The poll is a gallup poll. I can’t link to it right now because gallup’s web page seems to be down. I remember the numbers well. It’s 20% of people who say they are liberal and 45% who say they are conservative.
These numbers are not in dispute. Gallup is a legitimate polling organization and it’s a fair poll. I’ve seen those figures used in discussions on many news programs.
Usually when we debate this on the SDMB, instead of questioning the numbers themselves, the liberal crowd says that self-identifcation is useless and it’s more accurate to poll people on issues. The results of these issues polls then can be evaluated to see who is “liberal” and who is “conservative”.
Then we conservatives counter with saying that people aren’t stupid. They are perfectly capable of knowing what they are and what they stand for. Usually we toss in a couple jabs about how the liberals in ivory towers would be better served by not thinking everyone except themselves is a complete idiot.
The liberal’s then claim that the word “liberal” has been hijacked by the right to be a dirty word and it’s not fair, etc.
If I were to crticize your cite, BobLibDem, the way that Liberals here are wont to do, I would scream that an organization with an obvious progressive and liberal agenda would not have a very good unbiased judgement over the issues. In fact it looks more like a rally cry and feel-good journalism than a scholarly look at the numbers, and would be more likely to only look at numbers that support their beliefs while discrediting those that do not.
For example, they bring up the gay-marriage ban and how 11 states voted against gay marriage. That’s a more major slap against progressive thought than the approval of medical marijuana moves us toward it.
But I’m not going to criticize it, as I’m more tolerant of other POVs than the so-called tolerant left I find here.
But certainly, Wrath, regardless of the source the vote in Montana went as it did. The vote to raise the minimum wage in Florida went as it did. These are progressive values. You can’t deny the backlash against SSM, but then if you look at the bigger picture and see the progressive measures that did pass in unlikely places, then you see that the perceived rightward shift of the nation may either be overstated or nonexistent. Yes, the source is a liberal one. But the facts cited certainly can be verified elsewhere.
The question is too vague. Indeed, the issue is quite complicated. What are the relevant criteria? What are the parameters?
Here are some interesting data points –
My parents were subscribers to Time magazine for many years, starting in the early 1970s. They kept all the issues, because they hesistated to throw out a magazine; it felt to them too much like throwing out a book, and they had been raised to treat all books with reverence. As a result, we had a huge library of back issues. Occasionally, I would look through them, curious about the news of the past. To my delight, I discovered that in the early 1970s, Time occasionally printed photographs of women in which their breasts were showing. It was never done with fanfare or highlighted in a tabloid way (in the nature of a Page 3 girl). They were just photographs and there happened to be breasts in them. I remember a few of them – one of the recent winner of the Miss Nude California competition and one of a topless bathing Brigitte Bardot. Another was a picture of Morgan Fairchild accompanying an item about a nudie magazine that featured only one woman in each issue (I wonder how long that one lasted?).
Anyway, the point is – imagine what would happen in today’s post-Janet-Jackson-costume-malfunction America if Time printed a photograph in which a woman’s bare breasts could be seen so clearly?
Another anecdote – In 1992, an episode of Seinfeld (“The Contest”) featured a story about the four characters trying – and failing – to abstain from masturbation. Just a few years later, someone associated with the show said in an interview that NBC would never approve such a script again.
There’s a big difference between voting to legalize pot (even if just for “medicinal” purposes) and voted to ban SSM. The latter is simply a ratification of the status quo while the former is a change in the status quo. I’d hardly consider a vote to ban SSM as a “shift to the right”, since SSM has never been legal. The fact that most of the country is in favor of some sort of civil union for gays is a big change from what we’d have seen 25 or 50 years ago, and indicates an **increasing **level of tolerance towards gays.
Progressives can’t claim minimum wage as their own. A great many conservatives believed the minimum wage was too low. Florida, by the way, is not a good choice to point to an increase in liberal values.
John Mace, an increase in tolerance, again, does not point to an increase in Liberalism. Society does indeed progress, and Liberalism has contributed greatly to PC thought and opinion, but that does not mean there’s an overall move toward Liberalism. As we move forward, definitions of what is Conservative and Liberal will change… in some ways toward each other, and in others away.
I respectfully disagree. I don’t know of any national conservative leaders that think the wage is too low (though someone will doubtlessly find one to cite). I would wager that you would find more conservatives that think the minimum wage should be abolished than raised.
For every anecdote and stat showing the country is more ‘liberal’, I can point to one showing that it’s more ‘conservative’. For example, conservatives seem to have won the gun control debate. Marginal taxes used to be as high as what, 72% or something? Now they’re down in the 30% range and the fight is over whether they should be even lower. Tariffs are a bad word in both parties. Union power is much weaker than it was 25 years ago. There have been wholesale deregulation efforts in many industries. No one talks about ‘industrial policy’ like it’s a good thing - I remember when the liberals were all about the government taking over industry and running it ‘right’. This was back when Japan’s MITI was seen as the wave of the future, and the U.S. government was involved in Sematech.
There are dozens of other yardsticks that show a conservative tilt. And of course, there are some that show a liberal tilt. Because really what’s happened is that society has changed. In some ways it’s moved left, in others it’s moved right. People are not sheep, and do not move in herds.
Can I just point out the the terms “Conservative” and “Liberal” are functionally useless?
How do you describe someone who opposes abortion, but also opposes the dealth penalty? Or someone who thinks deficits are bad, but free trade is worse (and how do you reconcile the so-called “conservative Republicans” who have jacked up the highest deficits known to mankind, while implementing stringent protectionist measures?)
At a minimum, you have to split social views from fiscal views to get a meaningful sense of where a person stands. Right now, based on the evidence, Republicans are socially conservative while being fiscally liberal (even though they claim to be fiscally conservative).
I know that “social tolerance = left/liberal” is an oversimplification, but that’s kind of what this thread is locked into. And as far as homosexual issues go, I think that is one area where the oversimplification pretty much refects reality.
I agree with much of what you said… except the sheep part. Most people are sheep though they don’t necessarily move in herds. I think its called “churches” or something.
I see a lot of people labeling economic reforms that aren’t necessarily conservative or liberal as being so… in the economic area the “sides” are much more muddled than in other issues.
That is one reason why I have started so many threads (e.g., http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=269169, http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=284249]) about how it would be better if America had a multiparty political system instead of a two-party system. Each party (Greens, Libertarians, Socialists, America First, etc.) would stand for a complex of positions, some “liberal” and some “conservative” by standards of the way those vague terms are (usually) used now, and a new vocabulary would have to be invented to identify political viewpoints more precisely. Public political discourse would become much clearer.
[Nitpick] Adlai Stevenson was the Democratic nominee for President in 1952 and 1956. Some felt his divorce cost him the Presidency. He lost to Eisenhower, who is considered to have been somewhat liberal himself.[/nitpick]
The label “liberal” has connatations that are uncomfortable for some. Poll for viewpoints, not for labels.
Those who think that the country is on a steady ascent from conservatism to liberalism might want to take a closer look at 20th Century history. In 1964 the liberal Presidential candidate – LBJ – took all but one state (Arizona). Four years later they elected Nixon. That’s how quickly things can turn around.
In my opinion, we are going through such a conservative and repressive period that it may spark the liberal turnabout that some of us would like to see.
I think the big change is from moderate, traditional religions (like Methodist and Lutheran) to born-again, evangelical churches and “new” religions like LDS. There are now more LDS than Episcopalians in the US.
Religion used to be a way that Liberal ideas liek civil-rights was promulgated. Now it is a way for pro-life, traditional-values ideas to be emphasised.
I think what you’re seeing in the latest move toward conservatism is the turnabout from so much rampant liberalism after 8 years of Clinton. Society does work as a pendulum… it will swing back and forth.
But your use of the word “repressive…” What, exactly, is being repressed, with the recent move toward conservatism? If anything lately, freedom of expression has been repressed with regard to the liberal philosophy of political correctness.
Yeah, looked at by any reasonable objective standard Clinton was a moderate. He was hardly amongst the extreme liberals in the Democratic Party. Also, didn’t Clinton balance the budget? Certainly this isn’t economic rampant liberalism.
Sorry, but the Clinton presidency was only ‘rampant liberalism’ in the minds of the most rabidly conservative. Certainly Clinton started off as a liberally oriented president with a liberal agenda. However, in his first term he pretty much dropped most of his liberal agenda like a hot potato and then went about co-opting the Republican agenda (which is one of the reasons Republicans disliked the man so much IMO) and making it his own. I think Clinton is rightfully characterized as a political shark who did whatever it took to be popular and play to the US center. Thats why he won so easily in his re-election bid. He was a moderate. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your perspective) the Dems didn’t seem to learn any lessons from the Clinton presidency. C’est la vie.
To answer the OP…are Americans more ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ to what exactly? What exactly does this question even mean? Compared to what? Europeans? Certainly we are more ‘conservative’ than Europe for the most part. Ourselves? Well, based on the US political spectrum I’d have to say the majority of Americans hover somewhere around the US center, leaning left on some issues and right on others. Mostly I think Americans are economically ‘conservative’ while being socially more ‘liberal’ (again, using our own yardstick and looking at US history)…though this is painting with a hugely broad brush and its just my own opinion for whatever THATS worth.
I don’t think that any meaningful answer can be made to this question…just speculation, and such speculations are going to be colored by each of our own political filters.
I completely agree with you… but the important point you’ve made in is your first line, “in the minds of…” See, perception is reality. Clinton’s actual policies aside, what we had in the White House for 8 years was a Democrat who was morally bankrupt. I think that in the minds of Amercians there was a denegration of the Office, and runaway PC thought. Then we elect a Republican, and the Michael Moores and Hollywood nitwits come out of the woodwork. The voting majority of Americans don’t identify with that type of liberalism, hence the re-election of Bush, the ousting of Daschle, and Republicans gain the majority of the House and Senate.
It’s all in the perception. That’s how marketing works.
