*[1]
Although ozymandias' post is based " partially on talking with conservative friends"
I don't see much discussion (in the post nor the comments) of ...
actual conversations with US conservatives/Republicans about EA and EA ideas ... reporting what their reactions were.[2]
Has anyone done this? Is there any source material? I'm particularly interested in...
- the USA (and maybe Canada),
- conservative university/college students and young people in the military/academies,
- students at non-elite schools,
- conservative-leaning students interested in politics and government careers
- talking to conservatives in groups and at organizations... maybe in meetings or focus groups.
Are there conservatives in many EA student groups? What parts of the EA message particular appeals to conservative students, and which aspects do they hate the most? Are they interested in particular cause areas, or careers, or earning-to-give?
(Note: I expect some of the work and outreach EA for Christians is doing may be relevant, but it's not quite the same.)
We're going to need to start by defining what we mean by "conservative." Speaking as someone who was occasionally taunted as a "conservative" (despite having many relatively centrist views) by people in my college debate club, I think that many progressives either struggle or simply don't care to come up with fair definitions for what a conservative is.
But to be fair, I'm not sure even the average American conservative has a great sense of how to define conservativism.
For my current purposes, a practical (but obviously hand-waving) characterization would be "someone who often votes for Republicans and would strongly consider doing so in the future". I added the word Republicans in the post to help clarify.