The headline said, “Young Americans Are Leaning Left, New Poll Finds”. Maybe. But it looks like these 17-29 year olds are leaning toward responsible freedom—away from moral conservatism, to be sure (and thank you Jesus), but maybe not toward either big government or anarchy.

More of them describe themselves as liberal—28% versus 20% in the total population—and fewer describe themselves as conservative—27% compared to 32%--but that is not exactly a sea change. And incidentally, it still only comes to 55%, so close to half don’t even choose to identify themselves in those terms.

Forty-four percent thought gay people should be able to get married (compared to 28% in the general public) and, not surprisingly, they were also much more in favor of legalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana. On abortion, they were right in step with the general public: 24% would eliminate it altogether and 37% said it should be generally available, but a full 38% said it should be available with greater restrictions. That seems like a moderate, responsible mix to me, right in line with 45% who choose neither the conservative nor the liberal label.

The one place where they seem liberal in the big-government sense was, predictably, health care : 62% (compared to 47% in the general public) would go for a national health insurance program. I call this “predictable” because EVERYONE knows healthcare is broken in America, but this group is least invested in the entrenched healthcare establishment. But if this opinion seems “left”, how about the offsetting fact that 51% of young people (compared to 45% in the general population) believe the US is “very” or “somewhat” likely to succeed in Iraq?

So maybe this generation is leaning left, but if that means leaning away from the stifling moral conservatism of the past 20 years (President Clinton notwithstanding), then I say lean on. I happily, perhaps naively, choose to believe that they are leaning moderately and responsibly toward freedom and equality of opportunity.

And speaking of the Clintons, this supposed left-leaning among the young is not so hot for them. The young people were really only familiar with two Democratic presidential candidates—Senators Clinton and Obama. Only 19% had an unfavorable view of Senator Obama—pretty remarkable—but a whopping 43% had an unfavorable view of Senator Clinton. It’s one thing to get yourself all over the news, quite another to convince people that you are right and they should trust you.

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