i don't find it surprising that young people tend to democrats and old people tend to republicans. At the most general level and almost from definition, conservatism and traditionalism are just intrinsically more popular among older people who grew up with traditional values. Progressive social issues like gay marriage and abortion are intrinsically younger issues and obviously are more supported by dems than pubs despite any specific counterexamples adios may come up with.

Now as to the more fundamental aspect of dems vs pubs which is the size of government this one is less clear to me. One the one hand young people have just come through school, perhaps college, they are frequently unemployed and impoverished and the like....so they may desire assistance. On the other hand old people get the biggest wealth transfer of all through SS and medicare so this isn't fully explained. But to me, the coupling between size of government and progressive vs conservative social values is a mystery....in some sense it is more coherent if it was reversed and the small government types were the socially progressive ones advocating less government intervention in sex and the like.

If libertarians had a chance of getting elected then I'd probably support them over a dem/repub candidate. Having to choose between only two candidates though, I'll take the guy that doesn't think America becoming a secular state (because it's not already, we are a CHRISTIAN NATION!!!!!111) is an apocalyptic event that we need to expend all our energy trying to prevent.

Can anyone remind me which party just campaigned against Medicare cuts? Like, which one made the other side cutting medicare a signature issue of attack ads and such?

uke_master,

Factionalism itself is our republic's engine of social progress, so party alliances could be completely arbitrary and the system would still function. In fact, party alliances are probably determined by felt allegiances to the value systems each party's political rhetoric represents. Actual agendas are manifestly unimportant in elections (and, for the major parties, are in fact substantially less different than the rhetoric would lead one to believe), since the expected cost to each voter of a given social policy choice is practically nil. If a citizen has a meaningful encounter with the law, it will be in the courtroom, not in the halls of the legislature.

Remember also that talk about the size of government is, at base, metaphorical. Although we can measure things like government spending as a percentage of GDP, the idea of the size of government refers to the net amount of control certain social institutions have over certain aspects of the lives of the citizenry. On this point, since American society operates under a largely common set of customs, resources are relatively plentiful, and many differences in cultural composition have been elided by gradual assimilation (aided by public secularization), there is broad consensus among the population. Regardless of divided preferences about personal values (or "virtue"), only a radical (and notably complacent) minority disagree with the approximate divisions between public and private authority that the status quo represents. Power is ultimately, always in the hands of the people, so it is illogical to assume that the status quo does not, in some sense, represent their will.

Oh, right. I try to block out the memories when I'm not actually in SE.

Cliffs on why this is a thread?

My 2 cents (regardless of age) -

Intellectuals - Libertarian (which explains the small demo)
Faux Intellectuals - Liberal/Progressive (explains majority of college students)
Christians - Conservative
Business - Repubs
Gov't Workers/Most Minorities/Assistance Recipients/Media/Unions - Dem's (Obv some overlap)

All about demos. Painting with broad brush - anecdotal evidence not welcomed here

Libertarians are trying to hijack the party the same way the others have been

ahem...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7h51M3CfIQ

GT isn't real people.

So, if I'm an intellectual Christian who's paid with gubmint bux, where does that put me?

:

Infidel.

Forum fail for so many posts before this, should have been second reply.

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A couple of general comments (which will only be as accurate as generalized comments can be):

- People in general tend to have an income pattern that starts low, increases through your career, and decreases after you retire. Accordingly, people tend to be net beneficiaries of government programs when they're young and old, and net contributors in between. So there's a general inclination to like government programs when you're young because you are more likely to personally experience the benefits but not the tax burden.

- The long-term financing risks of government programs just don't "feel" costly to most young people. All people have a strong (rational) tendency to discount distant uncertain costs. This is just human nature.

This, its only when you start taking serious hits to the paycheck from tax that you start to question the free ponies, any one questioning the free ponies before this is just a blue meanie.

You're exactly what one would expect under his rubric, no? A hodge-podge of libertarian and liberal views tempered partly by your personal Christian convictions?

lol what? Libertarians are anti-intellectuals...

Anti-intellectual is not an insult. White gun toting states rights supporters from the south are rarely considered intellectuals and they make up a decent percentage of libertarians.

White, gun owning, states right proponent ≠ Anti-Intellectual

They are more likely to be tea-party style big government types. They want states rights so they can make laws to ban Islam or other equally ******ed things.

In what world is anti intellectual not an insult? And how can the tea party be big government when it's cause is the exact opposite? Crazy how you can just change definitions on the fly, typical newspeak

This is not relevant. I did not say that all (or most) anti-intellectual types were libertarian, just that most libertarians are anti-intellectual.

Most anti-intellectuals probably support some flavor of christian fascism in the US.

Many people call themselves anti-intellectual because they stand up to the socialism/evolution/atheism etc of academia that has come to dominate what intellectual means.

I now see what you're getting at Max and it's a fundamental disagreement in terms.

an·ti-in·tel·lec·tu·al (nt-ntl-kch-l, nt-)
adj.
Opposed or hostile to intellectuals or intellectual view

BUT where you err IMHO is in thinking that liberalism is the domain of the intellectual. Libertarians are not anti intellectual but anti faux intellectuals (haughty fakes)

So which anti-intellectuals are libertarians?