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I am told again and again that you get more conservative when you get older - does this hold true in practice?
It's easier to be radical when you're young because you usually have little or no stake in things. Whether you change over time depends on your personality, whether you made your political choices based on fashion or conviction, how many responsibilities/baggage you've accrued and other things. Re-evaluating your beliefs is something you should do as you learn anyway, if you're an intelligent adult and not a robot. You can become more nuanced in your views without abandoning your principles.
There's a breed of media commentator who moves from one extreme to the other as they age purely because it pisses the largest number of people off and all they've ever really cared about is sneering at everybody else. When they were young, they sneered from within their radical group at the rest of the world. As they age, they decide to sneer at the other people in that group and shift political perspective to justify it. Melanie Philips, for example.
But the idea that people move from left to right over their lifetime is out of date - a cliche from a time when left-wing idealism was in vogue. Right now, the alt-right and the loony conspiracy theory community is fashionable and there's a lot of young idiots signing up for radical assholery just because of the noise. Hopefully at least some of them are going to reflect and mature as they age.
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itsbruce
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The_Kindness_of_Trees
I am the youngest person in the office where I work, and pretty much the only person with left leanings. I am told again and again that you get more conservative when you get older - does this hold true in practice? Are all the free love/hippies from the 70s now voting UKIP? Seems to be my father's course.
People say "when all these old people voting Con. now are dead, we will have a liberal revolution" - is that true, or do young people just get old, more tory and replace dead right wingers?