[lbo-talk] bad for the party?

[Miles Jackson]

Dennis Perrin wrote:
> Doug:
>
>   
>> Well, less friendly to war, less exercised by same-sex marriage, less
>> hostile towards poor people, more secular. It's partly demographic -
>> younger people are less conservative than their predecessors (if the
>> polls are to be believed), and the hard core of bible-thumping
>> reactionaries tends to be older, and they're fading.
>>     
>
> Yes, yes -- but don't romanticize the young out in these parts, or in my old 
> stomping grounds of central Indiana. There are plenty of young 
> reactionaries, and their demographic is fed things like mixed martial arts 
> and fundamentalist Christianity. I see it every day. It depresses the hell 
> out of me.
>
> Dennis_
But the sociodemographic trend over the past 50 years is clear: compared 
to their parents' generation, each new generation in the U. S. is more 
likely to have the nonconservative attitudes Doug mentions above.  Sure, 
in a nation of 300 mill, there are plenty of young reactionaries, but as 
a proportion of the U. S. population, there are dwindling with each 
generation.  (As I see it, this is a clear vindication of Marx's 
argument in the Manifesto about the "cosmopolitan character" of 
capitalist production.)

Miles