# Country is 36 % Conservative 26% Liberal **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [January 3, 2017, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/country-is-36-conservative-26-liberal/776230 "2017-01-03T14:58:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2017, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/country-is-36-conservative-26-liberal/776230/41 "2017-01-03T18:31:45Z")
> [@Donpeyote](#): > > Teaching GAY History in Californiia Elementary & Middle Schools… Transgender bathroom allowance , over saturation in media & pop culture … Forced acceptance reguardless of religious reservations or personal reservations , degradation of ones variety of morality … I don’t even know what half of this means, and the rest is all nonsense. They’re teaching gay history in California? What does that even _mean_? That the teacher has to put on a foppish accent while speaking? That the lesson involves things that happened in history involving gay people without minimizing the fact they were gay or erasing the events altogether? Please, by all means, explain what you’re talking about. Transgender people are allowed to use the bathroom they identify with. Yeah. Because, you know, god forbid [this person](http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/000/869/540/dbb.jpg) be allowed to use the women’s bathroom. Or [this person](http://www.transvalid.org/wp-content/uploads/shawn1.png) be allowed to use the men’s bathroom. It’s a matter of basic decency - forcing these people to use the bathroom that corresponds to their birth sex rather than their gender refuses to acknowledge their transition, causes and exacerbates real mental harm, exposes them to _extremely_ elevated rates of assault… Yeah, basically it’s a shitshow. Allowing them to use the bathroom that corresponds to _who they are_ is the only rational thing to do. If 96% of the population is against that, it _still_ doesn’t make it right in any sense. [Of course, the actual number is closer to 37%](http://www.advocate.com/politics/2016/5/09/poll-most-americans-oppose-bathroom-bills), because most people aren’t _stupid_. Meanwhile, oversaturation in media is a really straightforward problem to fix: just don’t consume that media. Don’t support that media. Sure, you’ll come off as a nasty bigot whenever someone says, “hey, wanna watch \ with me” and you respond by saying, “Nah, I think gays are overrepresented in the media, so I’m boycotting media with gay people in it”, but if stories with gay people in them stopped making money, people would probably stop producing them. ## And yeah, I said “bigot”. Because that’s what this is. Bigotry. I’m not _forcing_ you to like gay people. You can gladly have the opinion that being gay is somehow immoral. But I am entirely within my rights to point out that you are a bigot, and to think less of you, refuse you goods and services, and recommend that others do the same. Kind of like I would do if you told me you thought black people were inferior. You can have that opinion if you want, but if you hold it, I will gladly call you an asshole and make that abundantly clear at every turn. You asshole. A big, creamy, santorum-filled asshole. Meanwhile, on the topic of the OP, I think **Don** ’s just gloating here. “Look at how many more conservatives there are than liberals, this means I’m justified in my stupid asshole positions!” Except that this surface-level reading is _obscenely_ stupid. “Liberal” has become a bad word in much of American parlance, much like “radical right-wing” has become a black mark on German political parties. But when you drill down to what people actually _believe_, you’ll find that while more people identify as conservative, when asked about actual policy details, they’re really quite liberal. > **[America Is Now a Liberal Nation](https://www.thedailybeast.com/sorry-teabaggers-america-really-loves-these-liberal-policies/)** > > Most of us agree that the game is rigged—and about what needs to happen to make it fair again. Maybe it’s just a matter of not understanding what those terms mean. I don’t know. But the idea that America is somehow overwhelmingly conservative is just bullshit. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2017, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/country-is-36-conservative-26-liberal/776230/42 "2017-01-03T19:03:53Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > The debate is, “If has liberalism gone up 50% in two and a half decades while conservatism remains stagnant, why do Republicans think that they are winning?” Such a debate premise may be simplistic, if not invalid. \*"There’s no sign of much of a change in the percentage of self-identified conservatives since the George W. Bush administration. In Kaiser’s 2015 surveys, 35.3 percent of respondents identified as conservative. That’s about the same as the 34.7 percent average from 2007 to 2014. The Kaiser poll does show that more people identified as liberal this year than in any other year since 2007. The NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found the same thing. In the Kaiser data, this seems to continue a trend from 2014, which also found a higher percentage of liberals than in previous years. How are liberals rising without conservatives falling? Liberals seem to be taking over for moderates. In both 2014 and 2015, less than 35 percent of Americans identified as moderates in the Kaiser data, compared with 38 percent or higher from 2007 to 2010. The Kaiser data tracks fairly well with what Gallup has shown from 1992 to 2014. When looking at self-identified ideology overall,1 Gallup hasn’t found any decline in the percentage of conservatives2 while showing moderates at an all-time low and liberals at an all-time high. Perhaps most importantly, the reason that liberal identification has been up according to Gallup is because of Democrats. The Democratic base is more liberal, but there has been zero movement toward liberalism among independents or Republicans. In other words, the left is more liberal, but the median voter is not."\* > **[There Are More Liberals, But Not Fewer Conservatives](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/there-are-more-liberals-but-not-fewer-conservatives/)** > > A few days ago, a potentially troubling report for Republicans came out: Fewer Americans were identifying as “conservative” than at any point in the past five y… If the best you can say is that you’ve mobilized more of your party base leftwards while a sizable majority of voters remains antipathetic (or apathetic) towards you, then there’s not much cause for anticipatory celebration. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2017, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/country-is-36-conservative-26-liberal/776230/43 "2017-01-03T19:05:08Z")
> [@Donpeyote](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > Country is 36 % Conservative 25% Liberal > > Per Gallup poll (Story on Drudge now) , my guess is this Forum/Boards political makeup is the reverse of that … Which is a condemnation of America, not of liberals. “Conservative” is simply a euphemistic way of saying that someone is dedicated to bigotry, cruelty, irrationality and ignorance. As you demonstrate in this thread: > [@Donpeyote](#): > > Teaching GAY History in Californiia Elementary & Middle Schools… Transgender bathroom allowance , over saturation in media & pop culture … Forced acceptance reguardless of religious reservations or personal reservations , degradation of ones variety of morality … ---
**Author:** ![Corry\_El](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@Corry\_El](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corry_El)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2017, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/country-is-36-conservative-26-liberal/776230/44 "2017-01-03T19:14:38Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Can we stop with this nonsense. People like the free stuff, and they don’t like the mechanism that pays for it. I don’t know about you, but I find it utterly unremarkable that people are in favor of “free stuff”. Same goes to some extent for the other side of the coin, reining in spending and reducing debt are popular in the absence of specifying how, in detail. Similarly the common poll finding that most people think the maximum fair tax rate is lower than the actual max (alongside polls showing support for ‘taxing the rich’). All in all IMO the argument ‘but the people agree with us on the issues’ is even less meaningful than quibbling about who calls themselves conservative or liberal. It’s not that issues aren’t important, but polls and discussions based on them tend to leave out the key factor, insofar as winning elections, of who cares most on which side of which issues, as well as just ‘who cares?’ (issue polls typically include the almost 1/2 the eligible population that doesn’t bother to vote). Then there’s the semi-arbitrary way in which the poll taker or pundit (pro or amateur like on a web board) can assign relative importance to the issues. I might myself attach great importance to the grim long term fiscal outlook in the US IMO, it doesn’t mean that’s moving as many voters as issues I think are much less important, or even trivial. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2017, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/country-is-36-conservative-26-liberal/776230/45 "2017-01-03T19:18:24Z")
> [@Fretful\_Porpentine](#): > > …hard-left people mostly _don’t_ like being called liberals. Radicals hack out the trail and clear the site, progressives build the cabins and the fire places, the liberals show up when the hot showers are installed. ---
**Author:** ![Typo\_Negative](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/typo_negative/32/484_2.png) [@Typo\_Negative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Typo_Negative)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2017, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/country-is-36-conservative-26-liberal/776230/46 "2017-01-03T19:30:12Z")
> [@Donpeyote](#): > > Teaching GAY History in Californiia Elementary & Middle Schools… Transgender bathroom allowance , over saturation in media & pop culture … Forced acceptance reguardless of religious reservations or personal reservations , degradation of ones variety of morality … Cite for a ‘gay history’ class being taught…anywhere? Media and pop culture? Heaven forfend! **swoons** YOU were not forced to accept, because you obviously have _not_. MY morality has not degraded at all. Yours seems to have evaporated, if it ever existed at all. All you got is hate. ---
**Author:** ![Corry\_El](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@Corry\_El](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corry_El)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2017, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/country-is-36-conservative-26-liberal/776230/47 "2017-01-03T19:32:20Z")
> [@CurtC](#): > > Most people agree with the requirement that pre-existing conditions not be a factor in denying a person insurance coverage. Is that “free stuff”? Basically yes. I think obviously so if you remove and/or don’t react to any moral implication of ‘free stuff’. You can have a system where private insurance co’s can price for risk, and decline high risks. Then the cost of insurance for most people is lower, and there needs to be some societal decision/action what to do with people who don’t qualify. One whole approach is to have govt just get involved with subsidizing a ‘high risk pool’ of people not covered by employer plans and who can’t get private insurance, not change everything else. Under the ACA we chose much broader change; yet another approach would have been a wholly govt system we also didn’t choose. But the cost of high risk individuals has to go somewhere. You may well realize but IMO a lot of people clearly don’t. They seem to think a system with insurers allowed to price for risk would have just as high premiums as a gteed issue system, except some ins go guys in big top hats would twirl their mustaches a few more times at the extra profits. 🙂 Actually this was well demonstrated by differing state policies pre-ACA. My state NJ had gteed issue pre ACA. Rates on individual policies were 3-4 times as high as PA or DE which didn’t. That wasn’t of course just spreading the cost of high risk individuals over the the whole population of potential buyers of private insurance, it included the effect of high rates driving healthy people to forego ins in NJ who would have bought it in PA or DE, the adverse selection death spiral the ACA is entering in various places around the country. NJ had no mandate or subsidies, the ACA does, but they are not enough to prevent the death spiral from the ‘free’ benefit of just telling insurance co’s they can’t price for risk. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2017, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/country-is-36-conservative-26-liberal/776230/48 "2017-01-03T19:41:28Z")
Whats to stop them from selling a policy that self-destructs when the customer tries to use it? Did it for years, got clean away with it. ---
**Author:** ![bobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobot/32/21622_2.png) [@bobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobot)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2017, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/country-is-36-conservative-26-liberal/776230/49 "2017-01-03T20:57:43Z")
> [@Donpeyote](#): > > Teaching GAY History in Californiia Elementary & Middle Schools… Transgender bathroom allowance , over saturation in media & pop culture … Forced acceptance reguardless of religious reservations or personal reservations , degradation of ones variety of morality … GAY history?! Are you serious? They’re teaching GAY history? GAY? Is that an acronym or something? Fucking moron. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2017, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/country-is-36-conservative-26-liberal/776230/50 "2017-01-03T22:12:44Z")
> [@bobot](#): > > GAY history?! Are you serious? They’re teaching GAY history? GAY? Is that an acronym or something? Fucking moron. I think what **Donpeyote** is upset about is probably some Foxified pearl-clutching version of this news story: > [@](#): > > The California State Board of Education on Thursday voted unanimously on a new History-Social Science Framework that includes “a study of the role of contributions” of minority groups, including “lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans.” > > LGBT content will be included in some elementary, middle and high school grades. In fourth grade, for example, students would learn about “the emergence of the nation’s first gay rights organizations in the 1950s,” the framework states, as well as struggles in California from the 1970s to the present day to affirm the right of gay people to teach and to get married. Presumably **Donpeyote** thinks that historical facts about civil rights social movements should just be left out of the curriculum entirely. Hey, if selective right-wing propaganda is good enough for Fox News, it should be good enough for the California school system! :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2017, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/country-is-36-conservative-26-liberal/776230/51 "2017-01-03T22:15:42Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > The debate is, “If has liberalism gone up 50% in two and a half decades while conservatism remains stagnant, why do Republicans think that they are winning?” If x is 100 and dx/dt is 0 you are still ahead of z at 50 and dz/dt at 1. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2017, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/country-is-36-conservative-26-liberal/776230/52 "2017-01-03T22:20:58Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Not to hijack the thread, but I think the high insurance premiums are one of the strongest arguments for single-payer health care that there is. Either way, you’re going to have to pay thousands of dollars into a system - be it private insurance or a government-run single-payer system. So why not just abandon ACA and go full single payer instead? You’d simply be paying the same thousands of dollars, but into a different system instead, and one that could potentially work much better. Do you think the VA is efficient? ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2017, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/country-is-36-conservative-26-liberal/776230/53 "2017-01-03T22:36:20Z")
It’s more efficient than the managed private system most of us are under. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2017, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/country-is-36-conservative-26-liberal/776230/54 "2017-01-04T12:43:54Z")
Hell, the UK NHS is a giant bureaucracy - it’s the biggest employer in the country and it constantly struggles with underfunding and overdemand… …and it still produces better outcomes for half the per capita cost of the US system. Because despite the right-wing assertion that the public sector is inefficient, wasteful and incompetent, when it comes to healthcare the private sector is far more inefficient and wasteful, and replaces “incompetence” with “callous greed resulting in mass death and financial ruin”. Roll on the American exceptionalism arguments. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2017, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/country-is-36-conservative-26-liberal/776230/55 "2017-01-04T17:20:12Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > Yes, the way that you all have controlled the White House for eight of the last twenty-four years has me quaking in my boots. > > Oh, no, that’s just my fear of whom Republicans thought was the most qualified person in America to be the _next_ President. My bad. You know the whole county voted in the general election, right? ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2017, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/country-is-36-conservative-26-liberal/776230/56 "2017-01-04T17:22:45Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Can we stop with this nonsense. People like the free stuff, and they don’t like the mechanism that pays for it. I don’t know about you, but I find it utterly unremarkable that people are in favor of “free stuff”. Well, its free stuff if you consider public education free stuff too. The notion is that there are some goods and services that should not be distributed solely based on ability to pay. How you deal with the moral hazards is another story ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2017, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/country-is-36-conservative-26-liberal/776230/57 "2017-01-04T18:11:48Z")
America needs more atheism, obviously. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2017, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/country-is-36-conservative-26-liberal/776230/58 "2017-01-04T18:29:34Z")
Our sublime worship of the Dollar Almighty is not under any threat. ---
**Author:** ![orcenio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/orcenio/32/1036_2.png) [@orcenio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/orcenio)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2017, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/country-is-36-conservative-26-liberal/776230/59 "2017-01-05T13:01:14Z")
> [@Donpeyote](#): > > Kinda like LGBT segment of populace is under 4 % yet other 96 % has to adhere to their whims … There must be an immense rift between my thinking and modern American conservatism thought. I hope not, but Goddamn. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/country-is-36-conservative-26-liberal/776230/60 "2017-01-06T12:03:50Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Which is a condemnation of America, not of liberals. “Conservative” is simply a euphemistic way of saying that someone is dedicated to bigotry, cruelty, irrationality and ignorance. As you demonstrate in this thread: I say you paint with too broad a brush here. It seems clear to me that SOME “conservatives” are merely WILLING TO ACCEPT bigotry, cruelty, irrationality, and ignorance as the cost of doing business…not necessarily “dedicated” to it. So not unmitigated evil – sort of the Vichy collaborators of evil. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/country-is-36-conservative-26-liberal/776230.md?page=2)