Teachers tend to be just a little to the right of society, and so do intellectuals. I analysed the voting intentions of British teachers, going back over polls reported over the last thirty years of elections, a while ago. In 1974 more teachers voted for the Conservative Party than any other. And in 1979 most teachers said they would vote Tory. In 1983, the Tories topped the poll among teachers once again. In 1987 – after a bruising pay dispute – teachers shifted to vote for the Social Democrat-Liberal Alliance. In 1992, and again in 1997, they voted Labour, just as that party moved to the right. In 2005, and again in 2010, more teachers voted for the Lib Dems than any other party. Teaching is for the most part a fairly conservative function, passing on the accumulated knowledge to the next generation. Similarly, at the other end, most theoretical work in sociology has been an attempt to head off marxism, and most in economics has been apologetics for the market, recent philosophy is mostly obscurantist, history conservative, the sciences are no doubt a good thing, but they do not exactly encourage a democratic outlook amongst their practitioners. I know that sounds like a blanket condemnation - and I really don't mean it. I think all knowledge tends to a better outcome, but 99 100ths of it is explicitly hostile to democracy and human advancement, let alone socialism.