It's accepted by many people that as you get older, you become more right-wing. Socialism and others are seen as political ideologies for less mature people whilst more mature, educated, experienced and intelligent older people drift towards the right-wing.
It's possible this is true. Maybe I'll feel the same way in 30 years (note: this is the least likely thing EVER). Alternatively, right-wing people say it a lot to try and undermine the credibility of left-wing ideas and the resolve of people who follow them. If you're constantly told that as you get older, you become more right-wing, it's likely that, as you get older, you'll become more right-wing. It's not an inevitable consequence of aging, it's an inevitable consequence of the social pressure set up against left-wing ideals.
It's also a shame that right-wingers will tend to dismiss younger left-wingers as "too young" to have the proper experience, saying that because they've got more life experience they're right. Then some young left-wingers that are easily swayed go to the right wing, and it plants the seeds in their minds for later in life.
Sometimes they use it as a crux to fall back on. I've debated with plenty of them and when they've got no argument left to offer they'll say "you're too young to know what you're talking about" or something along those lines.
It's not so much that the older you get the more right wing you become, it's more that old folks of today lived in a much different society, one that was much more conservative than today's liberal postmodernist culture and society. Back then, in the 1920s and 1930s, specific ideas that tie into conservatism--ideas such as covering up the body, being more religious, and the lack of mass communication technologies--were accepted as the general social norm. Once devices such as the radio, telephone, television and movies came around, they started to shift ideologies around in a big way. People with more liberal ideas were able to project them to more people.
For example--the first couple ever seen in bed on TV was Lucy and Ricky from I Love Lucy, just fifty years ago. Back then it caused a HUGE uproar, which is indicative of the conservative culture of the first half of the 20th century. Today, we see far more extreme things than that, which is an ode to the way culture as a whole shifted from conservative to liberal, while the people from that age mostly kept their right-wing ways.
Toledo is full of old liberals... I think it has to do more with the locations. Heavy populated areas tend to be more liberal, and the rural parts are conservative. Fulton county (right next to Toledo) Ohio was a red county. Lucas county Ohio (toledo) is a blue county and it's like that constantly.
Ace88, I know that's partially what's behind it but I think there's an idea that you do "mature" into a right-wing person as you become older too.
"Anyone who is not a socialist when they are 20 has no heart and any who is not a liberal when they are 60 has no brain."
Paraphrased off someone, I forget who. And that would be a classical liberal, not an "American" liberal.
There are a fair few people in the Labour party today in the UK who used to be communists. Jack Straw was a Trotskyist, Blair was a socialist and I think a few others were.
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Old people are more right-wing? blog
