explanation is actually pretty simple. Consider, the old people today were once young and they had an opportunity to effect change in the world toward their vision. As they age and get in power, some of those changes take hold and so, by the time they get to be old, they simply don’t want to make as many changes as they did when they were younger because they more or less like how things are now.
That is, the definition of conservative changes over time as it inherently means generally wanting to keep things the way they are. Hell, in many ways the conservatives of today would be seen as progressives a generation ago, and a conservative from a generation ago would just seem from another era today.
Go to the Villages in Florida and find out how conservative old people are. Palin was treated like a queen when she gave a speech there. But a lot of them are southerners who distrust blacks. I am sure bigotry or discomfort with blacks having access to power may be contributing factors. Somehow they think the Dems will hurt then fiscally, but the Repubs want to kill medicare and Social security. They don’t get it.
I can not believe misremebering “the good old days” that really weren’t is a factor. In the old days you were young.
I think this accounts for quite a lot of it.
But as a white man becoming older and richer, I’ve noticed I keep getting more and more conservative [read less liberal], but it has less to do with change, and more to do with the liberal notion of “helping.”
I was a lifeguard for years, and for the first few I was all eager and active. I loved “helping people.” But as I got older, I got tired of cleaning up after stupid people who acted stupidly. Every day some new genius would attempt to dive head first into 2 feet of rocky water, and every day I would point to the giant sign he was standing next to and ask him not to. Eventually I got tired of it, there’s nothing I can do to stop stupid people from being stupid. All the money in the world won’t keep people from diving where they shouldn’t.
I think the Cranick Case sums this up pretty well. There was a time I would have been sympathetic, after the first house burned to the ground. I’d find excuses for why we need to help him, why it wasn’t his fault.
But after the 10th or 12th house, I’d eventually say fuck it, I can’t stop people from being stupid. I can help set up the frame work to allow people to be smart, but that’s about it.
So each new social program sounds like the previous; an attempt to help stupid people not be stupid. Bought a house that’s too big, with a mortgage that’s too expensive, in a neighbourhood no one wants to live in. All easily foreseeable problems. If you wanted my help, I’d have said not to do it. Jumping into the clearly marked shallow water is your responsibility, along with the consequences.
That’s how old people stop being liberal.
Personally, I’d say most old people are more conservative as a whole, independent of race, but that’s just what I observe. I think that has a lot to do with having more responsibilities, and less overall options as you are stuck in a career at that point in your life, likely have a mortgage, and probably have kids, so family is important. These folks are often more religious too, which tends to make one more right leaning in my experience.
For me, I started out in pharmaceuticals and was living in an apartment, so I really wanted social programs and funding for science. After 9/11 when I switched to defense, my views became more conservative because Republicans fund defense, and because everyone around me was like minded. You throw in marriage and a mortgage, plus a healthy dose of cynicism and I’m permanently stuck as a Republican at this point. I don’t watch Fox News because I believe they are bat shit crazy, but at the same time, I hate the Huffington Post for the same reasons. What interests me now is keeping my defense job and lowering my taxes. While I certainly think social programs are necessary, we never seem to end any of them once they start, and consequently, we are constantly in debt because new ones are always being rolled out. I would vote for all kinds of social programs provided the money was freed up from some other existing source (oh, but not from defense .
)
Add in “able-bodied” and “Non Protestant”, and I could’ve written that post.
“If you’re not a liberal at twenty you have no heart; if you’re not a conservative at forty you have no brain.” - Winston Churchill
When you ask what makes a conservative tick on a quite liberal board such as this, you have to consider what kind of answers you are going to get.
I am conservative and know/hang around many of them. The two posts above are just about perfect responses for why people “turn” conservative. They are sometimes summed up with “I got less idealistic” or “The real world changed my opinions.”
No one likes to examine their ideas of “the real world,” so I may be going down a blind alley here.
But I think for younger people, a “real world” situation is more about needs, the future, and society: Who’s going to feed us? How can we live well or safely or at all?
Whereas for older people, the “real world” is more about order, the present, and you and yours: Who’s going to keep me fed? How can I keep my way of life?
The prejudice toward the latter view is predictable. Many people learn and gain wisdom with experience, and it’s often more effective to stick to your backyard rather than try to fix the planet. The mistake I would say conservatives make is assuming wisdom is no more than experience, and that we’d be better off if no one thought about the big unquantifiables of life.
“A witty saying proves nothing.”
It’s been hundreds of years since someone said that and it got recorded for all to read/hear, and yet people keep on spouting witty sayings by famous people as if they’re automatically true. I guess it’s just too true.
If you think most of the poor have had no chance to climb out of the gutter and that the rich have mercilessly took advantage of them to scrounge every last dime out of them, you’re probably going to be liberal. If you think the poor are lazy, ignorant, and have squandered their chances while the rich are hard working, intelligent, and have made the best of their chances, you’re probably going to be conservative. Plenty of people (myself included) have come into money through no ability of their own, and some of those people rashly spend it all on frivolous investments or diversions. Some people work hard and invest wisely only to see their job disappear and savings evaporate through absolutely no fault of their own, while others manage to keep their job until their retirement and never had their investment firm go bankrupt.
Much of the “debate” is each side yammering at the other over and over how they see the world, and it’s all colored by their own experiences. Hard work and dedication mean something, but so does pure luck, including who you’re born to. Each side will claim that one means more than the other, and some people will refuse to admit that the other half of the balance exists. The fact that the world economy had in general been going gangbusters from 1945 to 2007 means that most people who lived long enough saw their hard work pay off, moving them towards the conservative side of the spectrum. If the economy takes an extremely long time to improve to its past heights, people will see more and more how much influence the winds of fortune have on people’s lives, but there will still be those out there claiming that they built their fortune all by themselves.
< DeNiro >
You talkinna me?
< /DeNiro >
The Republicans have not been conservative for a very long time.
The 2 bush’s were not conservative. The Republicans in the Senate and House since 1996 have not been conservative.
Elizabeth Dole and Norm Coleman were NOT conservative, they were liberals.
Condoleezza Rice is not a conservative, she is a middle roader who had Republican parents.
**Ronald Reagan **never changed his philosphy, he said himself that he never changed but that it was the Democratic party that changed.
As far as Strom Thurmond, I really dont think that guy changed one single iota of any of his personal opinions in 100 years. He was always a racist Southern professional politician who said whatever he thought the voters of his state wanted to hear.
I am a 62 year old white man. Many of my beer binging college buddies are now Conservatives.
Although I agree with the statement, I think this transcends skin color.
Cause: I think it’s their last gasp, their last refuge. Some of them also rejoin religious groups. Some choose to defend their career turf, not matter how vile it may be (thinking law and medicine here)
Another cause for older men is that they’ve heard tons and tons of BS during their lifetime. They just feel they don’t have to put up with it any more.
“If you’re not a liberal at twenty you have no heart; if you’re not a conservative at forty you have no brain.” - Winston Churchill
I think old Winston was a gasbag too. Most people are that in politics.