# Will the death of American social conservatism produce a completely new party system? **URL:** \ **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:** 2
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2014, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/21 "2014-05-17T18:06:07Z")
> [@Pjen](#): > > 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! It depends where in Europe. Take a look at what’s going on in Hungary. ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2014, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/22 "2014-05-17T18:10:59Z")
To answer the question, there will always be differences of opinion regarding policy, and one group will be perceived as conservative with respect to another group. Precisely what that means will definitely change over time. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2014, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/23 "2014-05-17T18:18:36Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **Hector\_St\_Clare** : > > 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. Of course, it’s very iffy to assume that birth rates and interconversion rates will remain the same, given that they’ve obviously changed in the past, or we wouldn’t be so far out of equilibrium right now. To get anything resembling a decent estimate, you’d need some sort of model for how those rates change, and I have no idea how one could ground such a model. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2014, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/24 "2014-05-17T19:11:39Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > But, what Lind is describing has nothing to do with such political winds, it is a real, **generational** sea change. People have repeatedly claimed this and they’ve usually been proven wrong. Also, he seems to ignore the fact that there are different metrics to measure young people’s conservatism. For example, Andrew Sullivan and others have made a point of showing how the embrace of gay marriage is about the embrace of conservative values and he’s pointed out that polls show that the young people of today disapprove of adultery in larger numbers that the young people of the 80s. I’d also recommend this much better article from Slate. [http://www.slate.com/articles/news\_and\_politics/politics/2014/05/millennials\_racism\_and\_mtv\_poll\_young\_people\_are\_confused\_about\_bias\_prejudice.html](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/05/millennials_racism_and_mtv_poll_young_people_are_confused_about_bias_prejudice.html) You’ll notice that not only do 88% of millennials object to “race preferences” and 70% do so regardless of the historical past, but more than half of all white millennials think discrimination against white people is just as big a problem as discrimination against black people. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2014, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/25 "2014-05-17T21:27:40Z")
My personal opinion is no. I don’t feel the social conservatives are really in charge of the Republican Party. I think the people who are running the Republican Party are the corporate interests. They’re setting the real agenda for the party. Then they throw some “family values” issues in to attract socially conservative voters. That’s why you see social conservative issues like abortion and gay marriage getting talked about a lot but you see corporate issues like tax policy and deregulation getting enacted into law. And I don’t see those corporate interests fading away. They’ll keep the party alive and they’ll keep appealing to social conservatives as long as they’re useful. If social conservatives drop down to numbers where they’re no longer worth the effort, the corporate interests will just switch to a new group like the libertarians to drum up votes. The bosses will remain the same even if they put up a different banner to attract new followers. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2014, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/26 "2014-05-17T22:36:54Z")
> [@suranyi](#): > > It depends where in Europe. Take a look at what’s going on in Hungary. What’s going on in Hungary? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2014, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/27 "2014-05-17T22:38:58Z")
N.B.: When I speak of a “new party system” I assume the D and R party-labels will endure, but applying to different formations/constituencies/coalitions, as has happened many times in the past. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2014, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/28 "2014-05-17T22:40:42Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > If social conservatives drop down to numbers where they’re no longer worth the effort, the corporate interests will just switch to a new group like the libertarians to drum up votes. That would be interesting; ideological libertarians pride themselves on being pro-market but not pro-business, and balk at corporate welfare, big government contracts, etc. ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2014, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/29 "2014-05-17T22:41:05Z")
We millennials will transform America into a liberal nation. We definitely won’t sell out like the hippies. Right? > [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > And I don’t see those corporate interests fading away. This. A hundred years ago the party slogans and issues were completely different, but it was still same gentlemen’s duel between different sectors of capital. ---
**Author:** ![Stringbean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Stringbean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stringbean)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2014, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/30 "2014-05-17T23:04:28Z")
> [@marshmallow](#): > > We millennials will transform America into a liberal nation. We definitely won’t sell out like the hippies. Right? Thing is, millenials are not outright “liberal” but describe themselves as Independent politically. From a social perspective, undeniably liberal on issues like SSM, decriminalization of drugs, etc. In terms of governance, I think we will end up re-defining both parties toward the middle. Growing up under bitter partisanship has soured us toward politics in general. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2014, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/31 "2014-05-17T23:07:41Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > That would be interesting; ideological libertarians pride themselves on being pro-market but not pro-business, and balk at corporate welfare, big government contracts, etc. I’ve always said that if the Libertarians ever took power in Washington, they’d enact all their business deregulation programs before lunch on the first day. And ten years later they’d still be discussing decriminalizing drugs. Every political organization has its public agenda and its real agenda. You can distinguish the two by what laws they actually enact. Abortions, for example, have been legal for four decades now. If the Republicans really wanted to make it illegal, they’d have done it by now. But it’s not an issue they’re really committed to. But tax cuts? Reagan became President in January and the corporate tax rate was cut by August. (The spending cuts that were supposed to accompany this, however, got put on the “to do” list and never happened.) This illustrates the difference between what’s on the public agenda and what’s on the real agenda. ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2014, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/32 "2014-05-18T01:30:12Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > What’s going on in Hungary? In the last election, not only did the conservatives win a majority of seats in parliament but the neo-Nazi Jobbik party won 23 seats. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2014, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/33 "2014-05-18T01:44:17Z")
> [@suranyi](#): > > In the last election, not only did the conservatives win a majority of seats in parliament but the neo-Nazi Jobbik party won 23 seats. Well, I don’t think any form of Nazism is ever going to get any traction here; the Americans most disposed to be attracted to it are also maniacally suspicious of centralized national state power, and of any form of “socialism,” national or otherwise. ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2014, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/34 "2014-05-18T04:42:05Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Well, I don’t think any form of Nazism is ever going to get any traction here; the Americans most disposed to be attracted to it are also maniacally suspicious of centralized national state power, and of any form of “socialism,” national or otherwise. Oh, I agree. I was just responding to the comment by **Pjen** that European politics consists of centrists with shades of moderation. This is decidedly not so in Central and Eastern Europe. ---
**Author:** ![MrKnowItAll](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrknowitall/32/87_2.png) [@MrKnowItAll](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrKnowItAll)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2014, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/35 "2014-05-18T04:53:53Z")
Well, without reading every post, I just want to say that predicting the “death of social conservatism” is just plain foolish. These things are cyclical. Social conservatism may fall out of political fashion for a while (probably a generation), but once a generation grows up under a liberal slanted society it will come back. Reliance on either end of the spectrum will almost always create a backlash, mostly because people have no freaking sense of history, as well as a pollyanna attitude about the state of the country when they were children. For instance, I was a kid in the late 60s and early 70s. Despite the Vietnam War crisis and the Cuban Missile Crisis, not to mention a few notable assassinations of prominent Americans, I tend to think of that time in idyllic terms. Heck, these days I’m even beginning to reminisce about the Cold War fondly. We tend to remember the good and forget the bad about the past, and the fact that most children are sheltered from the really horrific news doesn’t help. Everyone wants the world to be like it was when they were children, when the fact is the world wasn’t like what we remembered it being. So, we hop on the bandwagon of whatever was the political climate during that time of our lives, hoping that we can recreate that social climate. And it never occurs to us that we really, really wouldn’t like it if we got it. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2014, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/36 "2014-05-18T05:27:31Z")
> [@MrKnowItAll](#): > > Well, without reading every post, I just want to say that predicting the “death of social conservatism” is just plain foolish. These things are cyclical. No, they’re not. Some things, when they die, are dead for all time. We will never go back to slavery or Jim Crow, or pre-feminist notions of gender roles, or agrarianism, and America will never again have a “Christian consensus.” ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2014, 6:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/37 "2014-05-18T06:12:41Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > 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. Lifelong religiousity relies to a certain extent on ignorance, which tends to decrease over the long run. More access to information that is not carefully tailored to the needs of religious propaganda also tends to reduce religiousity. Barring the rise of restrictive censorship programs on religious topics, such as are now practiced in the Middle East, religion is doomed in the long run … maybe in the short run. ---
**Author:** ![chappachula](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d2c977/32.png) [@chappachula](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chappachula)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2014, 10:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/38 "2014-05-18T10:42:32Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > Lifelong religiousity relies to a certain extent on ignorance… religion is doomed in the long run ummm–some of us Dopers have noticed that fighting ignorance takes longer than we thought. 🙂 And despite the best hopes of the born-again, evangelical scientists like Richard Dawkins, religion ain’t going away. The “Death of God” was announced on the cover of Time magazine in 1966. But the funeral is going to be delayed for a few more millenia. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2014, 11:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/39 "2014-05-18T11:54:05Z")
> [@chappachula](#): > > And despite the best hopes of the born-again, evangelical scientists like Richard Dawkins, religion ain’t going away. It seems to be dying off rapidly in places like Europe. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2014, 12:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632/40 "2014-05-18T12:01:27Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > 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. That’s the most depressing thing I’ve heard in a while. It goes against everything I always imagined – human beings shedding themselves of religion within the next century or two – but the facts and logic you cite are real, and a real bummer. The only hope is in gradually reducing that “heritability rate” of religion, I guess through many kinds of fora…the SDMB among them. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-the-death-of-american-social-conservatism-produce-a-completely-new-party-system/688632.md?page=3)