Archernar:
Here are my definitions:
Liberal - a willingness to challenge prevailing attitudes, institutions, etc.
Leftist - support for policies designed to remedy percieved past inequities.
One more vote for “the categories do not sufficiently reflect my views”.
I am socially liberal.
I might even be fiscally liberal too (there’s a phrase you don’t hear too often) but …
I believe in free trade.
I believe the minimum wage is counterproductive and hurts the people it aims to protect (Affirmative Action too come to think of it).
I believe government bureaucracy (in the US) is excessive and should be reduced.
My perception is that the board is to left of the general populace on social issues and fairly well distributed on economic issues… maybe a slight preponderance of liberals but the conservatives make up in volume what they lack in numbers.
There are more people at the extremes here than there are in the general populace… maybe because they think more than the general populace ?
There are way more Libertarians here than I encounter in real life.
Lib:
Well, this seems like the sort of tautological logic that follows from the “Market Fundamentalism” running rampant in conservative/libertarian circles. Sure, if you define markets as always being the perfect mechanism for people to make their choices then, by definition, any other mechanism including government is worse. And, then the sort of conclusions you make here follow from your premises. I don’t buy the premises.
It differs in a few ways. For a number of reasons, many of us feel that the rationing system called “pricing” that works well with other things is not morally justified when it comes to health care. I.e., I am happy to have the fancy cars go to only the people who can afford them but I am not happy with the idea that people who can’t afford decent medical treatment can’t get it. In fact, most people in our society seem to feel this way to the point where, in fact, emergency treatment won’t be denied to anyone, but the quality of treatment will vary greatly and the treatment will be much more costly to society than a preventative treatment might have been.
One of the problems with health care is whether you need to use it a lot or not is, to a large degree, a “luck of the draw” sort of thing. Of course, this leads to the concept of shared risk through insurance, just like in other areas. However, in health insurance, there is a particularly poor alignment of interests for the seller and the buyer, i.e., the seller wants to sell insurance to those most likely not to use it whereas the buyer wants to buy insurance most badly if they are likely to need to use it a lot.
This poor alignment of interests does not exist when I go to buy a car, for example. The car dealer and I both want me to get a car that I will be happy with. Sure, he might want me to pay a little more than I would want to pay and he might even want to unload a “lemon” on me but these are relatively minor problems that can be solved in the latter case, for example, by “lemon laws” (or if I try to get better information in this market transaction by taking the car to a mechanic before buying).
To some degree, the poor alignment of interests might exist for other types of insurance but I at least find it less fundamentally objectionable than in the arena of health care. E.g., someone with a bad driving record may have a hard time getting car insurance and someone who owns a house on the Outer Banks may have trouble getting flood insurance. (In fact, in this latter case, I think there has been a certain amount of government intervention too…something I feel considerably more ambivalent about.)
quoth Brutus, a long ways back:
I am amazed to say that, for the first time in my history on these boards, I agree with Brutus.
For Brutus is an honorable man…
This board is biased against bullshit. If you come in here (particularly this forum) and start spouting unthinking, dogmatic bullshit, somebody’s going to call you on it. Probably several somebodies.
Woah there. That article doesn’t say what you claim it says. It says that 46% of Americans describe themselves as evangelicals or born-again Christians. I would describe myself as a born-again Christian, though I would not describe myself as being evangelical. But, if asked “Are you evangelical or a born-again Christian?” I would answer yes.
Secondly, the report claims that 48% of Americans believe in creationism. That belief is not ipso facto incompatable with evolution. “Creationism” is a word that means different things to different people, not everyone is likely to ascribe to it the strict seven day, 168 hours and it was all done, meaning.
Who’s not for ‘less taxes and more freedom’?
Health insurance as it is currently put together in the USA is completely irrational.
Employees of the government and large companies have it the best.
Employees of small to mid-sized companies are perpetually feeling the pinch of higher health insurance costs.
Employees of very small to small companies generally have no health insurance to worry about. Praying is their insurance.
If anyone thinks this is in the least equitable, they’re out of their minds.
(I’ve worked in each and every one of the above situations. What I found is what I’m describing above. Needless to say, I now work for a large corporation, and I have no plans on changing that voluntarily, because I can count.)
I’m willing to go with everyone paying for their own insurance, or with universal health care. Just as long as it eliminates the completely irrational slicing of the population that currently exists.
Rhum -
I agree that is not a conclusive cite. Part of the problem in counting evangelical Christians is the diversity of beliefs under that umbrella. Thus, you might assume that all evangelical Christians are conservative Republicans. Many are African-Americans though who tend to vote Democratic despite Republican sympathies with their religious and moral beliefs.
I don’t agree with you on Creationism though. I agree that creationism can be defined in a number of different ways. I still think that by far the most prevalent definition is the more traditional one. That is that evolution is wrong and creationism is right as described in the bible. I would think that most of the respondants in the poll are likely to be agreeing with the more traditional definition.
Yep, in a European context the Dems as well the Reps are right wing. The Dems moderate right, the Reps quite “very” right. The European left wing would be considered as communist in the US, although it isn’t sigh. Then again there are the real communists in Europe, which don’t exist in the US.
Btw, are they illegal? Seems to me, since on the US VISA forms there is a question “Are you a member of the communist party?”. (Almost as informative as “Did you participate on a genocide?” or “Do you enter the states in order to perform terrorist acts?”, but that is another question…)
I would add a major distinction between left and right concerning fiscal politics:
Left = more intervening of the state into private financial matters.
right =less intervening of the state into private financial matters.
The extrems are, of course, communism and the extreme form of capitalism. The US is, IMHO, very close the extreme form of the latter.
In Europe we prefer state intervention - at least compared to the US - in order to:
- Guarantee a minimum of social coverage to the poor.
- Guarantee a minimum of infrastructure in areas where free market makes less or no sense (electricity, rail, etc.). In general we like to avoid situations like in California (electr.) and the UK (rail).
- Be able to have a minimum control of the powerful multi-national companies - what’s the point of an elected government if the companies rule the country?
Obviosly, Americans and Europeans diverge on this.
You might have noticed, that I am more on the left side 
This Gallup poll on the liberal media as perceived by most American’s mentions some interesting stats.
Only 20% of American’s self identify as liberals.
I think Milum’s figures are representative of the SDMB overall, roughly.
So, even if we had a 50-50 balance of conservative and liberals on the SDMB, which we certainly do not, then we would still be considerably biased towards the left compared to the general population of the US.
So far we noticed:
- that this board is a little bit “skewed” to the left
- and we also “tend to think” that the members of the SDMB are better informed than a random sample of the population, and less ignorant.
You may deduce conclusions as you like
I’m for “abortions for some, miniature American flags for everyone else.”
Seriously though – who gets to draw the line which determines what’s left and what’s right? If the position’s not taken, I’ll do it…
<draws chalk line directly underfoot>
flonks, I have noticed that generally two arguments are made when the liberal leanings of the SDMB are discussed.
The first is that it’s all not true. Conservatives are just making up stories and claiming persecution. Utter nonsense.
The second is that because the SDMB is fighting ignorance it attracts more liberals than conservatives.
You can’t have it both ways. To claim the second, you must admit the first.
Debaser, I am not sure if I am able to follow your argument…
The “claim” I made is, that people are here to fight ignorance, and that there are more “lefties” - well that is not my claim, that is apparently the “result” of the discussion.
I did not want to post my conclusion, but you can guess it anyway 
However, why do I have to admit the first argument (“Conservatives are just making up stories and claiming persecution. Utter nonsense.”) in order to claim to second (" because the SDMB is fighting ignorance it attracts more liberals than conservatives.")???
There may be more liberals here than conservatives and the conservatives are not making up their stories. Actually, that is allmost a tautology.
However, I wouldn’t say prosecuted, but they are perhaps a minority, which let’s them feel as being prosecuted.
I think there is a misunderstanding somewhere but I don’t find it.
I am confused as to how you can be confused but let me attempt to clarify:
The first argument is that the SDMB does not have liberal leanings..
The second argument is that the SDMB attracts more liberals than conservatives because we are fighting ignorance. With the logical assumption being that conservatives are ignorant.
These two arguments are mutually exclusive. They are also both usually made whenever these threads appear.
OK, I thought that your first argument was “The conservatives deny that the board has left leanings”, which doesn’t tell anything about the real situation.
Well I don’t claim anything about the real situation on the board. I refer to Milum’s figures. Emotionally I think that there are lots of conservatives on the board, but we already discussed the reason why.
So, if we claim 2, and agree that 1 is wrong together with the claim that we are here to fight ignorance … I still don’t get your objection to my first posting 
God bless you Gorsnak (err, not literally though, in case I get accused of being that rare beast, a religious Euro-Doper!:)) for saying:
(Quote)
You are quite probably right about the political leaning when viewed on a global basis. I can only judge accurately the political leanings of American dopers. I was mentally discounting the many non-US dopers because I don’t feel I have an accurate sense of the global political climate.
(Unquote)
From my personal (European) perspective I see the mass of American Dopers as ranging from the Centre-Right to the Far-Right. Due to the cultural influence of the US on the Rest of the World I suspect generally we have a stronger idea of the US politial climate than visa versa. Which is why I enjoy contributing to the SD boards; to help fight ignorance. Especially US ignorance of the world outside your borders (although SDoper ignorance regardless of political viewpoint is FAR FAR greater than what I find in the Houston hotel bar lobbies I spend too much time in).
As for me, I’m anarcho-syndicalist who has sold out ;). I guess that puts me outside the standard left/right spectrum, right?
Whoops, sorry, my comparison between the SD world and the Houston hotel bar fodder should have been inverted…
(hangs head in shame)