I think this is an example of where it can be dangerous: pretending that there is only a “liberal” and a “conservative” perspective. How about a perspective that gives empiricism primacy? This liberal/conservative construct encourage us to move away from an empirical basis for policy choice and towards belief as cheer. It seems to me to be destructive to the wealth-increasing commons.

I’m surprised you’re not more concerned about this, Robin. My perception is that you’re neck-deep in belief as cheer, and if you don’t innovate out of it, quickly, it could kill us both.

As for the topic at hand, elites that are “liberal” don’t seem to me to be anti-heirarchy or anti-personal egoism. Instead it seems to be a gentrification of the “liberal” space. Academics make about 50-100 times what the average person in the world makes, their educational expenses would feed a large third world family for years, and they maintain very heirarchical and egoist environments. That’s why I think their liberalism is more gentrification and moral heirarchical construction (with themselves on top) than a lived philosophy. By the way, I have no interest in them living that particular philosophy: I think we should be empirically determining how to maximize the persistence odds of an optimized subset of humanity (which includes me). Anything else, in my opinion, is a triumph of a meme over the persisting aspirations of our subjective consciousnesses.

Are the GRE scores of Republican applicants to graduate programs noticeably higher than those of Democrat applicants?

If so, Republicans are being forced to overcome some structure of discrimination by exhibiting a unique excellence in their candidacy.

Its conclusions might be tenuous, but it’s nice solid data ready for the crunching. (I suspect the issue is one of self selection: smart liberals are attracted to schools of sociology, smart conservatives are attracted to schools of business.)

Robin, The humanities are not “by their nature” liberal, but they exist in a culture, which takes for granted certain moral positions, especially concerning “social justice.” And those positions include the basic liberal belief that a “society” (which they equate with its “government”) must actively promote the welfare of the most disadvantaged. Hardly anyone ever questions these assumptions; few know who Hayek is, and far fewer have read what he has to say on the emptiness of the concept of social justice.

This also relates to the question of whether liberals are simply smarter. Political beliefs are often deeply embedded in culture; and there are all sorts of ways that a culture encourages and rewards the holding of certain beliefs. Intelligence is a necessary minimum qualification for entering academia; everyone there will be intelligent. A more appropriate question may be, why do some intelligent people go into academia while other equally intelligent people go into other things? I would suspect that the culture of academia has something to do with it; this helps encourage and reward those people who fit in. There is a wonderful irony here: academics pride themselves on the independence of their thought, yet they show great conformity in political matters. In my more cynical moments, I call this a “herd instinct.”