Leah, Leah, Leah.

Leah, Leah, Leah. The only way I can think to respond to your column on Saturday is as if you are a befuddled 18-year-old in a first-year university writing class. So – that’s what you’re getting.

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Hi Leah! Good start with the column on Saturday. I like that you’ve made reference to a specific study (from the University of Leicester), and I think that you raise some interesting questions. There are, however, still some issues I’d like you to consider.

First, you need to provide much more information from that study. You paraphrase and comment as follows:

Researchers at the University of Leicester recently examined the stated values of 136,000 people in 48 countries and found that well-educated people are most likely to misplace themselves on the political spectrum. In particular, there was a tendency for educated, upper-middle-class respondents to identify as and to vote left wing despite holding views on wealth distribution that place them firmly to the right.

An interesting point, to be sure! But you need to consider these ideas of “left” and “right” or “liberal” and “conservative” with a bit more caution. It sounds like the respondents in this study might perhaps be socially liberal, yet fiscally conservative. When you say that they vote “left-wing”, can you be more specific? Does “left-wing” refer to centre-left parties, or does it refer to a more radical left wing?

Second, based on the information you’ve provided, I think that you need to reconsider your analysis. Is it terribly surprising that, for instance, you would find a substantial number of educated, upper-middle-class Canadians voting for the Liberal party (i.e. centre-left) and identifying as ‘liberal’, yet still holding fairly conservative views about taxation and social programs? To me, that’s 100% predictable, and not in fact evidence that supports your “conclusion” that “[t]he more brains you have, the less likely you are to admit to being conservative while privately holding right-wing views.”

To clarify your thinking in general, you might consider the possibility that wealth correlates to fiscally conservative views, while advanced education correlates to socially liberal views, and ask how those correlations might work together. Rather than thinking of political allegiances or preferences as existing on a single-axis spectrum, like this:

you might think about these allegiances or preferences as existing at least in a system of two axes and four quadrants, like this:

This way of thinking might help you to avoid a lot of the ambiguity you create by using terms like “liberal” and “left-wing” interchangeably. I know you’re trying, because you say later that politics is more complicated than you’d seem to have previously believed:

That’s the trouble with politics: It is much more complicated than politicians would have us believe. Politics would do much better on television, I think, if it was more like hockey. With hockey, you choose a team and you root for it, win or lose, no matter which bunch of overpaid thugs are playing, until the franchise gets sold, goes bankrupt or you get old and die.

By comparison, politics is difficult, not only because it isn’t just a brutish game that people play for money – although, more than often, it can be that too – but because, no matter which team you decide to support, someone will end up calling you a hypocrite in the end.

But you still need to consider these terms with a better eye to historical context, and to be more precise in the way you use them. This attention to context and precision might let you avoid, for instance, making a claim that it’s a “huge relief” to “some” to realize that it’s “okay” to be a conservative who “can meet [his or her]  friends for sushi after yoga class, roll [his or her] eyes at the morons at BP and not feel like a total jerk for driving Range Rover and sending [his or her] kids to private school”. Here, you’re very clearly confusing “liberal” and “left-wing”. A committed left-winger would likely not choose the lifestyle you describe, but a social liberal with a high income very possibly would. Again — it’s not a surprise.

Third, if you want to bring your personal feelings of relief into your writing, that’s fine, but you need to make it clear that you’re talking about personal feelings. (I always tell my students that it’s best to own up to a bias, rather than pretending to be neutral…) More problematically, your later comments about “champagne socialism”, “chardonnay socialism”, and “mojito socialism” are very confusing. These terms could be part of an interesting set of metaphors, but at times you fail to control the comparison, and it ends up seeming suspiciously like you are actually talking about champagne and chardonnay. There’s nothing wrong with talking about alcohol consumption in your writing (we’re all adults!), but you need to be more clear.

Finally, I take issue with your argument about “the way to approach politics”:

No, the way to approach politics is to take a stand you believe in and stick to it, whether it makes you popular or not. If you are smart, you will read all sorts of books and magazines and newspapers and blogs that reinforce your particular point of view so that, if anyone disagrees with it, you can shoot them down with pre-prepared diatribes on why, say, Muslim head scarves promote Islamofascism in schools or how factory-farmed chickens are systematically melting the polar ice cap.

Do you really think that the “smart” approach to politics involves picking a single perspective and sticking to it? That the best thing is to read arguments on  a particular issue from only one side? That’s probably a sure-fire way to avoid the accusations of hypocrisy that you discuss, but it’s also intellectually irresponsible. What does it say about the strength of your political convictions, if you’re not willing and able to study and consider different political convictions or positions?

I suppose if you’re mostly concerned about avoiding appearance of hypocrisy, your advice is solid. But is this a fashion and lifestyle column, or are you providing political comment? You need to choose.

All in all, I give this draft a tentative B minus: as a first-year effort, it shows promise, but still needs work.