The political scientist Eric Kaufmann is no bringer of good news for us conservatives. In his latest CSPI research, there’s a lot of handwriting on the wall for our kind. I tell you this not to discourage you, but to help you understand the immensity of the task in front of us. I know reading my blog can be awfully discouraging, but I firmly believe that real despair is to turn away from hard truths because they are too discouraging. If we are going to resist this tide, we need to know exactly what we are facing. I’ll be taping an episode of The General Eclectic with Kale Zelden later today — after our long summer hiatus forced by my visa problems (not a good idea to leave your mike in a country you can’t enter because you screwed up your visa — and we’ll be discussing this.
Here is the summary of the findings:
America’s elite university students are more demographically diverse than the general population, but more politically divided along lines of race, gender, sexuality, and religion.
Minority and female students are far more liberal on campus than in the general population, whereas straight white Christian men are somewhat more conservative on campus than in the general population. Current trends portend a politics in which elite women, minorities, gays, and the nonreligious are more left-leaning while elite whites, males, and Christians remain relatively conservative.
White Christians tend to cluster in red state flagship universities, which are the most politically balanced in the country and have similar shares of liberal and conservative students. Yet many flagship universities in flyover states with conservative reputations actually have more liberal than conservative students.
A quarter of students are LGBT, and there are roughly equal shares of Christian and nonreligious students. LGBT, Nonreligious, and Christians are set to become more important political groups among America’s future leaders.
Liberal arts colleges are the least politically diverse. Many have almost no conservatives, and thus very low viewpoint diversity. But they have high sexual diversity, at nearly 40 percent LGBT.
Ivy League schools average 10-15 percent conservative and 60-75 percent liberal. Across 150 leading schools, there are nearly 2.5 liberals for every conservative.
Democrats outnumber Republicans by a 55-23 margin on campus, and liberals outnumber conservatives 53-21. Elite students are thus two-thirds more Democratic and twice as liberal as the American population.
Among elite students, there is a 15-point gender gap in political ideology and party identification between men and women. This is 3 to 5 times larger than the gender gap in the general population. It is also 2 to 3 times larger than the gender gap among either the 18-25 or college-educated general population. The campus gender gap has grown steadily since 2004.
The university with the highest viewpoint diversity ranking is the University of Arkansas, whose students are 35% conservative, 37% liberal, 36% Republican, and 41% Democratic. The least diverse is Smith College, at 81% liberal, 1% conservative, 78% Democratic, and 2% Republican.
Thirty percent of students and nearly the same share of academic staff in Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) fields identify as the furthest left point on a 7-point conservative-liberal scale. For Sciences, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) subjects, a smaller share – 20% of students and 10% of staff – identify as far left.
Self-identified Jews make up only 3% of elite students and just 7% of Ivy League students, suggesting a considerable decline since the early 2000s.
Homeschooled and parochial schooled undergraduates are as or more likely to identify as LGBT or non-binary as those from public or private school backgrounds.
“remember, I am going through a divorce after 25 years of marriage” Deep irony from the author of such a piece. Pretty much as predicted by the late Dr. Francis Schaeffer in “How should we then live”
“Homeschooled and parochial schooled undergraduates are as or more likely to identify as LGBT or non-binary as those from public or private school backgrounds”
Unbelievable!!!! I pray for my grandchildren each day. Four currently in school, two in Christian schools, one in a charter school and one in a rural public school. Jesus keep them safe and keep the evil ones away from them. We homeschooled my youngest daughter and raised her in the Church. She walked away from the church when her first child was born dead. Life can be such a struggle.
“Why is it, he wrote in 2010, that Evangelical Christians make up something like 40 percent of the US population, but have almost no effect culturally, whereas Jews are less than two percent of the US population, but exercise immense cultural influence? It’s because Jews are heavily represented among elites, while Evangelicals are not.”
Jews to a degree, practice biblical economics or at least have an insulated economy by and for their own people. The American populace at large are thrown economic crumbs by the elites, and actually self-perpetuate this by allowing wages that don’t keep pace with the economy as a mainstay of how the currency is directed for instance (it’s trickle-up), also the willingness to not inculcate overall, a foundational understanding of economics and personal finance that would be needed throughout a person’s lifetime. These are huge indiscretions foisted by the Christian church system against the people, congregants, the larger community, and even globally pursued.
“This shows how the Right is completely and comically outclassed on every front within the key institutions that we rely on to credential and staff our non-hereditary aristocracy. The issue is not how the Left won the culture war, but rather, how could they not?”
The political right should study how the communists were so culturally influential, i.e., the Frankfurt School, etc., in learning how to agitate for their causes and wield influence, as they’re not getting it from their churches, which apparently want them economically diminished and relationally and culturally dumbed-down. Read about the public as well as more obscure individuals that upset the status quo.
“Here’s the thing: it does us conservatives no good if all we do is react to whatever the progressive elites (who are now the Establishment) do. We have to be just as competent and as ferocious as they are. This is my constant complaint to MAGA conservatives: if all you care about is scandalizing the liberal elites, your emotional satisfaction is no compensation for actually changing things in the real world. The MAGA dogs bark, but the caravan of professional elites moves on, changing society beyond recognition.”
The reactionary disposition of the Right, that seems to be the predominant political feature of not only their platform politics, but is evidenced in the churches, and across their social spectrum, clearly positions and identifies themselves as a victim class to the elites, along with other countries that would be glad to occupy the vacated political, social, economic, and domestic realm responsibilities and territories as well. For instance, many Muslim men have stated that they will take this country from the wombs of its women. That is because they are aware of the often and increasing discontent between the genders, and our below replacement level birth rates.
As a Christian and a Patriot, I must recommend the book ‘Live Not by Lies’ by Rod Dreher the author of this article. He explains where we are headed, but more importantly tells us how to rebuild. His book is a must read “manual for Christian dissidents”. Well researched and written.
Dana
Second Law of Thermodynamics -- everything breaks down. No different with people! Starts with No fear of God! Lord have mercy for what’s ahead!