Do you honestly believe this? I mean, this is so absurd to me that I have a hard time comprehending what you could mean? Is this getting back to the assertion that liberals or democrats aren’t coming up with new ideas? Perhaps this is too off-track for this thread, but I am curious. Is this a new conservative talking point, because you and another poster have said this a few times already. I can come up with a fairly good list of new ideas that Democrats and/or liberals have proposed during the past decade alone (and conservatives have largely opposed).
Do you really believe that conservatives are supportive of individual rights, and not interested in maintaining the status quo? Help! My brain hurts.
I forgot to comment on this one, december. With the popularity of the Howard Stern show, I don’t see why you couldn’t also have videotape and keep the ratings high.
On another note, however, I don’t really get the joke here. Is it that he got a blowjob? Because you’ll probably understand better after you have gotten your first that these things are truly good. Even when they’re bad. You probably won’t go “tee hee” when thinking about blowjobs then, but the trade offs are well worth it.
Conservatives today are coming up with more new ideas IMHO. Remember the Contract With America? Newt also supported modernizing air traffic control, reforming welfare, ending the use of seniority for House committee chairmen, and school vouchers.
I see conservatives as more protective of individual rights than liberals in areas such as:
– Campaign finance reform: reduces freedom of speech
– Government regulations: more regs = less freedom
– Affirmative Action: group rights, not individual rights
– Minimum Wage: reduces the individual’s ability to take certain low-paying jobs
– Medicare restrictions on what doctors can bill private patients: reduces freedom to practice medicine and freedom to receive medical care.
Conservatives today are coming up with more new ideas IMHO. Remember the Contract With America? Newt also supported modernizing air traffic control, reforming welfare, ending the use of seniority for House committee chairmen, and school vouchers
Yea Newt taught me a lot…like how to hit your wife up for divorce while she’s dying of cancer in a hospital bed…And I bet she would have gave ole Newt a hummer if it wasn’t for the Chemo giving her cotton mouth.
Rand…leafing through the Conservative Moral Register…and its a damn light read.
Just head on over to www.amazon.com, and look at their non-fiction best seller list. I’ve done that on occasion, and of the best-selling books that can be said to have a political viewpoint, I’d say at least 3/4 of them are conservative.
Right now, Michael Moore’s book is at the top of the list. No surprise there - he’s promoting the hell out of it, and he has a successful movie out right now. But moving down the list, we have “Bush at War”, which is a very favorable portrayal of the Bush White House. There are also books by Rudy Guliani, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, and Michael Savage in the top 10.
So, to sum up today’s Top-10 list, we have four books by right-wing pundits, one pro-Bush biography, one book by Michael Moore, a reprint of columns from The Onion, which appeals to all political viewpoints, and a comedy book poking fun at the rich. I’ll give you that one as your ‘liberal’ book, if you really wan to use it as an example.
This is a typical composition for that list, except the top book is usually written by a conservative. For example, just for yucks I went back and got the NY Times non-fiction best seller list for one year ago. Here it is:
1 The No Spin Zone by Bill O’Reilly
2 Jack: Straight From the Gut by Jack Welch
3 The Final Days by Barbara Olsen
4 The Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen Hawking
5 John Adams by David McCullough
6 The Lost Son by Bernard B. Kerik
7 Holy War, Inc. by Peter L. Bergen
8 When Character Was King by Peggy Noonan
9 Churchill by Roy Jenkins Farrar
10 Islam by Karen Armstrong
I count six books by conservatives, two books of interest to anyone following the war, one biography of a favorite Prime Minister of conservatives, and one I don’t recognize. Not a single ‘liberal’ book on the list.
And how about the Internet? You can’t claim any conspiracies, or control of the media, or pressure from corporations, or any other excuses for the lack of liberal activism on the net. Look at blogging - there are hundreds of thousands of bloggers now, and I’d say 80% of them are conservative/libertarian. Conservative magazines are thriving, the liberal ones are dying off.
Liberals like to believe that they are the ones who are educated, who read, who think about politics, etc. And the stereotype of conservatives is that they are less educated, less intellectual.
But frankly, (this board not included - just about everyone here is way outside the norm) when I meet Liberals in regular life they are rarely really interested in the philosophy or history of their position. They are just calmly smug in the notion that they are right. Most of them probably haven’t picked up a political book in a long time, if ever.
My Conservative friends are far more engaged. They subscribe to the National Review, Policy Review, Reason, Liberty. They listen to Limbaugh, they watch Crossfire, they follow the news. And they read a lot of books on politics, economics, and public policy.
This isn’t because conservatives are smarter. My belief is that it’s because conservatives are constantly under fire, and are therefore forced to educate themselves in order to defend against the routine attacks that come their way. Plus, it’s downright refreshing to read a book that supports your beliefs after having them attacked all the time in other ways.
Not only is that anecdote irrelevent to this thread, but it’s also untrue. The New York Times said so.
Excuse the irrelevency…and a tip of the hat to New York Times, which never served a vested interest in its glorious history…But you sure seemed consumed with blow jobs…I thought you would appreciate the fact that Newt beat the hell out a Dodge when his shit was about to hit the fan…with a completely dry pecker.
Rand…all this irrelevent talk a hummers is making me thirsty
The best you data could imply is that Liberals read more widely and diversely: and fewer self-righteous political screeds. But it can’t even really substantiate that.
—it’s downright refreshing to read a book that supports your beliefs after having them attacked all the time in other ways.—
Really? It wasn’t “downright refreshing” to read almost any of the so-called “conservative” books on that list, despite most of them agreeing with my political views. It was depressing.
The Democrats do have a powerful radio outlet- National “Public” Radio.If people wanted to hear the liberal (or in Newspeak-Progressive)view,NPR’s ratings would be much higher.The liberals just can’t understand that a lot of people don’t want to hear them on the radio when the network news(Rather,Brokaw,Jennings and CNN) usually open with left wing slant on the news. People like to be informed and entertained,not preached to.Given the explosion of internet and cable tv news,the big networks hold on information is slipping and this explains their ratings slide.I have noticed that when a goverment program is budgeted for say, 5 billion dollars,with a growrh rate of 5% per year and the Republicans say lets only allow 3% growth,they are accused of destroying (pick your special interest group).Anyone that disagrees with the Democrats are anti old person/gay/school lunch program/hispanic/union/black/handicapped/name your cause.Just once I’d like to hear from either side something to the effect of "their idea is good,ours is better because-________(and not just because it costs more money).
Regarding the booklist… I think the same group of people keep buying the right wing books, which seem to rise and fall relatively quickly, whereas Moore’s been on the top of the list for nearly a year.
I’d also be interested in seeing some pre- 9/11 lists.
People’s blind spots are funny sometimes - if a non-“conservative” book is popular, it must be because it’s getting the hell promoted out of it.
You appear to be trying to support your assertion that conservatives read more because books purchased in large numbers often have a conservative bent. If we are going to restrict this to the nature of books on the best-seller list, I would be more swayed if you could show me that equal numbers of “conservative” and “liberal” books are being written, and conservative books are being chosen with significantly greater frequency. But that still wouldn’t be supportive of your intial assertion that conservatives read more. Or have you abandoned that fort? If you are talking about the more general issue, this data is entirely useless. We would need to examine the readers, not the books. My contrary hypothesis would be that liberals read far more books more frequently. Reading a bunch of different books selected for variety and for being off the beaten path means that no one book will rise to a best-seller list. On the other hand, conservatives will read what fits with their preconstruction of the world, and what they are told to read by other conservatives. Thus a small number will rise to the best-seller list.
Conservatives like to say that liberals think themselves more educated. Conservatives like stereotypes. They like to say “Conservatives are smarter!” “Conservatives read more!” Then they say, “Liberals are not smarter!” “Liberals control academia!” “Liberals have their heads buried in books and don’t live in the real world!”
But frankly, just about everyone I meet in real life who is conservative has no support for that position. When I ask why, they stammer. When I provide evidence to the contrary for reasons they do provide, they get huffy and walk away.
My Liberal friends are far more aware. They understand the broader ramifications for people other than themselves of social, fiscal and international policy. They know history and current events, they know not only who their representatives are but those of many others in the country. And they don’t even name what or who they have read.
This is because conservatives like to think they are constantly under fire. Yet, how could they be constantly under fire if they are winning all the elections, putting out and reading all the books, magazines and internet material. Conservatives are inherently self-centered, and see anything as a threat to their way of life. They used to like to say this more than they do now: “x is a threat to our way of life!” That is why they are conservative, despite the “newspeak” that december proposes. They fear change, and want to keep things the way that they are. They scramble to spin the meanings and interpretations of things, and present it under a title like “No Spin Zone.”
They delude themselves and don’t engage in exploration of alternative thought.
Feel free to draw your own conclusions. I think showing that conservative books outnumber liberal books by a huge margin on the best seller lists is reasonable evidence that more conservatives buy conservative books than liberals buy liberal books. If you want to try to spin that into something else, be my guest.
I’m just curious why Liberals don’t tend to read as much. Look at the latest books by Al Gore. He’s a huge presence in the Democratic party, and a very popular guy among Democrats. And yet, his books sank like stones when he released them. No one’s buying.
So wait now, which point are you trying to prove? First it was
Then it appeared to be, “There are more conservative books on the best seller list.”
Then, in the first paragraph of this post, it’s “more conservatives buy conservative books than liberals buy liberal books.”
By the second paragraph, scant seconds later, it has become, "I’m just curious why Liberals don’t tend to read as much. " Do you not see the difference, and the problem, in posing and pursuing an argument as you have? If not, I have to wonder why.
Are you sure, -spoke that these are the tactics you want us to employ? It would make me feel kind of weasily.
Why cherry-pick the genre Sam? Let’s look at the first 10 of amazon’s top 100 bestsellers list for today:
The Life of Pi
The Sopranos Family Cookbook
The Lovely Bones: A Novel
Prey: A Novel
Stupid White Men…
Bush At War
The Hobbit and LOTR
The Conquerers: Roosevelt, Truman…
I Don’t Know How She Does it: The Life of Kate Reddy, Working Mother
Contacting Your Spirit Guide
Frankly, this tells me nothing about who - Liberals or Conservatives - reads more. I suppose it’s interesting that “Stupid White Men” is outselling “Bush At War”, “Let Freedom Ring” and “Slander” and that a book about two Democratic Presidents is doing quite well, but I don’t see anything here that supports your argument that Conservatives read more than Liberals.
One thing that no one seems to have mentioned so far is the way that Bill Orielly explains the lack of liberal talk radio. I agree with many of the sentiments here so far, but think this one is also a factor.
Liberal’s are generally more tolerant and accepting that conservatives. Their moral relativism simply makes for not entertaining radio. A conservative radio host can rail on about how wrong it is that the liberals are doing this or that. “It’s outragous that our tax dollars are paying for this!” type of stuff is commonplace. A liberal host would do what? Sit there and be understanding of everyone. It’s boring.
Conservatives tend to see thing in absolutes. Black and white, right and wrong. This makes for more entertaining radio. And, as others have said before the democrats simplistic soundbyte styled messages are more perfectly suited to television.