Tuesday, January 03, 2006

Alito’s biography (Princeton, Yale Law) and that of the recently confirmed Chief Justice John Roberts (Harvard College, Harvard Law) led me to reflect on the very different socialization of conservatives and liberals on elite campuses. The former spend their entire educational careers as a small minority surrounded by people whose political views - and often their social mores - differ sharply from their own.
Because of their minority status it is far more difficult for conservative students to entertain the illusion that all smart people think like them. They are exposed to many obviously bright young men and women whose opinions on almost every issue vary radically from their own.
Being forced to recognize that there are different points of view helps make bright young conservatives such good debaters. They learn early on the limited persuasiveness of shouting at someone with whom they disagree, “You’re an idiot.” Of necessity they have to develop the ability to cast their arguments in ways that appeal to those starting from very different premises. ...
LIBERALS CAN be wonderful people, and boon companions, but they often have a hard time dealing with people of opposing views - especially when they cannot dismiss them out of hand as idiots. Too often they have spent their entire adult lives surrounded almost entirely by those who think just like them, and it comes naturally to dismiss those of other views as intellectually or morally challenged.