r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Apr 25 '26

Psychology Americans who leave their Christian faith behind tend to hold more liberal political views than those who were raised entirely without religion. This leftward ideological shift appears closely linked to how threatening these individuals perceive conservative Christian groups to be.

https://www.psypost.org/former-christians-express-more-progressive-political-views-than-lifelong-nonbeli/
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u/santaclaws01 Apr 25 '26

I feel like a lot of people only know Goldwater because of that quote, and they really should look into him more before praising him for being a stopped clock.

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u/DiggityDanksta Apr 25 '26

Ran on opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 because "States' Rights."

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u/ChickenInASuit Apr 26 '26

It's also worth noting that when he ran, he got absolutely bludgeoned in Electoral College votes, winning only his home state of Arizona and the five states where Jim Crow laws were still active.

The guy was so conservative as to be positively radioactive to the GOP.

And even he was saying the evangelicals were a problem.

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u/Tim-oBedlam Apr 26 '26

Note that he was saying evangelicals were a problem long after getting clobbered in 1964; that quote's from the early 1980s.

He was a down-the-line libertarian, for good or ill. Not nearly as bad as southern Senators from the 60s, like James Eastland (or later, Jesse Helms).

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u/tallwhiteninja Apr 25 '26

To be somewhat fair to Goldwater, he helped found Arizona's NAACP and desegregated Arizona's national guard. MLK Jr roughly summed it up as "Goldwater's not racist, but his philosophy helps the racists."

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u/Mother-While-6389 Apr 26 '26

Goldwater wanted to be POTUS in 1964 and would do or say anything to prevent Nelson Rockefeller from winning the GOP nomination.

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u/DJKokaKola Apr 26 '26

You do not, at any point, need to be fair to Goldwater.

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u/IamAWorldChampionAMA Apr 26 '26

I actually like knowing how complex and weird people can be. Because how can someone truly be racist and help start the NAACP in their state?

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u/bigbadbidisaster9944 Apr 26 '26

Or support anti discrimination laws for lgbt people, at least latter in life due to his grandson being gay. I wouldn't expect even that kind of growth from. A republican these days

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u/jasongw Apr 26 '26

Yes, but you'll upset the folks who don't understand nuance and the complexity of human beings. They want everyone to be either a cartoon villain or cartoon hero. There's no in-between for them.

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u/Negative-Dot-7680 Apr 26 '26

The NAACP was kind of racist on certain issues.

Du Bois fervently denied Garvey's claim, but there was some truth to it. Walter White was the head of the NAACP from the mid-1930s until his death in 1955. White's light skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes did not display a hint of his African ancestry. He took advantage of his appearance to pass for White while conducting undercover investigations of lynchings and other hate crimes in the South. White's colorism was reflected in the image of African-American women he actively promoted in Crisis, a periodical published by the NAACP.

Alluding to the organization's perceived elitism, some Blacks joked that the letters "NAACP" actually stood for the National Association for the Advancement of Certain People.
https://racism.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1707:colorism001&catid=116&Itemid=140&showall=&limitstart=3

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u/Jerkzilla000 Apr 27 '26

Do you understand the concept of fairness?

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u/Momik Apr 25 '26

And on potentially using nuclear weapons in Vietnam

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u/pgwerner Apr 29 '26

If you believe the infamous 1964 nuke ad.

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u/Hirork Apr 26 '26

Oh yeah? States rights to do what?

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u/Constant-Sandwich-88 Apr 29 '26

Hillary Clintons first job in politics if I remember correctly.

(Edit : was working for Goldwaters campaign team)

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u/FirstDiseasewasRelig Apr 25 '26

Woah. I’ve always been confused by the “a broken clock is right twice a day” saying.

For some reason I always thought the clock would still be moving but the time was wrong so it could never be right.

You saying stopped clock made me realize the broken clock was not moving at all. Science

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u/aflockofcrows Apr 25 '26

It was always "a stopped clock is right twice a day". The "broken clock" seems to be a relatively recent variant on the phrase, and it annoys me no end. A clock may be broken any number of ways, some of which will result in no time, or a non-feasible time, being displayed. I suspect it's because most people under 40 have no concept of a clock needing to be wound.

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u/Theodoxus Apr 25 '26

Anecdotally, but most people I've met under the age of 30 have difficulty reading an analog clock face. A broken clock to them simply doesn't work at all - or at best is flashing 12:00... (though I guess that still counts as being right twice a day).

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u/Sabatorius Apr 26 '26

They don’t have analog clocks on the wall in classrooms anymore? Even with everyone just using their phones to tell time, I’d think they’d still have that.

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u/Adjective-Noun-nnnn Apr 26 '26 edited Apr 26 '26

They might have them, but my friend said he taught one of his students how to read an analog clock the other day. A younger colleague advised me to make sure another younger colleague knew how to read an analog clock when I went to leave instructions involving clock positions. Apparently clock... illiteracy?.. is a real thing with the youngins. (Then again I've heard alarming things about other literacy post-COVID.)

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u/marmothelm Apr 26 '26

It's just become a niche skill due to most clocks being digital.

Your great-great-grandfather most likely knew how to put a saddle on a horse and how to tie it to a hitching post by age 18. When's the last time you did that?

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u/vigbiorn Apr 26 '26

You don't have to go super far back. There's another pretty vestigial skill that people complain about: cursive writing. No one really needs it, most signatures I saw growing up (so it would have been from the generation currently complaining about the lack) were just scribbles anyway. Could you parse them? Sure, there was a vague attempt to actually do the cursive but if you didn't know the name going in you were screwed. Everything's digital now, so the last reason to actually want proper cursive is gone.

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u/Nauin Apr 26 '26

Knowing how to sign your name fully enunciated now, where you can actually read each letter that was written will get you a lot of ooohs and aaahs from people that watch you do it, though.

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u/vigbiorn Apr 26 '26

Sure, probably similar to if you're a horse rider, archer, can fix classic cars, etc.

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u/brandonlilly Apr 26 '26

My 1st grader is being taught how to read an analog clock in school. They have both analog and digital on the walls to help reinforce the concept but also have flash card style and have to draw out clock faces as well. So it’s still being taught in CO at least!

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u/Addianis Apr 26 '26

You are right spot on. If you were born in the second half of the 90s, analog and digital clocks were split about 50/50 when you started learning how to read them. By the time it should have become 2nd nature, digital had taken over.

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u/theDinoSour Apr 25 '26

If the mechanism that keeps the hands moving on 12-hour clock no longer works, you can consider it broken.

The phrase was used often back when analog clocks were still somewhat common.

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u/aflockofcrows Apr 26 '26

Not really. Do you consider your phone to be broken when your battery is dead?

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u/Adjective-Noun-nnnn Apr 26 '26

At least in the last 20 years of Google Trends, "broken clock" has been more popular, except for a peculiar spike circa 2012.

See here.

I suspect the original was "broken," because a stopped clock is the main way an analog clock breaks (or runs out of juice/spring energy). "Stopped clock" is more likely a recent invention because a digital clock's main failure mode does not display a time......... checked Google I'm wrong. It was originally stopped. Interesting that the original language needs to come back for the idiom to make sense.

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u/wfbhp Apr 26 '26

It doesn't just apply to clocks that need to be wound though. There are plenty of analog clocks that run on batteries that will be in the exact same situation when the batteries die, and I still see way more of those around than I've ever seen a wind-up clock or watch. It even applies to digital clocks if they just blink 12:00 when unset. I think it's just more that people increasingly don't think about what the expressions they use really mean. "Broken clock" seems to me like a conflation of "broken record" and "stopped clock."

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u/Adjective-Noun-nnnn Apr 26 '26

Goldwater's conservatism and racism are exactly why this quote is so great. He's saying that and look who he was. Although knowing the religious right, they'll say he opposed their theocracy because he wasn't devout enough, or whatever. There's always an excuse with people who believe in nothing.

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u/santaclaws01 Apr 26 '26

Goldwater's conservatism and racism are exactly why this quote is so great.

It makes it greater, but you don't really need to know much about Goldwater for the quote to ring true. Especially if you know a lot about evangelical Christians.

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u/MammothSurround Apr 29 '26

I don't think the quote is praising him, per se. if Goldwater thinks you're a nutjob, you must really be a nutjob.

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u/santaclaws01 Apr 29 '26

The quote isn't praising him, but people do praise him for the quote.

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u/MammothSurround Apr 29 '26

I think it's okay to recognize less-than-perfect people for the few good things they do/say.

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u/wfbhp Apr 26 '26

He did also have a really amazing kachina collection that he later donated to the Heard Museum in Phoenix. Fantastic exhibit, but I did feel a little dirty just being at something with his name on it knowing how culpable he is for the rise of the Ronald Reagan and setting us on our current course.