Antidemocratic Beliefs: A Survey and Some Explanations

This paper presents descriptive and analytic data about tolerance for civil liberties and dissent in the American public. Support for free speech and dissent in concrete situations is more limited than support for abstract principles, a gap explained in terms of dynamics of threat, value conflict, and cognitive dissociation. The large gap suggests that the relationship between support for abstract principles and behavior in real situations would be very tenuous. Socialization of tolerance and support for civil liberties over the life cycle is discussed, and it is concluded that few attempts are made to socialize Americans to be true civil libertarians.