alt Hacker News> Perhaps due to those experiences, you will be the only generation that votes more left as you age.
I doubt it. My dad lived through the Great Depression, and fought desperate battles in WW2 and Korea.
As a young man, he was a socialist. His experience in fighting for American freedoms changed all that. Before he passed, he told me he regretted leaving me in a country that was significantly less free than when he was young.
I don't believe you'll find many communists in the greatest generation, especially among the war veterans.
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“Left” doesn’t mean socialism. In the long run, it comes out of the enlightenment period, quite literally.
Traditionally, the left is associated with small “L” liberalism, and the right is associated with small “C” conservatism.
Generally speaking, it has been a historic debate between whether the “natural” way things are is good and prudent (e.g., monarchs, religion, castes, roles, and norms), or if the way things are should be challenged to try something that seems better (e.g., liberté, égalité, fraternité).
When one of these ideas is successfully, it is often adopted by the right, when one fails, it is often abandoned by the left. Whether or not socialism is part of the left depends on whether folks on the left think it’s an idea worth trying. In America, right now, the vast majority are still quite hesitant to include it in their platform.
In 1994, the Greatest Generation voted D+7, higher than any other generational cohort.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2015/04/30/a-different-...