Poll: Your Political Leaning

[meankney]

This is random, but I was just looking at this forum and an add about reading Ann Coulter's column was on it. Gag. Ann Coulter is the devil. Seriously. She is what's wrong with America. People need to quit voting just to get THEIR party elected and start voting for the person who will be best for the country.

I didn't vote in the poll because it only came up with results but I'm about as liberal as they get.

[Leahlearns]

I'm an English major and basically a socialist, though I don't know how those two things are related. I think people are indistinguishable from their participation in society, so we all have to take care of ourselves and each other at the same time. I vote for Democrats not because I think the party line is completely correct, but because we have more influence moving parties' political positions from within them than we do from outside of them.

I probably fall under the socialist label too. I believe that everyone can/should chip in so that basic needs can be met for everyone health care, education, public transportation, etc. But a lot of what I see on the "far left" in the US I disagree with. I think the "far left," perhaps especially in academia, can get awfully whiny sometimes. There are problems. There are people who are not treated equally. I don't think there's any denying that. But I don't think it all needs to be turned into a who's more oppressed competition. On a related note, I also think sometimes those of us on the "far left" tend to romanticize "the other" a bit-- the Free Tibet protest last spring being a case in point. Sure, there have been abuses. But how many of those protesters could name five major cities in Tibet or tell you the first thing about how the next Dalai Lama is chosen. We might be able to help. But we should help where we know how. I'd love to see the same level of outrage we saw all across the country regarding human rights abuses in Tibet last spring over the lack of national health care (a problem most Americans have first-hand experience with). I think the reason that hasn't happened is because Tibet and Darfur and Palestine, etc are more "romantic." I'm not saying there aren't real problems in those areas, but I just doubt that many of the people involved really know the complexities/ what they're fighting for/ what would really help.

[swr22]

Although 400,000 Darfuris have been slaughtered- if we didn't do anything about the Holocaust because of 'complexities', we'd be rightly ashamed of ourselves. I think that you make a valuable point- informed protest is as necessary as protest itself- but it should be underlined that it isn't an excuse to walk by on the other side.

[habu987]

History major here. Far right fiscally, socially, religiously, etc.

[kbupz]

Reading this, my thought was that there may be a correlation between personality type and political views. Here is an interesting page that shows the results of a survey of 3000 Americans that asked (among other things) their MBTI personality type and their political party. People who go to graduate school, I think, are often IN types, who typically "are interested in knowledge for its own sake, as well as ideas, theory, and depth of understanding." Among those, the T/F distinction makes a world of difference. The "T" types are more strongly republican (or independent), while the "F" types are strongly democrat.

These results were actually what I was expecting, as I think that the thinking types would be more likely to be found in the hard sciences where there is the link between theory and practice is easiest to substantiate, while the feeling types would be the ones in the social sciences and humanities (I too am lumping them together ), where there are strong overtones of "social justice," as I believe someone said very early on in this thread. Of course, since the data preceded my hypothesis, this is not scientific, but it would make an interesting study for one of you statisticians/social scientists (at least, I think it would be interesting).

P.S. Sorry to those who are unfamiliar with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, but I'm sure Google can help you out.

[was1984]

Reading this, my thought was that there may be a correlation between personality type and political views. Here is an interesting page that shows the results of a survey of 3000 Americans that asked (among other things) their MBTI personality type and their political party. People who go to graduate school, I think, are often IN types, who typically "are interested in knowledge for its own sake, as well as ideas, theory, and depth of understanding." Among those, the T/F distinction makes a world of difference. The "T" types are more strongly republican (or independent), while the "F" types are strongly democrat.

These results were actually what I was expecting, as I think that the thinking types would be more likely to be found in the hard sciences where there is the link between theory and practice is easiest to substantiate, while the feeling types would be the ones in the social sciences and humanities (I too am lumping them together ), where there are strong overtones of "social justice," as I believe someone said very early on in this thread. Of course, since the data preceded my hypothesis, this is not scientific, but it would make an interesting study for one of you statisticians/social scientists (at least, I think it would be interesting).

P.S. Sorry to those who are unfamiliar with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, but I'm sure Google can help you out.

This is really fascinating.

[wilderbeast]

Heh - don't forget that we aren't an accurate cross-section of all graduate students. So, this is not a nice representative sample to go by.

[mpp_hopeful]

Heh - don't forget that we aren't an accurate cross-section of all graduate students. So, this is not a nice representative sample to go by.

I agree, or maybe I'm just hoping that I'm not the only far-right conservative studying government affairs. According to the poll, there are 5 of us floating around here on the boards. I would like to think that in some of these programs, they diversify the student body enough (politically) to encourage active discussion. It wouldn't be very interesting to have classes of all conservatives or all liberals.

I was always of the opinion that the reason why universities are so liberal was because of the activists - turned students - turned professors from the 1960's, and hoped that eventually universities would achieve more balance in their ideology. If the survey is anywhere near accurate, it scares me to think that an overwhelming majority of the people seeking to replace today's professors are just as liberal, if not more.

[ewurgler]

I agree, or maybe I'm just hoping that I'm not the only far-right conservative studying government affairs. According to the poll, there are 5 of us floating around here on the boards. I would like to think that in some of these programs, they diversify the student body enough (politically) to encourage active discussion. It wouldn't be very interesting to have classes of all conservatives or all liberals.

I was always of the opinion that the reason why universities are so liberal was because of the activists - turned students - turned professors from the 1960's, and hoped that eventually universities would achieve more balance in their ideology. If the survey is anywhere near accurate, it scares me to think that an overwhelming majority of the people seeking to replace today's professors are just as liberal, if not more.

Hate to break it to you, but if you've looked at much public opinion data, you'll see that as education increases so does left-leaning political views. I don't see it changing any time soon.

[HisRoyalHighness]

Hate to break it to you, but if you've looked at much public opinion data, you'll see that as education increases so does left-leaning political views. I don't see it changing any time soon.

Word - I thought conservatives hated government and wanted to, in the words of one one of their heroes: "drown it in the bathtub." Why study something you hate so much? Conservatives sound (and act) like they're suffering from a severe case of masochism these days.

[HelloFeminists]

Hate to break it to you, but if you've looked at much public opinion data, you'll see that as education increases so does left-leaning political views. I don't see it changing any time soon.

Exactly.

Besides, being diverse and compassionate and embracing difference and equality is far from "scary" to me. I think it's "scary" to refuse to get with the times and cling to tradition that excludes swaths of the population from having equal rights. I think it's "scary" to hold on to the same lines of thinking and same academic trajectories.

[Louiselab]

I agree, or maybe I'm just hoping that I'm not the only far-right conservative studying government affairs. According to the poll, there are 5 of us floating around here on the boards. I would like to think that in some of these programs, they diversify the student body enough (politically) to encourage active discussion. It wouldn't be very interesting to have classes of all conservatives or all liberals.

I was always of the opinion that the reason why universities are so liberal was because of the activists - turned students - turned professors from the 1960's, and hoped that eventually universities would achieve more balance in their ideology. If the survey is anywhere near accurate, it scares me to think that an overwhelming majority of the people seeking to replace today's professors are just as liberal, if not more.

This opinion is actually derived in part by Allen Bloom's the Closing of the American Mind. It is true that a number of faculty were in fact leftists and to some extent radicals, and also probably could be found guilty of granting tenure to those of similar backgrounds. Prior to the early 1960s, faculty tended to be liberal but not necessarily radical.