Politics: Nature or Nurture?…

A group of political scientists and geneticists are trying to prove that your political leanings are in your genes.
This raises an interesting question: are our social attitudes passed down from our parents, or are they learned characteristics and traits?
If they’re right, that means that the difference between Conservative vs. Liberal could come down to the fundamental building blocks of the human race.
From ABCNews.com:

So far, the political connection has relied on studies by Lindon Eaves, professor of human genetics and psychiatry at Virginia Commonwealth University. About 8,000 sets of identical and fraternal twins answered a series of questions on topics such as school prayer, nuclear power, women’s liberation and the death penalty.

Identical twins, who share their entire genetic code, answered more similarly than fraternal twins, who are no more similar than non-twin siblings.

If you assume that both identical and fraternal twins share an environment, then the disparity between the results must be genetic, Hibbing and colleagues conclude.

Call me skeptical, but…well…I’m not buying it. Yes, I’m a Conservative. My father was a Republican. Did he and I share many of the same political leanings? Yes…but for years we didn’t. Why? Well, that was because I would have done the exact opposite of anything my father wanted me for a good number of years. I didn’t decide what I truly believed politically until I started paying attention on my own.
Take 1988 for example–the first Presidential Election I was eligible to vote in. In December of 1987, I was in the Mall of New Hampshire at the same time that Mike and Kitty Dukakis were there. I was buying a new camera, and he was campaigning before the primaries. I didn’t quite know what my political beliefs consisted of at that point, so I was excited to meet a potential candidate. I thought it was great that a local guy was running and I wished him luck.
Then I started to look at what Dukakis was and what he stood for. I very quickly realized that the last thing I wanted was for him to be elected to the Presidency. After that election I started listening to Rush, I started reading more and I started to notice the coverage of the media and I came to one decision: the last thing I wanted to be in the world was a Democrat. It was a slow process and by the time I got to 1992, I knew one thing: I was voting Republican and my father was right…
…that was, until I learned he was voting for Perot.
Do we get our political leanings from nature or do we nurture them from what we’ve seen and believed to be true in our life experiences. I know what I believe, but I’m obviously no geneticist. I don’t know and, the thing is, no one knows.
Regardless of what people believe, they should know what it is they really believe in. That’s the only way our political process works: with people who are truly informed voters. People who are willing to put in the time and effort and decide what is right for them.
Although, this study–if true–would answer a question that’s been lingering in my mind for decades: Why do people vote Liberal, anyway?
William Smith
ConservativeBlogger.com