I'm not sure what definition of “liberal” you are using, but there are so many obvious counterexamples that don't fit any of the plausoble ones that I can't see any way that that could be even a useful rule of thumb.

Missionaries tend not to be liberals, and indeed tend to be lionized by conservatives for doing exactly the opposite of “move to an area, hunker down, shut up, and try to integrate.” Conservatives don't object to liberals because liberals proselytize more than conservatives, they object to liberals because liberals disagree with conservatives.

Originally, the political Left was a name for classical liberalism based on where the liberals sat, as opposed to the conservative monarchists, in the French National Assembly. So if we’re fetishizing the original sense of terms, the distinction is nonsense.

Most of the political spectrum in the modern West (outside of the far right, which is classically conservative) is rooted in classical liberalism, which was nearly completely victorious over classical conservatism. They differ in whether they see the progress made by the 18th century liberals as the end goal or the starting point (“Left” evolved somewhat faster than “liberal” because that division became evident during the revolutionary period in France.)

> I make the distinction about "thinking" people not to be elitists at all

Yeah, you just think disagreeing with you ideologically can only be possible if people don't think.

> but rather because it is obvious that there are those who blindly follow and then there are those who choose to be more analytical and actually think rather than follow.

Sure, that much is true. The part that's less obvious is where you say most everyone that falls in the latter camp agrees with you ideologically while most everyone who disagrees with you is in the former camp.

This is an interesting comment. Or rather, thinking about how this could be --and, it is-- is what I think is interesting.

I've given this much thought because, as someone who tries hard to navigate an ideological center --borrowing what's good from each side and discarding the rest-- I have watched in horror as some of my friends and even a few family members have effectively become radicalized (the only word that fits) towards each of the ideological extremes.

My conclusion, or rather one of them, is that there must be a genetic element at play. Nobody is born with these ideologies. Just like nobody is born religious. And yet, over time, mental changes occur.

How can I explain my atheism and extreme skepticism? All I can grab for is that my brain is wired just different enough that it is able to go against the grain. Social pressures can be intense. I had absolutely no negative experiences with the church growing up. And yet, somewhere near adulthood I started to question it all and ultimately rejected it.

The same mechanism applies to political leanings. I've gone back and forth thinking that one school of thought was better than the other, only to realize +/- 25% from center is where the good stuff lies and the rest is just grotesquely wrong on both sides.

A long way to say that it is my theory that people who's brains are genetically wired in a certain way self-select towards the left or the right. This isn't an intellectual process at all. The failing being that very few of them ever take the time to, in fact, at some point, look at their positions through the lens of honest intellectual inquiry.

And so, the "Democrats" who leave CA and behave the same way they did in CA do so because, well, that's who they are. Just like "Republicans" are who they are. Genetically.

A lateral example could be had in Olympic class swimmers vs. wrestlers. Their body types are very different. Yet, swimming doesn't stretch someone out, make them taller and more slender any more than wrestling makes them short and muscular. The top achievers in both domains self-selected into those positions because that's the genetics they were handed. They build from there, but you can't take a short person and make turn them into world competitive swimmers unless they were also born with super-human endurance and power delivery capacity...their hull speed will be lower than that of a longer person.

The other interesting data point is found in the Hispanic population in the US. Quite a few of them got here by escaping from regimes that are not that different from the ideology that has currently taken hold in the American Left. And yet, surprisingly, they are voting for and supporting the same kinds of people and policies they left behind. Once again, my thinking is that this is simply who they are genetically rather being "Democrats" or "Republicans". After all, they had no clue about either of these parties before they got here.

It's an interesting problem because this effect has destroyed nearly every single Latin American nation over the last, take a pick, one hundred years. The policies that have permeated places like CA and are being championed as saviors for our country are the very same kinds of policies and ideology that have laid waste to entire nations. This isn't a matter of opinion, it's a matter of Latin American history, something we don't teach here.

I have friends in Argentina --where elections are about to take place before the end of the month-- who are in absolute fear of the Leftists once again gaining power. And when I say "fear" I am not being dramatic. They actually fear they will lose everything they have worked so hard to achieve during the last several years. Venezuela's Maduro regime is sending activists into Argentina to cause mayhem and disruption. In fact, a good deal of Latin America is on fire right now with the political Left trying very hard to either take control or gain greater control. They are attacking journalists and, generally speaking, unraveling the very fabric of civilized society. It's sad to watch this kind of thing form a distance. It's also sad to understand that if we, in the US, don't realize what these people are actually selling we stand a really good chance to end-up on a path that will forever transform this nation and not in a good way.

Anyhow, this stuff is really depressing to me. I can't see why people don't see what's going on. A lack of education in the actual history of other lands might be part of the culprit. I mean, how many Bernie and Warren supporters actually even know about The Gulag Archipelago, much less read any of it.