Simple political question: Why do intelligent groups, who would seem to benefit the most from being left alone to practice their own values, vote liberal? It reminds of a time not so long ago when visiting a Jewish friend, and it became so apparent to me how younger generations now are scoffing and casting aside the values their parents expect them to sustain and uphold.

Mother to Jewish friend rambles on as usual about Polish ghettos and Jewish brilliance. I overlook the sentimentality of the situation and find it kind of amusing, but my friend suddenly grows tired of it all.

Son: Mum, stop talking like we're so special all the time, it makes me uncomfortable.

Mother: But you are special, you're Jewish.

Son: That's what I'm talking about. Give up that talk already, everyone's just as good and bad as the other, we don't need to feel superior all the time.

Mother: Jonathan, are you an anti-Semite!

At this point I have a hard time not laughing.

Son: No, I'm not, I'd just wish you'd stop talking about Jewishness all the time. Everyone is good.

His mother now looks at him with a stern and self-confident facial expression.

Mother: No, everyone is not good. We are good, but not the others!

It wasn't the first time Jonathan's mother had comically picked on him for being a bad Jew, but this is not a judgment on Jews. It illustrates a larger and more important point, hardly confined to Jews, or even European groups in general. Younger generations are growing increasingly liberalized. Social democracy, economic equality and cultural humility are no longer campaign phrases only among the liberal left; it's become the expected social norm. But why do the people who would benefit the most from being conservative, choose to go liberal?

Because liberalism is in many regards a signal system. People who argue over bumper stickers on cars saying "No more war in Iraq" or get upset over uneducated teenagers wearing Che Guevara shirts are missing the point. The stereotypical campaign liberal is not merely, and increasingly often not at all proposing anything in principle. It's a way to fit into a social hierarchy; to prove in public that he or she understands the act of sending and receiving moral codes. Nobody, not even liberals, really believe war is going to end. They just want to say how sorry they am, and how good we should perceive them for saying so.

Intelligent people, especially socially trained people, seem to prefer to participate in this process, inevitably expressing more or less liberal ideas. At the same time, liberalism is now slowly hitting back on those groups. In a modern progressive society, fairly wealthy people (including much of the middle class), successful ethnic groups, religious groups, scientists and company owners are hurt the most. Their values of family care, self-preservation, independence, risk-taking and cultural self-confidence are going extinct, because an increasingly aggressive government is not going to tolerate deviations from the progressive denominator.

It means the people who are voting liberal to ensure they are tolerated, will increasingly find that there is not much tolerance left. Take for instance Jews in Swedish multicultural Malmö. Previously an historically integral and well-off part of the city culture, is now a fragmented and scared ethnic group, afraid to speak out in public or express Jewish values. Why? The tolerant leaders they once voted for are now also tolerating radical Muslims, who are slowly taking over the city and would rather wish that Jews moved to somewhere else. Liberalism may be the biggest deceiver in the means of communication between intelligent people yet. Without a conservative framework to keep it in check, it seems to damage the very people it was supposed to benefit.