I'm curious to see how closely our political values match those of our parents. This is a topic I've been interested in since becoming a parent myself. My kids are getting close to grown now, and it is very interesting to see how their political views develop.

So which is it? Are you Alex Keaton in a family of Democrats? Or are you the hippy child of John Birch?

I'm also curious - if you are on the same side of the political spectrum as your parents, are you more liberal/conservative than them? Less?

Are/were your parents politically active? What's their level of civic participation?

My parents are liberals, and I am way more liberal than they are. Even though they never discussed politics with me as a kid, I am sure they instilled liberal values in me.

Have at it, folks!

Mom is a Mondale liberal of the New Deal vintage. My dad is a moderate republican with an independent streak-he voted for Perot once. I remember that in '84, mom let me check the box for Mondale and in '88, for Jesse Jackson during the Nebraska primary. Dad's candidates were not to my liking. I thought Dole should just stay my banana.

Fun topic, Quark!

I'm conservative, my parents were conservative. But we're social liberals. I'd say I'm probably a bit more liberal than they are in certain ways (regarding social programs), but conservative in others (I'll be a stricter parent to my teens than they were with me). They are atheist (though my father recently became Buddhist, so he's sort of a Buddhist/atheist) I'm a Christian. We're all pro-Obama this year, which is kind of strange. I think he would be the first Democratic presidential candidate my father ever voted for (though he has voted Libertarian, he's been a registered libertarian for about six or so years now).

My parents were part of the moral majority, and huge Reagan supporters. I was too, until I joined the Army and went on a little escapade for about a year in central America. Then I hated the guy with a white hot passion for who he was giving money to down there.

However- QH- there is a lot of room in between those labels- and I am very conservative on issues of crime and punishment, very conservative on fiscal matters, almost concrete you would say- but am a social libertarian- which is very anti-new-millineum conservative.

Also, I am totally anti-US foriegn policy for the last 50 years or so- totally liberal if that label fits- considering most consider Lieberman a liberal, but he is far, far right of me on foriegn matters.

So-

1) 180* out of my parents views on nation building and US foreign policies
2) 180* out from my parents views on "social" issues- Pro-gay marriage, pro-drug decriminalization, anti-goverment as nanny state
3) About the same as the parents on crime and punishment- perhaps even more conservative- I think the false accuser in the Duke Lacrosse case deserves the death penalty, for instance. So did Ken Lay and Michael Milken.
4) I am the same on fiscal issues as my parents USED to be- as they are moving into SS- it is funny to see how liberal they have become on THIER 'entitlements" (Pa hates it when I call it that, when I point out that he used up his "benefit" in the first year of his retirement)

I've been liberal ever since I gave a hoot about politics. That was college, 1983. I came from a whitebread high school experience where we never gave politics a thought, and went away to a college that was 30% Jewish, including my roommate. Politics was always on the menu there.

My Dad started out as a Republican, but that started to change with Reagan (not Nixon, but Reagan!) He retired the year that the big Reagan tax changes went into effect, taking a year's salary in a lump in an early retirement buyout, and got absolutely crushed by the new tax changes. I mean, this was not a big money situation, we were a middle class, middle management family, nothing fancy - and somehow, he got hit with a tax bill around $100K that year. Now couple that sore spot with Reagan's ramping up of the defense budget and his deficit spending, and the seeds of doubt had been planted. Now, he didn't just accept everything that Republicans did, and he didn't believe everything they said. Bush I did nothing to change that.

Dad came around to the other side while Clinton was in office. There was no more college to pay for, the house was paid off, and the bank balance started to fatten up. The stock market was doing great. Federal spending didn't seem to be as bad as it had been. Clinton was a smart guy who spoke well and did things the way we would have done them, mostly. The Republicans had that jerk Newt Gingrich out in front, and that seemed to be when politics got very partisan, and the nastiness got a lot worse. And that has been the Republican party ever since - Gingrich, DeLay, Rove, Cheney - just a bunch of creepy characters that cared more about tearing down Democrats than building up the country.

So for Dad it was probably more a matter of being turned off by the way the Republican party changed since Reagan than anything the Democrats ever did. The Democrats were not an impressive bunch until Clinton came along, to say the least.

Now, we are pretty much on the same side, if not the same page. Dad's main focus is still the stock market, and mine is on the law, so we both have good reason to hate Bush.

I'm a liberal and my dad was a Yellow Dog Democrat. My father looked down on Republicans in general and Black Republicans specifically. He was ticked off for years at my mom for voting for Richard Nixon in 1960 over John Kennedy (she said she got confused) and gave me endless grief for choosing John Anderson over Jimmy Carter in 1980.

Funny thing is my father would have been considered a conservative on many issues. He had zero interest in women's rights. Never seemed to think much about the environment. Wasn't a fan of organized labor and hated homosexuals with a frightening intensity. He voted for Democrats and liberals but he wasn't all that tolerant about a lot of things.

However, he was very interested in politics and that's where I got my interest in turn. I figure it was from watching news documentaries and he was fascinated by the Congressional hearings into Watergate. He'd come home on his lunch hour just to watch the live broadcasts.

I'm not a straight-down-the line-liberal and have voted for Republicans on a local and state level. I find the further away from the homefront Republicans get, the less I can stand them.

Does the apple fall far from the tree? Apparently not, since my wife is a Barack Obama fan and so are my kids.

There needs to be another set of categories, when your parents were mixed in their political leanings. My Dad was conservative, but my Mom was liberal--so I don't have any way to answer the poll.

I will share a survey my High School Government teacher had us do. He had everyone in class go home and ask their parents whether they were Republican or Democrat, and why. We then wrote the responses down on the board. Every single reason given -- without exception -- listed a reason that should have indicated support for the opposite party. I suspect a similar poll taken today would have similar results.

Like Hobbes, I have a politically diverse family. My father is a Republican, my Mom is an independent with liberal leanings, my sister is a democrat and I would best describe myself as an independent with conservative leanings (for now).

Though we are all fiercely interested in politics (except my sister), and we all certainly take different sides on almost every issue, we, oddly enough, all end up cheering for the same presidential candidates. Last year it was John Kerry. This year, Obama.

I guess I'm mostly conservative now, as is my father so in that respect I checked the first box, but in point of fact its not as simple as just the four choices given. I may be conservative on some issues but on others I'm decidedly left wing and I differ from my fathers attitudes as much as NT apparently differs from his fathers (who seems to have been an American variation of my Dad).

Most of the time I try to prefer to avoid political labels (unless I'm in a debate online where its often necessary to use a label to describe what your talking about), and both my praents did the same so I guess this apple is resting firmly at the roots of the family tree no matter what my political perspective is.

I don't think much of the labels conservative and liberal in a modern political setting. As general terms they are usually thought of in an economic policy context - liberals being willing to have the government intervene to promote equity while conservatives advocate for a very limited government role while in actuality adopting policies that favor corporations and the wealthy. While this is still an important distinction, much more relevant to today are terms like militarist vs. anti-militarist, imperialist vs. anti-imperialist, civil libertarian vs. favoring extensive state police powers, and environmentalist vs. growth at all cost.

That said, my parents were New Deal Democrats. My mother was from a Republican family that had split up over slavery with her branch moving north and supporting Lincoln. My mother remained critical of Southern Democrats but the Depression led her to become a fervent supporter of FDR and even more so of Elenore. My father's father was a union organizer and avid supporter of the Democratic Socialist, Eugene Debbs. My father, himself, supported FDR, Truman, and other Democrats but had little time for political activity.

I started out pretty much with my mother's views and majored in Developmental Economics with the idealistic intention of working for AID until I became aware of that agency's involvement with the CIA. Subsequently, I became involved in the Civil Rights Movement and later, even more extensively, with the anti-Vietnam War campaign. At the time, my mother and father were inclined to believe the government and for a time we didn't discuss politics. Originally I believed that Guatemala, Iran, and Vietnam were aborations in a generally well intentioned anti-communist American foreign policy. However, as I followed our complicity in the Lumumba assassination in the Congo, the Indonesian massacres, coups in Chile and Greece, and interventions elsewhere I could only conclude that American foreign policy and our military were primarily in the service of corporations and not ordinary Americans let alone people of the 3rd World. Many of these interventions occurred under so called "Liberal" administration as well as "Conservative" ones. Therefore, even though I'm self labeled as being very liberal, a better description is probably a mixture between a Chomsky Radical and a Green.

My parents were hippies... I thought I was too until I talked to a buddy who shuddered at my political leanings... "It like someone took all of politics put it in a can and blew it up"

My parents have, as of late, turned in to such hard core Conservatives they make Pat Buchanan go, "Whoa... you guys need to relax."

I don't straddle the political fence as much as I've knocked it down and made a deck.

Damn - you pretty much nailed it there. My father was a Yankee libertarian - in fact, he once ran for state congress as the Constitutional Party candidate. Otherwise, he was a pretty hardline Republican in the Barry Goldwater mold. My mother was somewhat more moderate, especially on social issues - and they differed on gun legislation. In presidential elections, they usually voted Republican - though, in 1968, my mother supported Nixon and my father Wallace.

I, on the other hand, came of age in the sixties, near Penn State University where there were massive anti-war rallies and a lot of civil rights organizations and so on. Not to mention drugs of every description. That all appealed to me a lot more than joining Young Americans for Freedom (my brother's route), so I joined the SDS, the Youth International Party, a number "liberation" groups, NORML, and just about any other lefty organization that was taking members. I was something of a hippysexual - a long-haired, bell-bottomed, activist, and sexually promiscuous gay youth - and remained fairly radical through the eighties (even in gay terms - in the seventies, for example, I eschewed the hideous disco scene for the new wave tribe).

I never registered with a political party, though (the Democrats remained too conservative for my taste). Post-Reagan, I gained more respect for old school conservatism, which often supported my latent libertarianism and my non-interventionist foreign policy leanings - as well as my mistrust of the military-industrial complex. Views I shared with my father. I suspect we would find a lot of common ground in Ron Paul, were my father still alive.

So I guess the fruit fell pretty far from the tree, but eventually rolled back a bit.

Both parents are republicans. Most people I knew growing up in Connecticut were mostly conservative democrats reaganstyle.
The Liberals were all generally teachers.
I went Republican in high school because of Reagan and left the party after gingrich showed his true colors and the GOP went totally christian right.
I lean Libertarian but vote for whoever will be a counterweight to the party in charge. Big fan of gridlock. A democrat on POTUS and a GOP House is my dream ticket.

Both parents are liberal Democrats. My first political act, spurred on by my parents, was writing to Ted Kennedy and urging him to challenge Jimmy Carter for the 1980 Democratic presidential nomination. I was nine.

I've certainly become more conservative than my parents, especially on fiscal and economic issues, but I don't consider myself to be a conservative. More of an inconsistent libertarian. (I'm right-wing by San Francisco standards, but then, so are Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi.)

Both parents are liberal, I don't think our core political views differ very much. My parents were much more liberal when I was young. I was also raised as an atheist, along with my 3 other siblings and still remain as such. My eldest brother became a born again Christian about 15 yrs ago and he is the only conservative amongst my siblings.

Both of my parents would be considered pretty much non-political, I think. Philosophically, I think they would both lean conservative. As I recall, the only time they ever voted was for Nixon. (One must balance this against the almost automatic hero-worship of the martyred JFK among American Catholics of their generation.) Some remarks that I heard as a child -- "stick to your own kind," the use of the word "colored" -- convince me that they are very conservative on social issues. As far as economic issues go, I suspect that they are as confused as I am.

Well, this apple fell very far from the tree indeed. Not just politically, with me winding up an ultra-liberal on social issues, but in almost every way you can imagine.

Both parents were Studs Terkel liberal, meaning working class. Father was one of the first to join the union, not sure which one, in the 1930s and got canned, but not before being sent to a TB sanitorium for 6 months. He had silicosis of the lungs, not TB. But it was a good excuse to get rid of him. He later moved into electronics away from iron mining.

Mother baked for our municipal hospital. She was active in her union, remember her getting all dressed up for the meetings.

Both my folks had lots of life-long friends at their funerals.

I've been working for whatever I can get since being 10 years old. Started out mowing lawns with a push mower and hand clippers. Good honest sweat, made a body strong.

So I'm liberal in a sense. Mostly though I work for a living, so my politics are toward we who work for a living. I've been called a red neck, and if you know where that came from, it's a compliment.

From Wiki:



I learned in my youth that it was a term from the union movement. The red bandana was a statement of working class pride, very popular in the railroad circles. My best friend in high school had a father who worked the railroad (all the live long day). My girl friend's father was an iron miner. Her mother worked the shirt factory.

Arrow shirts, 100% cotton. Made me want to sing Dixie.

So I consider myself to be working class. That's the touchstone, not really liberal, not really conservative. I might tell you a tall story, and some swallow them whole. Seems to be a problem these days, people believing too much or not getting the sense of the old time storytelling, stuff I grew up with. My father had been a master at the story. He could sing Hank Williams and yodel more powerfully than I've ever heard since. That came from his youth of singing and playing for barn dances, bouncing the freeloaders at the door.

Oral tradition. It just doesn't exist any longer. But people still work for a living, and those are the people to whom I gravitate. My blood is red due to iron. My life took a different turn from my brothers, who worked the mines. Yet some things are resilient.

Pride in a job well done. Yep, figure out a label for that, hey?

I nulled my vote because I don't really know.

My parents never directly talk(ed) about politics, but if I had to guess I'd say that they were both small-c conservatives. My mother is a devoted fan of the Daily Mail (the closest UK equivalent of Fox News), but has always said when I've asked her - even as quite a small child - that her political opinions are her own business and between her and the ballot box. So I suspect she's a Tory and ashamed of it. :wink: As well she should be

And my late father may even have been a capital-C Conservative at one point, since I remember him talking about visits to the local Conservative Club (I don't know if membership was required), attempting to join the Freemasons, etc.

I have a theory that their generation (born shortly before or during WWII) in the UK grew up when British politics were still amost entirely polarised by social class, and if you were (like them) lower middle class and aspired to better yourselves, left wing politics (whatever its merits) was just another aspect of the working classes one strove to distance oneself from.

Me being rather leftwing may be some kind of rebellion against them, rather than continuation of them.

But - remembering Winston Churchill's aphorism that "if a man isn't a socialist while he's young, he's got no heart, and if he isn't a conservative when he's old, he's got no brains" - their positions may well have changed over time; I have no idea what they though in their twenties and early thirties before I was born or just old enough to have any awareness of politics.

Interestingly, from what I remember my grandparents talking about, I suspect that my parents' political sensitivities were also a rebellion, against the left-leaning, socialist sympathies of my grandparents. (Who were all in resolutely working class occupations for their whole working lives - steel, coal, railways, farm labouring.)

This might also explain why overtly political discussions in my family never really happened - presumably my folks got so fed up of constant arguments over politics that they just didn't bring the subject up. In turn, it might explain why I *like* talking (and arguing) politics, and why I'm here on .

Edited to add:

AuthorMusician

Thanks for the derivation of "redneck", that was interesting.

I'd always assumed the origins came from white agricultural field workers who were so religiously uptight that they wouldn't work bare-chested, but would undo a few shirt buttons only on the hottest days of the year. Thus getting a brightly sub-burned neck. Though I came up with my theory to try to account for the current pejorative usage, rather than thinking it used to mean something different. Oh well...