Tolerance, part 6

 Last week Ross Douthat had a column about the Dr Seuss controversy.  He said that liberals used to have a strong aversion to the idea of banning books and an inclination to defend or even celebrate any book that was banned*, but that this has diminished or disappeared.  I have the same impression, but is there any systematic evidence?

Since the early 1970s, the General Social Survey has asked about whether certain kinds of people should have their books removed from "your public library":  somebody who is against churches and religion ("atheist" for short) , someone who advocates doing away with elections and letting the military run the country ("militarist"), a Communist, and a person who believes that blacks are genetically inferior ("racist").   In a future post, I'll look at liberal/conservative differences in opinions, but here I'll consider a related issue--the strength of association among opinions on the different cases.  That is, to what extent is there a tendency to say that they all should stay or all should go.   With four cases, there are six possible combinations.  I'll show them in groups of three--first, those among the communist, the militarist, and the atheist; and second, the correlations of those three with the racist.  

A definite downward trend for each, although maybe with a pause in the early 1990s.  

A similar pattern, but the magnitude of the decline is larger.  In the first years, the correlations involving the racist were similar to those involving the other items, but by the end they were all weaker.  So it seems like people are increasingly making distinctions, rather than having a general tendency to favor removing or not removing.  

In general, the association among different opinions ("attitude constraint") seemed to stay about the same from the 1970s to around 2000, and increased in the 21st century.   These questions followed a different course.  It doesn't seem that the high/low tolerance alignment is being replaced by a tendency to distinguish between the "left" and "right" pairs (atheist and Communist vs. militarist and racist)--just a general decline in the associations, especially those involving the racist.  

This doesn't directly address Douthat's issue, but it suggests that there has been a decline in support for the general "civil libertarian" position, even though there's been increasing support for civil liberties in most specific cases.

 

Note:  since these are yes/no questions, it would be better to use odds ratios rather than correlations, but I started with correlations and don't have time to re-do the analysis now.  

*Many "progressives" say that this case isn't really censorship because the decision was made by a private organization rather than the government, but that used to be an argument you heard from the right, not the left.