Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Silat on June 13, 2007, 04:22:24 PM
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http://mediamatters.org/progmaj/?f=h_top
The complete report : http://mediamatters.org/progmaj/report
Ideology in America
"Republicans tend to be conservative on both [economic and social issues]. That's been a strength in a conservative country."
Mark Halperin of ABC News, October 30, 2006
Halperin is hardly alone in his view that whether one is talking about economic issues or social issues, conservatives have the public on their side. Democrats may win an election here or there, but at its most fundamental level, conventional political wisdom assumes America is a conservative country: hostile to government, in favor of unregulated markets, at peace with inequality, desirous of a foreign policy based on the projection of military power, and traditional in its social values.
This report demonstrates the inaccuracy of that picture of America. Media perceptions and past Republican electoral successes notwithstanding, Americans are progressive across a wide range of controversial issues, and they're growing more progressive all the time.
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Conservatives are nearly always Republicans, but as witnessed by the recent immigration debate, very few Republicans seem to be conservatives
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I'm surrounded by thirty percenters...
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It's an interesting read. It makes perfect sense that the majority of Americans are going to be middle of the road people because that's where the greatest concentration of common sense can be found.
On the other hand, some of the views described in the article as progressive I would think of as being more liberal. Big government, big spending, lots of government assistance, grass root economics, etc are traditionally lib values unless I am mistaken.
I would have voted with the majority on some of those questions, but mostly I favor a weaker central government (certainly weaker than the *cough* conservative government we have in place).
As for equality issues, I'm all for it as long as it's not done at the expense of others getting a fair shake. That's almost impossible to do with legislation. On that issue, I would say that since the majority of Americans already favor the idea of a just and equal society, there's no need for central involvement because the problem will solve itself.
I'd be willing to pay for progress on energy and for alternative fuel research, but only to a point. I'd expect results within a reasonable but very specific timeline. No results = no more funding.
I think nationalized health care would be as big a flop as Social Security because the same .gov wonderboys would be dreaming up and executing the plan. It *could* work, but only if people receiving benefits are the same people who contributed X amount into the pool. Oh, and participation shouldn't be mandatory. ;)
Gun control legislation in the United States would be doomed to failure much like the war on drugs and for the same reasons. No explanation should be necessary here.
Strong alliances can be useful, but they come with strong obligations. I would be in favor of an alliance where all members contributed the same amount of money and human resources into any common goal. When you have a few members contribution 10 or 100 times as much as some other members for any given project, it's not a very worthwhile alliance except on the stage of world perception.
Maybe it's just where I've lived and whom I've known, but the majority of the people I know don't really delve quite so far into the left as the study suggests. Most of them are pretty much down the middle.
Ok, I think that about covers everything. Thanks for the read and pardon the wall of text.
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Originally posted by bj229r
Conservatives are nearly always Republicans, but as witnessed by the recent immigration debate, very few Republicans seem to be conservatives
Exactly it's all smoke and mirrors..
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Originally posted by crockett
Exactly it's all smoke and mirrors..
No, this is analogous to that old saying:
All squares are rectangles, not all rectangles are squares.
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Now this is news... A liberal site that interprets polls and studies to mean that we really do want socialism but that the vast right wing conspiracy of hollywood and the media and the right wing school system are keeping karl marx from his rightful place as god in America.
Where do you find these site silat and how can you stand to read em?
America is fundamentaly individualists but like all people we can be greedy and like to tell others what to do.. we may say we want regulation but when it happens we hate it. we don't like our government no matter who it is and the more of it we have the more we hate it.
lazs