# Will the death of American social conservatism produce a completely new party system?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [May 17, 2014, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632 "2014-05-17T14:37:35Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2014, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/1 "2014-05-17T14:37:35Z")
I am not posting this in Elections because the changes in question are on a generational time-scale and affect no imminent election.
[Michael Lind writes in Salon:](http://www.salon.com/2014/05/17/r_i_p_social_conservatism_why_its_dying_%e2%80%94_and_the_coming_realignment/)
> [@](#):
>
> You wouldn’t know it from watching MSNBC or Fox, but the era in which controversies over social issues like “God, gays and guns” defines political alignments is probably drawing to a close, thanks to the social liberalism of younger Americans such as Millennials, who were born in 1981 or later. Millennials are the least religious generation, with fewer than one in 10 saying that religion is important in their lives. They are the only generation in which a majority (70 percent) supports gay marriage. And Millennials are not only less likely than their elders to own guns but also provide majority support to gun control.
>
> Does the rise of social liberalism mean that today’s Democratic coalition will permanently dominate American politics in a decade or a generation? Will John Judis and Ruy Teixeira be vindicated by the final emergence of “the emerging Democratic majority”?
>
> It’s possible that a combination of Latino votes and social liberalism among younger generations will push today’s Democratic coalition into power for decades or generations, but I don’t think so. On the contrary, I argue that the rise of social liberalism and the decline of social conservatism will destabilize existing American political divisions and shatter and recombine today’s parties, in surprising ways.
I think he’s right in forecasting the end of social conservatism. See the [Pew Political Typology 2011](http://www.people-press.org/2011/05/04/typology-group-profiles/), particularly the “Staunch Conservative” grouping:
> [@](#):
>
> **Staunch Conservatives**
>
> 9% OF ADULT POPULATION /11% OF REGISTERED VOTERS
>
> Basic Description: This extremely partisan Republican group is strongly conservative on economic and social policy and favors an assertive foreign policy. They are highly engaged in politics, most (72%) agree with the Tea Party, 54% regularly watch Fox News, and nearly half (47%) believe that President Obama was born outside the U.S.
>
> Defining values: Extremely critical of the federal government and supportive of sharply limited government. Pro-business and strongly opposed to environmental regulation. Believe that military strength is the best way to ensure peace. Highly religious; most say homosexuality should be discouraged by society.
>
> Who they are: More than nine-in-ten (92%) non-Hispanic white and 56% male. **The oldest of the groups (61% ages 50 and older).** Married (79%), Protestant (72%, including 43% white evangelical), and financially comfortable (70% say paying the bills is not a problem).
>
> Lifestyle notes: Many are gun owners (57%) and regular churchgoers (57% attend weekly or more often), and fully 81% are homeowners. More watch Glenn Beck (23%) and listen to Rush Limbaugh (21%) than any other group.
Now, these are not “The oldest of the groups” because people grow more conservative as they age – [they don’t](http://news.discovery.com/human/psychology/voter-conservative-aging-liberal-120119.htm). They are the oldest because they are of generations who grew up in and were shaped by a different America that will never again exist. When they die off they will not be replaced in commensurate numbers – their children and grandchildren might be conservative, but not conservative the way **they** are.
But that does not end the debate over America’s long-term political future, it begins it. Lind again:
> [@](#):
>
> At the moment the Democrats are a tenuous coalition of economic progressives and “neoliberals” or moderate economic conservatives. In their policy views many of the neoliberals, including arguably Barack Obama and the Clintons, are what used to be called “Rockefeller Republicans.” Many neoliberals favor smaller government, free trade, deregulation and lower taxes and side with the Democrats chiefly because of the religiosity and social conservatism of today’s Republicans.
>
> If the threat of religious fundamentalism and social conservatism declines, there is really no reason for the allies of neoliberals like Robert Rubin and the allies of economic progressives like Elizabeth Warren to remain in the same party. This is why, in “The Coming Realignment,” I predict that the two wings of today’s Democrats may evolve into the nuclei of the two national parties of tomorrow, once social conservatism goes the way of segregationism and agrarianism.
>
> Because both economic progressives and neoliberals call themselves “progressives” today, to avoid confusion I describe the likely future coalitions using portmanteau names: “Populiberals” (socially liberal and economically liberal) and “liberaltarians” (socially liberal and economically conservative). The useful term “liberaltarianism” is already in circulation, to describe the overlapping position of the right wing of progressivism and the left wing of libertarianism.
>
> In the essay\*, I argue that these future factions are likely to have their own geographic bases, with populiberalism strongest in “Posturbia” (suburbs and exurbs) while liberaltarianism will flourish in the urban downtowns of “Densitaria.” I should emphasize that by “urban” I do not mean “nonwhite,” just as by “Posturbian” I do not mean “red state” versus “blue state” or the “Retro/Metro” schema put forth by John Sperling in 2004. I am describing a possible future, not the present or the past. Already a majority of Latinos and African-Americans live in the suburbs, and decades from now most immigrants in immigrant-rich urban areas may no longer be from Latin America. And remember, nearly everyone in the future in this thought experiment is a social liberal, by today’s standards. So I am not talking about conservative white-flight suburbs versus black inner cities. I am talking about a different and new pattern of political geography.
>
> In post-social-conservative America, the division between Posturbia and Densitaria may correspond roughly to the debate among tomorrow’s New Deal-ish populiberals who favor universal social insurance and tomorrow’s liberaltarians who may favor means-tested, targeted welfare programs, like today’s neoliberal Democrats or “gentry liberals” (to use Joel Kotkin’s phrase).
- The above excerpts are from a short essay Lind posted in Salon summarizing [url=]a longer one in The Breakthrough.
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2014, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/2 "2014-05-17T14:48:21Z")
One thing Lind seems to be overlooking – if the cities of the future will have an “hourglass” class structure, which he also predicts – then the suburban Populiberals also will have an urban base, in the urban working/service class.
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### Author:  [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2014, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/3 "2014-05-17T14:58:17Z")
**BrainGlutton** Abortion, for one, is a social issue that isn’t going anywhere. Popular opinion about abortion has stayed more or less the same for a couple of decades, in spite of the country becoming less religious. There are demographic reasons to think that the country might become more pro-life in future: partly because abortion opinion is largely heritable and abortion opponents tend to have more children. I don’t see the abortion debate going anywhere. I suspect there’s going to be more racial division in the near future rather than less, as well.
The increasing secularization of America is also a self limiting trend- if you extrapolate out current trends, we will stabilize at around 40% nonreligious (conpared to 20% today) which is still much more religious than most of Western Europe outside Ireland and Poland.
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### Author:  [@Pjen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pjen)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2014, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/4 "2014-05-17T15:01:21Z")
I suspect that everything will change but everything will stay the same. Europe used to have extremes of political views- from the near fascist right to the near communist left, all of which had a chance to move into national government from decade to decade. What we tend to have now is a massive centrist agglomeration with different shades of moderation, and extreme groups usually excluded from main stream Government. I suspect that the Tea Party Republicans will fall into this category of powerless protest voters as they decline. The US has little real left-of-center activity in national politics- the Democratic Party is just another Conservative Party in International terms. I see a return to the sixties and before where there is a choice between two centrist parties of differing hues. Going back to read republican policy statements (especially Eisenhower) is an education in political centrism!
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### Author:  [@Pjen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pjen)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2014, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/5 "2014-05-17T15:03:04Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#):
>
> **BrainGlutton** Abortion, for one, is a social issue that isn’t going anywhere. Popular opinion about abortion has stayed more or less the same for a couple of decades, in spite of the country becoming less religious. There are demographic reasons to think that the country might become more pro-life in future: partly because abortion opinion is largely heritable and abortion opponents tend to have more children. I don’t see the abortion debate going anywhere. I suspect there’s going to be more racial division in the near future rather than less, as well.
>
> The increasing secularization of America is also a self limiting trend- if you extrapolate out current trends, we will stabilize at around 40% nonreligious (conpared to 20% today) which is still much more religious than most of Western Europe outside Ireland and Poland.
I am not sure how we can predict future religious affiliation. In the UK we have gone from nearly full church attendance to less than 10% in a century!
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2014, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/6 "2014-05-17T15:07:33Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#):
>
> **BrainGlutton** Abortion, for one, is a social issue that isn’t going anywhere. Popular opinion about abortion has stayed more or less the same for a couple of decades, in spite of the country becoming less religious. There are demographic reasons to think that the country might become more pro-life in future: partly because abortion opinion is largely heritable and abortion opponents tend to have more children. I don’t see the abortion debate going anywhere.
But a one-issue social-conservative party would have limited prospects.
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#):
>
> I suspect there’s going to be more racial division in the near future rather than less, as well.
What do you base that on?
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#):
>
> [The increasing secularization of America is also a self limiting trend- if you extrapolate out current trends, we will stabilize at around 40% nonreligious (conpared to 20% today) which is still much more religious than most of Western Europe outside Ireland and Poland.
What do you base **that** on?
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### Author:  [@Fuzzy\_wuzzy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fuzzy_wuzzy)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2014, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/7 "2014-05-17T15:09:32Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#):
>
> I am not posting this in Elections because the changes in question are on a generational time-scale and affect no imminent election.
>
> [Michael Lind writes in Salon:](http://www.salon.com/2014/05/17/r_i_p_social_conservatism_why_its_dying_%e2%80%94_and_the_coming_realignment/)
>
> I think he’s right in forecasting the end of social conservatism. See the [Pew Political Typology 2011](http://www.people-press.org/2011/05/04/typology-group-profiles/), particularly the “Staunch Conservative” grouping:
>
> Now, these are not “The oldest of the groups” because people grow more conservative as they age – [they don’t](http://news.discovery.com/human/psychology/voter-conservative-aging-liberal-120119.htm). They are the oldest because they are of generations who grew up in and were shaped by a different America that will never again exist. When they die off they will not be replaced in commensurate numbers – **their children and grandchildren might be conservative, but not conservative the way they are**.
>
> But that does not end the debate over America’s long-term political future, it begins it. Lind again:
>
> - The above excerpts are from a short essay Lind posted in Salon summarizing [url=]a longer one in The Breakthrough.
I think this is an important point. What are important social issues of today may not be the important social issues of tomorrow. The entire debate will have moved on. This doesnt necessarily mean the end of social conservatism, but possibly end of social conservatism as we know it. Just as im sure social liberalism will also move on. What are controversial social issues in twenty years may be entirely different to the controversies today. There will always be social conservative and liberal voting blocks.
I do still believe that social conservatives are missing a trick by not more closely aligning with right leaning social libertarians. The ideology of which would be as follows - f\*ck who you like, smoke what you like, abort what you like; just dont ask me to pay for the consequences of your lifestyle choices. I think this alignment _may_ come in the future.
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2014, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/8 "2014-05-17T15:13:17Z")
> [@Pjen](#):
>
> I am not sure how we can predict future religious affiliation. In the UK we have gone from nearly full church attendance to less than 10% in a century!
Yeah, but, a century ago, Brits went to church just because that’s what Brits do, it does not mean they believed. From [_The Lion and the Unicorn,_](http://georgeorwellnovels.com/essays/the-lion-and-the-unicorn-socialism-and-the-english-genius/) by George Orwell (1941):
> [@](#):
>
> But in all societies the common people must live to some extent AGAINST the existing order. The genuinely popular culture of England is something that goes on beneath the surface, unofficially and more or less frowned on by the authorities. One thing one notices if one looks directly at the common people, especially in the big towns, is that they are not puritanical. They are inveterate gamblers, drink as much beer as their wages will permit, are devoted to bawdy jokes, and use probably the foulest language in the world. They have to satisfy these tastes in the face of astonishing, hypocritical laws (licensing laws, lottery acts, etc. etc.) which are designed to interfere with everybody but in practice allow everything to happen. **Also, the common people are without definite religious belief, and have been so for centuries.** The Anglican Church never had a real hold on them, it was simply a preserve of the landed gentry, and the Nonconformist sects only influenced minorities. And yet they have retained a deep tinge of Christian feeling, while almost forgetting the name of Christ. The power-worship which is the new religion of Europe, and which has infected the English intelligentsia, has never touched the common people. They have never caught up with power politics. The ‘realism’ which is preached in Japanese and Italian newspapers would horrify them. One can learn a good deal about the spirit of England from the comic coloured postcards that you see in the windows of cheap stationers’ shops. These things are a sort of diary upon which the English people have unconsciously recorded themselves. Their old-fashioned outlook, their graded snobberies, their mixture of bawdiness and hypocrisy, their extreme gentleness, their deeply moral attitude to life, are all mirrored there.
No one would have written that about the American people in 1941, we were extremely religious – and specifically Protestant Christian (but never more specifically than that) – from the beginning; but now it is coming true of us.
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2014, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/9 "2014-05-17T15:15:52Z")
> [@Fuzzy\_wuzzy](#):
>
> I do still believe that social conservatives are missing a trick by not more closely aligning with right leaning social libertarians. The ideology of which would be as follows - f\*ck who you like, smoke what you like, abort what you like; just dont ask me to pay for the consequences of your lifestyle choices. I think this alignment _may_ come in the future.
That would be what Lind calls the Liberaltarian alignment, and that base would be strengthened if, as you predict, social conservatism survives in a different form.
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2014, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/10 "2014-05-17T17:01:25Z")
The Ukraine thread reminds me that Lind is also ignoring the dove/hawk axis – but, then, that tends to cut across other ideological axes and always has. How else could the GOP encompass both hawks and libertarians? The MIC is the single biggest and most expensive element of biggummint. And how else could it have been liberal Dems who got us into 'Nam?
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### Author:  [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2014, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/11 "2014-05-17T17:05:30Z")
> [@Michael Lind](#):
>
> Because both economic progressives and neoliberals call themselves “progressives” today, to avoid confusion I describe the likely future coalitions using portmanteau names: “Populiberals” (socially liberal and economically liberal) and “liberaltarians” (socially liberal and economically conservative).
Not sure why he needs to invent a new word for socially liberal, economically conservative people. That’s just plain old libertarian.
‘Liberaltarians’ were always a contradiction. The notion that you can be a libertarian who also supports heavy state involvement in social affairs (mandating ‘social justice’, distributing income, subsidizing birth control, etc) is fundamentally contradictory.
There are two ways to be socially liberal: One is to support a wide range of state interventions designed to drive society in a direction considered more ‘just’ by opinion makers and enforcers, and the other is to just leave people the hell alone and let them form their own associations as they see fit.
The latter is the kind social liberalism libertarians believe in. The former is wholly incompatible with any concept of libertarianism. If Lind doesn’t make a distinction between the two, it’s either because he doesn’t understand libertarianism or he’s obscuring the differences in order to make the argument he’s making.
It’s always a mistake to simply extrapolate current trends into the future and assume that’s the way things will work out. Philosophies wax and wane. Society adapts to the conditions around it. Sometimes that adaptation is away from conservatism, sometimes not. The U.S. of the 1920’s was in many ways more socially liberal than the U.S. of the 1950’s. The U.S. of the 1960’s and 1970’s was far more liberal than the U.S. of the 1980’s and 1990’s.
As for Hispanics joining the new socially liberal majority - The Hispanic population, like the Black community, is quite socially conservative. Hispanics vote for Democrats because of their economic and immigration policies, and Blacks vote Democrat for economic and racial reasons. But both demographic groups oppose gay marriage. Hispanics are split down the middle on whether abortion should be legal.
I think you could easily form an opposite hypothesis to Lind’s: If progressive policies fail and the country becomes economically conservative, that could split Hispanics out of the Democratic coalition and could actually make Republicans more socially conservative and force Democrats to backpedal on social issues to try to reclaim the Hispanic vote.
Also note that a powerful force for social conservativism (of a different kind, maybe) is the growing size of Islamic populations in Western countries. Islam is not a socially liberal religion.
You know, every time the political winds shift from one party to the other, people come out of the woodwork to declare that the current trend represents some kind of permanent sea-change. How many times have we heard the phrase “The new \ permanent majority.”?
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2014, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/12 "2014-05-17T17:08:52Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#):
>
> Not sure why he needs to invent a new word for socially liberal, economically conservative people. That’s just plain old libertarian.
He is describing something different, I think, from LP ideological-libertarian. The latter is so extreme as to be different in kind rather than degree. The Liberaltarians he predicts/describes probably would never demand an end to Social Security or Medicare or the Federal Reserve or public education. Nor to federal income tax, though they might favor a flat-tax system.
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2014, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/13 "2014-05-17T17:12:41Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#):
>
> No one would have written that about the American people in 1941, we were extremely religious – and specifically Protestant Christian (but never more specifically than that) – from the beginning; but now it is coming true of us.
From Lind’s From [_The Next American Nation_](http://www.amazon.com/NEXT-AMERICAN-NATION-Nationalism-Revolution/dp/0684825031) (1995):
> [@](#):
>
> Conservatives do not recognize how much the nation has changed since the fifties in its religious attitudes. It may be that the religion of nominal Christians in the United States can no longer be described as traditional trinitarian Christian. The scholarly term for their belief is henotheism, the belief that all ethnic groups and cultures have, and should have, their own gods and rites. In Christian theology, this is the heresy of indifferentism. Robert Linder and Richard Pierard have described the evolution of American civil religion: “Its umbrella has changed from evangelical consensus to Protestantism-in-general, to Christianity-in-general, to the Judeo-Christian tradition in general, to deism-in-general.” The decline in belief in Christianity as the only true religion has been extraordinarily rapid in the United States. In a poll taken in 1924 in Muncie, Indiana, 94 percent of high school students agreed that “Christianity is the one true religion and all peoples should be converted to it.” By the late 1970s, merely 38 percent of respondents in a later poll in Muncie agreed that Christianity was the only true faith. Two-thirds of the respondents in a 1991 poll agreed that Christians, Jews, Muslims and Buddhists “pray to the same God.”
This of a people who in the 19th Century donated large sums of money, with no significant public controversy, to send Protestant missionaries to Africa and Asia.
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2014, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/14 "2014-05-17T17:16:47Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#):
>
> Also note that a powerful force for social conservativism (of a different kind, maybe) is the growing size of Islamic populations in Western countries. Islam is not a socially liberal religion.
But Muslims in the West will be politically impotent as a socially conservative force unless allied with conservative Christians – who do sometimes ally with conservative Jews, but I really cannot see them allying with Muslims ever.
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2014, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/15 "2014-05-17T17:19:10Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#):
>
> You know, every time the political winds shift from one party to the other, people come out of the woodwork to declare that the current trend represents some kind of permanent sea-change. How many times have we heard the phrase “The new \ permanent majority.”?
But, what Lind is describing has nothing to do with such political winds, it is a real, **generational** sea change.
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### Author:  [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2014, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/16 "2014-05-17T17:19:41Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#):
>
> The Ukraine thread reminds me that Lind is also ignoring the dove/hawk axis – but, then, that tends to cut across other ideological axes and always has. How else could the GOP encompass both hawks and libertarians? The MIC is the single biggest and most expensive element of biggummint. And how else could it have been liberal Dems who got us into 'Nam?
Yes - and I’d argue that one of the reasons social issues rose to prominence after the fall of the Soviet Union was that until then the Democrats had too many hawks that sided with Republicans on security matters, and that forced many compromises on social policy. It made the congress more bipartisan because the important issue of the day spanned party lines.
Today, I would say that both parties are fracturing over defense issues. The Democrats still have plenty of interventionists in their mix (including Obama, John Kerry, the Clintons, and many other movers and shakers). Plenty of Democrats voted for the Iraq war, and in the Clinton administration Democratic majorities supported many interventions - as they have under Obama. But there’s a growing faction of civil libertarians and non-interventionists becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the foreign policy of Democratic leaders.
In the meantime, the Republicans are becoming more isolationist. Partly because they were stung by Iraq and turned against Bush, partly because they oppose Obama’s interventions on more partisan grounds, partly because of a rise of Pat Buchanan-style populism, and partly because of the growing influence of the libertarian wing of the party.
But security issues can turn on a time. Look at the shift to the right on foreign policy that occurred immediately after 9/11. Putin’s adventurism in the Ukraine has woken up a few people. A society tends to become more hawkish when it is threatened. The peace movement was largely a product of a Pax Americana - it’s easy to be for ‘peace’ when you can’t see any threats to yourself. It’s a bit harder after you’ve been attacked. There weren’t a lot of peace marches in London during the blitz, and no one had a problem with launching mass incendiary bombing raids on German cities.
Lind’s right that the coalitions are shifting, and this will probably have a major impact on American politics in the future. But I don’t think we have the ability to extrapolate and draw conclusions as to what those coalitions will look like.
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### Author:  [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2014, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/17 "2014-05-17T17:25:34Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#):
>
> Lind’s right that the coalitions are shifting, and this will probably have a major impact on American politics in the future. But I don’t think we have the ability to extrapolate and draw conclusions as to what those coalitions will look like.
Lind concludes his Salon essay:
> [@](#):
>
> Whether my guesses prove to be prescient or misguided, one thing is certain: The ongoing erosion of social conservatism in the United States is bound to destabilize and transform American politics, even if present coalitions last through another few election cycles. Gridlock will not last forever. Big change is on the way.
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2014, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/18 "2014-05-17T17:30:39Z")
The party which is currently known as the Republicans will certainly come to an end within a generation or so. Unless we make major changes to our electoral system, the US will remain a two-party system. On any issue which remains relevant and which has two sides (which will include at least the hawk/dove axis, the have/have not axis, and the abortion issue), those two parties will adopt opposing positions. All of this, I say with certainty.
Beyond that, I don’t know, and don’t think anyone can. It is possible that the parties of the future will go by different names, but it is also possible that they will continue to be called “Republicans” and “Democrats”. It remains to be seen how the various issues that remain relevant will align with each other: We might, for instance, see the same party opposing the military and abortion while the other party supports both. And I have no idea what new issues will arise which will polarize the nation, though I’m confident there will be some.
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### Author:  [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2014, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/19 "2014-05-17T18:02:05Z")
> [@Pjen](#):
>
> I am not sure how we can predict future religious affiliation. In the UK we have gone from nearly full church attendance to less than 10% in a century!
It’s not a very sophisticated estimate, but you can do a back-of-the envelope estimate based on fertility rates and interconversion rates.
Religious people have more children than secular ones\* (evangelicals have about 2.5 per women, secular people about 1.5), and people raised ‘secular’ are somewhat more likely to convert to a religion as adults, than people raised religious are to lose their religion. (The Pew Forum refers to this as secularists having a lower ‘retention rate’ than religious people as a whole, and also lower than most individual religions). Those two are factors that tend to decrease the relative proportion of secularists. On the flip side, there is a much larger _number_ of religious people right now, in America. So even if only 33% of raised-religious people convert to secularism as adults, as compared to 50% of people raised secular, that still produces a net outflow of people from religion into secularism.
Assuming birth rates and interconversion rates stay the same, the religious and secular populations should reach equilibrium at around 60:40. IIRC, relatively soon, within a couple generations or so. Anyone with the time and access to the data is welcome to make a better estimate, as I said this is purely back-of-the-envelope.
\*Religiosity is also somewhat heritable, IIRC the heritability is around 0.5.
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### Author:  [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2014, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/20 "2014-05-17T18:04:55Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#):
>
> . Putin’s adventurism in the Ukraine has woken up a few people.
Putin’s adventurism in the Ukraine is a ‘threat’ to no one except some Western Ukrainian ‘democracy’ activists who would rather stage dramatic protests than get around to planting their wheat crop. He may enjoy the concept of a Greater Russia, but he isn’t going to risk a war with the western powers, and that means he isn’t going anywhere near Latvia, let alone countries further to the west.
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