The Pit threadstarted by **Clothahump **went Pitt-y immediately, but I think there are a few things that the political right and left generally agree on enthusiastically, and want to see what else there might be.
[ol]
[li]Just because something is legal doesn’t necessarily mean it is morally right.[/li][li]Just because something is illegal doesn’t necessarily mean it is morally wrong.[/li][li]There should be “equality” in society. (The dispute is over just what exactly that means.)[/li][li]Some people are indeed treated badly because of their race, gender, or religion. (The dispute is over who falls into that category - are white men victims of discrimination today? etc.)[/li][li]Free speech does not mean freedom from social consequences of speech.[/li][li]Facts and truth are extremely important. (The dispute is over *who *and *what *is correct.)[/li][/ol]
What else?
The peaceful transition of power is a good thing. People should be generally free to practice their religion as they see fit. Handguns should not be banned. We all hate the TSA.
Not sure about this one; there are a considerable number of people who want an outright repeal of the 2nd Amendment and a total ban on private gun ownership.
(I could live with that; I actually wouldn’t mind that too much.)
There are certainly dissenters, but they’ve shrunk to a rather insignificant minority at this point. Gallup has the question like this:
The “yes” vote has been generally trending down for decades, and last month it got 28% while “no” got 71%. While I would guess that most of that 28% is on the left side of the political spectrum, I still think this is an area of significant bipartisan agreement, which is the thread topic.
I think (without evidence) that a large segment of the 28% was simply trying to express extreme frustration at current state of gun laws and endorsing the most extreme option on the poll.
to the OP:
Perhaps there is wide agreement that disputes should be resolved in court of law, and that in criminal cases, the accused should be afforded a presumption of innocence.
That the birth of the United States was an important historical event.
The United States has a valuable form of government (albeit one that is currently a bit beaten up)
We are simultaneously annoyed by government reach into our lives, but also count on the government to provide a large array of functions and services
I actually agree with HD. I think that most liberals want gun violence control, not gun control.
We value personal freedom, even if we don’t always agree what that means.
Jobs here in the US are important.
The right to peacefully assemble it important.
Infrastructure is important.
Healthcare is important
Social security is important
From what I gather, the Right only wants rights and benefits for THEMSELVES, and they want all those they view as unlike themselves to be excluded. The Left wants those things for everyone. Big damn difference there. Also there’s a large or at least extremely vocal segment of the Right which doesn’t want a democracy, they want a theocracy. An astonishing number would be just fine with fascism.
My list:
The sun does rise in the east and does set in the west.
Gravity has to be taken into account.
Kind of stumped on anything else.
Really, really high on the list!
Alas, a fair number of people on the right do not accept this, and want to restrict Muslims and others. There was a nasty case in the City of Escondido (CA) where a Krishna Temple was denied a building permit, on picayune objections that were not applied to nearly-identical Christian churches. This is an ideal that gets more lip-service than actual support.
Dunno if this is a good example. It may not be a “yes/no” dividing line between left and right, but the respective proportions change dramatically. Compare it, if you will, to support for Gay Rights. It’s no longer valid to say that the right “oppose” Gay Rights; too much progress has been made for that to be true any longer. Rather, support among the right is statistically less than among the left.
I don’t… I have some objections in practice, but think they’re necessary to our safety.
One might add:
Vigilante Justice is bad. Get a policeman to make an arrest, don’t just lynch the criminal.
Pollution is bad. We don’t want to see a return to the days of smog and poisoned rivers. There is a statistical division regarding regulations, but no one wants to see Lake Erie as close to death as it was in the past. (There are still algae blooms and dead zones.)
There must be universal education. Even if kids are home-schooled, kids must be schooled. We cannot afford a major illiterate subpopulation. There are currently some Federal lawsuits arguing that literacy is a basic Constitutional Right. The left and the right might be able to agree on that.
Racism is bad. While the overt racists of our day tend to be from the right, they’re really a pretty darn minor segment of the population. It takes a creepy kind of batshit to come right out and declare for White Supremacy, and the vast majority of those on the right don’t go there.
I think we all believe in the right to vote for every citizen of voting age.
I think the confusion/breakdown comes from an understanding of the ease of which one is able to obtain the right proof of identity, and what proof should allow one to be able to vote.
-
That government derives its just authority from the consent of the governed.
-
Political violence is wrong.
-
The rule of law.
And, unfortunately
- The most extreme of the other side is typical.
Regards,
Shodan
No, this is a smokescreen put forward by conservatives when they enact voter suppression laws, but doesn’t match reality. When the NC legislature came up with their voter ID laws, for example, they specifically asked the elections board to provide a breakdown of voting methods and ID’s used, then passed a law that excluded ones predominately used by minorities, but didn’t touch those used more often by whites, even though some untouched methods like absentee voting actually has some evidence of fraud while the restricted ones didn’t. There is simply no way for a reasonable person to conclude that “voter ID” laws are actually intended to curb fraud or require reasonable proof of identity, instead they’re meant to hinder voters who traditionally vote Democratic more than Republican.
IMO, as long as we agree that our nation is based on the Rule of Law (i.e. that nobody is above the law), all is not lost.
I think all sides agree that congress has become too partisan and doesn’t compromise enough in producing legislation that is good for the American people. Of course both sides disagree as to what compromise means.
I think all sides agree that the Middle class is not a prosperous as it once was and that this is a problem. But they disagree as to what the causes are and how to solve this.
Both sides agree that the deficit is too big, but both sides also agree that its not so much of a problem if their side is in power.
At this point it also seems that both sides are generally opposed to more Military adventurism. (although our leader may not be)
Both sides agree that Terrorism is bad, and that oppression of women and religious minorities in certain majority Muslim countries is bad. We just disagree as to whether this makes the Muslim religion/Muslims inherently bad. As a result those on the right don’t believe that those on the left oppose these things.
I understand that elected officials on the right are blatantly going out there trying to suppress voters. But in my humble experience, the actual voting public don’t understand why their tactics are a big deal. My parents routinely say “I showed my drivers license and I was able to vote. What is the big deal?” There is absolutely no way to impart to them that being stricken from rolls or being denied the right to vote is a thing. I think they would be against peoples’ right to vote being taken away if they could understand that is really does happen. I don’t think they can even fathom that it does happen.
That’s a biggie. At this point, both left and right can point to Supreme Court decisions they don’t like…both both left and right agree that these decisions are the law of the land, and cannot simply be ignored at will.
(This is the single most troubling thing about Alabama’s Roy Moore: he chose to ignore rulings from higher courts, including the Supreme Court. That’s the ugliest mark against him, even worse than his sexual transgressions.)
As usual, the hateful come out to play and insist, NO!
There are always a lot of things that are so commonplace that they don’t even register.
In Aus, the right-wing party once put up as a suggestion for a bill-of-rights, the “right to private ownership of property”. It was a kinda of private political insult that most people didn’t understand. The right to private ownership of property is such a fundamental right for most Australians of both parties that those that oppose it don’t even want to talk about it it.
Another one is car ownership. I see discussion here about gun ownership, but can you imagine either party coming out against car ownership? You know that plenty of NYC left-liberals don’t own cars, but can you imagine the party coming out against the right of other people to own cars?
Or how about food? Plenty of places in the world where eating pigs or cows will put you at risk of mob violence: you don’t see either American party taking a partisan stand on diet.
If conservatives agreed with this, Fox News and right-wing talk radio would be universally condemned, as well as websites like Breitbart and InfoWars.
If courses. As an extreme liberal, I used to have personal conversations with my friend, the local commander of the national guard about many divisive issues. All we need to do was to recognize that each other were reasonable and knowledgeable and thoughtful men of intellect, and to agree to keep the discussion civil. Adults ought to be able to do that.
I think most Americans, conservative and liberal, believe in some level of government-provided social services and infrastructure. There are, of course, disputes over the details.