Are most Dopers liberal, conservative, or what?

[flonks]

You can’t be a rarer beast than me: European,religious,lefty,scientist

[BF]

As to the OP, Lynn Bodoni says this board is skewed to the left o’ center.

This board is mostly read and moderated by people residing in the USA. As such, it does have a decided American slant. It has posters from every political viewpoint, though there is a liberal slant. Deal with these facts. They’re not likely to change. I’m not saying that non US residents are unwelcome, or that non liberals are not welcome. I’m just saying that these are likely to be in the minority.

[elfkin477]

*Originally posted by VarlosZ *
**Only given an extremely limited definition of “socially liberal.” Recognizing gay marriage, supporting a woman’s right to an abortion, abolishing the death penalty, and opposing prayer in public schools are all examples of liberal social positions that don’t require federal spending. **

They do on my planet… Do you think that the people who try to write laws, and oversee cases on these things work for free? Yes, they’d probably be paid anyway, doing something else, but the people are investors in what they’re spending their time on. To some people the money is as poorly spent as the investor’s money in your company is spent to employ someone to spend 4 hours of every work day to play on the internet instead of doing something productive. Whether these things are productive or not, they’re still costing the tax payers money - especially if they cause it to take longer (pay workers more for their time) for more “worthwhile”- whatever the voter deems that to be- projects to be completed. It gets to be like the big dig but in the courtrooms instead of on the roads.

And that’s only the things that require lawsuits to protect or instigate. If you take away the death penalty, you have to pay for housing prisoners for a longer amount of time. Many things that support a woman’s right to chose hinge on being federally funded to offer abortions and birth control (and if you change the laws to allow minors to get abortions without parental consent, that means Mom and Dad’s insurance isn’t paying for it. Who will then? probably the good ole US public)… There’s a fiscal component to virtually all of the things you list. You might not look at them in the same way in terms of money, but there are those who do see the dollar signs attached to all of it.