more thought = more liberal

does more thought and study on the political tend to make people more liberal? some evidence seems to point in that direction. there's a recognized positive correlation between level of educaton and the degree of "liberalness". now, to top it all off, there's a new book out about an experiment (Deliberation Day, Yale U. Press) where students were paid to think and read about politics and "society", and generally turned out to be more liberal (in the modern sense, an advocate of government action) than before.

could it be that the materials they were given to deliberate on were just skewed? The WSJ thinks maybe so...

it does seem that something else is going on here, because there are obviously non-liberal academics and others with higher educations (i hesitate using "conservative" because non-liberals can be libertarians, anarchists, or a host of other things). is it that these folks are just dense? what happened to them?

Labels: ideology