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Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

nytimes.com

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Re: Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

#151

Post by throwaway7312 »

blowski wrote: post #144
throwaway7312 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re assuming poor American working class voters vote against their interests by voting conservative. Leaving aside the social issues for now and looking solely at economic ones, let’s ask the question whether that’s true to them in their own minds. The American liberal party (Democrats) brands itself as the party that’s going to help you out. It’ll leverage redistribution (taxes) to take money from rich people and…

I will read more about Haidt, thanks for the links. Where do you think those different mindsets come from? Is it totally random biology, something about childhood upbringing, or some situation in life?

I could not begin to tell you :)

Far smarter men than me are still debating how much is genes, how much is early childhood influence, how much is the result of what you experience along the way, etc.

I don't suspect we'll have anything remotely close to a conclusive answer anytime soon. My guess is it's something like baking a cake; the batter (biology), how mixed or lumpy it is (childhood), and how it's cooked (life experiences) will all play a role, but aside from the extremes like the eggs missing or being grossly under- or overcooked there's no good way to accurately gauge how everything comes together to produce what it does.

Re: Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

#152

Post by WayneBro »

petewailes wrote: post #3

Pithy answer: because you aren't going to be afraid of something when you understand that it's not something you need to fear. When you have a simple world view, nuance is always going to escape you. An educated person can understand that the world isn't simple, which will lead to a more liberal view, as liberal views tend to be based on the assumption that angry, narrow world view responses aren't a good thing. Some…

> Examples: climate change denial, anti-vax, religion...

It's just a tad naive to list the entirety of religion with climate-change and anti-vax and then conclude that the sole reason that religion exists is "fear of things people don't understand". Do you know anything about religion at all or are you just parroting what you read in the news about American Christianity?

It's funny to me because this kind of thinking seems to indicate that you are "Someone who sees things in black and white, ignoring the complexities of life, [who] will respond with simple, ignorant answers."

Furthermore, the vast majority of people who are pro-vax and anti-religion have made up their mind based on nothing more than social cues. They're not scientists and they have to trust what they're told just like most people.

Re: Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

#153

Post by wrgrossman »

tim333 wrote: post #135
wrgrossman wrote: post #125

I worked at a private University (as a conservative leaning independent) for 7 years. I found the University to be a hostile work environment for conservatives. In my case as well as others, that I met while there, it was enough to dissuade us from pursuing an advanced degree. I worked with many wonderful academics, they are people that I still count among the smartest and kindest people that I have ever met. At the…

Re the 9/11 thing, if you are someone who dislikes the killing of innocent people it seems reasonable to be horrified by the original 9/11 killings of three thousand odd people and also horrified by Bush/Cheney using that as a justification to do stuff leading to the deaths of many times as many innocent people. It seems quite reasonable to avoid condoning that.

I won't disagree that that feeling is reasonable or justified. I've worked at a number of places where someone who felt that way would have been supported if they chose not to participate.

That being said, Academia is the only place where I have worked that it was considered okay to demand that others not be allowed to participate. Especially, demanding that students who may or may not feel the same way be barred from attending.

Re: Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

#154

Post by [deleted] »

vixen99 wrote: post #67
sandworm101 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that you do not see democrats stumping about the benefits of communism. You do see GOP candidates openly denying climate change and denouncing Darwinism as a left-wing plot. One has decided to become more extreme than the other.

Climate change? What does that mean? It used to be global warming but the facts were so blatantly unsupportive that the sly shift to 'climate change' was adopted. Now it's a mantra for unthinking people. But it works because heads I win, tails you lose. The climate is always changing. Temperature changes are slight and hedged with ifs and buts. Now if you mean that the CO2 level in the atmosphere has increased from t…

[deleted]

Re: Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

#155

Post by SaasDeveloper1 »

petewailes wrote: post #3

Pithy answer: because you aren't going to be afraid of something when you understand that it's not something you need to fear. When you have a simple world view, nuance is always going to escape you. An educated person can understand that the world isn't simple, which will lead to a more liberal view, as liberal views tend to be based on the assumption that angry, narrow world view responses aren't a good thing. Some…

You could make the same argument against the "scholar" who spends their life in university and research. They are highly educated and practically useless as they accomplish little of substance towards "enlightenment." A socialist utopia sounds great when confined to the walls of the Ivy League but the individual who actually works for a living is far too wise for such nonsense.

Re: Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

#156

Post by lake99 »

ionised wrote: post #119
lake99 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in the rest of the world is rather to the right of centre I find "rest of the world" hard to justify. The Indian right-wing are Hindu hardliners, but economically not all that different from the "center-left" INC, both of which, are IMO, way more left-wing than the US Democratic party when it comes to economics. Socially, all parties here pander to their regional (as opposed to national) voterbases. The Pakistani r…

Rest of the western/developed world perhaps.

No, on this very page, we seem to have a couple of Australians and a few Europeans, expressing how these terms mean something else in their countries. I don't know how South Americans use these terms, but I expect them to be closer to the European sense.

Re: Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

#157

Post by lake99 »

vowelless wrote: post #75

This has always confused me. There are some rich texts based on beautiful rigor on the side of the conservatives like freidman and Hayek. Goldwater also approaches things in a very principled manner. Arthur brooks' latest book is similar. On the other than, I have not come across any liberal text, yet, that makes a good convincing case for liberalism. I would love to get some recommendations. I'm interested in princi…

Your post confuses me, no offense intended. Friedman and Hayek called themselves liberals, not conservatives. The American progressive movement co-opted the word "liberalism". Before that, they called themselves "progressives". Is that what you're looking for?

Todd8's comment below confuses me for the same reason. Rawls could be considered to be on the US-left. The other people he mentioned, except Gross and Levitt, all opposed Rawls, and called themselves "liberals".

Re: Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

#158

Post by mywittyname »

TruthAndDare wrote: post #82
Kaizyn wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May I refer you to an oldie but goodie: 'The Disadvantages of an Elite Education' by William Deresiewicz: https://theamericanscholar.org/the-disadvantages-of-an-elite...

>It didn’t dawn on me that there might be a few holes in my education until I was about 35. I’d just bought a house, the pipes needed fixing, and the plumber was standing in my kitchen. Hehe, the obvious hole in his education was of course that he couldn't fix his pipes himself. :) Anyway, would you care to summarize or just briefly mention what point the article argues?

TL;DR: The purpose of ivy league schools seems to be to teach people the entitlements of being part of an elite class. With that comes a complete ignorance to the fact that there are smarter, more diligent people that don't get into elite universities. [cites the behavior of numerous Yale graduates]

Re: Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

#159

Post by dragonwriter »

rimantas wrote: post #109
gjulianm wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this comment to be borderline insulting, even when my political views are very liberal. Basically, what I read in your comment (maybe I'm misreading it) is that not having a liberal view means that the person does not understand the world, has an angry response, ignores the complexities of life and does not understand anything. So, instead of just trying to understand what do these people think, feel and fear…

Yes, religion in the same bucket (and largely responsible for the existence of the bucket itself). Why look for answers when they all are in THE BOOK? > A degree just gives you knowledge in a specific area, and > does not make anyone more intelligent just by having it. In many (most?) cases a degree also means that you became familiar and aquired skills needed for problems solving and answer finding. And even if raw…

> Yes, religion in the same bucket (and largely responsible for the existence of the bucket itself). Why look for answers when they all are in THE BOOK?

Within Christianity (much less religion more generally), the idea that the answers are all "in the book" (the doctrine of sola scriptura) is a doctrine of a distinct subset of the larger body of believers.

Re: Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

#160

Post by eli_gottlieb »

fab13n wrote: post #72

I'm an upper-middle class, over-educated professional expert, and I'm strongly liberal for selfish reasons: mostly, I want to live in a climate of social peace, and would prefer to be surrounded by people who foster a mood of solidarity and benevolence, rather than a cut-throat and ever-worsening competitive mindset. So sure, one way is to protect myself and those I love behind a gated community. But that's pretty mu…

You actually sound more like a social-democrat than a liberal. Liberals do not refer to property as a mere social construct.
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