Idan Solon: The Left-Right Distinction / Why Intellectuals Turn Left

Winner, 2011 George Walford International Essay Prize.

Systematic Ideology (SI) is a study of ideologies founded in the 1930s by Harold Walsby and George Walford. These scholars were inspired by the progress of science since Galileo, but frustrated by a lack of corresponding progress in understanding what inclines a person toward a particular ideology—in “understanding understanding,” as Walsby put it. (1) Therefore, they endeavored to study ideology scientifically. In doing so, they asserted that the world’s citizens can be divided into six political groups: non-politicals, conservatives, liberals, socialists, communists, and anarchists. They claimed that these six groups align in the same order on each of five features of differentiation: size of popular support, degree of change desired, preference for freedom or government control in economic affairs, preference for freedom or government control in political affairs and value placed upon theory as a guide to action. That is, nonpoliticals represent the high extreme on popular support, the low extreme on degree of change desired, the high extreme on freedom in economic affairs, the low extreme for freedom in political affairs, and the low extreme on the value placed on theory. The other groups move increasingly to the opposite direction in the order outlined above. This, according to Walford, is highly significant: “[W]hen five major features change consistently over the whole range it comes close to being proof that this arrangement of the parties and movements… expresses real and significant relationships.” (2)

According to Walsby and Walford, these delineations reflect not only the citizens‟ respective political inclinations, but also their underlying “ideologies” which Walsby defined very broadly as “the complete system of cognitive assumptions and affective identifications which manifest themselves in, or underlie, the thought, speech, aims, interests, ideals, ethical standards, actions—in short, in the behavior—of an individual human being.” (3) Walsby introduced six general terms which map to the six political terms he outlined: expediency to non-politicals, principle to conservatives, precision to liberals, reform to socialists, revolution to communists, and repudiation to anarchists. Thus, according to Walsby, non-politicals are non-political because of a more general and all-encompassing “expedient” outlook, conservatives are conservative because of a general “principled” philosophy, and so on.

Walsby and Walford then very ambitiously extended this non-political-to-anarchy (or expediency-to-repudiation) set of demarcations to hold not only in describing citizens‟ political inclinations and broader personal ideologies, but also in differentiating between people’s occupations and in describing the series of transitions that society has made through the epochs.

That is, first, society was characterized by expediency, then principle, and then precision. The epochs of reform, revolution, and repudiation have yet to be achieved, and Walsby and Walford were pessimistic about the chances that they will ever occur. Walsby, in repeatedly rejecting “the mass-rationality assumption,” expressed doubt not about “whether the masses are capable of developing or extending their existing mode of thought (i.e. quantitatively), but whether they are capable, as a mass, of developing the qualitatively higher modes of thought” characterized by reform, revolution, and repudiation. (4)In examining the efforts of Walsby and Walford, consider first their grouping of people into the six aforementioned political categories. Walsby and Walford indicated that each of these categories is characterized by a signature place on the spectra of five features. If these five features differentiate between the six categories most organically, then the following question should be answered straightforwardly: What is the relationship between the features of differentiation? That is, why do people who are extremely averse to change also support, to the extreme, both economic independence and government encroachment on political independence?

Similarly, why do people who are likely to embrace change, in the extreme, completely support political independence but entirely reject economic independence? Upon answering these questions, the five features of differentiation shall be reduced to one. (Walsby rightfully expressed skepticism about the notion that individuals‟ ideologies are always internally consistent. But the reduction is unaffected as long as the ideologies themselves, as represented by the tallied sums of the self-described leftists and rightists on particular issues, are internally consistent.)

The political positions of the left (the side on which self-described liberals and socialists reside) and the right (the side on which self-described conservatives reside) are easily accessible by examining voter exit polls and public opinion surveys. For the most part, leftist and rightist positions on particular issues can be consistently explained by the Walsby-Walford framework. For example, the left is more likely to be in favor of legalized abortion, gay marriage, stem cell research, euthanasia, amnesty to illegal immigrants (and immigration in general) and marijuana legalization, and against the death penalty, because the left is more in favor of political independence. The right is more likely to be in favor of lower, and less graduated, taxation and against universal health care and minimum wage because the right is more in favor of economic independence. Consider, however, issues such as gun control and global warming. The left tends to advocate for the tempering of political independence with respect to gun ownership and global warming, while the right takes a contrary view. On these issues, the political sentiments of the left and right are opposite those predicted by Walsby and Walford. Just as the anomalous Mercury orbit led Newton’s cosmological framework to be replaced by Einstein’s more fundamental one, so should issues like gun control and global warming, apparently unaccounted for in the SI model offered by Walsby and Walford, inspire a more all-encompassing framework of political theory.

A simple, consistent representation of the features that differentiate the ideologies has heretofore eluded political scientists. Conservative scholar George Nash once commented, “What is conservatism?… (T)his is a perennial question; many are the writers who have searched for the elusive answer… I doubt that there is any single, satisfactory, all-encompassing definition of the complex phenomenon called conservatism, the content of which varies enormously with time and place. It may even be true that conservatism is inherently resistant to precise definition.” (5)

It is true that terms like liberalism and conservatism have different meanings in different societies, but the concepts of political left and right are consistent throughout the world. The issues discussed are similar from country to country, with largely the same subtle voter clusters observed. Analysis of leftist and rightist positions on all of the contemporary issues in the United States and Europe reveals that the distinction between the left and the right can be expressed in a single sentence: Leftists demonstrate more consideration (and rightists demonstrate less consideration) toward the less represented generally, whether that less represented be a person, group, or idea. The place at which a person falls on the political spectrum is determined by the degree to which that person considers the less represented.

This single broad feature of political differentiation manifests itself in more particular features and subsumes all the features of distinction offered by others, including Walsby and Walford.

Because the left is more considerate toward the less represented generally, the left is more empathetic toward society’s less represented segments (such as the poor, the sick, animals, and citizens of other countries), and more open to less represented alternatives to the established (for example, religion, government, and general dogma). Because the left is comparatively more empathetic toward less represented segments, the left is comparatively more averse toward violence, since the left is more empathetic toward the would-be victims of that violence, whether they be accused criminals, animals, or citizens of other nation-states. Because the left is more open toward less represented alternatives to the established, the left is more open toward change: That which has prevailed in the past is established and alternatives to it, which constitute change, are the less represented.

These four categories of differentiation—respective positions toward less represented segments, established entities, violence, and change—that outgrow from the single, broad feature (consideration toward the less represented in general) explain the positions of the left and right on each of the contemporary partisan issues considered by society. An elaboration on each of the four follows.

First, leftists demonstrate an empathy toward plight-facing societal segments that are removed from them, including the poor (on the issues of universal health care, minimum wage, and graduated taxes), the sick (euthanasia and stem cell research), animals (environmental protection and global warming), other nation-states‟ leaders and citizens (by seeking to abstain from patriotism and militant intervention), pregnant women (abortion), accused criminals (death penalty), homosexuals (gay marriage), and immigrants.

While most of these attributions to the less represented category are rather straight forward, on abortion, some might claim that the right actually advocates for the less represented embryo or fetus. However, the right’s opposition to abortion drops dramatically if the pregnancy was produced by rape or incest. (6) In these cases, fetal value is unchanged—the only difference is perceived culpability of the pregnant woman. In addition, the vast majority (over 99%) of abortions take place before fetal viability and sentience (7), and many leftists do not view these organisms as being morally alive. Therefore, empathy toward the pregnant woman is the differentiating factor.

Second, the left demonstrates a comparative openness toward alternatives to established or exalted entities in its neighborhood or country, such as religion (which influences issues like abortion, euthanasia, gay marriage, and stem cell research), political leaders (on issues such as the U.S. Patriot Act and military interventions), and human stature (on issues relating to animals and global warming). Contrarily, the right tends to inflate the value of the proximal. The right demonstrates belief in a more inflated human stature via resistance to sullying non-sentient human life, on abortion and embryonic stem cell research, yet willingness to subject sentient animals to harm for mild human pleasure, and by being rabidly afraid that humans will deliberately destroy the planet, as indicated by the Patriot Act and military interventions, yet disbelieving that humans can accidentally destroy the planet by emitting heat-trapping gases.

Third, the left demonstrates a comparative aversion toward violence by its positions on animal issues, the death penalty, and military interventions, but most revealingly by the left’s willingness to sacrifice safety for freedom on marijuana legalization but not gun control, and the right’s willingness to sacrifice safety for freedom on gun control but not marijuana legalization. This difference of opinion on marijuana legalization and gun control results largely because conservatives are far more likely than liberals to own guns (8), while liberals are far more likely than conservatives to have used marijuana (9). So, the disparity is a function of self-serving incentives, as well as comfort through familiarity versus fear of the unknown.

Fourth, the left demonstrates a comparative openness toward change on gay marriage, universal health care (in the U.S.), immigration, marijuana legalization, religion, and embryonic stem cell research. In embracing the established, the right exhibits a tendency toward the proximal, and the status quo is the temporally proximal. The left displays less of a bias toward the temporally proximal and is more open toward the less represented alternatives which constitute change.

Thus, the most fundamental factor that determines a person’s political ideology is the degree to which that person considers the less represented. The more a person considers the less represented on a particular issue, the more likely he or she is to be left-inclined on that issue.

The more a person considers the less represented overall, the further left he or she is likely to be. This new interpretation subsumes the five distinctions made by SI’s founders: size of political support, willingness to embrace change, tendency toward political or economic independence, and value placed on theory versus experience. A point-by-point elaboration follows.

First, the new interpretation holds that the left is more likely to support a less politically popular position because it considers the less represented to a higher degree than the right.

Second, as previously observed, a more thorough consideration toward less represented alternatives to the established leads to more of an openness toward change.

Third, this new interpretation explains the left’s tendencies toward (and the right’s tendencies against) political independence on many issues, for example, abortion, gay marriage, and embryonic stem cell research. However, it also allows for the aforementioned cases in which the left tends against (and the right tends toward) political independence.

Fourth, the left is less likely than the right to be inclined toward economic independence because it is more likely to consider the less represented, poorer citizens.

Fifth, and finally, the right would be more likely (and the left would be less likely) to value experience over theory in the cases in which experience is recent and accessible and the results of it are proximal, while theory is the less represented perspective.

The new interpretation also subsumes the features of differentiation found in a recent analysis by John Dean. (10) Dean analyzed a study by conservative theorist James Burnham, who, in the 1950s, asserted that liberal and conservative (U.S. leftist and rightist, respectively) partisans differed from each other in thirteen particular tendencies. Dean found that, through the interim decades, only five of Burnham’s original distinctions have persisted: First, conservatives are more likely than liberals to “believe that government involves a nonrational factor.” This is explained by the right’s comparative tendency (and the left’s comparative skepticism) toward the established, and therefore towards religion.

Second, conservatives are more likely than liberals to “believe that human nature is essentially corrupt, or evil, and is limited in its potential” while liberals “believe that most human weaknesses and errors are the result of weak social structure or inadequate education, for human potential, if not infinite, has no discernible a priori limitations; therefore, it is not unrealistic for humans to work toward an ideal society in which problems such as war, poverty, and suffering do not exist.” This, however, is consistent with (and to some degree, explains) leftists’ demonstration of empathy toward less represented segments: Leftists are more optimistic than conservatives about the benevolence, trustworthiness, and malleability of those segments which are removed from them.

Third, compared to liberals, conservatives “respect tradition, established institutions, and conventional modes of conduct” and are “reluctant to initiate quick or deep changes.” As covered previously, liberal openness, and conservative aversion, toward change is explained by their respective skepticism and trust with which they regard society’s established.

Fourth, conservatives “feel that the American constitutional system embodies principles of clear and permanent value,” while liberals “hold that the Constitution is a living document, with its meaning dependent on time and circumstances.” This difference is a function of their respective feelings toward both change and the nation’s founding fathers, each of which is explained by their respective tendencies toward the established in general.

Fifth, conservatives “believe private, profit-making enterprises are the most just and effective means for economic operation and development,” while liberals “are critical of private economic enterprise, and believe in governmental control of private activities, if not some measure of government ownership. They find private enterprises are frequently opposed to the interests of the people and the nation, and that, in many cases, the government can do a better job than private enterprise.” This difference is explained by leftists’ empathy toward society’s less represented segments: In the cases that the well-being of the less represented is somehow threatened by profit pursuit, leftists will place more value than the right on the less represented. The new interpretation also subsumes the features of differentiation offered by University of Virginia professor Jonathan Haidt, a self-identified liberal. (11) Haidt has theorized that the differences in political opinion between liberals and conservatives can be attributed to their differing levels of priority placed on what he calls the five foundations of morality: harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. (12) Haidt’s work has shown that liberals are much more likely to prioritize harm/care and fairness/reciprocity well above the other three, while conservatives are more likely to prioritize all five equally. This is explained by our new interpretation: Indeed, a person who prioritizes harm/care and fairness/reciprocity is demonstrating comparative empathy, whereas a person who emphasizes ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity is demonstrating comparative faith in the established.

Walsby and Walford considered six political ideologies, whereas I have considered the left and right broadly. In contemporary politics, self-described liberals and self-described conservatives enjoy widespread popularity. Contrarily, the positions of socialists, communists, and anarchists aren’t easy to tally because they are so sparsely represented that they are very rarely identified in public opinion and voter exit polls. Doubtless, many voters, who might have otherwise voted socialist, communist, or anarchist, vote liberal because they feel a vote for a socialist, communist or anarchist is tantamount to a wasted vote or because they just aren’t made aware by the media of socialist, communist, or anarchist alternatives. Socialists, communists, and anarchists do, however, generally take leftist positions on political issues. The case of non-politicals is different. In Walford’s representation, non-politicals comprise citizens who either do not vote because they are politically apathetic or who vote inconsistently, shifting political sides from election to election. These citizens tend to more politically moderate than the anarchist, communist, socialist, and liberal citizens of the left. The 2005 Pew Global Research Project’s Political Typology Study considered citizens‟ “values, political beliefs, and party affiliation” in splitting the public into nine groups: Enterprisers, Social Conservatives, Pro Government Conservatives, Upbeats, Disaffecteds, Bystanders, Conservative Democrats, Disadvantaged Democrats, and Liberals. (13) The characteristics of SI’s non-politicals most closely match Pew’s Bystanders, who, according to Pew, “largely consign themselves to the political sidelines,” and who consistently identify with the political center. (Bystanders also identified with the center for each of Pew’s three previous typology studies, in 1987, 1994, and 1999.) The Pew study neither invoked nor was influenced by SI, and its differentiating methodology differed slightly from that of Walsby and Walford, but not enough to explain the dramatic shift in nonpoliticals/bystanders‟ representation on their respective political spectra. Pew does, however, reiterate, as Walsby suggested (14), that this politically apathetic (Bystander) group is characterized both by very low income and very low educational attainment. Perhaps Walsby’s characterization of non-politicals as being latently extreme rightists accurately described citizens under the powerful Nazi Germany propaganda, but this appears not to be a general rule.

As indicated previously, George Walsby found that a particular demographic, namely intellectuals, is considerably more likely to tend toward the political left. At first glance, this may seem self-serving. However, most political observers already acknowledge reliable demographic voting trends. For example, women tend more toward the left, while older people tend toward the right (especially on issues involving change). Blacks tend toward the left; those with higher income than average tend toward the right. Atheists and agnostics tend toward the left; gun owners tend toward the right. In reference to intellectuals, Walsby distinguished
between the innate intelligence that remains constant through a person’s life, and the intellect possessed by intellectuals, which he said “is intimately connected with ideology,” though he did allow for some relationship between intelligence and intellect. (15) He also distinguished between horizontal intellectuals, who he said demonstrate a breadth of knowledge across a wide variety of topics but lack in depth understanding about any particular topic, and vertical intellectuals, who he said do possess in depth insight on particular topics. Walsby indicated that, unlike horizontal intellectuals, vertical intellectuals are able to bring widely separated facts and classes of fact into deep relation with one another. It is these vertical intellectuals, Walsby held,
who have considerable tendency toward the political left. Walsby posited a causal relationship between left inclination and vertical intellect. Interestingly, Walsby indicated that intellect is “largely a function of the ideological development of an individual,” rather than the other way around. He explained further, “Environmental influence plays a great part in determining intellect and intellectual growth…” (16) Specifically, Walsby held that “our scale of political
outlooks has a direct and close relationship with the growth of intellect,” particularly what he called vertical or “qualitative” development of intellect. (17)

Walsby’s explanation appears to be that when one immerses oneself in the extreme political right, one subjects oneself to pervasive pressures to conform, and this stifles the independent and creative thinking characterized by vertical intellect. Intellectualism is akin to “individual independence of mind,” Walsby indicated parenthetically (18), and he quoted Wilhelm Sauser, who wrote that in a Fascist atmosphere, “Not only the individual, but all cultural organisations have therefore in the last resort to serve the community of the people, and it is in relation to this that they get their meaning and justification. To this extent only a political activity is to be recognised and tolerated in the life of the people. Therefore economics, law, science, art, religion have no independence; they have all to be political.” (19) While Walsby allowed that conservatism is a significant departure from Fascism, he nevertheless wrote that “all these features of the typical conservative outlook (e.g., patriotism, militarism, and aversion toward equality and internationalism) are plainly seen to be closely related to the characteristic mass modes of behavior and thought of primitive groups in general…” (20)

Walsby has repeatedly associated intellect with political leftism, yet he has given the reader different ways to think of “intellect.” He previously indicated that “vertical” intellect was associated with leftism, and that vertical intellect was characterized by deep understanding of a discipline. He had also expressed that leftists‟ “general intellectual superiority” was a potential “political weapon” against the right. (21) Yet in explaining the leftism-intellect causal relationship, Walsby indicated that intellectualism was merely “individual independence of mind.” This latter definition does not confer the same credence to intellectuals because it does not indicate that intellectuals have understanding, just independence.

Consider the likelihood of a causal interaction of political inclination upon intellectual development, as posited by Walsby. Would the degree to which a person considers the less represented affect a person’s intellectual development? As intellect is defined generally as a profundity of insight, this is plausible. A more thorough consideration toward the less represented would, in some cases, cause one to seek to understand those less represented views, ideas, and people, and absorb those newfound understandings into one’s own mental reservoir. However, an analysis of this posited intellect-leftism relationship, through the lens of the
intrinsic distinction between the left and right, illuminates significant causal interaction in the reverse order: intellect upon political view.

The left is defined by a more thorough consideration toward the less represented than the right, and this consideration manifests itself in a higher degree of empathy toward society’s less represented segments and more of a willingness to question society’s established elements. The following examination illustrates the degree to which higher intellect would cause a person to embody these two broad leftist tendencies. With regard to the first tendency, intellectuals would be more likely than the median citizen to be empathetic toward society’s less represented segments because: a) intellectuals are more likely to identify the underlying causes that lead to a segment’s condition, and less likely to attribute that condition to the intrinsic agency of the segment’s members; b) intellectuals are likely to be more knowledgeable about the specific instances of plight faced by members of less represented segments; and c) intellectuals are more likely to be optimistic about the benevolence and integrity of the less represented generally.

To elaborate: A 2002 Pew poll (22) captured this intellectual attentiveness to antecedent causes: Democrats with a college degree or higher were 50 percent more likely than Democrats as a whole, and four times more likely than Republicans, to primarily attribute people’s poverty to society. (My illustration here supposes that while intellect and education are not equivalent, they are correlated. An intellectual, of a certain age, is much more likely to have a college degree than not, though a person with a college degree is not necessarily intellectual.) Some very prominent intellectuals, such as Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, Stephen Hawking, Baruch Spinoza, and countless others, have expressed even more skepticism about human agency, holding that there can be no intrinsic human agency at all. This position stands whether one believes in determinism, in which each human action or thought is an inevitable part of an endless causal chain, or indeterminism, in which not every action or thought is inevitable, but any causal power over these actions and thoughts lies outside human agency. In fact, there is a catch-22 preventing agency. One (any living or non-living thing) cannot create oneself. Thus, one has no characteristics until nature confers them, and one cannot affect the nature of these conferred characteristics, and these characteristics include any part of the cognitive apparatus with which one would first exercise agency. Besides the conferred characteristics, the only other factor which affects one’s cognitive apparatus is the environment, which includes everything other than the conferred characteristics. But one cannot affect the nature of the initial environment, and cannot intrinsically affect one’s reactions to the environment because one reacts with conferred characteristics that fall outside agency, including any conscience and desire to react. Therefore, the person has no intrinsic effect over the changes that occur to the conferred characteristics or the environment as a result of the reaction. The person continues to lack
agency, and with each reaction, the situation loops. Hence, intrinsic agency cannot be. While most arguments for the lack of free will suppose determinism, this argument illustrates how free will is absent even in a state of indeterminism.

However, there are many instances in which the less represented segment does not face blame. While some might blame women for being pregnant or the poor for lacking income, no one has faulted animals, disenfranchised blacks and women, potential immigrants (for not being natives) or the sick for being in their respective segments at various times in U.S. history. Yet each voter has exhibited a different degree of empathy toward the members of these groups as well. As
mentioned, intellectuals would be more likely to be empathetic toward the members of these groups because they’re more aware of the particular instances of plight faced by the members of these groups. Earlier, we examined James Burnham’s observation that leftists are generally more optimistic than rightists about the benevolence, trustworthiness, and malleability of people in general. (This distinction can be extended to describe left-right positions on animals too.) In fact, the following fascinating series of University of Chicago surveys (23) shows that education is very strongly correlated with a more optimistic view of human nature. In 1975, 1984, and 1994, respondents were asked the following questions (among others): “Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you can‟t be too careful in dealing with people?” “Do you think most people would try to take advantage of you if they got a chance, or would they try to be fair?” “Would you say that most of the time people try to be helpful, or that they are mostly just looking out for themselves?” In all three years, a roughly double digit increase in optimism accompanied each increase in educational rung, and strong pluralities of postgraduates answered each question optimistically regarding the trustworthiness, fairness, and helpfulness of most people, while only half as many people with no high school degree felt similarly optimistic.

For various reasons, people with graduate degrees are more likely to know family members, friends and coworkers with graduate degrees, while those without a high school degree are more likely to grow up among, and socialize with, others lacking in education. Since education has been correlated (24) with various factors – including income, health and happiness – which would affect the chances that one would be honest or deceitful, altruistic or selfish, upstanding or criminal, part of the disparity in optimism is likely attributed to differences in personal experiences. Perhaps intellectuals are also more likely to be ethically congruent because they are more likely to see flaws in the status quo and so more likely to hold themselves to their own standards rather than other people’s. They would be more likely to realize that the very going against one’s own integrity and being unethical generally negates any benefits they would gain from lying. This is another way people who know educated people would be optimistic about human nature. Intellectuals are also more likely to travel and know more people, whereas the less educated are more likely to have their views of human nature clouded by news snippets, violent movies or video games. Thus, the disparity in optimism is due to differences in experience quality and broadness.

Certainly, people who are optimistic about the fairness and trustworthiness of most people would be much more likely to demonstrate empathy on political issues, feeling that those to whom they demonstrate empathy would be mostly unlikely to take untoward advantage. Therefore, those with higher education would be much more likely to demonstrate empathy. It is also highly plausible that one’s expectations about the helpfulness of others correlate with one’s own likelihood to demonstrate empathy. If one feels a societal standard of altruism, that would make one more likely to stand up for others‟ rights (and demonstrate empathy in a political manner) than if one feels a standard of selfishness.

As for the second broad leftist tendency, intellectuals would be more likely than the median citizen to question the established religion, government, native country, and general dogma because: a) intellectuals are more likely to notice inefficiencies in the particular established entity in question, b) intellectuals are more likely to be aware of previous instances of inefficiency of an established entity and hence less likely to put credence into any particular established entity, and c) intellectuals are less likely to have to rely upon pride derived from exalting the reigning established.

Albert Einstein had an epiphany through scientific education: “Through the reading of popular scientific books, I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true.” (25) Einstein was far from alone among intellectuals in his skepticism toward organized religion. Over the past century, there has been an enormous amount of studies on the relationship between intellect and religiosity, with the vast majority showing that as IQ, formal education, intellectual achievement and scientific eminence increase, religiosity decreases. (26) Intellectual skepticism toward religion may be driven prominently by: a) awareness of other common religions that contradict the proximal religion; b) incompatibility between religious scriptures and science or logic; c) incompatibility between lack of free will and reward/punishment in afterlife; and d) knowledge of religious authorities‟ justification of slavery and war, and persecution of innovative scientists throughout history. For Einstein, skepticism against one form of establishment grew into skepticism of all: “Suspicion against every kind of authority grew out of this experience, an attitude which has never again left me.” (27)

Intellectuals are more likely to be educated about the political and scientific history of the world, and to know that the popular consensus has often been reversed. They are thus more likely to temper the degree to which they embrace the popular consensus.

In addition, as Eric Hoffer has articulated, “The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready is he to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.” (28) Intellectuals are more likely to be able to derive pride from sources other than country, religion or ethnicity, so they would be more willing to refrain from exalting these forms of establishment.

Since intellectuals would be more likely than the median citizen to embody both of the broad tendencies that characterize leftism, intellectuals would most often self-identify on the left side of the political spectrum.

In empirically confirming this intellectual-leftism hypothesis, consider the following U-shaped curve. An examination of election exit polls and public opinion surveys, both in the United States and Europe, shows a general trend: On a given partisan issue, there is a simple direct relationship between educational attainment and leftist inclination (as education grows, left inclination grows), except on the issues on which some lowly educated demographic (usually the poor) has incentive to vote for, or occasion to consider, the less represented. On these issues, both the least educated and most educated segments vote further left than the middle educated. With regard to this “incentive to vote for, or occasion to consider” phrasing, it is important to note that in the case that a person is more likely than the general public to take a position that benefits his or her own segment, self-interest is not the only plausible explanation. The person may also be voting that way because he or she is in better position to consider the less represented segment to which he or she belongs. That is, for example, a poor person might vote in favor of universal health care not because it will benefit that person, but because that person is intimately familiar with the conditions faced by the poor, and therefore in position to empathize with the poor with regard to the acquisition of health care. Political scientist Martin Gilens (29) and economist Bryan Caplan (30) have each rejected what Caplan calls the “self-interested voter hypothesis,” which states that voters are selfishly motivated, by listing the myriad issues on which groups that are particularly affected by an issue vote no differently than the aggregate public. Caplan wrote, “After completing my doctorate I read more outside my discipline, and discovered that political scientists have subjected the SIVH to extensive and diverse empirical tests. Their results are impressively uniform: The SIVH fails… The broken clock of the SIVH is right twice a day. It fails for party identification, Social Security, Medicare, abortion, job programs, national health insurance, Vietnam, and the draft. But it works tolerably for a few scattered issues…Most voters disown selfish motives.” On some issues, but not others, a person may be more empathetic than the overall public toward the other members of one’s own segment. For example, a poor person may be in better position to empathize with other poor people, but a wealthy female from a secure family may not be in better position to empathize with pregnant women than, say, a poor male, and young men of draft age may not be in better position than anyone else to be concerned about the risk faced by soldiers in war. So, even though their self-interest would dictate a leftist vote, they are no more likely to do so than the rest of the population. This lends credence to the idea that empathy with one’s own group members is a crucial factor in voting in favor of one’s own segment.

General elections involve the sum of individual issues, and in general elections, the least educated and most educated segments vote further left than the middle educated. If we graph this relationship, with educational attainment on the x-axis, and left inclination on the y-axis, it forms roughly the shape of a U. This U-shaped curve is remarkably consistent in general elections all across the United States, although it has been seldom noted by analysts. The most and least educated segments do not always take majority leftist positions: They just tend to be more leftist than the middle educated. The education measure must also be differentiated enough to provide a sufficiently high standard for the most educated, otherwise it will miss the break in the curve that leads to the last tip of the U.

Exit polls for the 2004 U.S. presidential election (31) show that postgraduates voted further left than college graduates in 21 of the 22 states surveyed, while those with no high school degree voted further left than college graduates in 18 of the 19 states surveyed. For the 2008 U.S. presidential election, postgraduates voted further left than college graduates in 43 of the 48 states surveyed, and those with no high school degree voted further left than college graduates in all 10 states that had a category on their exit polls for those who lack a high school degree. Lest one think that the U-shaped curve is solely a function of presidential elections, postgraduates also voted further left than college graduates in 31 of the 32 U.S. gubernatorial elections surveyed for 2004, 2006, and 2008, and the vote of those with no high school degree was tallied in 14 of these elections, with this segment voting further left than college graduates in
all 14 elections.

Out of 30 U.S. state ballot measure exit polls on partisan issues from 2004 to 2008, postgraduates voted further left than college graduates on 26, the same as the left on 2, and minimally further right on two marijuana legalization measures. On five of these issues, a less educated demographic had incentive to vote for, or occasion to consider, the less represented, and for each of these issues, the least educated also voted further left than the middle educated, producing a U-shaped curve.

This trend is also illustrated on U.S. national public opinion polls on individual issues. Simple direct relationships between education and left inclination—as education grows, left inclination grows—are very consistently observed on issues such as gay marriage (32), abortion (33), embryonic stem cell research (34), euthanasia (35), the death penalty (36), illegal immigration (37), anthropogenic global warming (38), and consideration toward allies in foreign policy (39).
A U-shaped curve is more commonly observed on issues such as universal health care (40) and minimum wage increases (41).

As mentioned previously, this trend is also pervasive in Europe. Euro RSCG’s 2005 European Values survey (42) tallied the opinions of approximately one thousand people in each of ten European countries by gender, age, working status, income, education, and political scale. Of the 14 partisan issues surveyed by Euro RSCG, the most educated was further left of the middle educated on 13: importance of religion, acceptance of homosexuality, opposition to the death penalty, acceptance of working mothers, support of legalized abortion, support of immigration, environmental protection at the expense of growth and employment, free health care for the poor, importance of spare time to work, a minimum income for the unemployed, the effects of free competition, the effects of profit pursuit, and the closeness of the values of the European countries. The least educated was further left of the middle educated for 2 issues: free health care for the poor, and the effects of free competition. (Issues on which there was a significant difference in the tally of the self-identified left and the self-identified right are considered
partisan issues, with corresponding left and right positions. There was one issue on which there was no difference, and this issue was not included as partisan.)

The general trend is thus a direct relationship between education and left inclination, unless a particular less educated demographic has incentive to vote for, or occasion to consider, the less represented, in which case, there is a U-shaped curve.

Conservative analyst Steve Sailer noted the U-shaped pattern when examining the exit polls from the 2000 presidential election, in which both postgraduates and those with no high school degree were significantly more likely than the middle levels of education to vote for the Democrat, the large leftist party in the United States. Sailer’s explanation for the Democratic plurality among postgraduates? “[A] large fraction of [Democratic presidential candidate Al] Gore’s votes from Graduate Degree holders came from schoolteachers, and many don‟t consider Ed School masters and doctorates to be in the same class in terms of mental demands as other advanced degrees.” (43) Upon closer inspection, however, we observe that the consistent increase in left inclination between the middle educated and the highest educated cannot be attributed to schoolteachers, but is rather part of a general intellectual-leftist relationship.

Pew’s 2005 typology study of nine distinct political groups showed that “Liberals,” comprising 19% of registered voters, were by far the furthest left of any group on virtually every issue, had the highest education level of any group (49% were college graduates and 26% had postgraduate education; both percentages were roughly double the rest of the population), and were tied with the Enterprisers for the highest percentage (41%) with income above $75,000. (This compares to
24% above $75,000 for the public as a whole.) Thus, when this furthest left segment is very finely analyzed, it is apparent that there is a high educated, high income societal segment which votes consistently left. This cannot be explained by an allusion to schoolteachers, who, in 2005, made an average salary of $47,602 nationwide. (44)

On the other hand, the low income, low education group that votes on the right unless it has incentive to vote for, or occasion to consider, the less represented, appears to be represented by a combination of the Pew groups, “Conservative Democrats” and “Disadvantaged Democrats,” each of which, according to Pew, include many minority voters, are very religious, have very low income and very low educational attainment and are very socially conservative, but also very reliably vote Democratic. The Democratic vote of Disadvantaged Democrats is easily attributed to their strong economic leftism. The Democratic vote of Conservative Democrats,
which is comprised mostly of older women (27%) and blacks (30%), is more curious since they appear to be moderate or conservative on virtually every issue. Perhaps the people in this group have residual allegiance to the party which advocated for their principle gains in rights over the past fifty years, legalized abortion for women and civil rights for blacks. The people in these two low income, low education groups are actually conservative enough that they often do not
refer to themselves as “liberal,” though they do vote reliably Democratic. Indeed, the percentage of the U.S. public that self-describes as Democrat (39% in 2008) is almost twice that which selfdescribes as liberal (22%). (45) On the other hand, the percentage of Republicans, 32%, is roughly the same as the percentage of conservatives, 34%. Democrats draw lots of moderates, who are largely conservative, in line with their educational level, but have an incentive to vote for, or occasion to consider, the less represented.

The U-shaped curve shows that leftism draws voters from opposite ends of the intellectual spectrum, thus calling into question Walsby’s assertion that embracing leftism leads to intellectual growth. However, as observed above, those less intellectual voters tend not to be thoroughly liberal. They are rather mostly conservative and their leftist vote is driven by one or two main issues. Therefore, Walsby’s hypothesis cannot be discarded. The preceding income analysis shows that liberals tend to depart from their own self-interest by being economically leftist. This appears to support the Gilens-Caplan observation that selfinterest is not as powerful a voting impetus as is commonly believed, and suggests that a large part of the tendency of low income, low education people to depart from their general conservative inclination on issues involving their segment is driven not by self-interest, but rather by the superior vantage point they have to consider the less represented. However, it is also plausible that voting by self-interest is more prevalent among the lesser educated than among the higher educated. Indeed, the University of Chicago surveys showed that education is strongly correlated with optimism about other people, and the level of optimism within a societal segment was earlier hypothesized to both follow from and factor into the level of altruism that is demonstrated by that segment. Therefore, more altruism would be demonstrated by higher educated people. In Walsby’s time, the U-shaped curve was either not noted, or did not obtain. Since Walsby had already posited a direct relationship between intellect and left inclination, and also suggested that society’s poorest citizens would vote furthest right but that its wealthiest would not necessarily vote furthest left (46), we can deduce that Walsby saw a close correlation between intellect and income at the lowest levels of each, but no close correlation at the highest levels of each. An inclination by the poor toward the left would have therefore brought about a U-shaped curve (whereby, society’s extremes by intellect are most left inclined). The absence of a notable Ushaped curve is particularly curious since, as represented by Walsby, economic issues comprised the bulk of attention. In more recent times, society has famously considered issues like gay marriage, abortion, embryonic stem cell research, on which the poor people do not have incentive to vote for, or occasion to consider, the less represented. Yet still we observe a more leftist trend among society’s very poor, particularly in general elections. The more simple, direct relationship between intellect and left inclination observed by Walsby apparently made the relationship easier to identify by the people of the time, and Walsby commented repeatedly that society’s far right bitterly identified intellectuals with the left. In contemporary time, the middle intellect can look down at the low intellect and see a segment that consistently votes further left of it. Therefore, the intellectual-leftist correlation is not as clear on the surface, and there is anecdotal illustration that both sides of the spectrum are likely to feel that intellect resides on its side, and that a vote for the alternative is tantamount to ignorance.

Some examples:

Ann Coulter book’s titled, If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans Age of Reagan author Sean Wilentz’s comment to Newsweek: “It’s no secret that intellectuals, generally being liberals, didn‟t think much of Ronald Reagan.” (47)

A blog commenter’s inquiry as to whether “intellectual liberal” is an oxymoron. (48)

The Daily Mirror’s front page headline, after the re-election of Republican George W. Bush: “How can 59,054,087 people be so DUMB?”

On the Internet, reams of examples can be found in which a person speculates that his or her’s own side is smarter, wiser or more knowledgeable than the other. The U-shaped curve, and the general intellectual tendency toward leftism (as illustrated previously, and to be illustrated more fully) would seem to give credence to the left in some quarters. However, the degree to which it would is uncertain: Walsby furnished several examples of people who rejected leftism, despite acknowledging the intellectual tendency toward it.

This very consistent break in political inclination, from right to left, at the ascension in education, from “college graduate” to “postgraduate” and from “medium” to “high,” motivates the question as to exactly where in the educational percentile the break occurs. Walsby alluded to Serge Chakotin (49), who asserted that for the purposes of conducting propaganda, people are divided into two classes, 10 percent of which are active and thinking, and 90 percent of which are passive and emotional, and therefore particularly susceptible to propaganda. However, the intellectuals we‟ve examined differentiated themselves from the middle intellect not just by questioning the established (and thereby, being less susceptible to propaganda), but also by empathizing with society’s less represented segments.

In the exit poll data, the break in the trend occurred from roughly the top 16% to 18% of voters by education, which is the percentage of postgraduate voters in an average voter exit poll. However, only slightly more than half of the adult public participates in elections. (In the 2004 U.S. national elections, it was 60%.) The politically apathetic also tend to have lower educational attainment. (50) Therefore, postgraduates are of a higher educational percentile compared to the general public than they are compared to the voting public. Roughly 10% of the U.S. adult public fits into the “postgraduate” class. (51) It is likely, however, that the intrinsic break in the trend does not occur exactly at the postgraduate level, but rather somewhat below or above it. (In both of these cases, the statistical break would show up in the ascension from college graduate to postgraduate level.) This break occurs consistently throughout countries and eras, but it is uncertain whether it occurs consistently at the same educational percentile. The kind of information available in some societies could be such that it becomes comparatively more likely (in which the break will occur at a lower educational percentile) or unlikely (in which the break will occur at higher educational percentile) that a person will ascertain that, while swindlers exist, most people are fundamentally honest, have integrity, won‟t abuse any societal assistance, and deserve equal rights, and that just because something is established doesn‟t mean it’s above being questioned.

The following demographics have exhibited intellect in ways aside from formal education. They are characterized by both higher levels of intellect and higher levels of leftism than the general public. Interestingly, their higher levels of leftism appear to be caused by their higher levels of intellect.

As mentioned previously, an overwhelming number of studies have documented that as IQ, education, intellectual achievement and scientific eminence increase, religiosity decreases. Atheists and agnostics are strongly liberal. In the 2008 U.S. presidential election, for example, they voted for Democrat Barack Obama by better than a 3-to-1 margin. (52) Given that intellect and religiosity are inversely correlated, and only 12% of the voting public identified as atheist or agnostic, atheists and agnostics comprise a highly intellectual group. Explanations for this substantial difference between the atheist and agnostic vote and the religious vote come in two forms. One is that a religious person’s political ideologies are affected and, in fact, molded by religious services, documents and authorities, and that atheists and agnostics are more likely to be liberal in part because their religious skepticism causes them to be more liberal than the average. The other is that the kind of person who is more likely to become atheist or agnostic— shown previously to be most often highly intellectual—is just more likely to be liberal, and that this very intellectual group is liberal independent of its religious skepticism. That is, one possibility is causation of religious faith on political ideology, and the other is correlation of religious faith and political ideology. Of course, both explanations may have validity. Religiosity might particularly impact a person’s view on many issues, such as gay marriage, abortion, stem cell research, or even marijuana legalization. However, atheists and agnostics tend to be more liberal not just on these issues, but on issues on which the religious influence figures to be minimal, such as minimum wage. It is doubtful that many religious authorities have warned against minimum wage recently. Yet atheists and agnostics are consistently more liberal, by double-digit percentage points, than the religious public on this issue. (53) This is despite the fact that atheists and agnostics are no more likely to be low income than the general public. (54) So, there is a significant aspect to this religiosity-political inclination relationship that is strictly correlative and not causal. The kinds of people who are more likely to follow religion tend to be the kinds of people who are more likely to vote conservative, and the kinds of people who are more likely to be skeptical about religion tend to be the kinds of people who are more likely to vote liberal. Higher intellect is the common denominator that causes the correlation between religious skepticism and left inclination.

Note also that for the 2004 U.S. presidential election, CNN’s exit poll asked voters which of seven qualities—cares about people, religious faith, honest/trustworthy, strong leader, intelligent, will bring change, and clear stand on issue—they deem “most important” in a leader. In presidential elections, gubernatorial elections, senatorial elections, and ballot measures, those who chose religious faith (roughly 8% of voters nationally) were more likely than those who chose any other quality to vote Republican, while Democrats drew the top margin from those who chose intelligent (roughly 7% of voters nationally). (This is significant because heretofore, “will bring change” has often been offered as a definition of the political left.) The margins were shocking. Those who most valued intelligence preferred Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry by a 91 to 9 margin, but also voted in majority for all six Democratic gubernatorial candidates by an average margin of 82 to 14, voted in majority for all twenty-five Democratic senatorial candidates, seventeen at clips of above eighty percent, and brought the highest liberal margin on 10 of 11 ballot measures (second highest to those who most valued “will bring change” on the other). Those most valuing religious faith were in diametric opposition, preferring Republican George Bush by a 91 to 9 margin, and consistently voting overwhelmingly toward the right on each of these election levels. The consistency of this finding through the myriad election levels indicates the association of “intelligent” with a Democrat and “religious faith” with a Republican was not a function of the intellect or religiosity of the particular candidates, but that people who most value intelligence are overwhelmingly inclined toward the left, and that people who most value religious faith are overwhelmingly inclined toward the right, with little regard for the particular candidates. Those who most value intelligence are very likely to be intellectual themselves. This is illustrated by comparing the percentage of voters in a state who most valued intelligence with the percentage of the population in that state with a graduate degree. (55) The correlation is striking: Of the thirteen states most preferring intelligence in a leader, eleven have a population percentage with graduate degrees higher than 10%, while of the nineteen states least preferring intelligence in a leader, zero have a graduate degree concentration above 10%. The enormously strong tendency of those most valuing intelligence to vote liberal, coupled with the correlation between valuing intelligence and higher education, gives more evidence of the intellect-leftist correlation.

The average IQ of U.S. Jews is roughly one full standard deviation above the mean of the rest of the U.S. population. (56) U.S. Jews are also almost twice as likely as the average American to have received a college degree, and more than four times as likely to have received a graduate degree. (57) An estimated 1 out of 2500 people in the world is Jewish, yet Jews have comprised approximately 18% of Nobel Prize recipients, which is roughly 45,000% higher than the Jewish population distribution would predict. (58) Jews, as a whole, are very strongly and reliably leftist, on presidential elections, gubernatorial elections, senatorial elections and ballot measures. Indeed, since 1992, and presumably long before, Jews have voted Democratic in U.S. presidential elections by a roughly 5-to-1 ratio. Yet approximately half of U.S. Jews are secular and these secular Jews are even more liberal than religious Jews. (59) There are many characteristics embodied by observers of Judaism that would incline them toward liberalism, including perhaps having the experience of being a minority, knowledge of historical persecution of Jews, and origins in an urban area. But what liberal-causing characteristic do Jews possess such that the less religious Jews are even more likely to possess it? None of the above characteristics fit. The only obvious characteristic is intellect.

Postgraduates have already been observed to be significantly more liberal than college graduates. As the measures of intellect become more exclusive than postgraduate education, there is a correspondingly higher tendency toward liberalism.

Academia is a cluster of society’s most talented minds, in a wide variety of disciplines. Most college professors have doctorate degrees, and many are considered experts in their respective fields. The portion of intellectuals that are affiliated with academia is undoubtedly large. Academia is very largely liberal, across the United States and across the wide range of academic disciplines. This much is not in dispute. In 2004, the New York Times reported on two studies made by Daniel Klein, a libertarian professor at Santa Clara University. (60) Klein found that, nationwide, Democratic professors outnumber Republicans by seven to one in the humanities and social sciences, and that Democrats outnumbered Republicans by a nine-to-one ratio on the Berkeley and Stanford faculties, across a variety of disciplines.

Several conservative commentators reacted with “what else is new?” sarcasm. Notably, George Will wrote, “Oh, well, if the studies say so. The great secret is out: Liberals dominate campuses. Coming soon: „Moon Implicated In Tides, Studies Find.‟” (61) Columnist John Leo was more alarmed: “It’s not news that college professors are lopsidedly drawn from the political left, but American Enterprise magazine offers some numbers on how heavy the tilt has become.” (62)

In the voter registration study to which Leo alluded, the forwardly conservative American Magazine cross-referenced faculty rosters with public voter registration records in “carefully arrayed” academic fields at 18 of America’s most elite institutions. (63) Overall, the ratio of left to right was 1358 to 122. In fact, the liberal margin is particularly prevalent in elite academia. The Center for the Study of Popular Culture, also a forwardly conservative organization, organized a large voter registration study, tallying professors at 32 elite colleges and universities, including “the entire Ivy League, premier liberal arts colleges like Amherst and Pomona, wellknown technically-oriented universities like MIT, highly competitive public institutions like the University of California at Berkeley, and other elite private universities like Stanford.” (64) The number of registered Democrats outnumbered registered Republicans by 1420 to 135. Lest one think that this study only included faculty from areas that usually vote Democrat, it also included schools like Duke (95 Democrat, 15 Republican), Carnegie Mellon (31 Democrat, 6 Republican), and Oberlin (19 Democrat, 0 Republican).

In fact, the large leftist margin in academia exists all across the United States, across a wide variety of disciplines, and it is not exclusive to the United States. Large leftist margins characterize academia in many Western countries, sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset has reported. (65) The preceding studies have been conducted by conservative analysts who have illustrated these disparities in an expression of concern regarding the lack of diversity in academia. A more controversial matter is why these disparities occur. A canvass of the conservative analysis indicates that two theories have been offered for this wide liberal academic margin: First, liberals‟ altruism causes them to be more interested than conservatives in “do-gooder” careers as professors rather than business professionals, and second, liberal hiring committees discriminate against would-be conservative professors.

The first theory is discredited, upon closer inspection, by the fact that in each study that listed the faculty by discipline, the least liberal (though still substantially liberal) professors were from Economics and Business Administration. Why would Republicans interested in business be so much more likely to pass up the business world than Republicans interested in other disciplines? For those who reject the altruism theory, there is a more sensible reason: Those who are particularly interested in business and economics are more interested in what policies are best for the business world, compared to professors of other disciplines, who wouldn‟t similarly focus on business, and who would be more interested in the effect of policies on society as a whole. The conservative appeal to these economics and business professors is that conservative politicians are more likely to hold laissez-faire policies for businesses by imposing lower taxes, less environmental regulations and less employee restrictions.

In further rebuttal of the first theory, Professor Klein found a much higher share of Republicans among the nonacademic members of the scholars‟ associations, which belied the notion that nonleftists were uninterested in scholarly careers. (66)

Interestingly, prominent libertarian commentator F.A. Hayek noted way back in 1949 that the most intellectually talented members of academia gathered on the left side of the political spectrum. Like those who espouse the altruism theory, Hayek conjectured that academia was non-representative of intellectuals in general: “The main reason for this state of affairs is probably that, for the exceptionally able man who accepts the present order of society, a multitude of other avenues to influence and power are open, while to the disaffected and dissatisfied an intellectual career is the most promising path to both influence and the power to contribute to the achievement of his ideals.” (67) However, as noted before, the more intellectual a person, the more likely he or she is to note inefficiencies in, and consequently question, “the present order of society.” By Hayek’s theory then, intellectuals will be more likely to be inclined toward academia. The second theory supposes discrimination in hiring. For example, the authors of the aforementioned thirty-two college and university study concluded, “We believe the figures recorded in this report make a prima facie case that there is… a grossly unbalanced, politically shaped selection process in the hiring of college faculty.”

However, the liberal margin in academia does not just exist in politically-related disciplines. The discrimination would have to be so vast, covering disciplines like Engineering, Physics, Mathematics, Chemistry, and other non-political disciplines, which see much stronger liberal margins than politically-related fields like Business Administration and Economics. In fact, the American Enterprise study surveyed the Economics department at ten universities. The Economics professors were either the least liberal or the second least liberal department at all ten, though they were still liberal by a strong majority. This data is consistent with Stanley Rothman’s 1999 study (68) and the Klein-Stern 2003 study (69), each of which conducted large national surveys of professors in a wide variety of fields (fifteen for Rothman, six for KleinStern) and found economics professors to be the least liberal of any field studied, but still substantially liberal. How would it come to be that, from university to university, a single department is consistently discriminatory against Republican would-be professors, yet much less discriminatory than the hiring committees in other disciplines? Further, why would the discrimination be mitigated in Economics, and not some non-political discipline like Math or Physics? Again, if one rejects the discrimination theory, this phenomenon is explained by the fact that intellectuals who focus on economics, which often involves the study of idealized free markets, are more likely to be conservative than those who do not.

The Klein-Western 2004 study also noted that younger assistant and associate professors tended to be more overwhelmingly liberal than full professors. They charged, “This rank profile of lopsidedness strongly suggests that the problem has gotten worse over the past decades, and suggests that selection mechanisms have been working in ways that eliminates Republicans.” (70)

There is, however, a much simpler reason: Younger people in general tend to be more liberal than older people, so younger professors would tend to be more liberal than older professors. In fact, Paul Lazarsfeld and Wagner Thielens Jr. found the same disparity by age when they reported on academia back in 1958: “As in the population at large, Democratic voters are more frequent among younger teachers.” (71)

Similarly, Klein and Western lamented that the Democrat to Republican ratio “is especially extreme for women faculty.” That is, at both Berkeley and Stanford, the ratio of Democratic women to Republican women was even higher than the ratio of Democratic men to Republican men. Yet women are also significantly more likely than men to vote Democratic. Therefore, female professors would be more likely than male professors to vote Democratic. The fact that in academia the same political imbalances by age and gender occur as those in voter exit polls and public opinion surveys actually makes it less plausible that there has been any significant, unnatural, politically motivated selection of professors that is responsible for the leftright disparity. Interestingly, in their paper, Klein and Western rejected the notion that the Stanford and Berkeley faculties are leftist because of their liberal surrounding areas: “We conjecture that if Berkeley and Stanford are non-representative, it has less to do with geography than with the elite character of those institutions. That is, we would conjecture that the more elite institutions tend to be more rock-solidly Democratic and statist. This conjecture is in line with Lipset’s findings against academic elites.”

Indeed, multiple other studies, have revealed that more elite members of academia tend to be even more overwhelmingly liberal than other members of academia by myriad measures of eminence, including faculty productivity rate (72), honorific society membership (73), institutional standing (74), and self-judgment (75).

To attribute the large disparity in academia to discrimination in hiring, one would have to assert not just that the elite schools are discriminatory, but also that the lesser caliber four year colleges are discriminatory against conservatives, just less so, and that the two year colleges are discriminatory against conservatives as well, but even less so.

Considering all the measures of eminence by which the more elite scholars were found to be more liberal than other scholars, the hiring committees would have to discriminate not just against conservatives, but against the most elite conservatives, across many non-political fields, and discriminate more in many of the non-political fields than in the political fields. Such argumentative acrobatics are unnecessary. There is a more perspicuous explanation for the leftright academic disparity: Intellectuals in general are considerably more likely to incline toward leftism than the alternative.

It is not just college professors who increase in liberal inclination with an increase in eminence— college students at more selective universities appear to be considerably more liberal than other college students. Democrat Barack Obama’s popularity with the youth in 2008 was well documented, but even in 2004, the top 16 college towns (that is, the parent cities or counties of the top sixteen colleges) on the U.S. News & World Report’s ranking of U.S. colleges voted in favor of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry by an average margin of 49.875 percentage points. (76) Each of the top 32 college towns voted more Democratic than their surrounding states. Of the top 40, 36 voted in favor of the Democratic candidate Kerry, compared to 4 for the Republican candidate Bush. As college selectivity decreased, however, there was a corresponding tapering of Democratic inclination: For the middle 46, 35 favored Kerry and 11 favored Bush. For the bottom 40: Kerry, 24; Bush, 16. Of the thousands of four year institutions in the United States, U.S. News & World Report only ranked the top 126. Therefore, even colleges on the bottom of the list were reasonably selective, but much less selective than those at the top. College towns in the bottom 40 were four times as likely as college towns in the top 40 to vote for Bush in the 2004 election. This disparity in vote by college selectivity holds up whether the surrounding state voted for Bush or Kerry, and whether the town had median household income, minority presence, population size, or median age lower or higher than the national average. An examination of even more selective measures of intellect is desirable. There are certain instances in which a select group of people has been recognized for intellectual accomplishments, and the people in this group can be cross-referenced against public voter donation records to determine their political inclinations. The following is a list of intellectual recognitions along with the corresponding political inclinations (as determined from public voter donation records) of those recognized. (77)

Nobel Prize (the Nobel Peace Prize, which is often granted on a political basis, was omitted): 44 exclusively left, 5 exclusively right, 9 majority left, 1 left special interest, 1 even. Pulitzer Prize in Letters (only those recipients who did not win the Nobel Prize): 70 exclusively left, 0 exclusively right, 1 majority left, 2 left special interest.
National Book Award (only those recipients who did not win the Pulitzer Prize): 20 exclusively left, 0 exclusively right.

Fields Medal of Mathematics: 4 exclusively left, 0 exclusively right.

Turing Award of Computer Science: 7 exclusively left, 3 exclusively right, 1 majority left, 1 majority right.

Pritzker Prize of Arc

hitecture: 4 exclusively left, 0 exclusively right.

MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship: 184 exclusively left, 7 exclusively right, 10 majority left, 5 majority right, 7 left special interest, 1 libertarian.

The total nature of the donations made by the recipients since 1978 of these seven most prominent prizes awarded based on intellectual achievement has been 364 left-inclined, 21 rightinclined, 1 even, 1 libertarian.

Lest one think that this overwhelming intellectual inclination toward liberalism was due to the recent, unpopular George W. Bush presidency, a tally of the voter donation records of the above recipients, considering only those donations made between 1978 and 1999 (before Bush), reveals the exact same 17.3 to 1, left to right ratio. (78)

A control group is necessary to ensure that liberals are not simply more likely than conservatives to donate to political causes. Twenty common American names, randomly selected by matching most common surnames in the U.S. alternately with the 26 most common male name, the 27 most common female name, and so on, produces names such as Gary Hall,

Shirley Allen, Jose Young, and Angela Hernandez. This brings up 179 separate donors, 121 from the ten male names, and 58 from the ten female names. (79) Overall, the donors contributed 101 exclusively right, 63 exclusively left, 8 majority right, and 7 majority left. This does not necessarily mean that the general public is more likely to donate to the right than to the left: Perhaps people with common names are just more likely to vote on the right than people with uncommon names. However, this sample is enough to show that the left-contributing percentage of intellectual donors is dramatically higher than the left-contributing percentage of the general public.

A large portion of the above recipients are affiliated with academia, and it has already been established that academia is overwhelmingly liberal. Indeed, many intellectuals teach, which is why academia is a good representative of intellectuals. However, a survey of champions of the prominent intellect-related competitions finds intellectuals unaffiliated with academia. A crossreference with public voter donation records shows:

Scripps National Spelling Bee: 5 left, 0 right.

Putnam Mathematical Competition: 10 left, 1 libertarian.

Jeopardy Tournament of Champions: 20 left, 5 right, 1 libertarian.

World Scrabble Championship: 2 left, 0 right.

American Contract Bridge League Hall of Fame: 4 left, 1 right.

The winners of these competitions may not be traditional “intellectuals,” but they have demonstrated intellect at a world-class level, and they have often demonstrated aptitude in other intellectual areas. For example, a sample (80) of seven Spelling Bee winners from 1986 to 1992 includes a national Quiz Bowl champion who subsequently got a PhD in Sociology, a high school valedictorian who is now working as an attorney, a PhD and M.D. resident who started Stanford at age 16, a practitioner of chiropractic and naturopathic medicine, a molecular biotechnology research technician, a neonatology fellow, and a champion of the Jeopardy teen tournament who earned a perfect SAT score and graduated from Harvard Law School. The four left-inclined champions of the American Contract Bridge League Hall of Fame include a Dartmouth MBA, a Harvard graduate, an author, and Robert Hamman, “the Babe Ruth of Bridge.” (81)

Overall, the winners of these five most prominent intellectual competitions have, since 1978, contributed 41 left, 6 right, 2 libertarian.

Recall that Walsby differentiated between “vertical” intellectuals and “horizontal” intellectuals. Walsby would likely refer to Nobel and Pulitzer prize recipients, who usually received recognition on the basis of one particular accomplishment in a specialized field, as “vertical” intellectuals. On the other hand, the ability necessary to compete in the Jeopardy Tournament of Champions seems to match very well the first part of the description of “horizontal” intellectualism (82) offered by Walsby: “people who have almost encyclopaedic knowledge— that is to say, people who have a great quantity of factual information at their disposal.” But it is uncertain how many fit the second part of the description: people who “despite their very „wide‟ range of knowledge, have no „deep‟ insight or understanding into the nature of things.” It is noted that the liberal inclination among the Jeopardy champions was, although strong, less overwhelming than the liberal inclination among the intellectuals in aggregate. However, any conclusion about this distinction would be tenuous, given the comparatively small Jeopardy sample size and an inability to distinguish between people who demonstrate a wide breadth of knowledge, but lack depth, and those who demonstrate both breadth and depth. The very strong intellectual inclination toward political leftism leads to the notion that such a relationship lends credence to the left. In fact, the degree to which people have speculated upon a relationship between intellect and their own political view indicates that many people feel intellectual support to a political side is compelling. People’s political differences are functions of their differing understandings about the issues. It follows that intellectuals have a different, keener understanding, both of human nature and (somewhat consequently) of particular issues. They are also more likely to be aware (83) of more facts and arguments related to these issues. (People with postgraduate degrees, for example, answered correctly more than twice as many political questions posed by Pew as those who did not finish high school.) The general public tends to be most familiar with the dominant government, religion, and prevailing order. But intellectuals are more likely to be familiar with the less represented too, and to be more empathetic and open toward the less represented than anyone else. This is why intellectuals incline toward leftism.

Scott Althaus has found that, on an issue-by-issue basis, when significant splits occur between the public’s most informed citizens and the general public, the positions held by the most informed “can be quite prescient in predicting future trends” in general public opinion. (84) That is, on issues for which there has been a shift in public opinion, that shift has most often occurred in the direction of the highest educated opinion. In recent decades, on the issues of euthanasia (85), interracial marriage (86), homosexuality (87), gays in the military (88), gay marriage (89), and stem cell research (90), the general popular trend has moved in the direction of the highest educated.

Walsby did indicate that intellectuals were more likely than the general public to incline toward socialism. Indeed, many of history’s most renowned intellectuals have been associated with socialism, and some contemporary intellectuals are still. (91) One of the objectives expressed by the SI founders was to explain why socialists had not gained broad popularity. Several reasons are apparent.

Movements such as socialism and communism have led wealthy and powerful people, particularly in the United States, to employ public figures, from politicians to actors, to denounce anyone or anything associated with those leftist causes. This has been accompanied by pervasive but surreptitious military intervention: The U.S. has employed its military in other countries over seventy times since 1945, not including innumerable operations by the U.S.‟ Central Intelligence Agency. (92) Over the past sixty years, the CIA, which recruited Nazis by the tens of thousands at its inception (93), has assassinated or otherwise overthrown over a dozen of the democratically elected leftist governments that were perceived to be threats to U.S. corporate interests in those countries, and has installed in their places dictators which suppress the will of the people. (94) Around the world, the CIA has conducted both economic and military sabotage attacks (95) and has, under Operation Mockingbird, published false reports and propaganda under the names of hundreds of prominent journalists and scholars. (96) Journalist and former U.S. State Department employee William Blum has compiled a list of twenty-eight different countries in which the United States has influenced, tainted or sabotaged elections, including pouring millions of dollars to favored candidates, spreading disinformation, blackmail, staging elections, stuffing ballot boxes, and drugging, threatening or tormenting unwanted political opponents, from the Philippines in the 1950s to Afghanistan in 2004. (97) The Association for Responsible Dissent, an organization comprised of ex-CIA officials, estimated that by as far back as 1987, CIA covert operations had already killed six million people. (98) This intervention’s scope and intensity indicates that there is a necessity for it, and that left unmolested, leftist governments, such as socialists and communists, do attract the masses. The democratically elected leftist governments that the U.S. has overthrown or sabotaged support this idea.

In the United States, the propaganda has been pervasive and fierce, and the bulk of the public is persuaded by the use of “socialism” and before that “communism” as pejoratives, despite not knowing what the terms really constitute. At the peak of anti-Communist propaganda in the U.S., 71% of Americans responded (99) that the Communist Party should be forbidden by law (college graduates were more than twice as likely as the general public to reject making Communism illegal), just 17% thought that U.S. Communists should be permitted to hold government jobs in the U.S. (100), and just 10 % held that a man could simultaneously be a good Christian and a member of the Communist Party (101), yet while 90% of Americans could identify Columbus and two-thirds could identify both Napoleon and Beethoven, no more than one-third could even identify (102) Karl Marx, the father of the Communist movement and the author of The Communist Manifesto.

The Democratic-Republican political monopoly has also presented a catch-22 to third-party candidates in the United States. As mentioned previously, voters are reluctant to “waste” votes on candidates they feel probably won‟t win, and the media seldom covers candidates unless they have a certain amount of support. Without support, they lack attention; without attention, they lack support.

Finally, many positions consistent with socialism, including Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and universal health care, have fallen under the umbrella of Democratic positions, so that one has not had to identify as socialist in order to support these programs.

The broader Walsby-Walford extension from political inclinations to ideologies that are associated with different personalities, occupations, and eras appears tenuous. Walsby and Walford had represented the six political stances as they were ranked in order by five scales of differentiation. While the order was earlier called into some question (the non-politicals should be closer toward the middle), and this paper has reduced the scales of differentiation to one, the order is generally accepted. However, Walford’s mapping of the political stances to the broader ideologies reveals no clear, corresponding order among the broader ideologies by any significant feature of differentiation. The only orderly characteristics that presumably apply to the ideologies are the ones specifically associated with the more particular political inclinations which belong to the ideologies. These are hardly all-encompassing enough to explain the differences between people, occupations, and eras. There is also an absence of precise differentiation. Earlier, we were able to differentiate between people’s political inclinations based on their very discrete answers to exit polls and public opinion polls. A corresponding precise differentiation between personalities, occupations, and eras is lacking. Consequently, many inconsistencies seem to appear in Walford’s representation.

The placement of technology into the expediency class (103) is particularly dubious. Technologists would then be interpreted to be both averse to change and very large in number, which are two of the few deductions that can be made from their being in the expedient class. Both are questionable. Contemporary society is very specialized, and the inventors and engineers who exhibit a technological focus are both part of a relatively select group and by the nature of their profession push the prevailing technological boundaries. Additionally, there is no reason to believe that technologists tend to be non-voters, or particularly susceptible to propaganda. Walford also described expediency as lacking a “principled set of guidelines” (104), but the technology since Thomas Edison is practiced much more systematically than when the “first digging-stick was shaped” and “as flint-knapping developed,” two examples Walford gave of expedient technological practice.

Walford characterized (105) expedient people as apathetic (probably a more accurate description of non-politicals than expedient), which inspires a question as to why apathetic people would be the ones most averse to change. Additionally, it was observed earlier that atheists and agnostics are strongly liberal. Walford mentioned that expedients lack of commitment to any set of religious principles, yet he associated them with the expedients/non-politicals group which he put on the far right.

The fact that only expediency, principle, and precision appear to have been observed in personalities, occupations and eras, and the myriad inconsistencies in the way expedients have been presented, mean that the broad extension across personalities, occupations, and eras has only been consistently instantiated in principle and precision. Even here, there are questions. What is the connection between leftism and precision? The reader is left to wonder. Why is military to be associated with principle? The military also seems to embody precision. Indeed, military missions are planned down to the minute. If the ideologies were represented on a continuum like the political inclinations, an occupation could not be two places at once. But since the ideologies are not represented in a clear order, it appears that associating an occupation with multiple ideologies is not contradictory. One person could not be both more liberal and more conservative than another, but it seems that one profession could be characterized as both more precise and more principled than another. If the ideologies are not mutually exclusive, the division of ideologies is not as revealing because some portion of the population cannot be described in terms of that dichotomy.

The ideological terms appear to describe the differences in eras better. In fact, one might conjecture that the terms were originally motivated by the chronological stages. Even here, however, there are issues. Only three of the six eras have been instantiated. The dividing lines between them seem rather arbitrary, and the character of the changes that are said to occur between each era also differs. In the ascension from expediency to principle, the change appears to be characterized by increased attention toward long term planning. The difference from principle to precision seems to be, above all, the latter’s attention to detail. Since the three eidodynamic ideologies (reform, revolution, and repudiation) have been scarcely instantiated, their descriptions have not been as well developed, but they appear to be characterized by increasing levels of change. Indeed, there is no consistent thread of differentiation that runs through the temporal periods.

One wonders whether the pattern in time observed by Walford predicts a society that passes into increasingly shorter eras, characterized by increasing change and decreasing influence, and whether this would continue into infinitely short eras characterized by an infinite amount of change and an infinitely low amount of influence compared to the previous, or whether the society would be characterized by repudiation forever after, which would seemingly go against repudiation’s characteristic paucity of instantiation.

Scientific history reveals analogy to be an effective tool. Johannes Gutenberg applied a wineproducing screw press to print ink onto paper (106), thus inventing the first western printing press. Early mechanical calculator developer Gottfried Wilhelm Schickard viewed his endeavor as the mechanical analogue of human logistics. (107) Charles Babbage applied the Jacquard loom, which used punch cards to mechanically control a series of weaving operations, to his analytical engine. (108) However, analogy is better suited for invention than description. Many minds have tried unsuccessfully to stretch models of known phenomena onto unknown phenomena. For seven centuries until the second century AD, “humoral medicine” (109) held that four humours mapped to the four elements of external nature. Johannes Kepler taught (110) that since there are five regular solids, there must be six planets (with Mercury inscribed inside the first one). In popular medicine, substances were associated with various body parts by their colors. (111) The Walsby-Walford application of a workable description of political delineations to explain the differences between occupations and eras is merely one of the latest in a line of unsuitable analogies.

This paper, like the Walsby-Walford theses, started with an attempt to describe the political demarcations that people form naturally. Therein lie the most viable patterns we have considered. This paper provides a means to differentiate between people’s political stances that is singular and explains differences on issues that were seldom discussed in the Walsby-Walford era. Following Walsby, this paper does observe a very strong intellectual tendency toward leftism, and it explains this tendency in terms of the fundamental distinction between political stances: Leftists are characterized by a more thorough consideration toward the less represented generally, and intellectuals are much more likely than the general public to demonstrate this leftist consideration. In a break from Walsby, this paper argues that intellect causes leftism, rather than the reverse. Finally, this paper argues that the use of political delineations to describe occupational and temporal phenomena constitutes an ill-suited analogy.

Notes: 1) Harold Walsby, The Domain of Ideologies, William Maclellan in collaboration with the Social Science Association, 1947, pgs. 91-92
2) George Walford, Beyond Politics, Calabria Press, 1990, “The British Political Series”
3) Walsby, The Domain of Ideologies, pg. 95
4) Ibid, pg. 80
5) John W. Dean, Conservatives Without Conscience, Viking, 2006, pg. 2
6) Amanda Paulson, “South Dakota’s Stark Abortion Choice,” The Christian Science Monitor, October 12, 2006, http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1012/p01s01-uspo.html; CBS News Poll, October 12-16, 2007, http://www.pollingreport.com/abortion.htm;
7) The most common position among doctors appears to be that fetal feeling begins at the 26th week of gestation, though the estimates range from 16 to 28 weeks: Jacqui Wise, “Fetuses cannot feel pain before 26 weeks,” BMJ, 1997, 315: 1111-1116 (November 1), http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/315/7116/1111/c; Arthur Caplan, “Abortion politics twist facts in fetal pain laws,” MSNBC, November 30, 2005, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10238840/ Fetal ability to survive outside the mother also begins at roughly 26 weeks: Franklin Foer, “Fetal Viability,” Slate Magazine, May 25, 1997 90% of abortions occur within the first 12 weeks, and almost 99% occur within the first 20 weeks: Borgna Brunner (editor), Time Almanac 2007, Information Please, 2006, pg. 518
8) CNN, 2004 national exit poll, http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/US/P/00/epolls.0.html
9) Erich Goode, The Marijuana Smokers, http://www.psychedelic-library.org/mjsmokers2.htm
10) Dean, Conservatives Without Conscience, pg. 189
11) The New Yorker, conference video, Morality: 2012, May 7, 2007,
http://www.newyorker.com/online/video/conference/2007/haidt
12) Jonathan Haidt, TED conference, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs41JrnGaxc
13) Pew Global Research Project, “Beyond Red vs. Blue,” May 10, 2005, http://peoplepress.org/2005/05/10/beyond-red-vs-blue/
14)Walsby, The Domain of Ideologies, pg. 28
15) Ibid, pg. 27
16) Ibid, pg. 27
17) Ibid, pg. 28
18) Ibid, pg. 55
19) Ibid, pg. 52
20) Ibid, pg. 56
21) Ibid, pg. 29
22) Andrew Kohut and Bruce Stokes, America Against The World, An Owl Book, 2006, pgs. 212-21323) Susan Mitchell, The Official Guide To American Attitudes, New Strategist Publications, 1996, pgs. 347-355; General Social Survey, National Opinion Research Center, University of Chicago
24) Gina Kolata, “A Surprising Secret to a Long Life: Stay in School,” New York Times, January 3, 2007; Catherine Rampell, “Does Education Make You Happy?,” Economix, February 18, 2010, http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/18/does-education-makeyou-happy/?src=twr
25)Walter Isaacson, Einstein, Simon & Schuster, 2007, pg. 20
26)Burnham Beckwith, “The Effect of Intelligence on Religious Faith,” Free Inquiry, Spring 1986; Edward J. Larson and Larry Witham, “Scientists and Religion in America,” Scientific American, September 1999, pg. 90; Frank Newport, “A Look at Americans and Religion Today,” The Gallup Poll, March 23, 2004,
http://www.gallup.com/poll/11089/Look-Americans-Religion-Today.aspx#2; Frank Newport, “Who Believes in God and Who Doesn‟t?,” Gallup News Service, June 23, 2006, http://www.gallup.com/poll/23470/Who-Believes-God-Who-Doesnt.aspx
27) Isaacson, Einstein, pgs. 20-21
28) Thomas Sowell, “The Legacy of Eric Hoffer,” Free Republic, June 18, 2003, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/964347/posts
29)Martin Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare, The University of Chicago Press, 1999, pg. 40
30)Bryan Caplan, The Myth of the Rational Voter, Princeton University Press, 2007, pgs. 148-150
31)CNN national election exit poll data, http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results
32) Pew Research Center, “Gay Marriage Is Back On The Radar For Republicans, Evangelicals,” June 12, 2008, http://pewresearch.org/pubs/868/gay-marriage
33) Pew Research Center, “Pragmatic Americans Liberal and Conservative on Social Issues,” August 3, 2006, http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=283
34) Ibid.
35) Pew Research Center, “Abortion and Rights of Terror Suspects Top Court Issues,” August 3, 2005, http://people-press.org/report/253/abortion-and-rights-of-terror-suspectstop-court-issues
36) Gallup Poll, October 4-7, 2007; http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/death/opinion.htm
37) Pew Research Center, “Mixes Views On Immigration Bill,” June 7, 2007, http://peoplepress.org/report/335/mixed-views-on-immigration-bill
38) Pew Research Center, “A Deeper Partisan Divide Over Global Warming,” May 8, 2008, http://people-press.org/reports/pdf/417.pdf
39) Pew Research Center, “Foreign Policy Attitudes Now Driven By 9/11 and Iraq,” August 18, 2004, http://people-press.org/report/?pageid=86440) Gallup, “Blacks, nonwhites most supportive of healthcare reform,” September 24, 2009, http://www.gallup.com/video/123167/Blacks-Nonwhites-Supportive-HealthcareReform.aspx
41)Missouri 2006 Proposition B,
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2006//pages/results/states/MO/I/02/epolls.0.html; Montana 2006 Initiative 151,
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2006//pages/results/states/MT/I/02/epolls.0.html; Ohio 2006 Issue 2,
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2006//pages/results/states/OH/I/03/epolls.0.html
42) Euro-Rscg, European Values Survey, May 2005, http://www.thebrusselsconnection.be/tbc/upload/attachments/European%20Values%20O
verall%20EN.pdf
43) Steve Sailer, May 2004, http://www.isteve.com/Web_Exclusives_ArchiveMay2004.htm#38115.6465670139
44) American Federation of Teachers Survey, 2005,
http://www.aft.org/salary/2005/download/AFT2005SalarySurvey.pdf
45)CNN, 2008 national exit poll, http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/polls.main/
46)Walsby, The Domain of Ideologies, pg. 28
47)Newsweek, May 12, 2008, pg. 26
48) http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2006/06/intellectual_gl_1.html, June 23, 2006
49)Walsby, The Domain of Ideologies, pg. 39
50) Florin Fesnic, http://florin.eu.pn/subfiles/publications/education_and_voting.pdf
51) U.S. Census, http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/c2kbr-24.pdf
52)CNN, 2008 national exit poll.
53)CNN ballot measure exit polls, 2004 to 2008
54) Pew Research Center, “Income Distribution Within U.S. Religious Groups,” January 30, 2009, http://pewforum.org/Income-Distribution-Within-US-Religious-Groups.aspx
55) U.S. Census Bureau, “Eastern States Lead in Graduate Degrees; Colorado and New Mexico Stand Out in West,” March 10, 2004, http://www.census.gov/PressRelease/www/releases/archives/american_community_survey_acs/001712.html, Table 1
56) Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Bell Curve, Simon & Schuster, 1994, pg. 275
57) National Jewish Population Survey, http://www.ujc.org/page.html?ArticleID=46193
58) Israel High Tech & Investment Report, December 2004, http://www.ishitech.co.il/1204ar3.htm
59) News Hour with Jim Lehrer, PBS, August 9, 2000, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/religion/jul-dec00/orthodox_8-9.html
60)John Tierney, “Republicans Outnumbered in Academia, Studies Find,” New York Times, November 18, 2004,
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/18/education/18faculty.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5090&en=e4c17b953627eec0&ex=1258520400&partner=rssuserland
61) George Will, “Academia, Stuck To the Left,” Washington Post, November 28, 2004, pg. B07, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15606-2004Nov26.html
62)John Leo, “The absent professors,” Jewish World Review, September 17, 2002, http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/leo091702.asp
63) Karl Zinsmeister, “The Shame of America’s One-Party Campuses,” American Enterprise, September, 2002, http://www.taemag.com/issues/articleID.17443/article_detail.asp
64) David Horowitz and Eli Lehrer, “Political Bias in the Administrations and Faculties of 32 Elite Colleges and Universities,” Center for the Study of Popular Culture, 2004, http://www.frontpagemag.com/Content/read.asp?ID=55
65) Seymour Martin Lipset, “The Academic Mind at the Top: The Political Behavior and Values of Faculty Elites,” The Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 46, No. 2 (Summer, 1982), pgs. 143-168
66) Tierney, “Republicans Outnumbered in Academia, Studies Find”
67) F.A. Hayek, “The Intellectuals and Socialism,” The University of Chicago Law Review, Spring 1949, http://mises.org/etexts/hayekintellectuals.pdf
68) Dr. Stephen H. Balch, report to the select committee of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, November 9, 2005,
http://www.nas.org/polimage.cfm?doc_Id=7&size_code=Doc
69) Daniel Klein and Charlotta Stern, “How Politically Diverse Are the Social Sciences and Humanities? Survey Evidence from Six Fields,” http://www.nas.org/aa/klein_launch.htm
70) Daniel Klein and Andrew Western, “How Many Democrats per Republican at UCBerkeley and Stanford? Voter Registration Data across 23 Academic Departments,” http://www.ratio.se/pdf/wp/dk_aw_voter.pdf
71) Paul Lazarsfeld and Wagner Thielens Jr., The Academic Mind, The Free Press of Glencoe, Illinois, 1958, pgs. 14-16
72) Ibid.
73) Lipset, 1982
74) Ibid; Seymour Martin Lipset, “Academia and Politics in America,” in T.J. Nossiter, A.H. Hanson, Stein Rokkan (editors), Imagination and Precision in the Social Sciences: Essays in Memory of Peter Netti, London, Faber 1972, pgs. 224-225; Richard F. Hamilton and Lowell L. Hargens, “The Politics of Professors: Self-Identifications, 1969-1984,” Social Forces, March 1993, 71(3), pgs. 603-627
75) Lipset, 1982
76) college rankings: U.S. News & World Report, America’s Best Colleges 2007 edition, pg. 80; county voting data: CNN, 2004 county exit polls The rankings are from 2007, but change little from year to year.
77) Those tallied are the recipients of these intellectual recognitions between 1978 and 2009. The publicly available donor data was obtained at newsmeat.com. For many names, there was no entry given for the name, indicating that no one by that name has made a political donation of $200 or more since 1978. If there was no entry, I went to the next name. If there were one or more entries, I searched the award winner on the Internet, and obtained such information as the winner’s middle name, place of residence and place of occupation, which could be used to match the award winner with the political donation entries. For the comparatively few, very common names which brought many entries, it’s possible there were donations made by an award winner from a place other than his/her known place of residence, which went uncounted. If these instances occurred, they were rare. If a donor made a donation that did not include his/her middle name or occupation, and was a relatively common name, I did not count the person’s donation. These instances were rare also. Donations to a party’s candidate or to a party itself have
been listed as contributing to the side of the political spectrum to which the party belongs. The vast majority of donations were made to either the Democratic or Republican parties. 78) The same names were considered, but only their corresponding donations made from 1978 to 1999 were tallied.
79) U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division, Population Analysis & Evaluation Staff, 1990;
http://names.mongabay.com/most_common_surnames.htm;
http://names.mongabay.com/male_names.htm;
http://names.mongabay.com/female_names.htm
80)Rita Healy, Time,
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1624100_1624098,00.html
81) American Contract Bridge League, http://www.acbl.org/hallOfFame/index.html; SCA Promotions, http://www.scapromotions.com/index.php?task=news&whichone=68
82)Walsby, The Domain of Ideologies, pgs. 27-28
83) Pew Research Center, “Public Knowledge of Current Affairs Little Changed by News and Information Revolutions,” April 15, 2007, http://peoplepress.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=319
84) Scott L. Althaus, Collective Preferences in Democratic Politics, Cambridge University Press, 2003, pg. 230
85)College graduates are consistently more likely than those with just a high school education to support legalized euthanasia: Pew Research Center, “Abortion and Rights of Terror Suspects Top Court Issues,” August 3, 2005, http://peoplepress.org/report/253/abortion-and-rights-of-terror-suspects-top-court-issues; Gallup Poll: “Americans Back Euthanasia, Assisted Suicide, Others Disagree,” June 19, 2006 A 1947 Gallup poll showed that just 37% of the public supported euthanasia: George H. Gallup, The Gallup Poll Public Opinion 1935-1971, Random House New York, 1972, pg. 656; by 2005, Pew showed that figure to be 51%: Pew Research Center, “Abortion and Rights of Terror Suspects Top Court Issues,” August 3, 2005, http://peoplepress.org/report/253/abortion-and-rights-of-terror-suspects-top-court-issues 86) In the 1960s, people with bachelor’s degrees were 22 percentage points more likely than high school graduates to disapprove of laws against interracial marriage: Susan Mitchell, The Official Guide To American Attitudes, New Strategist Publications, Inc., 1996, pg. 128 Popular support for interracial marriage has grown from 4% in 1958, to 20% in 1968, to 48% in 1991, to 77% in 2007: Gallup, “Most Americans Approve of Interracial Marriages,” August 16, 2007, http://www.gallup.com/poll/28417/most-americansapprove-interracial-marriages.aspx
87) Through the decades, college graduates have been consistently more likely to accept homosexuality, by double-digit percentage point margins. Susan Mitchell, The Official Guide To American Attitudes, New Strategist Publications, Inc., 1996, pg. 389; Pew Research Center, “Jury Still Out on Clinton’s Success,” August 5, 1993, http://peoplepress.org/reports/pdf/19930805.pdf Public acceptance of homosexuality was 41% in 1993. It was 52% by 2010: Lydia Saad, “Americans‟ Acceptance of Gay Relations Crosses 50% Threshold,” Gallup, http://www.gallup.com/poll/135764/americansacceptance-gay-relations-crosses-threshold.aspx
88) In 1993, college graduates were ten percentage points more likely than high school graduates to support the inclusion of gays in the military. Popular support for gays in the military was 42% in 1993. Pew Research Center, “Jury Still Out on Clinton’s Success,” August 5, 1993, http://people-press.org/reports/pdf/19930805.pdf By 2010, support had grown to 60%: Pew, “Gay Marriage Gains More Acceptance,” Oct. 6, 2010, http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1755/poll-gay-marriage-gains-acceptance-gays-in-themilitary

89) Pew showed that in 2004 and 2008, college graduates were sixteen and twenty-four percentage points more likely than people with a high school degree or less to favor gay marriage. In 2004, popular support for gay marriage was 32%. Pew Research Center, “Gay Marriage Is Back On The Radar For Republicans, Evangelicals,” June 12, 2008, http://pewresearch.org/pubs/868/gay-marriage Support for gay marriage has grown from 32% in 2004 to 42% in 2010: Pew, “Gay Marriage Gains More Acceptance,” Oct. 6, 2010, http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1755/poll-gay-marriage-gains-acceptance-gays-in-themilitary

90) Pew showed that from 2002 to 2005, college graduates were between twelve and twentyone percentage points more likely than high school graduates to support stem cell research, and during this time, the total public support for stem cell research grew from 43% to 57%: Pew Research Center, August 3, 2005, http://peoplepress.org/2005/08/03/abortion-and-rights-of-terror-suspects-top-court-issues/\

91) Prominent intellectuals associated with socialism include Fabian socialists H.G. Wells and John Maynard Keynes and libertarian socialists Jean-Paul Sartre, Bertrand Russell and Noam Chomsky. Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Stephen Hawking have expressed support for democratic socialism. Albert Einstein was “convinced” that socialism was a way to overcome “the economic anarchy of capitalist society.” (Albert Einstein, “Why Socialism?” Monthly Review, May 1949) 92)Barbie Zelizer and Stuart Allan (editors), Journalism After September 11, Routledge, 2002, pg. 92
93) Peter Grose, “Uncle Sam’s Nazis,” Washington Post, April 24, 1988, pg. x11
94)William Blum, Rogue State, third edition, Common Courage Press, 2005, pgs. 162-220; Eugene Jarecki (director), Why We Fight, documentary, Sony Pictures, 2005
95)William Blum, Killing Hope, Common Courage Press, 1995; James Bovard, “Terrorism Debacles in the Reagan Administration,” Freedom Daily, June 2004; Lisa Haugaard, “Declassified Army and CIA Manuals Used in Latin America,” Latin America Working Group, February 18, 1997; U.S. Congressional record, May 7, 1998, pg. H2970; “U.S. Said To Sabotage Peace Talks For Contras,” Chicago Tribune, May 10, 1987, pg. 27; Barbara Trent (director), The Panama Deception, documentary, The Empowerment Project, 1992
96)Carl Bernstein, “The CIA and the Media,” Rolling Stone, October 20, 1977; Michael Kazin, “Dancing to the CIA’s Tune,” Washington Post, January 27, 2008
97)Blum, Rogue State
98)Colman McCarthy, “The Consequences of Covert Tactics,” Washington Post, December 13, 1987, pg. F02
99) George H. Gallup, The Gallup Poll Public Opinion 1935-1971, Random House New York, 1972, pg. 285
100) Ibid, pg. 594
101) Ibid, pg. 844
102) Ibid, pg. 1378
103) Walford, Beyond Politics, “Ideology Beyond Politics”
104) Ibid.
105) Ibid.
106) Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From, Riverhead Books, 2010, pg. 152
107) Stan Augarten, Bit by Bit, Ticknor & Fields, 1984, pg. 18
108) Johnson, pg. 157
109) Roy Porter, Greatest Benefit to Mankind, W.W. Norton & Company, 1997, pg. 9
110) Frederick Gregory, Natural Science in Western History, Houghton Mifflin Company,
2008, pg. 106
111) Porter, pg. 38