It's Hip to be Liberal
Posted by alalonde
I've been spending a decent amount of time on Facebook lately, sending messages, posting on people's walls, stalk--errr, reading about people, etc. One thing I've been noticing is people's "political views." There are eight selections for this category:
- Very Liberal
- Liberal
- Moderate
- Conservative
- Very Conservative
- Apathetic
- Libertarian
- Other
I'll admit that most of my friends tend to lean to the left, but I can still count on my fingers the number of people who have put "Conservative" or "Very Conservative" in their profiles. Even a lot of the people that I strongly couple with conservative ideology and frame of mind are "Moderate." This intrigued me to compile some numbers:
In the RIT network (this includes current students, alumni, staff and faculty with Facebook accounts) the political outlook is:
Innnnnteresting...this begs a number of questions: Why are there so many "liberal" people? There are only 102 people that are unabashedly conservative? This at a tech school full of engineers and IT students! This where most students' idea of a good time on a friday night is sitting in their room playing World of Warcraft, drinking Mountain Dew, and locking themselves away from the outside world?
Politics in this country tends to be fairly evenly split between the Democrats and Republicans. It has been like this for several decades, with the typical pendulum of partisan support gently swinging every decade or so. Yet these numbers aren't remotely close to balanced.
"2008, here we come!" One might think on first glance. But the problem is, just about everyone represented here is between the age of 18 and 24, and frankly, most of us should jump into that "Apathetic" column. We don't speak up, get involved, or even vote!
I believe that these numbers are just part of a trend. After six years of bullying, fear-mongering, and outright lies, we're pretty fed up with the man in charge and his administration. As a nation we finally spoke up in November, and a whole lot of people (GOP'ers included, clearly) are disassociating themselves from the President. It's about time, but still, I think all this means is that right now, it's just hip to be liberal.
It's worth noting that there is a liberal bent in students at all educational institutions and always has been. One theory is that students don't buy into conservative ideology until they've had to pay taxes. Facebook's little thing on political stance is complete crap anyway. I'm fiscally conservative and socially liberal, but in terms of government privacy issues I'm practically libertarian. Where does that put me in terms of that list? I have no clue, so I just put liberal like everybody else. At least I fit in this way.
I was going to put in a bit about people who put 'libertarian' and how they likely have no idea about the broad ideology of libertarianism...I think a lot just like the whole bit about the removal of drug laws but have no idea about the social ideologies and subsequent consequences...
Alec, I'm pleased to see your interest in political philosophy. I was a poly sci minor in undergraduate school, second only to my interest in philosophy, which I couldn't get a minor in. I took your earlier test, and I was found to be a liberal leaning libertarian, which is probably pretty close to my views. Cheers, Daddyo