# Does America \*feel\* liberal or conservative to you? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 10, 2017, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-america-feel-liberal-or-conservative-to-you/786309 "2017-05-10T19:37:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![control-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@control-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/control-z)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2017, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-america-feel-liberal-or-conservative-to-you/786309/61 "2017-05-16T20:08:00Z")
It feels mostly conservative, but with a lot of vocal liberals. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2017, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-america-feel-liberal-or-conservative-to-you/786309/62 "2017-05-16T20:30:53Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Which makes complete sense. > > The conservatives have dragged the Overton window so far to the right that half of them are now satisfied and half think we oughta go at least a bit farther right. IOW, from their average POV the US seems centered. By their standards. > > Meanwhile from the liberal POV, the Overton window is so far off to the right that even our leftish stuff isn’t really very left. > > Which, interestingly enough, is what so far 100% of the foreigners have said. IOW our Left is to the right of their Right. I think there’s another alternative explanation: Liberals tend to want progress and continuous change, whereas conservatives prefer status quo, or reverting back to the way things were. A number of complaints I have heard from liberals are of this sort: “Things in America are not changing as rapidly in our favor as we would like.” They rephrase it as, “America is too conservative,” but it doesn’t mean America isn’t trending liberal, it just means it’s not going liberal _fast enough_. Even if America didn’t move in the conservative direction, it would feel conservative, kind of like the “When you have a fever everything around you feels cold” phenomenon. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2017, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-america-feel-liberal-or-conservative-to-you/786309/63 "2017-05-16T20:59:34Z")
America feels…slightly sticky. Does that help? ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2017, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-america-feel-liberal-or-conservative-to-you/786309/64 "2017-05-16T21:05:29Z")
Most people, when questioned on individual policies, will tend to favor the liberal policies. However, when picking party affiliation a large number of them choose the conservative party. ---
**Author:** ![rbroome](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/838e76/32.png) [@rbroome](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rbroome)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2017, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-america-feel-liberal-or-conservative-to-you/786309/65 "2017-05-17T01:49:20Z")
I voted for doughnuts. I consider myself a centrist Democrat. Not a liberal. No matter how I rank myself, the US is a conservative country. Outside of San Francisco, I think if you compared New York (as an example of what passes for liberal in the US) to any city in the world outside of the US widely accepted as liberal, it would come out either the same or more conservative. Liberal in the US is centrist/conservative in other liberal democracies. And the other 80% of the population (I can’t find the cite right now, but I believe only 20% of the US self-identifies as liberal. We have a lot of middle of the roaders here) 90% of the land area in the US is far more conservative than that. Trump is doing his level best to change that by pushing the Democrats toward liberalism, but he has a long way to go. ---
**Author:** ![igor\_frankensteen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/839c29/32.png) [@igor\_frankensteen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/igor_frankensteen)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2017, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-america-feel-liberal-or-conservative-to-you/786309/66 "2017-05-17T02:11:57Z")
I am unfortunately aware that there are multiple real meanings to each term. There’s (at least) what liberal and conservative ACTUALLY mean, as words; there’s a host variations on what each term means in a political setting; and there is another completely different definition of each one, which it’s OPPONENTS make up, but which rarely has anything to do with reality. Someone above pointed out somewhat more obliquely, that a lot of people who THINK they are the epitome of one or the other, are actually dead wrong. The only thing that seems to be extra true of the overall tone of the country these days, is that the effort by one group, to make selfish petulance and petty resentment into a virtue, has been very successful. ---
**Author:** ![Dale\_Sams](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/779978/32.png) [@Dale\_Sams](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dale_Sams)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2017, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-america-feel-liberal-or-conservative-to-you/786309/67 "2017-05-17T03:12:23Z")
I’ve been doing some thinking…I think in general America wants to do the right thing and rejects extremism. If you presented general referendum questions on The Wall, prison reform, and lowering health care costs…I believe America would vote liberal. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-america-feel-liberal-or-conservative-to-you/786309.md?page=3)