It could be the structure of the board – or it could be because most Dopers learned of the Dope through Cecil’s column, which is published in alternative weeklies mainly distributed in funky urban zones.
Oh, that goes back to the '60s, when the Right was marginalized. And for some reason it just grew progressively louder and shriller as the Right gained more and more power in real life.
This is a left-leaning board, as compared to the United States in general. I certainly acknowledge that compared to Europe it may be centrist or even right-leaning.
This bias is not readily apparent in GQ, which is intended for factual answers to factual question, and it’s not tremendously noticeable in MPSIMS, CS, or IMHO. In GD and the Pit, however, it is present.
It’s difficult to quantify a claim like this, but I believe it was demostrated reasonably well last year with the excellent “Political Compass” threads, a series of several dozen threads each of which explored in detail one of the questions used by the “Political Compass” orientation test. Rather than merely measuring “left” and “right,” these questions sought to explore the political orientation of the respondant on two orthogonal scales: left vs. right and authoritarian vs libertarian. I welcome more detailed recollections and summaries, but as I recall the threads, in aggregate, showed that the majority of active posters in GD were more left than the American populace, and were more libertarian than the American populace.
The former editor of National Review, John O’Sullivan, used to quote what he called O’Sullivan’s First Law - all organizations not explicitly right wing will become left wing over time.
I wouldn’t call this a hard and fast law, myself, just something that tends to be true more often than not, and something that finds confirmation here.
I was thinking of it more like “some people on this board are VERY right-wing, and they really stand out, because for the most part, it seems pretty middle-of-the-road.” This is because, from the perspective of most of the members, leftist views are centrist, and even mildly right-wing views are seen as WAY out there.
That’s more like it. We only have a few mild conservatives, and they’re routinely seen as raving lunatics.
Again, though, a lot of this stuff is informed by what we now consider right-wing or left-wing, here in America, which is more of a partisan political thing rather than a purely ideological thing.
But you’re right, Mr. Moto, in that the vast majority of “conservative” posters here are far less hardline and carry less of the baggage of what now passes as conservativism in this country. The same goes for the “liberal” posters, but I think that “liberals” are much angrier these days (and posting more screed) from having been shut out of the process at the top levels of government and more marginalized in the post-9/11 frenzy, much like the “conservatives” pre-Reagan.
I’m a liberal and I think the board leans left. It used to be more evenly balanced, but it’s been skewing more liberal for years.
I think a major cause is that under the Bush administration it’s become much harder for intelligent, principled conservatives to argue effectively for their side. Many of the traditional tenets of conservatism – fiscal restraint, minimum government interference in the affairs of individuals, avoiding foreign entanglements – have been abandoned by the conservative movement lately. Without a bedrock set of principles to build on, it’s difficult to construct abstract arguments.
There are some shrill and, frankly, rather dumb liberals on the boards. However, we’re a US-based board and the majority of Americans do not support George W. Bush, who (rightly or wrongly) is basically the prominent conservative American. It’s not surprising that there is a lot of outrage about the president and his administration. Sometimes this is translated into general disdain for conservative political views, which is not fair but is pretty understandable.
While I consider myself largely centrist nowadays, I am also strongly opposed to the President’s policy decisions as a whole. It’s hard not to be flippant when many conservatives defend what I and others consider undefendable.
That being said, the respond is that thread was inappropriate and was rightly stopped.
To Americans, this appears to be a left leaning board. I suspect a European would see it quite differently, though. Don’t forget we have a lot of non-Americans who post in GD-- plenty of Aussies, Kiwis, and Asians, too, besides the Europeans.
Someone actually plotted out the scores of the various posters, and that’s pretty much what it showed. We have very few social conservatives on this board. We have lots of socially liberal members, way more libertarians than you’d find in the general populace, and probably a good balance of right/left on economic thought.
BTW, if someone asked me where you stood on the political spectrum, I’d probably say I didn’t know. Probably because you seem to be able to debate subjects without making then a partisan matter. That’s a bit too rare around here, if you ask me.
Yeah, your thread is your cite. Nice try.
Oh, I see. Conservatives have jobs. It’s only liberals who have any spare time to go on messageboards!
There aren’t enough rolleye smileys in the world for that one.
I propose an alternative hypothesis. The tighty righties don’t have the intellectual curiousity to seek out other points of view. They like to be told what to think by their church, by Rush Limbaugh, by Fox News, and can’t be bothered to go to a venue where they actually have to logically defend their positions.
Am I being slightly unfair here? Perhaps. But so is the implication you are making.
SentientMeat actually ran another thread with a sum-up of the finished scores and wolf_meister created a graph from the raw numbers.
Mostly libertarian with a decidedly Left bias. I’m sure all the lefties are just shocked to learn that they are in the majority, this place seems so centrist. :rolleyes:
Wow, thanks, Jon! 
My comments were drawn from the Political Compass, which offers 6 pages of about 12 questions each. I have not view the Pew study you refer to in any depth, but a brief review does not suggest that level of nuance or detail.
That graph is a little misleading because it doesn’t label the axes correctly, and so it makes it look like it’s an authoritarian/libertarian thing. The vertical axis is a social scale (authoritarian/libertarian) and the horizontal axis is an economic scale (left/right).
If I had seen the original thread, I would have linked to here: http://www.wideawakes.net/
I’m not a conservative so I can’t say it’s a great site from the conservative perspective, but I found it much less hysterical and lockstep than, say, Free Republic.
Good Lord, Man!
What did it say before you fixed it?
Well, he didn’t label the horizontal but you’ll see that either end of the vertical has a a label, indicating it’s the social scale.
Not really. You don’t necessarily know that it’s “social” just from the end labels.