I very much doubt whether anyone, at least in polite company, would admit to a prejudice about anything. To admit to a prejudice is to proclaim oneself a bigot, the kind of person who can't, or worse still won't, examine his preconceptions and opinions, and is, as a consequence, narrow in his sympathies, pharisaic in his judgments, xenophobic in his attitudes, rigid in his principles, punitive towards his inferiors, obsequious to his superiors, and convinced of his own rectitude. Such a one is not very attractive, to say the least. Better, then, to swallow one's prejudices than admit them in public.
(Theodore Dalrymple, In Praise of Prejudice: The Necessity of Preconceived Ideas [New York: Encounter Books, 2007], 3 [first published in 2006])
Note from KBJ: In my experience, having been both a progressive and a conservative, and therefore having looked at each ideology from the outside, progressives are at least as prejudiced (in the stated sense) as conservatives. The idea that only conservatives are prejudiced (bigoted), or that conservatives are more likely to be prejudiced (bigoted) than progressives, is a progressive conceit, designed to make progressives feel good about themselves. Is it projection? Do progressives know, deep down, that they're prejudiced (bigoted), and project that bad trait onto those they despise? It's an interesting phenomenon, one that I haven't quite figured out.
