MaxTheVool: excellent post! However…
Why a problem? Seems just to be an actuarial sort of thing. Elderly people tend to be conservative; the citizens of Oklahoma tend to be conservative; NASCAR fans tend to be conservative… And SDMB members tend to be liberal. Are any of these really “problems?”
…especially since it’s really nothing more than a collection of people on the internet.
It’s a problem in that it makes the SDMB less good at what I’d like to think it should be doing, namely, encouraging conversation and debate. All snideness aside, there are certainly plenty of issues out there which have legitimate arguments that can be made on both sides of them (obviously simplifying here into issues with two sides, yada yada yada). When the ratio of people arguing one side to people arguing the other side is sufficiently lopsided, it’s much rarer for actual meaningful dialog to occur, for a bunch of reasons. I mean, take it to an extreme… have a room with ninety-nine people on one side of the spectrum and one on the other and try to start a debate about some crucial issue of the day. Even IF all 100 people were honest and polite and well meaning and intelligent it would be awfully hard for a real dialog to ensue, purely logistically. Throw in the usual ratio of cranks and jerks which occur in all groups and it just gets exponentially worse.
The board is anti-ignorance. Its membership generally self-selects for opposition to ignorance. Its progressive political orientation is a by-product of fighting ignorance. And it it is hardly a problem.
“If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention.”
Adding 10 more Adahers would not raise the level of debate…
So you guys wouldn’t prefer to have an online forum with the same general tone and level of debate as the SDMB, but with a more balanced userbase? Or are you going to just snidely insist that there are so few intelligent Republicans that such a thing is clearly impossible?
I invite you to go forth and advertise for the SDMB everywhere you can find Republicans, in hopes of [del]suckering[/del], err, drawing them into our debate circle. If they don’t want to join (or don’t stay long if they join) that’s their choice, and we’re very pro-choice.
I’d appreciate it. But I do also think critically thinking (R)s are increasingly defecting over to the Dems.
Noticing **adaher **hasn’t posted in either thread in several days, but has been back to the board.
Which in no way answers the question I asked.
The question you asked was stupid. I cut to the chase.
Seriously, you’re keeping score? I really hope you don’t do this with people in the real world. This sounds more immature than my kids, who instead of dealing with an issue will whine “It’s not faaaair…”
And for the record, more conservatives here would improve the dialogue, but only if they were intelligent ones who argued with integrity and didn’t parrot a Fox News script (or want to just make points for their side so it was faaaair…)
I went to a far-right-wing college (Hillsdale) where a constant guest and lecturer was William F. Buckley. Chatting with him was an education… and quite unlike feeling my IQ slip a point as I read some of the so-called “conservative” arguments here.
Not impossible… But difficult. Very difficult. In another thread, GIGObuster noted that only six per cent of scientists self-identify as Republicans. Would science really be better if the percentage were higher?
Education is highly correlated with liberal viewpoints. The better one’s education, the more liberal (on the average.) Would education itself be improved if this were altered?
This board has a conservative minority, not entirely by selection bias. It has an anti-conservative bias for the same reason that creationism has a pro-conservative bias. Ignorance is, today, inclined more toward one ideological philosophy than toward the other.
BUT… Yes, the SDMB might be healthier if we could find a few more moderate, soft-spoken, genteel, intelligent conservatives. It would make us liberals have to work harder to uphold our points. We definitely don’t need fish in barrels.
From my experience, he’s more likely to say something off-the-rails crazy, and you’re more likely to be wrong and refuse to admit it in a smarmy annoying way. I can tolerate the former a lot more, because it’s fundamentally harmless - nobody is taking that shit seriously anyways. The latter… Eh… No. Fuck that with a rake.
You know, I’d ask for more of them, but from my experience… Well, lemme just recount a personal anecdote. I hung around the gay rights section of another political forum for quite a while, and whenever there was any discussion, it boiled down to dishonest fuckbags who refuse to admit that they’re wrong in the face of overwhelming evidence and who constantly lied, used faulty studies, turned the discussion personal (usually with quite interesting stereotypes), and the like. I kept on waiting for someone on the “other side” who was sensible to show up. Someone who could represent his position honestly, without looking like a fucking idiot. And then I came to a realization: when your position is so fundamentally flawed, so completely and utterly wrong as you’d have to be to take the “other side” on gay rights, then you’re not going to get a sensible debate partner. You’re going to get people who were too fucking stupid to get it the first time.
I say, let’s just be thankful for Bricker. 
Well, actually, I think this board’s orientation is also a by-product of its being rooted in a column published in alternative weekly tabloid newspapers which are mainly found in big cities and college towns. But, it is also true that such areas tend to be less ignorant and more intellectual than rural areas, and their being also more progressive is no coincidence.
So what would it take to get The Straight Dope into the Washington Times or Wall Street Journal?
Threats.
True… At some point, it’s like hoping to meet an intelligent Creationist or moderate and balanced Flat-Earther. There may actually be such things, but in general, nuh uh. Truthers and Birthers, for instance: its shouldn’t be impossible for them to be rational, balanced, intelligent, and well-spoken. It just never actually happens in practice.
Same with Tea-Party conservatives, then? Can someone defend shutting down the government in order to kill Obamacare, and phrase it rationally, giving reasons, maintaining sensible discourse? It ought to be possible…right?