Kevin Williamson brilliantly sums up why people vote as they do, and what conservatism needs to do to have conservatism reach people.
To sum it up absurdly briefly: different ethnic, gender and social groups have different tolerances for risk; people with higher risk tolerances tend to vote conservative; ironically, “progressivism” is riskier in the long term. Convincing them is the hard part. What do you have better to do?
At various points in reading it – it’s 6,000 words – I thought about doing a couple of pull-quotes a day for two weeks. I may do that still. It is that good – and by “good”, I mean “very, very thought-provoking about what motivates people to vote conservative or “progressive””.
Read the whole thing when you get some time to spare.
UPDATE: Mr. Williamson will be joining me on the Northern Alliance Radio Network on January 12. Hope you can tune in. This oughtta be good.
I would count on it being good, Mitch! I have read his stuff and heard him on other conservative radio shows. He IS that good!
Williamson, Jonah Goldberg, and Andrew Klavan are the best pundits on the right today.
Naturally, my small-town paper gives us Kathleen Parker, Bill ‘phone it in’ O’Reilly, and George Will (no knock against Will, but he’s reached the ‘grumpy old man’ stage of conservative commentary).
Well written article. While Williamson seems to define conservative and progressive by the extremes, he discusses their operant differences from near the middle. I like that.