Saw an interesting perspective the other day re: universities and students leaning liberal.

[A HERETIC I AM]

It was a TikTok vid, if I recall. The woman professor said that one of the reasons so many young people become liberals after attending a major college or university in this country is because they are finally told the truth.

They come into these large schools with their pre-conceived notions foisted on them by their local school districts and their churches and families, and for the first time in their lives they are presented with unvarnished reality and truth.

It tends to change their perspective.

That is one reason so many right wingers are afraid of this idea of Critical Race Theory gaining traction or becoming more widely discussed. It’s even more truth and we just can’t have that, now can we? It’s like Florida Governor DeShitforbrains and his dopey party loyalty quiz (or whatever he’s calling it, but we all know what that crap is about), trying to keep students dumb enough so conservative political ideology can remain viable.

Dumb, uninformed people tend to vote Republican. Educated, enlightened, critical thinking people tend to vote Democratic and liberal.

Just thought that was interesting.

[lagomorph777]

1. I've always understood that's why Reptilians are anti-education.

[Phoenix61]

2. I bet a lot of them quit going to church.

I knew kids who had to go until they graduated from high-school.

[A HERETIC I AM]

11. I started refusing to go when I was 17 or so.

I remember the day I had it out with my dad. We had attended Episcopal (or Anglican, depending on where we were) churches overseas and everywhere we lived. He sang in the choirs at all of them and mom was involved in the things moms get involved in.

But I got to the point where my skepticism was growing stronger and I just said I didn’t want to go anymore.

After some yelling and argument, he relented.

I’ve attended a grand total of about 3 Holy Eucharist services since then.

But I agree with you. Once kids who have been going to church all their lives are finally exposed to other perspectives, the desire to attend church services falls away.

[IronLionZion]

14. I went on and off while in college

but gave up completely in my late 20s

[Warpy]

37. When they had kids, a lot of them went back.

I watched it among my own circle of friends, the kids dragged them back because they wanted to be with their friends for church outings. Most of them picked sane churches. The ones who got sucked into Jebusland didn't last long as friends, too intolerant.

I didn't believe a word of it by the time I was 10. Bertrand Russell let me know that wasn't a shameful thing a couple of years later.

it was always a contentious subject with my parents, but I'm glad to say both died unbelievers, unafraid of judgment or hell. I had nothing to do with it, there had been an armed truce and a moratorium on discussing it for many years.

So churchgoing can be fluid, people going at some times and avoiding it at others, depending on life stages and whether or not they buy the story. Some leave while they're young, go back while they have kids, and leave again. Some stay away until they're old. alone, ill and frightened. And some are sour old atheists like me who just can't see the point.

So don't expect a huge drop and don't expect it to be permanent.

[ck4829]

3. Certainly. Today's conservatism is NOT the conservatism of William Buckley

Heck, I bet most of the people at Trump rallies don't even know who he is.

If you do things to "own the libs", to just spite people, you act shocking and offensive just to act shocking and offensive. If you run around being racist, sexist, xenophobic. If you operate on the mindset that rules are for "other people". If you express disdain and even hostility for the institutions of medicine, science, and education. And if you're not bothered by "cancel culture", people have been fired for being gay, for being on the left, for being unmarried and pregnant for years now, you're just really bothered by the idea of YOU getting potentially canceled, and everyone knows it...

Then, people are going to treat you like a boorish man-child... because you are a boorish man-child.

Maybe conservatives could stop being boorish man-children?

[ProfessorGAC]

22. Good Post!

Good description of the phenomenon.

[GB_RN]

26. For Conservatives

Or more accurately, "regressives", it's all about the cruelty they can inflict on others.

[JHB]

36. I still maintain that what people today think of as "the conservatism of William Buckley" is...

...a lot more flattering to him than the actual conservatism of William F. Buckley. It was a lot nastier and less principled than people remember, mostly because those aspects were not the face he showed on The Firing Line.

He was a radical, not merely "conservative," despite labels. He's one of the people whose goal was to wipe out the New Deal and everything after and before it that made the government work for ordinary people instead of the wealthy. As far as he was concerned those were socialism, Marxism, communism. Not such an out-of-place view these days, thanks to the success of his acolytes in dragging definitions far to the right.

He's one of the people who considered the Rockefeller Republicans to be traitors and quislings, and set about radicalizing the Republicans to make it an exclusively conservative party. Anyone who was Conservatively Incorrect was targeted for ouster or isolation until they retired and were replaced with a more ideologically acceptable candidate. He encouraged divisiveness in order to eliminate a safe middle ground. Compromise with the enemy (us) was always "Munich".

The Republican Party is what he put it on the course to become: a party elite playing the part of statesmen while using every nasty trick and tactic to get enough votes to take power and use that power to push an agenda straight out of Buckley: fill the courts with conservative judges, cut taxes, deregulate, undermine or wipe out labor and environmental laws, etc.

He simply had to operate in an environment where he was an outlier, and had to use that Ivy League education, manners, and connections of his to make headway. If he didn't, he'd have been dismissed as just another crank who could go rant at the country club bar over his gin and tonics.

He's remembered better because of the better presentation he needed then, and because of the hot mess he created has come to fruition.

[ck4829]

41. I know, right? I'll be an old man and I'll never call myself a conservative

It wasn’t great back then either.

It’s just funny and tragic at the same time that today’s conservatism is “Think Ronald Reagan and Charles Krauthammer doing lines of coke… then aim lower.”

[unblock]

4. A lot of it isn't even coming from professors

It's coming from the other students when people who feel up in all white neighborhoods finally meet people of color, it other religions, etc., and realize they're all just kids at college. Studying, partying, working, eating. Not so different after all.

[A HERETIC I AM]

12. Agreed.

I never attended a 4 year university, but I understand what happens to young people exposed to true diversity for the first time.

[intrepidity]

5. As they say, truth/reality has a liberal bias

and you've just explained perfectly why it manifests so prominently in higher education institutions.

[A HERETIC I AM]

13. Thanks!

[flying_wahini]

6. My husbands family were (still) Bible Banging Church of Christ. They wanted all their kids to go

a ‘good’ Christian school. They openly said they were afraid the young’uns would leave the
Church if they were exposed to the Devil’s ways.

After a lifetime of indoctrination they were still worried about exposure to ANY liberal concept.
My comment to them was How strong is your Christianity if someone can talk you out of it?
Your faith must not be very strong if a few classes can change your mind.

[A HERETIC I AM]

17. The reason religious skeptics represent such a threat...

To many sects of religion in my opinion at least, is because for many Christian denominations we represent that unmentionable alternate possibility; That everything they have been told is utter bullshit!

Not unique to Christianity either, obviously. Publicly saying you don’t believe in god in the Arab world can be a death sentence.

[3catwoman3]

30. "How strong is your Christianity if someone can talk you out of it?"

"Your faith must not be very strong if a few classes can change your mind."

Pre-bleepin'-cisely! I have been saying this for years. Those who claim they avoid whatever it might be because of their allegedly strong faith are NOT operating from strength, but from fear.

[FakeNoose]

7. The rightwing attitudes come from the parents mostly

Once college kids are free of their parents, they can explore other ideas, learn the real history and the real culture of our species. Suddenly things start to make sense, suddenly they can see that they've been lied to for the first 18 or so years of their young lives.

Ultra rightwing parents are already hip to this and they insist their kids go to rightwing conservative schools, and THOSE KIDS are never told the truth. Never!

That's how we get Beer-bois on the Supreme Court.

[A HERETIC I AM]

19. Yeah...no kidding.

And Amy Coney I do what my husband tells me to Barrett.

[alterfurz]

8. Karl Rove explains:

"As people do better, they start voting like Republicans...unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing."

[Hoyt]

9. That's exactly what happened to me, not that I had not already seen things that bothered me in high

school -- separate, and unequal, schools, segregated water fountains, employment ads in a large newspaper that actually said "Only Caucasians need apply," and much worse crud. But truth is, I still was at a point where I'd hesitate a bit to make sure I was using "integration" and "segregation" correctly because those issues weren't really talked about in classes.

I was very lucky. I went to a typical southern conservative university in 1967. We are talking about colleges where the fraternity houses had big confederate flags hanging on the antebellum houses. One of the reasons I avoided fraternities. The alumni did include the likes of Jimmy Carter, Sam Nunn, and numerous scholars. So, it was not totally rubesville, although a lot of students were rubes.

Anyway, my first quarter there I needed one more course to fill out my hours. Only thing I could find was a Sociology class at 8:00AM three days a week, including Saturday. I almost didn't take it because I hated early classes.

The first few sessions were pretty normal, although the professor was an odd, but likable type. One Monday he walked in with a big bandage on his head. He had been at the city park over the weekend for a large demonstration -- civil rights and Vietnam -- and had been arrested/beaten by police.

After telling us what happened, he said go ahead and sell your sociology books because we are going off script. The class turned into something very similar to Howard Zinn's book A People's History of the United States written over a decade later.

I never learned as much in any other class. Just a few years ago I saw where he had died in his 80s. I wrote a long response to the notice expressing my sincere thanks for his class and the risks he took teaching such matters back in the 1960s.

[A HERETIC I AM]

15. The kind of teacher that can change lives.

Sounds like a fascinating man.

[3catwoman3]

31. How fortunate that you picked that class.

Thank you for sharing this story.

[StarfishSaver]

10. Exactly

This is also the answer to why so many political journalists lean left - they have more information and know more about politics and government than the average person.

[A HERETIC I AM]

16. Yup.

“The more you know….”

[Mr.Bill]

18. Anyone worried about their children being

"indoctrinated" into any political ideaology by a college needs to take a look at how they raised their children before they blame the college.

[A HERETIC I AM]

21. Exactly

I find it fascinating that conservatives want to call teaching truth “indoctrination”.

Well, what the hell have they been doing to the kid all his/her life?

[Mr.Bill]

23. And Big Religion knows this.

That's why most of them run their own Universities.

[hunter]

20. Reality has a well known liberal bias.

--Stephen Colbert

[jmbar2]

24. I was thrilled when I started grad school and started reading critical theory

It was the essence of higher education to me - having deep philosophical discussions that turned my assumptions upside down, hearing viewpoints of students of color on topics where I had never questioned my received knowledge, and learning how to do critical analysis.

My life changed in every aspect as a result of that experience. It made me a stronger advocate for others, and a vocal dissenter about issues in organizations that might inadvertently hurt others.

If the schools cannot offer critical theory, there should be free after school programs that offer it in every community. You could advertise it as, "The knowledge they don't want you to have".

[GoodRaisin]

25. My subdivision is heavy in university professors. I know this because I was active

in protesting a nearby development project, and a large part of the subdivision eventually joined my protest, during which time I met most of them personally. I was blown away by the number of educators that had bought homes here. There are over 100 homes, and I only recall one home with Trump-Pence signs during the last election. But, Biden-Harris and other democratic candidates signs in down ballot races were all over the place.

Driving through our neighborhood it was pretty clear who my university employed neighbors were supporting.

[ananda]

27. That happened to me regarding religion.

In my junior year my Classical Civilization professor
really opened my eyes about the similarities between
old religions.

I was already liberal politically, but it made me see
the Catholic Church in a whole new way. I was then
able to ditch the bad and false parts, and keep the
good... and I came to like the mysticism in all the
religions.

[modrepub]

28. Ignorance Spawns Fear

Knowledge provides some salve against fear of the unknown. A scant few of the educated have come to realize how little we actually do know (but we are still not fearful).

Fear (of the unknown) is a great motivator against change. It also seems a powerful motivator for getting people to vote. I'd bet my bottom dollar that folks who have less fear of change are less inclined to register or show up to vote. Maybe they realize the futility of fighting against inevitable change or maybe they realize "control" is merely an illusion. After all, what do you really have "control" over?

[Glaisne]

29. This quote from Howard Zinn is appropriate

“History is important. If you don't know history it is as if you were born yesterday. And if you were born yesterday, anybody up there in a position of power can tell you anything, and you have no way of checking up on it.”
― Howard Zinn

In the end all of conservatism is based on BS, it's a con-job. If you are uneducated and don't learn critical thinking skills, and science, history, etc. then you will fall for cons and believe in BS, especially from charismatic authoritarians.

[Pacifist Patriot]

33. Conservatism relies on convincing people the past (the way it is conveyed as a golden age) is...

both reality and desirable. When in fact it is neither. The past as a golden age is an illusion painted to preserve the power of those who held it in that "golden age" and want to make sure they continue to possess that monopoly on power.

[Pacifist Patriot]

32. The minute someone is exposed to an alternative point of view/experience AND...

are in an environment conducive to listening AND promotes critical thinking... it is game over. THAT is what they are afraid of.

Reality does indeed have a liberal bias. Okay, I hate that phrase, but there you have it.

[AverageOldGuy]

34. Back a few years ago . . . .

I was born (1944) in rural SW Mississippi.

A few years ago -- I don't recall exactly when -- I made the offhand comment to a couple of acquaintances that I was born a Southerner, a Baptist and a Democrat then I learned to read -- and I'm still a Democrat. Their reaction was . . . well, they were not happy and I've never seen them since.

[Captain Zero]

35. Amazon Prime is running a doc about PEONAGE

Everyone needs to see it. I think I saw it in parts on you tube as well. I've been to college and read Howard Zinn and I had no idea how extensive debt peonage was in running the Jim Crow era South. Shocking.

[moonscape]

40. What's the name of the documentary? n/t

[AllaN01Bear]

38. ive know some smart people to be republican too. and a mind is a terrible thing to waste .

[AllaN01Bear]

39. they had to unlearn what was drilled into them. my late mom said that universites

and colleges are there to make people think.

[colsohlibgal]

42. This

You either accept the truth and go from there or you turn right wing and deny reality....like all the whining about Critical Race Theory.