Marty Kaplan: Liberal Parents, Liberal Children - The Diigo Meta page

• 27 Jan 09
  

  Clay Burell

  For jan 31: New study suggests American youth are more self-professed liberal than anytime in a generation, discuss politics ditto - but don't watch or read political news in the same numbers. What gives?

  progressive research students change politics conservative webroundup

  • More freshmen today say they frequently discuss politics than at any time since Lyndon Johnson announced that he wouldn't run for re-election. Just since 2000, that slice of young people -- 35.6 percent -- has more than doubled, and it even exceeds by a couple of points the previous high-water mark, when Richard Nixon was elected president. When you add in the number of today's freshmen who say they occasionally discuss politics, you're talking about nearly 86 percent of them, another record.

    
    
    

    Today, the proportion of freshmen calling themselves liberal has hit 31 percent, the highest it's been in 35 years. At the same time, the number of students calling their political views middle-of-the-road has hit an all-time low, just over 43 percent, territory it hasn't been in since 1970. Only one out of five students today describes him or herself as conservative, an erosion of more than two points since the year before.

  • You can see expressions of that liberalism -- a word that doesn't seem to be a boogeyman to today's college freshmen -- in the support by two-thirds of them for same-sex marriage; in the agreement by more than 60 percent of them that "the wealthy should pay a larger share of taxes than they do now"; in the belief by three-quarters of them that "addressing global warming should be a federal priority." More than four out of 10 freshmen want marijuana legalized, while only 28 percent of them want higher military spending, a steep drop from the high of 45 percent in the wake of Sept. 11.
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  • • One difference between today's freshmen and the ones buying the Beatles' new "Sgt. Pepper" album -- the difference that makes sense -- is a drop in the number saying that it's very important or essential to find a meaningful philosophy of life. It was 86 percent in 1967. By 2004, that had fallen to a record low of less than 40 percent. Though it stands now at 51.4 percent, that's still a huge drop since 1967. At the same time, the percent saying that being well-off financially is essential or very important has risen from 43.5 percent in 1967 -- half the number looking for a philosophy of life -- to nearly 77 percent today.

      
      
      

      Who can blame them? The years between the 1960-61 recession and the 1973 oil crisis saw economic growth, which made it an opportune time to worry more about the meaning of life than about financial security. But with the pall now cast over the economy, it's a wonder that only three out of four freshmen are worried about making ends meet.

      
      
      

      To me, the real conundrum in the attitudes of today's freshmen has to do with news. In the late 1960s, keeping up with politics was an essential or very important goal to 60.3 percent of freshmen. By 2000, the number had fallen to less than half of that, a record low. It rose after Sept. 11, but today the figure is still south of 40 percent. How can it be that almost nine out of 10 freshman say they talk about politics, but six out of 10 don't think it's important to keep up with politics?

      
      
      

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