Many, many people change their political beliefs, including David Horowitz and David Mamet. There may be a genetic component contributing to certain neurological differences between conservatives and liberals (cognitive neuropsychologist John Ray thinks so), but the many people who have switched their views suggest that such a genetic component is secondary to education and life experience.

It should be pointed out that genes merely get the ball rolling on the development of neural pathways in a developing fetus, but that experience and opportunity soon take control of the matter. To argue that we are somehow predestined by deterministic applications of our DNA is dubious, at the very least.

The article's basic thesis is in error and depends on a false alternative between nature and nurture, as if no third alternative exists.

Free will is a fundamental, and obvious, fact. It is the basic capacity that makes possible rational thought, and the outcome of that process - applied to the real world (environment) and limited only by what is genetically (i.e., physiologically) possible - can fully explain, in principle, why people adopt the ideas, values, and behavior they do.

THE fundamental of human nature is that we possess volition, and thus, determinism in either of the two popular traditional forms - genetic or environmental - is necessarily false.

Interesting line of thought and investigation. So does that mean if I'm relatively happy with local politics that I should be for limiting immigration to prevent "mucking up" the local gene pool? I am sure someone is already well on their way to formulating new political strategies based on this information.

Good article, but the comment about why people vote shows one of the ideological limitations of social scientistic thinking: inability to recognize deontological drives and contexts. People stand in line to vote because they see it as their duty; you have to think about the fireman rushing into the burning building to understand this. A homo economicus analysis will always make unegoistic behavior appear irrational.