Radio National reported on a joint study by the University of California, Berkeley, Indiana University and the University of Maryland not long back that some young’uns appear to be more conservative than their parents who grew up in the 1970s. My experience certainly agrees. The RN story tried to hang that difference on the rebellious nature of teenies, but I think it’s simpler than that.
‘Leftism’ is the political domain of thinking people. In almost all cases I can think of, the leftie position will be based in evidence, not simple or popular belief. Conservative views are frequently based in fears of the unknown (i.e. racism, nationalism based in xenophobia) or in religio-moralist beliefs (anti-abortion, drug wars), none of which require one independently acquire knowledge and apply critical analyses. These lines of thought merely require unconditional, unquestioned belief; blind faith, if you will.
At the risk of offending the younger people reading this, I have to say that the older you are, the more likely you are to be educated and thus able to apply a deeper analysis. Every time I hear a teen-20 person come up with something of a ‘conservative’ bent, I find that these notions would be cured with a little infusion of thought and established fact. The ‘youth’ we’re talking about here are generally pre-university age.
Universities are frequently derided by hardcore conservatives as hotbeds of poisonous liberal thought that should be dismantled. Many conservatives are suspicious of educated people. I still can’t work out why being ignorant and believing faerie tales is somehow a desirable thing, outside of the fact that people who will believe anything without deeper consideration are quite easily led and don’t give much trouble to elected leaders. However, exposure to uni doesn’t actually teach one what to think as much as how to think.
Outside of racism/nationalism, probably the nuttiest stuff I hear is young Australian and American women expressing anti-feminist views, despite women still being significantly underpaid compared to men and heavily discriminated against in the workforce, not to mention being dictated to by men as to how to operate their sexy bits.
These young women often equate feminism with dykes, cheesecloth skirts and hairy armpits, as though feminism were a fashion choice. Of course, once young women gain some knowledge of the recent history of how the world has changed for women, that history just outside of their own life experience, they begin to appreciate what feminists really are and exactly why they should be one. Of course, this requires that one be open to learning.
Some younguns never see the bigger picture… the result being the sort of person you find in Sophie Panopoulos and Phyllis Schlafly… and the silly, overprivileged able-bodied 20-something cow that I evicted from a disabled parking space at Woolies yesterday evening when I caught her parked in an access space without a permit (with lots of other carpark spaces available only 3 metres further from the shop entry).
The conspiracy theorist in me thinks that right-wingers in Australia wanted to dismantle VSU to keep students off campus. It’s true that if students don’t congregate and network, there’s fewer opportunites for them to organise resistance to the status quo. In example, one US uni I attended was in a major city, an expensive private school, where most students were commuters and did not live in university housing on campus. The other was a large state operated uni where most students came from families of modest means and also lived on campus due to the distance to the uni from their home residences. The latter was a decidedly more leftie/small ‘L’ liberal community.
No, Virginia, using the title "Ms." does not indicate a woman is divorced and all peace activists are not necessarily unbathed hippies.
-weez
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Reading this, and John Doyle’s speech from the Andrew Olle Lecture… it’s made we realise that we’ve got a lot of work to do on our side of the politcal divide.
Comment by Marcus 10.13.05 @ 12:56 pmClearly true, Marcus.
But who in the group who abhor commercialism will become the salesman for the cause?
Is part of the value of progressive thought in the discovery itself? If it’s made more accessible, is leftism itself devalued? There’s a balance somewhere.
I find that wrapping my leftiebricks in a little humour often makes them a bit more palatable. Photoshop culture jams are becoming a new favorite for me.
Comment by weezil 10.13.05 @ 1:08 pmYou’ve got a point. But I think the fact remains that liberalism and the left are being disenfranchised from the very processes of meaning making and the demarcation of what’s true. I don’t want to bear witness to an age of unreason. I don’t want any daughter of mine to be ashamed of being a feminist. I don’t want to be maligned for saying the Bible has no place in a Science classroom. I don’t want ‘Union’ to be a dirty word.
But all these things ARE being contested. And I hate to say it, but it looks like we’re losing.
Comment by Marcus 10.13.05 @ 3:47 pmAlso… you’re damn right about the humour thing. Have you seen any of the snippets of Bill Maher’s Tv show that seem to float around the net?
Just the other day I saw one where he was wiping Anne Coulter all over the floor in an interview, and had the audience rolling in the ailes. He was never disrespectful, or discourteous, but turned her into a laughing stock none the less.
Now that’s a show I wouldn’t mind Australia slavishly immitating!
Comment by Marcus 10.13.05 @ 3:59 pmI am a Ms Feminist and I know what I think but I do have trouble with how to think and then put it in words that make sense. Ridicule is sometimes the best weapon we can use unless you want to borrow my geologist’s pick for future parking evictions? More feminist, gay and political history should be taught in high school not just at university level.
Comment by JahTeh 10.13.05 @ 4:43 pmMarcus, the most shameful thing is that HoWARd was re-elected on the interest rate ruse by some greedy, shortsighted voters. Not a single one of them will have any right to complain when they are sacked for no just cause and find their man HoWARd has taken away their right to contest the dismissal. When people start losing their jobs and thus their houses to HoWARd’s REAL constituency on the big end of town, the lights may begin to come on…
Comment by weezil 10.14.05 @ 10:10 amLeave a comment
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