I've been hearing that for years but it sure isn't true of me. I get more liberal the older I get. What gets me is how many of the youngest members (of voting age) in my circle of friends and family who are hardcore conservatives. We have way too many low-information voters in this country and selfishness---me-first-attitudes---seems to heavily influence politician standing these days.

I'm also one who has become more liberal as the years go by. My family was staunchly Republican and I, too, voted that until life experiences and becoming aware of political news caused me to change along the way. It's so true that low-information voters and our sharp divisions due to inequality are a factor. Through the years though, as I've heard that, that people become more conservative with age, I could never understand it and have wondered why on earth it should be so.

There's no real mystery to this tendency. The more money you have (and if you have been successful financially, you will have your highest net worth in your older years), the less you want to see it taxed away.

There is also the desire to pass your assets onto your own children and grandchildren to keep them in the family. Activist government needs piles of money, and where does it come from? Why from the people who have money.

More liberal the older I get. The older I become, the more attuned I am to our responsibility for our fellow humans, our planet, and animals. The more I understand that this complex world requires we be open-minded and even more open-hearted, making choices tempered with the wisdom of our years and, above all, guided by kindness.

Maybe there's a grain of truth in it, if you take the classical meaning of the word conservative. That's what that quotation is about. As we gain more experience of life, it may well be true that we do become more financially conservative in our approach to politics. We do ask the important question which younger people might not, "That sounds all well and good, but tell me first, how do you plan to pay for it?"

(Though, please notice that Churchill, or whoever really said that, put the transition to more responsible thinking at age thirty. Hardly old age!)

But that doesn't describe today's Conservatives. They've been trained to think about that question only when it's about helping people in need... (except, of course, for themselves and their own family and friends, who are deserving!) They've been diverted by a carefully chosen assortment of wedge issues: race, religion, language... It never occurs to them to ask it about military spending or tax breaks for the rich; they regard that as essential spending that -- somehow -- keeps them safe.

I think that... as we age, liberals will tend to become more liberal, and conservatives more conservative. Our circle of contacts and new experiences contracts. Our accumulated sum of already-established opinions grows. It takes more contradictory evidence to overthrow something we've come to believe, and we're less likely to run into such non-confirming evidence.

Whatever we are already, with age we become more so.

I haven't followed this topic historically, however, what it meant to be Republican over the decades has changed, I think. Currently, does "cutting your nose off despite your face" have an alarming ring to adhering to the present crop of GOP members and their media darlings? I just want to shake people and ask what are they thinking? For example, in one breath they say they want to protect social security and in the other they support the GOP that wants to stab them in the back.

Personally, I consider myself an independent, because I never agree totally with either party.

"Activist government needs piles of money, and where does it come from? Why from the people who have money."

Yvonne, I take issue with your above statement, because the facts give a blatantly different view. Because of the the loopholes and benefits given to the largest investors and corporations, the taxes are disproportionately levied on the middle and lower income citizens of our country.

The rates at which the upper income and filthy rich persons and corporations are taxed could be raised and loopholes could be closed to make for a bit more equalization of the burden placed on the middle and lower income population. Just closing the loopholes would be a godsend for the budget deficit. The tendency for the politicians to stiff arm the needs of the people while glad handing and filling the hands of the corporate world, makes for the corruption of Democracy, OF, BY, and FOR the people.

The catchphrase "free" enterprise is a guise to play upon the American ideal of individuality. People who are underfed, in debt, without hope cannot fight the fallacy of the word "free" being used to take away their freedoms.

The small government movement wants the wages of the middle and lower income to be as low as possible and their taxes to be as high as possible, so they are "free" to fill their coffers for their progeny. Their attitude toward the rest of Americans, "let them eat cake."

I think of myself as Moderate. Equality is a lost cause in our ever-greed-grabbing society.

Sorry, I got off topic. I have not become more conservative in my political thinking. I have always been personally conservative, caught that from my father.

In many states, there are many voters that are rendered voiceless by the electoral college.

There is comfort in being Conservative. You don't have to change your lifestyle. If you are conservative, you don't have to believe in global warming, air pollution, Americans who live below the poverty level, homelessness, or any of the social ills that the Liberal media seems to make such a big deal of. You can believe that America is a white country, founded by white people for white people and that if the government would just keep its hands out of my pockets and let me run rampant over the land, we'll be alright. Yes, you can live your life with blinders on, oblivious to the world around you because it's just so darn safe.

Good comments here. Like many others, I was raised in a Republican voting household and my mother worked for the party during elections. Our lodge was a voting place when I was a child so I voted Republican when I was old enough to cast my first ballot. (21 years at that time).

My grandparent's fathers fought for the North in the Civil War and President Lincoln was there idol, so it's no surprise that they were Republican. I like to think that as the Republican party started it's rightward trend that they would have become Democrats.

As soon as I became interested in politics and studied the issues I changed from my family's party to the Democratic party. For a time I voted for the person as well as the party, but now I would never put my mark next to anyone on the Republican ticket.

I was always liberal in my thinking, but have gotten more so as I age. I have friends who have never varied from being Republicans and they have veered "right" along with the party. Just as they accept whatever their Priest or Minister tell them without thinking, they accept whatever the party bosses tell them and continue to follow the party line. Critical thinking or research to find fact from fiction is not in their character. It's a tribal thing.

Parents were Republicans...I usually couldn't swallow all of it and drifted to more independent ideals in my early 30's...However the last 15 to 20 years I have become a true Tax and Spend Liberal!
Terry

My husband born in '45 to democrat parents and me in '47 to republican parents, although the Eisenhower type and not the far right nuts of today. As my husband aged he got more conservative and I more liberal and much more so now as a widow of two years.
Some of this conservatism among the young is rebellion against their parents like for many in the 60's only in reverse.
But it's also lack of education, talk radio hatred spewing, Fox News, anti science push and judging people negatively of different races, non Christian religions, alternative partner choices by the religious right and fear of change and technology especially by older adults.
If it's true and I think it is in the big picture ( remember here you usually have educated professional people commenting) , it's because of this fear of change and the world changing from our comfort zone.

These comments are really interesting to me. I too grew up in a Republican household. Then I married a Republican who became a public figure in the 70's.
He died young, and, like the rest of you, I have become more and more liberal, and it's not just because the current Republicans are nuts. I don't like the mean-spiritedness of the party's resistance to gov't spending, it's fairy tale belief that the private sector will take up the slack, among other things.

My late husband, who was a moderate Republican, once said to our daughter, "I am part of a dying breed." And of course he was right. There is no place in our current culture for moderate Republicans. Still, even if there were, I'd still be a Democrat.

In a country where two parties dominate our politics all a third or fourth party accomplishes is to weaken the Democrat votes. It's all well and good to think for yourself, but if it means that you split voters from the Democrats you're simply strengthening Republican power.

I favor Bernie Sanders for President, but if Ms. Clinton wins the Democrat nomination I will definitely cast my vote for her rather than some independent candidate -- otherwise the nut-case Republican candidate will run away with the race. As it is, the electoral college may negate all our liberal votes anyway.

I'm not sure that I have become more liberal than when I was young, but I am more aware of the gerrymandering and the growing power of the far-right wing. I believe our government has become an oligarchy and I am afraid of it.

I was raised by a widowed mother who always voted Democrat - except when she found she could support neither of the major party candidates and then willingly - and I think joyfully - turned to Norman Thomas, the perennial candidate and head of the the American Socialist Party. (my parents were totally enamored with him, and actually, I am told, had him to dinner one night. I wish I could remember--).

I find that I am critical of both major parties, find fault with both, but far greater fault with the Republicans - several of you have used the term nutcase to describe the current candidates, and I agree, find it quite terrifying. Like others of you, I find Bernie Sanders closest to what I believe and hope for, although even in his case I find his positions re immigration and gun control pretty reprehensible. Hillary Clinton is the obvious second choice.

But as to political leanings, there was a time when things were less rabid between the two parties when I could comprehend at least an occasional Republican position - think of Goldwater, for example, and his strong belief in the conservation of the planet - but generally it was because those positions somewhat echoed the Democratic platform. Nowadays, however, I feel nothing but contempt for and terror of what passes as the second major party. There is SO much at stake in this upcoming election, and I have never felt more frightened than I do now.

Actually, the person who represents for me those things I believe in is Bill Moyers. I mourn his absence, think that basically what I am is a Moyersist.

Anyway, it may indicate some complacency in me, but I am pleased that, at least in terms of politics, my parents headed me in what I see is the right direction.

Another one who's moved to the left with age, rather than to the right. But, of course, the spectrum in this country has moved wildly to the right in my lifetime, so that Democrats these days are saying things that Republicans were saying 40 years ago. I am certainly to the left of the Democrats currently. It has nothing to do with my (fairly meager) pocketbook. It has to do with--remember this?--the common good, and the welfare of both the species and the planet.

Reading today's column by Ronni and the comments from everyone caused a good deal of vigorous head nodding! I do miss having meaningful though opposite points and perspectives of view with conservatives as I once had, but everyone I know has become as liberal as I the past few years.

I suspect Jan and Bruce are very close to the truth. Making choices which aren't well thought out is a classic avoidance measure. Wanting to turn back time is fear, being baffled by tech is fear (unless you have dementia, then it's true bafflement). Both parties are good at playing to fear....and every election feels like there's SO much at stake.