This is largely targeted at other Americans. Others could certainly be interested and make constructive responses, however.
The liberal end of the political spectrum is associated with these values:
Respect for members of other cultures and their traditions/values.
Respect for minorities and their traditions/values.
Respect for the lower and lower-middle class.
At an intuitive level, these values make sense to me. I tend to think I’m in the liberal camp.
But something has recently occurred to me. I doubt this is a particularly ground-breaking observation:
The lower and lower-middle classes of the United States tend towards social conservatism. They’re often highly religious.
Minority groups in America are, more often than not, more socially conservative than average. America’s African-American community is known for its religiosity. Muslim Americans are known for their religiosity, regardless of ethnic background. Latinos are generally viewed as supporting a tight-nit, conservative family structure.
Pick any country overseas and you’re going to land yourself in Social Conservistan. I’m not just talking about Saudi Arabia - just about any country outside of the U.S. and Western Europe is going to be markedly more socially conservative than the United States.
I’m not making any normative claims here. I’m not saying liberals should change their views in this way or that.
But I have to wonder: if liberals tend to respect members of other cultures and their traditions/beliefs, tend to support minorities and their traditions/beliefs, and tend to respect the lower ends of the economic spectrum, don’t they run the risk of actually spreading social conservatism or increasing its prominence within America? If, for example, we accept more immigrants in this country, aren’t we more likely to see anti-homosexual, misogynistic, and otherwise socially conservative views in our society?
Well one of the reasons why it tends to empower social conservatism is that the respect for other cultures usually comes packaged with a disrespect for one’s own culture.
Didn’t the south make a gradual shift towards the right after the 60s because of all the anti-war protests?
To address mswas’s comment, the only disrespect towards American culture usually comes from members of the extreme left, IMHO. Any other disrespect, perceived or otherwise, isusually interpreted from a leftist’s critique of U.S. foreign policy. To be fair, any critique of U.S. foreign policy is deserved of late.
As far as other issues are concerned, espescially gay marriage and religion in schools, I hope the left keeps banging the drums, polarization be damned. Those are the issues where the social conservatives are wrong, way wrong.
When Marx called religion “the opiate of the masses,” he did not mean it is something the ruling classes peddle the masses to keep them docile, but that it is something the masses cook up for themselves to dull the pain of their existence. The best remedy for religiosity is broadly shared prosperity.
Considering how much ranting we see from the Right about America’s sinfulness/moral corruption/secularism/etc, you can’t rationally claim that the Left has a monopoly on bashing “American culture”. The Right just likes to label the Americans it bashes as “Unamerican”. The Right does not get to unilaterally declare it’s own beliefs as the One True American Culture.
Canada? Australia? New Zealand? There must be others, but those spring to mind first, as fairly liberal countries “outside of the U.S. and Western Europe.”
The anti-war protests and the sixties counterculture did galvanize the conservative movement, but the South’s departure from the Democratic Party is generally associated with The Voting Rights Act and Civil Rights Act of 1964 and 1965.
No, it made a gradual shift towards the Republicans, who were a much more liberal party before masses of conservative white Southern Democrats crossed over (without changing their own politics); and it was less a reaction to the anti-war protests than to the civil rights movement. All a result of the Southern Strategy.
We like to denigrate America as being a big bad influence in the world.
From the left we are imperialist swine who have enshrined greed as a moral virtue.
From the right we are degenerate prostitutes who have enshrined lust as a moral virtue.
It is also not ok to be anglo in this country from one side, and not ok not to be anglo from another. If you are a white male you are not supposed to be proud of your heritage. Liberals believe the white man owes everybody something as a result of the building of America and conservatives think that America is a thing of value unto itself that benefits everyone in the entire world.
The more honest (and nevertheless more despicable) conservatives will tell you that America is a thing of value unto itself and they don’t give a rat’s ass about the world.
I don’t follow your logic. You seem to suggest that adopting a position of respect regarding a subgroup will … make that subgroup bigger? Or will somehow make the beliefs of that subgroup more popular in the larger group? How so?
What is the mechanism you are proposing that will lead from respecting a subgroup to the propagation of that subgroup’s belief system through the population at large?
