Does college make you a liberal?

The first step in the freshman orientation is the brainwashing proceedure.

Good luck!

Re: Does college make you a liberal?


We can only hope.

<snort>!

Well, I for one was just as liberal before college as I was after college.

Actually I didn't turn liberal until I joined the armed forces and got sent to some faraway place to kill people, University life/experience mellowed me out rendered me the conservative you see here. (I think it's the floridated water in the uni water systems that makes peeps liberal so I only drank whisky while I was there.

College actually does nothing but help you learn how to think for yourself.

In other words, it won't make you a liberal, but it will greatly decrease your chances of being a conservative.

Okay.

In all seriousness, as Oprah would say "when you know better, you do better".

College, if done right, will expose you to ideas that you have never considered. It will open your mind to new ways of looking at the world and the people who inhabit it.

I do believe that research shows that those with a better education are more likely to embrace a liberal ideology.

Look forward to testing your beliefs. Go after it in a big way. Question everything you know. That's what college is for - growing your mind.

Whether you emerge a liberal or a conservative at least you will have challenged your mind and grown to understand why you believe what you believe.

lol I wasn't trying to be rude, I'm sorry if it came off like that. I just know that I've been told that there is quite a bit of peer pressure to become more liberal if you are a conservative. I don't want to be close-minded but I don't want to be pushed into a belief. I am president of a political club at school and we talk about a lot of different political beliefs. I've become less staunchly conservative and become rooted in my own ideas politically because I've discussed different political ideologies. But that is because I chose to do so. I don't want to be pressured into believing something bc the faculty and/or students believe in it.

You know the line, rmrrose820, "Just say NO!" No one is going to pull an intervention to cure you of your conservatism. And, no one will try to brain wash you. I doubt you'll see very little to no pressure to rethink your conservative dogma. But, just maybe, you'll grow and learn and change on your own. What ever happens, it should be your own decision.

Do you have anything to substantiate this "research"?



rmrrose - there's a current discussion on this subject:

http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1039019#1039019
(Diversity of everything but thought).......check it out.

If you can't stand up to peer pressure, university isn't a good choice for you in any case.

University is about doing your own thinking, defending your own choices successfully, not being afraid to confront people with other positions.

College doesn't turn people liberal; life does.

Cycloptichorn

How do you know you're a conservative? Do you vote against your own economic security? Do you find yourself wanting to give more tax breaks to millionaires? Are all your positions counter-intuitive like waging war to win the peace, and amending the Constitution to reduce rights rather than expand them?



Have you tried to understand what government for the people means?

Joe (together is better) Nation

ehBeth: I think I can handle the peer pressure but I am realistic and realize that surroundings have a large impact on you, particularly during the formative years of college. I'm just not sure to what extent the liberal agenda is present in universities.

Cycloptichorn: Awesome SN btw. I've always heard the opposite. But then, I am only 17 and I make no pretense at knowing much about life at this stage.

Joe Nation: I am a conservative because I believe in morality and personal responsibility.

I did find this, Just Wonders:

http://www.umich.edu/~umisl/articles/parties.htm

I'm just going to type in the liberal v conservitive numbers:

grade school conservative: 15 liberal: 7
high school 19 13
some college 18 23
college grad 17 30
advanced degree 17 26

When it came to the formation of the democracies of the West, the concepts of liberalism and democracy, while not inseparable, were surely complementary, with the emphasis on the former. Among the founders of the American republic were serious men who were more dubious about democracy than about liberty. They certainly did not believe in -- indeed, they feared -- populism; populism that, unlike a century ago, has now become (and not only in the United States) the political instrument of "conservatives," of so-called men of the "Right." It is significant that in Europe, too, the appeal of the term "liberal" has declined, while "democratic" is the adopted name of a variety of parties, many of them not only antiliberal but also extreme right-wing nationalist.

Yes, democracy is the rule of the majority; but there liberalism must enter. Majority rule must be tempered by the rights of minorities and of individual men and women; but when that temperance is weak, or unenforced, or unpopular, then democracy is nothing else than populism. More precisely: Then it is nationalist populism. It may be that the degeneration of liberal democracy to populism will be the fundamental problem of the future. True, many liberals have contributed to the inflation -- the degeneration -- of the original meaning of "liberal." But the acceptance of the word "liberal" as a connotation of something damnable, unhealthy, and odious is to be deplored.

Liberalism in its noblest, and also in its most essential, sense has always meant (and, to be fair, here and there it still means) an exaltation, a defense of the fundamental value and category of human dignity. But much of scientism and technology (yes, including the orthodoxy of Darwinism and the absolute belief in progress) declares that there was, there is, and there remains no fundamental difference between human beings and all other living beings. But if that is so, what happens to the emphasis on human dignity? Either human beings are unique or they are not. Either thesis may be credible, but not both. That is not just a question for religion.

John Lukacs is a professor emeritus of history. His newest book, Democracy and Populism: Fear and Hatred, will be published by Yale University Press in February.

Yes.... and what does government for the people mean?

Joe

If you're truly fearful that being at a fine university like Rice or Cornell will make you change your political views, then your views can't be all that strong, can they? It doesn't sound as though you're a very deeply convinced or committed conservative.

Thanks for looking, boomerang.

I was only 3 when that study was made. I'll see if I can find something more recent.

I don't understand how folks can call liberals immoral or against personal responsibility. I guess you have to be one to know. As for college making one liberal, Bush and many other prominent "conservatives" also went to college.