By world standards they probably are. But that’s not what American pundits mean when they say “America is a center-right country”. The American axis is a bit different than the world axis.
Emphasis added.
Only four times ever and only ONCE in the last 100+ years has the President not been the winner of the popular vote. While your statement is technically correct, the popular is a pretty damn reliable predictor of who will be President. As the saying goes, that’s close enough for government work.
Compared to Canada and western Europe, the Democrats are to the right, and the Republicans are to the right of the Democrats. In that context, the USA is significantly right of centre country, but since the USA tends not to look abroad, that would moderate it in its own eyes as being centre right.
Now, just how the hell can you call yourself “center right” if you can’t even spell “center” right?
There’s no equivalence. Perhaps the most significant factor is that the Occupy movement is a part of an “extraparliamentary opposition” of sorts and casts a jaundiced eye on the state in general. This leads in to the fact that there are not regular Occupied movements in Town Halls and Occupy does not have any significant impact on primary elections for either party. I can think of two members of Congress espousing support for Occupy, John Lewis and Bernie Sanders.
Saying that the country is “center-right” using its own political axis as a measuring point is obvious nonsense, like the line about Lake Wobegon where “all the children are above average”.
But it’s rhetorically useful to certain parties.
Its simpler than that, they just believe it. Everybody they know agrees with them about that, and everybody they know are sensible, hard-headed realistic people, so of course they are right. Except for their gay lefty nephew, but he only shows up at Thanksgiving, and that sort of thing happens in the best of families…
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Its simpler than that, they just believe it. Everybody they know agrees with them about that, and everybody they know are sensible, hard-headed realistic people, so of course they are right. Except for their gay lefty nephew, but he only shows up at Thanksgiving, and that sort of thing happens in the best of families…
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Sure, but no need to put this board down so hard. Sure, sure…when lefties trot out the ‘American is a center-right country’, or some variation on that theme, it generally gets a pass, because everyone knows and agrees with them, in general, about that assertion without ever thinking about what it means. To be fair to board lefties though (I’m trying something new this week, though this being fair thing is kind of hard), they mean it as a comparison of the US verse Europe or whatever, as if there should and is a universal yardstick we can use to determine what the center is and should be and…
You were talking about the SDMB and lefties here, correct??
I think your Compulsive Equivalence Disorder is acting up again. Tell you what, why don’t you point out a few of these lefties who are “trotting out” that llne, and we’ll have a look.
I’ll let you do the donkey work on that one, 'luci…there have been multiple threads on this subject in the past. BrainGlutton has done a few (unless you want to claim he’s a board righty, of course), and Der Trihs in particular brings this up quite a bit. I’ve seen others but those are two off the top of my head…I’m sure you can find others. Just do a search on ‘America right of center’ and you should get some hits…or better yet ‘America right wing’ or some variant on that theme. I’d say it’s a board fact (hell, I agree with it myself…I’d say it’s pretty obviously true) that the US is a right wing country compared to Europe or most other 1st world democracies. The fallacy, IMHO, is that there is some sort of universal yardstick that all countries can be measured against, and that countries need to conform to that fantasy center line in determining if they are left or right leaning. I can think of at least 2 threads that I’ve participated in discussing that exact point, so feel free to use my name in your search for truth, justice and enlightenment as well. 
Many American liberals (like me) say that America as a whole is right of center merely because our political system gives a voice to views that would be laughed out of the room in other countries. This is particularly clear when it comes to matters that *should *be private and fully legal (SSM, abortion), as well as religion (SSM again, evolution debate). We give Teabagger crackpots space on national news networks. The antics of the Double-you Bee See Church aren’t illegal. Most first world countries are casually atheist, and they don’t have arguments over the stupid bullshit still being debated in the US.
It’ll probably stay like this until we split the Bible Belt off into its own country.
You might know that and I might know that, but try telling it to moonshot925.
It depends what countries. The world consists of more than just western Europe. Some countries are pretty conservative.
As an aside, it is possible for all the children to be above average, provided that Lake Wobegon has an infinite population. And it’s also possible, even with finite population, for all but one of the children to be above average.