Undergrads aren’t as Liberal as You Think
A recent poll by Reason magazine says that a large number of undergraduate students hold some conservative views — despite the fact that most of their professors are overwhelmingly liberal.
Malcolm A. Kline at Accuracy in Academia has the story:
College Indoctrination Hits a Wall
College faculties may be further to the political left than they have ever been but students aren’t necessarily following in the same direction.
“In 1971 National Review published the results of a poll of undergraduates at twelve American campuses in 1969-1970,” George H. Nash wrote in his book The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945. “The results were deeply disheartening to conservatives.”
The NR poll found that:
- “Three-fifths [of the respondents] call themselves political liberals, fully 17 % are self-proclaimed radicals.”
- “Almost half favor the socialization of all basic industries”
- “Just over half believe that organized religion is harmful or worse.”
Since then, as we’ve reported, some of the “self-proclaimed radicals” have gone on to teach. “Accuracy in Academia has found that 25 percentof the National Council of Students for a Democratic Society has either worked in academia, guest lectured there or written textbooks,” I wrote in the September 2010 issue of AIA’s monthly Campus Report newsletter.
Flash forward four decades. This year, the libertarian Reason magazine polled millennials between the ages of 18 and 29 and reported that:
- 69 percent say it is government’s responsibility to guarantee everyone access to health care and 51 percent have a favorable view of the Affordable Care Act
- 68 percent say government should ensure everyone makes a living wage
- 66 percent say raising taxes on the wealthy would help the economy
Oddly, that same poll revealed that:
- 73 percent of millennials favor allowing private accounts for Social Security; 51 percent favor private accounts even it means cutting Social Security benefits for current and future retirees because 53 percent of millennials say Social Security is unlikely to exist when they retire
- 64 percent of millennials say cutting government spending by 5 percent would help the economy
- 59 percent say cutting taxes would help the economy
Comments
This is good news (most of it)!! It actually exposes what I’ve long believed was – and is – a STEALTH GOAL of those “radicals” (who are now running the US gov’t too, sadly): to take over higher ed and the textbook industry.
The good news is that apparently the students are smarter than their professors, in many ways.
Once they reach the job market, and see how their indoctrinated utopian socialism isn’t livable reality, they will, for the most part, discard those naive and false socialist ideas they hold about “living wage” etc.
Especially if it is clearly explained, visually and in other medium, in a fun and simple way – which has been done, often, but isn’t publicized well because of the MSM monopoly and the choke-hold these radical-turned-tyrants-in-places-of-power have at present. THAT is what needs to change, to be tackled – soon! – along with essential changes in the political landscape of leaders.
If you haven’t read it (or perhaps even heard of it), a great book to read about all this is Stanley Kurtz’s book, Radical in Chief. It explains so much. So much.