Young People: "Liberal" or just Reasonable

You might have heard about the NYT/CBS/MTV (?!) poll that declares the young are becoming more left-leaning.

More than half of Americans ages 17 to 29 — 54 percent — say they intend to vote for a Democrat for president in 2008. They share with the public at large a negative view of President Bush, who has a 28 percent approval rating with this group, and of the Republican Party. They hold a markedly more positive view of Democrats than they do of Republicans.

It might be more accurate to say that the attitudes of young people are therefore, identical to other age groups. The Times, CBS and MTV paid good money for this poll, so is suppose they had to have something good to lead with in the paper. Kids' Attitudes the Same as Rest of Country" doesn't exactly jump off the page at you; doesn't really sell newspapers. So, one has to take some minor differences and blow them way up.

Forty-four percent said they believed that same-sex couples should be permitted to get married, compared with 28 percent of the public at large. They are more likely than their elders to support the legalization of possession of small amounts of marijuana.

The findings on gay marriage were reminiscent of an exit poll on Election Day 2004: 41 percent of 18-to-29-year-old voters said gay couples should be permitted to legally marry, according to the exit poll.

In the current poll, 62 percent said they would support a universal, government-sponsored national health care insurance program; 47 percent of the general public holds that view. And 30 percent said that “Americans should always welcome new immigrants,” while 24 percent of the general public holds that view.

Their views on abortion mirror those of the public at large: 24 percent said it should not be permitted at all, while 38 percent said it should be made available but with greater restrictions. Thirty-seven percent said it should be generally available.

It isn't so much the approval of national health care and the general sympathy for the democrats at this point in time, that is striking. In those regards the 18-29 year-olds are just echoing the fatigue of the rest of the country. No, what strikes me more and more as I talk with young people is the reasonableness and ability to make distinctions. Andrew Sullivan summed it up yesterday.

What strikes me most about the latest poll of the next generation is the distinctions they make. Instead of seeing "drugs" as an amorphous category, they distinguish between largely harmless marijuana and an addictive upper like cocaine. Instead of conflating all the moral issues, they have no problem with gay dignity and equality, but retain many of the moral conflicts of their parents with respect to the far more troubling issue of abortion. This doesn't strike me less as a sign of their liberalism than of their intelligence and experience. You simply cannot persuade most sane people who have smoked pot, or know people who do, that it is even a minor threat to social order or civilization. And you cannot tell people who know and have grown up around gay people that we are the threat to the family that the Christianists claim. All of which should make us more optimistic about the future, because it suggests that, in the long run, reason and experience actually do work to make the world a marginally less stupid and cruel place.

That pretty much sums up my child rearing goals right there. Survey: Young Wise Beyond Their Years, now, there is a lede.