What do you think of the quote "If you are not a liberal at 25, you have no heart. If you are not a conservative at 35, you have no brain"?
With a nod to the great answers on the history of the saying, the only time I have heard it used by anyone in the last fifteen years or so was by a thirty or forty something conservative trying to put down “liberal idealism”.The version I have heard most often, “If you aren’t a liberal at 20 you have no heart. If you aren’t a conservative at 30 you have no brain.”I think there is some usefulness to thinking about the progression of worldviews as they are affected by living.At 20 we are all heart. Our feelings rule, probably contributed to by the fact that our frontal lobes, where supervisory functions come from, aren’t fully developed until around 30 years old. Being heart centered, compassionate, is seen as a liberal trait.By 30 we have lived some, and had experience with the harsh realities of finances, and been angered by the tax “stolen from our checks”. Naturally, if we “have a brain” our reaction to those cold facts would have us take a conservative viewpoint.That actually makes some sense as I have seen that progression in many people, including myself.However, I have amended the saying to include,“If you aren’t a moderate by 40, you don’t have a heart or a brain, and if you aren’t back to liberal by 50, you definitely don’t have a heart.”If one is paying attention to life, one will learn that it’s never a “heart vs head” choice. In reality it takes both to be a fully functional Human being. We spend our thirties finding that balance, which should bring us to a moderate or centrist view. If we are still stuck in “either or” at that point, we really aren’t growing or gaining wisdom.When we keep paying attention, with a fully functional heart and brain, and gaining wisdom, as we pass middle age we start to see that the really good and important things in life are our relationships, not all those things we thought were important at 30 or 40. We realize that people are more important than wealth or achievement. We miss all those people we have lost. We wish we had been better to some of them. We wish we could have done more to reduce suffering in the world. We come back to our hearts.
Do you support current proposals to lower the voting age in the United States to 16? Why or why not?
Do you believe that a 16 year old is knowledgeable and mature enough to enroll in the Armed Forces? How about signing a legally binding contract? Purchasing a firearm? Purchasing alcohol? Driving a car?The general consensus in society is 16 year olds do not have the knowledge and maturity to make these decisions, so why would they have the knowledge and ability to vote? You can make the case that some 16 year olds can undertake these tasks with the maturity to understand and accept the consequences of their actions, but then again you can equally make the case there are plenty of 26 year olds who are simply not capable. Unless you are willing to do some sort of mass psychological screening or make voting contingent on something like performing national service (see the Heinlein novel “Starship Troopers” for the fictional representation of that argument), the consensus that adulthood starts at 18 is a good “general” means of making a standard.Lowering the age of voting, especially without the concurrent reduction of the age of all the other things mentioned at the beginning of the post simply seems a way of trying to change the rules to capture voters when they are vulnerable to emotional appeals but not fully capable of using critical thinking to dissect these appeals and understand them fully. Much lie other proposals to change electoral rules and Parliamentary procedures inside the legislatures, these are fairly naked attempts to rig the rules of the game against middle and working class Americans and their interests.
Why are many millennials attracted to progressive politics?
I wouldn't say anyone in America is really far left wing. Sure many people have leftist viewpoints, but even someone that the media labels as far left, like Bernie Sanders, is actually just left of center on a world stage. Obama is probably just right of center on a world stage.But back to your question about why millennials are more prone to have leftist ideology.There are a few reasons as a millennial myself I can think of:We aren't as religious. “Nones,” or people with no religious beliefs, are the second largest group in America after Protestants. Young people make up a large part of the nones. As an atheist I find it hard to support anyone who is ridiculously religious like Cruz. The younger generation sees the harm that religion has caused, and tends to shy away from supporting a party that is hell bent on establishing a theocracy.We are more educated. Not just college educated, but we have more access to information than ever before. This tends to make us feel like “intellectuals,” and intellectuals tend to have less hypocritical beliefs. Yes, democrats can be hypocritical, but it's no where near as bad as the hypocrisy in the Republican Party or conservative ideology. We have very good BS detectors, and every time some conservative says something phony our detectors go off.It's par for the course. Every younger generation is more progressive than the one before. That's how we keep progressing as a society. If it wasn't we'd still be hanging women for being witches.A lot of young people, like myself, have viewpoints that would mesh in with conservative ideology. I'm a free market proponent, but republicans today aren't really free market. They also aren't even fiscally conservative. Modern day radical republicans have hijacked conservatism. Religious nuts are attempting to take over the country, and that is just not something young people vibe with. I vote democrat because I could never justify voting for a candidate that believes that a magic man in the sky sent them to become president. I'm sure a lot of my peers feel the same way. So the reason a lot of millennials aren't conservative, is because conservatives have gone crazy and by contrast liberals and democrats seem more sane.
Why is California so liberal?
We aren’t. We voted in moderate Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger over a Democratic nominee who was a tool, not that long ago.We only seem “so liberal” because the Republican Ministry of Propaganda foments hatred of California, because voters with two-digit IQs can’t understand ideas, but they can and do vote against enemies…and we seem “so liberal” because what had once been the Party of Lincoln, of Teddy Roosevelt, of Eisenhower, turned into a tribe of angry rural white men once Nixon put his Southern Strategy into play.So now the GOP voter base is more like the Know Nothing Party of the 19th century than something Eisenhower would recognize.In Europe today’s GOP would be considered a radical right wing splinter party, especially with Trump in charge, while Clinton’s Democratic Party would be considered a mainstream conservative party.That said, watch the way Fox News portrays California, focusing that old devil Hollywood, Gay Pride parades in San Francisco, some of our ultra-Left congressmen…selective editing can make the whole state look like a reactionary’s worst nightmare. If there’s a speechfest on a college campus and one of the half-dozen speakers is a screamer and five of five thousand in the audience has beards and dreads, guess what you’ll see on the news that night? The screamer and the beards.You can tell the truth and still be a liar.What you’re supposed to think we’re like:What we’re really like:(portion of the million people attending Fleet Week 2017 in San Francisco, waiting for the Blue Angels to perform)
What does this mean: "If you are not a liberal when you are 30 you have no heart, if you are not a conservative when you are 40 you have no brain"?
Conservatives used to say this back in the day. I haven’t heard it at all recently, because most people recognize it for what it is — an insult without any punch behind it.If you were a conservative, a common view of liberals was that they were idealists. Liberals were typically in favor of social programs that helped the poor, and the sick, like meals on wheels, and cleaning up slums, and unemployment insurance, and medicare and rehabilitation for drug addicts and criminals, and so on. But you really have to eventually grow up and start looking out for yourself instead, and forget about people who actually might benefit the most from help. There’s a common view among conservatives that is still around today, that if you help people who actually need it, then they will become dependent on that help. So unemployment insurance and medicare and programs for drug addicts and convicts or former convicts really are bad for society (not good for society, the way idealistic liberals think they are). The irony is that they have no problem giving money to people who DO NOT need the help, though.