I’m not quite sure I follow what you’re saying, @TopTier, not least since presidential elections are poor barometers of electoral shifts generally. Exit polling and (to a lesser extent) legislative voting patterns, on the other hand…
@dfbdfb (re post #20): What I’m saying is entirely clear. If, as you suggest, “the US electorate has shifted rightward over the past several decades,” then how does one explain Obama’s election/reelection? Exit polling and state level legislative voting patterns may – or may not – highly correlate with the result you seek, but the BIGGEST prize – and the MOST meaningful indicator – obviously is the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW.
Presidential elections are about personalities at least as much as they are about politics. In addition, party affiliation has only a loose correlation with whether one leans right or left in historical terms.
But to go with presidents, just since it makes for an easy reference point, consider that Ronald Reagan was Republican but stood generally well to the left of the current crop of Republican presidential hopefuls, and Reagan and his Republican contemporaries were well to the right of Nixon and Ford; similarly, as many have pointed out, Obama’s and Clinton’s policy positions are well to the right of the Democratic Party of the previous couple decades.
(Seriously—I mean, government wage and price controls? There’s no Democrat with a hope of getting the nomination who holds that such an example of actual socialism would be a reasonable proposal nowadays—but that was an actual Nixon administration policy…)
@dfbdfb (re post #22): Baloney. Isn’t Obamacare Federally-directed de facto wage (defined payments to providers regardless of source) and price (allowable procedure costs regardless of indemnification plan) controls over nearly 20 percent of our economy? Polices need not be termed “wage and price controls” in order to be “wage and price controls.”
Partial price controls != general price controls.
@dfbdfb (re post #24): Ethically and philosophically identical . . . 17+ percent of our GDP is far from trivial, especially when it is universally pervasive . . . two months pregnant and eight month pregant are both pregnant.
Also, I’ll offer a fundamental disagreement with your claim, @TopTier, that Obamacare is price control—if it was truly price control, then the insurance companies wouldn’t be able to set their own rates. What you’re talking about is who pays what amounts, which is an entirely different issue.
Of course, all this is a sideshow to my overall claim—while specifics may run in whatever direction, in general the US electorate has been trending rightward over the past several decades despite certain hysterical claims that college students are being “indoctrinated” by liberal professors. Really, the claim that such indoctrination is happening fall apart when looking at general trends, and even more so when you start looking at how little of an effect professors have on their students’ political thought.
@dfbdfb: Isn’t it quite possible that professorial indoctrination is pronounced, but simply unsuccessful? You imply that were it true, it would necessarily have to be effective; however, there is another, entirely logical explanation.
Well, I’m actually saying that *even if it is true/i, it’s not only unsuccessful but actually anti-successful, because the US electorate is moving in the opposite direction. Therefore, I don’t get why there’s so much breathless going-on about the alleged indoctrination—why even care? (And that’s a serious question.)
It’s really annoying when your professor is liberal and shove his/her ideology on the class. My history teacher is somewhat close to being an ultra liberal, and the whole class is completely liberal. Yesterday, we just argued about illegal immigration. The prof. showed a video about illegal immigration, which you could guess what its context is.
Of course, except for me, everyone was like “illegals are nice and cool oh yeah!!!”. I was the only who opposed it, and I wish I could have argued better, but it was hard to deal with so many of them at once. This country is heading for a total disaster. 
I don’t know your particular situation, @Whateverchan, but you know, your professor might well have been overjoyed to have a conservative voice in the classroom. Yeah, stereotypes and all, but in most cases professors are utterly happy to be challenged on assumptions, and it gets distressing when an entire class goes into groupthink. (I’ve had seminar classes where the entire group of students clearly leaned one way or the other on particular issues under discussion, and whether they agreed with me or not, echo-chambering is not conducive to learning!) You were providing a service—and they were all providing a service for you, in that next time something like that comes up you’ll have experience enough to have improved your arguments a bit.
It’s easier to brainwash the young, so the libs turn to the schools as indoctrination grounds for Marxism.
I think college is an age and time where people are open to new ideas and new ways of thinking…I think there’s a great curiosity about the world and a willingness to be open to all ways of living and thinking…i don’t think it has anything to do with politics…but i do think these traits are somehow seen as liberal ones.
The Democrats have more money in education than Republicans, so therefore the schools officials hire people like them to teach.
EVERYTHING in the USA comes back to the politicians money.
My professor today: Freeway is racist because it was built on top and through the poor neighborhoods.
Me: Somebody helps me.
People often seem to assume that these liberal ideas are being planted in their heads by professors. This isn’t really the case. The issue of politics has almost never come up in my classes. It’s been raised in my philosophy and sociology classes, but never in the sense of “this idea is correct, and that one is wrong.”
I am a very liberal leaning person, and most of the friends I’ve made in college are as well. I’ve met some conservative students as well, but they aren’t the norm. There are large segments of the conservative population that are in many respects anti-education to some extent. There are certainly many highly educated conservatives, but education tends to fall more in line with liberal values.
Actually, I’d argue that it isn’t the case that conservatives are generally anti-intellectual. Are many of them? Sure—but so are many liberals. (Anti-vaccination hysteria, anyone?) As a number of social science researchers have pointed out, the US has a long history of anti-intellectualism generally.
As a conservative student, I’m not anti-education but I am anti-bull Sh#%. Extreme liberal views have become systemic in the field of sociology. You’re in denial if you don’t believe there is a left-leaning bias. Just open any sociology 101 textbook to witness a diatribe against conservative thought. As I said before this is not a right or left issue, but a complete omission and twisting of truths; The student is never allowed a conservative thought because it is never presented to him. If you want to here conservative sociologists, discussing this “shift from center”-Check this out;
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/counterpoint/conservative-sociology/3166248
hear*
@judasGOAT
Can you give a particular example of a liberal sociology idea that has shifted from center? I’m genuinely interesting in exploring your claim but I can’t easily find a starting point based on google or that link. I don’t study the field but I know someone who does and all the ideas we discuss from their classes seem about right to me so I’m wondering if there’s a good example or examples to exemplify your claim. So far I haven’t found anything to support it.