> That’s interesting, but there does seem to be a moderate
> amount of data to the contrary: faculties (apart from
> math/science faculties, which don’t count [as it were]) have
> been surveyed and found far more liberal than the population
> at large, far more liberal than the student or grad student
> population; conservatives simply _don’t_ “get hired in
> academia at the same rate as liberals”, unless the data is
> wrong…
I’ve also noticed that creationists don’t get hired as much in biology departments. And astrologers are noticeably lacking in psychology departments. Conspiracy!
Why are faculties more liberal than the general population? Because the more you learn, the more liberal you get. Also, conservatives don’t want to waste their time teaching; they go into professions that actually make money! C’mon, conservatives, you’ve got Wall Street, the White House, the Congress, the Supreme Court, the Media, and all the money, can’t we at least have the university faculties and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals?
I can only speak from my own observations and experience. When I was fresh out of high school, I was a Reagan Republican. I voted for Bush Sr. in my first presidential election. I believed the homeless people should just go out and get jobs. I believed drug addicts (I hadn’t touched any until 1990) should Just Say No. I believed that gay people were choosing that lifestyle. I believed that giving rich people lots of money would have the effect of trickling down to the masses. I believed the media had a liberal bias. I believed that the terrorists hated us because they’re jealous of us. I believed affirmative action was reverse racism. I believed the Mexicans should be shot trying to cross the border because they were coming to take out jobs. I believed women had abortions because they were too slutty to take care of their birth control.
So what happened? College. (I actually did participate in my undergraduate education for a few semesters, before the lure of rock’n’roll, free drugs, and willing groupies took hold.) In particular, I think the changing points were two classes I took: Intro to Social Work and Macroeconomics.
I remember my professor, he came highly recommended by my father, who was president of the Student Social Workers just the year before. His name was Arnold Panitch, a Russian Jew, which in Boise, Idaho is pretty rare. One of our exercises was a case study of a poor, single, high-school dropout welfare mom with three kids. Professor Panitch assigned us to read her story and come up with a way to get her into a job and out of poverty. Try as I might, I couldn’t do it. She could only qualify for the basest of jobs at minimum wage, and to work meant her kids had to go to day care that cost more than the money she’d make working. Likewise, she couldn’t get into any sort of schools or job-training. Every avenue for advancement I could conceive of was impossible. At that moment, I realized, “hey, maybe those homeless guys can’t just go out and get a job…”
And the Macroeconomics class helped by showing me how markets and money works. I learned about supply and demand; that no matter how much supply you have, it’s worthless without the demand for it. I started to think, “hmm, what would be better for the economy: giving a rich guy more money when he’s already hoarding the wealth he currently owns, or giving poor people more money who will immediately spend it to pay back debts and create demand for goods?”
Also during college I started to meet people unlike me. I met a gay person, and eventually asked if being gay was a choice or a condition of birth. He was so funny and cool, he just answered, “Oh it’s a choice, absolutely! I wasn’t getting beat up enough in high school, and sure enough, choosing to be gay really increased my beatings!” I met a Mexican-American who was the first of his migrant-worker family to go to college. He told me he completely agreed with my views on closing down the border, because he wanted to spend weekends visiting onion fields to watch white people put in a fourteen-hour day stooped over in the hot sun for less than minimum wage.
Then, as those of you who know me know, I dropped out of college and began the life of a rock musician. This made me even more liberal as I participated in the seamy underside of drug addicts and alcoholics and the working poor who go to bars to listen to me jam out the three chords of “Taking Care Of Business” in an attempt to drown out the miseries of the week. I learned the hard way that once you say “Yes” to some drugs, saying “No” becomes nigh impossible. I couldn’t say no to methamphetimines until a life-threatening hernia put me into emergency surgery. I was lucky to have a family and friends and education and opportunities to get me out of that life.
So now when I listen to conservatives, I think back to the ignorant high school kid I was, growing up in lily-white middle-class suburbia, blithely unaware of the reality of the world, and I wonder just how much these right-wingers are paying attention to the people and the world around them. Because from my point of view, being conservative means seeing the world in first-person singular; being a liberal means seeing the world in first-person plural.
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