# Are the American people more "liberal" or more "conservative"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 21, 2004, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-american-people-more-liberal-or-more-conservative/280910 "2004-12-21T03:02:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2004, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-american-people-more-liberal-or-more-conservative/280910/61 "2004-12-29T14:08:18Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Oh, and is anybody familiar with any studies other than the Pew Center’s, which might present a more accurate picture, or a conceptually better-organized typology, of the American people’s political views and alignments? I don’t think lumping people into groups like this can ever be accurate. I don’t fit into any of your groups, and I’m sure many others don’t also. If you had 100 groups rather than 10 you would still have some people who couldn’t be accurately included in any of them. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2004, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-american-people-more-liberal-or-more-conservative/280910/62 "2004-12-29T14:12:58Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > OK, so suppose the Pew Foundation were to repeat their political-typology analysis for the whole planet. How do you think the results would look? And how would they differ from their typology of the American people? The first three categories wouldn’t exist. From what I understand what we call a “conservative” in the US really doesn’t exist anywhere else. The concept of american conservatism and smaller less intrusive government along with lower taxes and more personal responsibility is totally foreign to socialist Europe for instance. IMO, it’s for this reason that America is the sole superpower on the face of the planet. If the Liberals had their way we would raise taxes to 70% or so, use the money to pay for socialized medicine and a much larger government in general. The military would be cut to a fraction of what it is now. We’d become not a bad place to live, but not the USA that I know and love. We’d be a second rate country like France or Germany. Our military and economy would no longer lead the world. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2004, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-american-people-more-liberal-or-more-conservative/280910/63 "2004-12-29T14:55:58Z")
> [@Debaser](#): > > The concept of american conservatism and smaller less intrusive government along with lower taxes and more personal responsibility is totally foreign to socialist Europe for instance. Then how did Maggie Thatcher win so many elections in the UK? Wasn’t her program all about those things? ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2004, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-american-people-more-liberal-or-more-conservative/280910/64 "2004-12-29T15:02:25Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Then how did Maggie Thatcher win so many elections in the UK? Wasn’t her program all about those things? Maybe. I’m basing my statements mostly on what I’ve seen many European dopers say in response to seeing an American conservative viewpoints here on the boards. I would think that while Thatcher was privatizing some government and opposing some unions during the 80’s in England, Reagan was probably doing some more serious cutting of the government back here in the US. ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2004, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-american-people-more-liberal-or-more-conservative/280910/65 "2004-12-29T15:08:04Z")
I just want to say thank you for the posts and links, BrainGlutton. This is one of the more interesting things I’ve read for a long time. ---
**Author:** ![annaplurabelle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/919ad9/32.png) [@annaplurabelle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/annaplurabelle)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2004, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-american-people-more-liberal-or-more-conservative/280910/66 "2004-12-29T15:08:43Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > OK, so suppose the Pew Foundation were to repeat their political-typology analysis for the whole planet. How do you think the results would look? And how would they differ from their typology of the American people? I don’t dispute the Pew typography (as it applies to the US) but if you notice, there is no significant grouping for true leftists, ie, socialists, communists…That’s one big difference I can see between US and Europe. Out of curiousity, what grouping would a US “progressive” with socialist leanings fall into, as it stands now? Are they a measured subset of liberal democrats, or do they exist in such small numbers as to be statistically insignificant? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2004, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-american-people-more-liberal-or-more-conservative/280910/67 "2004-12-29T15:56:31Z")
> [@annaplurabelle](#): > > I don’t dispute the Pew typography (as it applies to the US) but if you notice, there is no significant grouping for true leftists, ie, socialists, communists…That’s one big difference I can see between US and Europe. > > Out of curiousity, what grouping would a US “progressive” with socialist leanings fall into, as it stands now? Are they a measured subset of liberal democrats, or do they exist in such small numbers as to be statistically insignificant? As a democratic socialist, I’ve wondered/worried about that too. I would say the latter – a subset of the “Liberal Democrats,” too small in numbers to form a measurable fraction of the general population. But bear in mind that **statistically** insignificant is not the same thing as **historically** insignificant. If you form a list of all prominent American political leaders, political thinkers, and political activists of the past century, there will be a very significant number of socialists of various kinds on that list. But, unlike their counterparts in Europe and most of the industrialized world, they have not been able to build up a corresponding mass-based following. It is a remarkable fact that the United States is the only industrialized nation where no communist, socialist, social-democratic, or labor-based political party has ever played an important role in national politics. In their book _It Didn’t Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States_ (W.W. Norton & Company, 2000), Seymour Martin Lipset and Gary Marks study the question and conclude the failure of socialism here resulted from a combination of factors, including: 1. American poltical culture is uniquely antistatist, individualist and libertarian, even compared with other English-speaking countries. 2. Leaving out the systematic submergence of certain ethnic and racial groups, there has never been a rigid social (as distinct from economic) class system in the United States, such as characterized the societies of Marx’s Europe. 3. Unlike their counterparts in Western Europe and elsewhere, American socialists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries failed to build a power base in the labor unions, which were mostly concerned with bread-and-butter issues like wages, hours and working conditions. 4. Unlike their foreign counterparts, American socialists failed to build alliances with traditional religious believers, and in fact alienated them, to the point where the American Catholic clergy became openly hostile to socialism. 5. In the early 19th century, European socialists got their foot in the door, and established their political presence as defenders of the people, by campaigning for such things as press freedom and universal suffrage. Although these were radical ideas in Europe at the time, they were well established (at least, universal suffrage for white males regardless of wealth was well established) in the United States from earliest decades of the republic, which deprived American socialists of the opportunity to fight for them here and reap political benefits thereby. 6. The winner-take-all, first-past-the-post system marginalized American socialists, compared with other countries that had proportional-representation systems. This systemic barrier, however, has marginalized all American third parties of all ideologies. 7. The American federal system prevents Congress, if it ever had a socialist majority, from enacting any thoroughgoing program of socialism on a national scale. However, this cuts both ways: The federal system also provided socialists with more opportunities to contest and win elections at the state and local levels. (See below.) 8. Although American socialists won important offices at the state and local level in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and even controlled the governments of some cities, socialist leaders at the national level failed to build on these achievements. In fact, such non-revolutionary municipal reforms local socialist leaders were able to achieve – publicly owned utilities, etc. – were dismissed and derided as “sewer socialism” by national party leaders. 9. Compared with more practical and compromise-oriented socialists in other countries, American socialists were unfortunately given over to extremism, sectarianism, and splitting over minor points of doctrine. 10. The ethnically diverse character of the American working class led American workers to identify with their ethnic group before their class, inhibiting the development of “class consciousness” here. White American proles, for instance, have never wanted to think of themselves as being in the same social class as the blacks. 11. The Socialist Party made the crucial mistake of opposing U.S. entry into World War I. This made the party much more popular among German-Americans, but it also drove a lot of Anglo-Saxons out of the party, especially in the Midwest. For some reason, Marks and Lipset end their analysis with the 1930s and '40s – the period when much of the Socialist Party’s agenda was co-opted by Roosevelt in the New Deal; the party became even more marginalized by sectarianism; many of the Communist Party members, on Stalin’s orders, hid their party affiliation while they sought positions of influence in government and the labor unions, and indeed went so far underground that those who escaped the McCarthy-era purges gradually stopped being Communists at all; and the Cold War taught Americans to identify the idea of socialism with treason. But the political upheavals of the '60s and ‘70s apparently do not even merit discussion as lost opportunities for socialism in America, in Marks’ and Lipset’s view. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2004, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-american-people-more-liberal-or-more-conservative/280910/68 "2004-12-31T22:53:21Z")
These excerpts from the Wikipedia might also help us put these “left-right,” “liberal-conservative” questions into perspective. From [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-Right\_politics:](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-Right_politics:) > [@](#): > > **Meaning of the terms** > > Despite the prevalence and durability of these terms, there is little consensus on what it actually means to be Left or Right. There are various different opinions about what is actually being measured along this axis: > > Support for the economic interests of the less privileged classes (left) or of the more privileged (right). Originally, this meant the rising bourgeoisie (left) vs. the aristocrats (right), but it rather soon came to mean, more commonly, the working class and unemployed (left) versus all wealthy and/or aristocratic classes (right). As discussed in the next section, this issue of class interests was the original meaning of the dichotomy. > > Whether the state should prioritize equality (left) or liberty (right). Two writers who characterize the distinction along these lines are Norberto Bobbio in Left and Right: The Significance of a Political Distinction (ISBN 0226062465) and Danielle Allen [1] ([http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?...c=7&s=forum](http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?...c=7&s=forum)). Note, however, that both the left and the right tend to speak in favor of both equality and liberty - but they have different interpretations of the two terms. Many self-described leftists (and most anarchists) argue that liberty and equality are inseparable from each other, since people cannot be truly equal unless they are free. Also, there have been many governments opposed to both liberty and equality, but which are nevertheless characterized as “left-wing” or “right-wing”. > > Whether law creates and subordinates culture (left), or culture creates and subordinates law (right). This formulation was put forward by US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. > > Whether the government’s involvement with the economy should be interventionist (left) or laissez-faire (right). For example, the Nolan chart proposes this as one of its axes of distinction between left and right. However, it does not take into account the leftists who wish to limit or abolish the government, such as the anarchists. > > Whether the government should promote secularism (left) or religious morality (right). This is the other axis of the Nolan chart. > > Fair outcomes (left) versus fair processes (right). This view has been expressed at times by Australian Labor Party politician Mark Latham. > > Whether human nature and society is malleable (left) or fixed (right). This was proposed by Thomas Sowell. > > Whether living standards can best be improved by direct economic support to the poor (left) or by job creation through greater economic activity (right). > > Whether human nature is determined by nurture (left) or nature (right). > > Priority for collective rights (left) versus priority for individual rights (right). > > Preference for a larger government (left) versus a smaller government (right). Again, this does not take into account such leftists as the libertarian socialists or the anarchists. > > Whether one embraces change (left) or prefers rigorous justification for change (right). This was proposed by Eric Hoffer. And from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political\_spectrum:](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum:) > [@](#): > > **Alternative spectra** > > Some people feel that it is not obvious how these various concepts are related. They say that it is very confusing to speak of the right or the left without indicating what exactly you are referring to. They believe that one should first establish context by defining the axes upon which different positions will be measured. > > Nonetheless, the right-left spectrum is so common as to be taken for granted. Many people even have a hard time conceptualizing any alternative to it. However, numerous alternatives exist, usually having been developed by people who feel their views are not fairly represented on the traditional right-left spectrum. > > Perhaps the simplest alternative to the left-right spectrum was devised as a rhetorical tool during the Cold War. This was a circle which brought together the far right and left ends of the traditional spectrum, equating “extreme socialism” (i.e. the Communist Party) with “extreme conservatism” (i.e. Fascism). This nexus was particularly useful to those opposed to rapprochement with the Soviet Union. > > Another alternative spectrum offered at American Federalist Journal emphasizes the degree of political control, and thus places totalitarianism at one extreme and anarchism (no government at all) at the other extreme. However, the way the American Federalist Journal uses such a measure to show Democrats and Libertarians both close to the two opposite political extremes is arguably ridiculous, with their rather more moderate stances unrealistically exaggerated. Such an error owes more to an apparent ignorance of the policies of those US parties and their distance in relation to the opposite levels of state power. Furthermore, there is the issue of the Journal’s own (conservative) political agenda to take into account. > > Yet another alternative, currently popular among certain environmentalists, uses a single axis to measure what they consider to be the good of the Earth against the good of big business, which is seen as being the force most likely to harm the earth. > > In 1998, political author Virginia Postrel, in her book The Future and Its Enemies, offered a new single axis spectrum that measures one’s view of the future. On one extreme are those who allegedly fear the future and wish to control it, whom Postrel calls stasists. On the other hand are those who want the future to unfold naturally and without attempts to plan and control, for whom she uses the name dynamists. > > Other axes that might merit consideration include: > > **Role of the church:** Clericalism vs. Anti-clericalism. This axis is not significant in the United States where views of the role of religion tend to get subsumed into the general left-right axis, but in Europe clericalism versus anti-clericalism is much less correlated with the left-right spectrum. > > **Urban vs. rural:** This axis is also much more significant in European politics than American. > > **Foreign policy:** interventionism (the nation should exert power abroad to implement its policy) vs. isolationism (the nation should keep to its own affairs) > > **Market policy:** socialism (government should democratize or control economic productivity) vs. laissez-faire (government should leave the market alone) vs. corporatism (government should subsidize or support existing successful businesses) > > **Political violence:** pacifism (political views should not be imposed by violent force) vs. militancy (violence is a legitimate or necessary means of political expression). Informally, these people are often referred to as “doves” and “hawks”, respectively. > > **Foreign trade:** globalization (world economic markets should become integrated and interdependent) vs. autarky (the nation or polity should strive for economic independence) > > **Diversity:** multiculturalism (the nation should represent a diversity of cultural ideas) vs. assimilationism or nationalism (the nation should represent the dominant ethnic group) > > **Participation:** Positive Liberty (positive participation in the government) vs. Oligarchy (rule by a limited number of people) ---
**Author:** ![artcramp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e9c0ed/32.png) [@artcramp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/artcramp)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2005, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-american-people-more-liberal-or-more-conservative/280910/69 "2005-01-01T17:04:38Z")
If we’re taking the entire nation and placing it in one camp or the other, we’re making bad assumptions about people’s beliefs. I will say, my opinion on the matter is that Americans are tilted more towards the liberal side of the scale. My opinion is based on the observation of what I am going to call “Bait Bills”, referendums added to the ballot. The purpose of these bait bills was to pull in more people towards one side or the other. Several states had referendums on the ballot to ban gay marriage or otherwise amend the definition of marriage within said states. Enough ultra-conservatives felt so strongly about this issue that they mustered grassroots support for it through a network of well funded religious centers. Given the _relatively_ narrow margin by which Bush became elected I believe that these “bait bills” made all the difference in the world. Folks who normally wouldn’t be that concerned with the presidency and who might not have cared one way or the other came out to vote for Bush, because he was on their side. In all honesty, I felt that both candidates were owned by the same people, had basically the same views, and had very similar backgrounds. Many other people I know were still trying to make up their minds as they went to the booth. I think the democrats got pegged by a savvy republican electoral strategy. With the absence of said bills, I do not believe that Dubbya would have gotten elected again. Since this would have given both sides a similar strategic advantage, my belief is that the nation is somewhat more liberal. As it stands, the democrats lost out because of whining, infighting, and a poor grasp of strategy. If the democratic party could pull itself together and start planning for the long term, avoid petty bickering and whining, and present a more unified front they stand a decent chance of winning in 2008. Comments? Evidence? As I said, this is simply my opinion. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2005, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-american-people-more-liberal-or-more-conservative/280910/70 "2005-01-01T17:22:28Z")
> [@rjung](#): > > Go and think yourself immune to the laws of gravity, then take a step off the roof. Good luck. :rolleyes: > It’s not hard to grasp: > > _Having consentual sex with an intern:_ Crime against his marriage, possible slight abuse of authority. > _Lying about nonexistent WMDs and starting a war as a result:_ Crime against humanity, against the principles of the United States, and a disgrace to both the office of the Presidency and the nation. > > Having Monica play tonsil hockey with Bill’s gonads doesn’t even _begin_ to compare with the thousands of people killed and maimed as a result of Bush’s damn fool war. If you can’t recognize the blinding obviousness of this fact, you must be a Republican. Intellectual dishonesty, or just an accidental strawman? Bush did not lie. He was mistaken, in good faith, about the presence of WMD, as were many others, even before his administration came along. Now, you may argue that to make a mistake of that caliber is egregious; this is a very supportable view. But to dismiss by omission the inference that he was acting in good faith, and say “he lied” as though it is proven truth… is very dishonest. ---
**Author:** ![artcramp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e9c0ed/32.png) [@artcramp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/artcramp)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2005, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-american-people-more-liberal-or-more-conservative/280910/71 "2005-01-01T18:24:30Z")
Fact: Bush claims to have invaded Iraq because it was a hostile nation in possible possession of WMDs. Fact: No WMDs were found. Fact: We KNOW that North Korea has nukes. Fact: Even though they are incredibly hostile towards us and our allies, we did NOT invade North Korea Let me break this down: ==========WMDs?=== Oil?===== Hostile? North Korea----yes----------no-------------yes Iraq------------maybe-----yes, lots---------yes ## And this is if we assume that there may have been WMDs in Iraq, even though we can’t find a pip on the ol’ geiger counter(maybe it’s busted?) Conclusion: Bush invaded Iraq to a) finish the job his daddy started b) carry on a family vendetta c) get his hands on the oil pump d) all of the above Take your pick, but the evidence tells me and anyone willing to look at it logically that he and his administration lied to the american people. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2005, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-american-people-more-liberal-or-more-conservative/280910/72 "2005-01-01T19:15:15Z")
> [@Debaser](#): > > I would think that while Thatcher was privatizing some government and opposing some unions during the 80’s in England, Reagan was probably doing some more serious cutting of the government back here in the US. I know you qualified it with a “probably”, but that was one funny sentence, dude. Almost fell out of my seat. Not to say he wouldn’t _support_ cutting government, but even thinking that that happened in the 80’s is funny. If cutting government actually happened, we wouldn’t have had the massive deficits we do now. Especially compared to Thatcher, he did not actualize a _relative_ cutting of government. Now, one might argue that the end product even after Thatcher’s reforms was still a more “liberal” England, and I wouldn’t disagree. ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2005, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-american-people-more-liberal-or-more-conservative/280910/73 "2005-01-01T20:37:07Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Bush did not lie. He was mistaken, in good faith, about the presence of WMD, as were many others, even before his administration came along. Your ability to believe the White House spin, without the slightest skepticism or cynicism, does you proud. You have most definitely earned your Loyal Fox News Fan™ button and hat, _mon ami._ ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2005, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-american-people-more-liberal-or-more-conservative/280910/74 "2005-01-02T18:35:28Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > If cutting government actually happened, we wouldn’t have had the massive deficits we do now. But that was mainly due to his determination to build up our defense establishment – something which many conservatives, consciously or unconsciously, seem to omit from their definition of “government” whenever they talk about “cutting government.” As it turns out, severing military from non-military spending policies is extraordinarily politically difficult. From [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald\_Reagan#Domestic\_record:](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan#Domestic_record:) > [@](#): > > A large focus of Reagan’s first term was on reviving a stagflation-troubled economy his administration inherited. His administration sought to fight the high inflation recession with large across-the-board tax cuts controversially combined with reductions in social welfare spending. Reagan’s fiscal theories soon became known as “Reaganomics.” The end result was that public spending as a percentage of the national income, steadily growing in the pre-Reagan era, now folded to a steady level it has fluctuated around ever since [4] ([http://libertyunbound.com/archive/2004\_10/friedman-reagan.pdf](http://libertyunbound.com/archive/2004_10/friedman-reagan.pdf)). Also, in order to get increases in military spending to fight the Cold War, the administration had to allow increases in spending on social programs, resulting in record deficit spending and a tripling of the national debt by the end of his second term. Proponents often note that Reagan used his veto on public spending projects 78 times in all. ---
**Author:** ![kpinocchio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/a88e57/32.png) [@kpinocchio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kpinocchio)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2005, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-american-people-more-liberal-or-more-conservative/280910/75 "2005-01-04T01:36:01Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > The people are getting more liberal, but the conservative faction is much more militant… I think you may be right about this. Conservatives these days are quite noisy and therefore very noticeable, where as in the 60’s liberals were noisy. > [@BobLibDem](#): > > - Divorced presidential candidates (Reagan, Kerry) and nobody cared. A generation ago, it would have been difficult for a divorced man to run for president. But Reagan was president a generation ago… ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2005, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-american-people-more-liberal-or-more-conservative/280910/76 "2005-01-04T02:26:22Z")
> [@kpinocchio](#): > > But Reagan was president a generation ago… Up to now I never thought of the Eighties as “a generation ago” . . . but you’re right. Twenty years is a generation. Time does fly, doesn’t it? (We need a smilie for a look of mildly surprised bemusement.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-the-american-people-more-liberal-or-more-conservative/280910.md?page=3)