I know I should probably leave this alone - real professionals have been going over it (see Matthew Yglesias' blog or Julian Sanchez' or Brad DeLong's) - but it'sthe sort of thing...

For one thing, you don't have to be a professional anything to see that an argument built on phrases like "If I'm right about this" or, "I'm only speculating here", has problems. And trace back: what does he ask if he's right about? I will quote his topic sentences, for he is a very well organized writer:

"Actually, I want to focus on mature individuals, for I believe conservatism increases with age, as experience broadens and deepens."

"Young people yearn to be free. Their predominant value is liberty, understood as the absence of constraint." (There's more in this paragraph - see below.)

"My liberal friends, bless their bleeding hearts, had easy, undemanding upbringings."

"But that's false, as anyone who grew up in a working-class family with siblings knows. Many of us worked damn hard for everything we got -- or else we didn't get it."

That gets us to "If I'm right about this..." Right about what?

If I'm right about this, then many liberals are guilty of projecting their own narrow and unrepresentative experience onto others. They're ignorant of the connection between (1) effort, initiative, discipline, risk-taking, hard work, and sacrifice and (2) wealth. They think money grows on trees, because they never had to work for it. They think everyone else had indulgent parents who catered to their every whim. They think everyone else had parents who bought them a car, sent them away on vacations, paid their way through college, lavished gifts on them, gave them a credit card, lent them money interest-free, provided housing for as long as they wanted it, and so forth .

If he's right about what? Well - that all liberals grew up like his friends, basically - liberals had it easy growing up ("Little was demanded of them; much was given to them.") - conservatives had it hard ("Many of us worked damn hard for everything we got"). Um - is that likely? Does that match anyone else's observations? Not mine - but whether it's so or not - the argument - to assert something, based, I guess it is, on personal anecdotes, then to use that assertion (unsupported by anything except personal anecdote - which is really an impersonation of a personal anecdote, since he writes not about some specific person, but about "My liberal friends, bless their bleeding hearts" - whoever they are... Ted Kennedy maybe?) as the grounds for the rest of the argument - that liberals are guilty about their undeserved wealth - is extremely dishonest. Or stupid. Whichever it is.

Still - stupidity is one thing - straight out nastiness is another: let's quote the paragraph referred to above:

Young people yearn to be free. Their predominant value is liberty, understood as the absence of constraint. They care little about the past or the future. Like animals, they are riveted in the present, uninterested in what came before them and oblivious to what is to come. They think they're immortal. They do not yet have a stake in society. When they acquire a stake, as most do (some do not survive the turbulence of youth), their perspective changes. This -- an enlarged perspective -- is an important component of wisdom. Yes, I'm saying that conservatism and wisdom are directly correlated. You're wiser now than you were ten or twenty years ago, aren't you? Is that an accident?

He's asking me? Sure, I'm wiser now - am I more conservative? Fraid not.

Another paragraph (the one above the paragraph just quoted - I see I'm working backwards through this "essay" - hey, that's life):

I wonder sometimes what explains whether a given individual is liberal or conservative. Actually, I want to focus on mature individuals, for I believe conservatism increases with age, as experience broadens and deepens. As we age, we see connections better. We grasp cause and effect (in part because we have engaged in trial and error). We understand the importance of tradition, which embodies compromises, bargains, and settlements. We come to value things like security, community, and stability as well as liberty.

Do people grow more conservative as they age? It's a commonplace - maybe it is true. If it's true - is it for the reasons he cites? Because they are more mature, wiser? Or is it that they own more property, and their selfishness takes over? or, that they achieve status and influence (as well as property) and are more concerned with protecting it? Liberalism, maybe, wants change - conservatism wants to keep things the wayt hey are - which might be a result of what you have (in terms of power, prestige, property, etc.) Or - perhaps people grow more conservative because they are tired - they give up - they accept bad things in the world, as long as they don't touch them. Maybe they are less imaginative, less empathetic or sympathetic - maybe they stop seeing how things are connected, stop being curious about how things are connected, and become more concerned with themselves and their families, the rest of the world be damned.

I don't know - but those explanations seem as reasonable as his - as easy (or hard) to correlate to real cases (to actual individuals) as his. Broad generalizations are not helpful - but they are particularly unhelpful when they take such abusive forms, and are built on such dubious premises (those rich pampered liberals and working class conservatives). This argument is built on air - it's circular (because liberals are rich, they must be liberals because they are guilty - therefor, since liberals are liberals because they are guilty, they must all be rich and spoiled...) - it's nonsense. It's mean, childish nonsense, the kind of thing you expect to hear from young conservatives trying to shock their idealistic friends.