Those are good points. I hadn’t thought about the role that international members would play in moving the board left, seeing how the old saying is what is right wing in Europe is considered left wing in America. Point 4 has a lot of truth too.
This is the self-perpetuating thing I think others have been talking about. I’m sure many people will disagree with your comment—in fact, I do too—but one would certainly feel less welcome if, when one expresses one’s political views, A) most of the people posting disagree with them, and B) that disagreement comes as almost routine and dismissive, since most people participating in those discussions here are fairly well-seasoned in such debates.
In other words, it may not matter if “conservatives are not welcomed here” is true or false. But that will certainly by the perception—that people with political views x, y, and z tend to get a lot of people arguing them and people with political views i, j, and k are broadly agreed with, and this has some relationship with feeling welcomed—of more Republicans visiting this board than it will of Democrats.
It’s not the argument – I crave argument. In my view, any idea I have should be able to withstand vigorous challenge.
What I don’t crave is the vituperative attacks. Attack any position I hold; that’s not unwelcome.
But THAT is not welcoming.
Would there be more conservatives if debate here were closer to the Platonic ideal? Yes, that’s probably true.
Would there still be a liberal lean? Almost certainly, if for no other reason than that the lean necessarily predated the out-group hostility (unless you think liberals are uniquely less tolerant of opposing ideologies, in which case I direct you to exhibit A, the rest of the internet including all of the conservative hotspots).
Instead of a message board (small d democracy ), call into any number of right-wing radio shows. You won’t get a “vigorous challenge.”
This, I agree with you on. For what it’s worth, I suspect “Republicans” in this case referred specifically to “Republican politicians”, not “all registered Republicans”—it’s an unfortunate reality of political debate that much of it reads like “Republicans x” and “Democrats y”, even though those parties have a membership comprising a lot of diverse views. I see a lot less of that here than at other political forums I’ve read, and a lot more discussion of ideas, and I think the overall tone is one of intense, but usually civil and even friendly debate.
As has been mentioned, you want to see real nastiness, look at the comments on newspaper articles. Or sites like FreeRepublic and Democratic Underground.
While these are all certainly pieces of the stew, it also appears that there simply are more Democratic than Republican leaning people in the US. So even if we did have a perfectly representative percent of posters here, we’d have more Democrats.
If you’re expecting 50/50, that would actually be surprising, and indicate a *Republican *bent that would need ‘splainin’.
Tamerlane is right that in the early days of this board, the political balance was much closer to even, regardless of the board’s origins.
What changed things was the Bush Administration. For good reason, the intersection of the set of people with functioning brain cells and the set of supporters of that worthless, ignorant, lying, corrupt Administration was rather small. Transparently bad arguments for invading Iraq, no WMDs, torture, “heckuva job” Brownie, just one damn thing after another.
And since Bush, of course, the GOP has continued further into crazyland.
You could take this same group of people, give us a brainwipe of our knowledge of the past 20 years, and send us back through a wormhole in time to 1993, and we’d be a much more evenly divided bunch, politically speaking. It’s the world that has changed.
Another thing is that the GOP increasingly skews white, male, and old. While we probably skew a good deal whiter than the population at large, our gender balance isn’t extremely skewed, and only a small fraction, probably under 5%, of our active members are old enough to be on Medicare. That’s a lot less than in the nation as a whole.
I welcome you.
I may not agree with everything you post, but you, sir, are an asset to this board.
You bring an important, sometimes contrary, aspect to many debates, and I am very happy you post here.
And I am not a conservative.
Besides all the other reasons, the Republicans for years have been restricting themselves more and more to their media bubble where they see, hear and read only people & things they already agree with. The fact that the mods do not instantly ban anyone who doesn’t spout the Republican party line is by itself more than enough to drive off most Republicans.
People from a closed ideological hothouse like that (Republican or otherwise*) aren’t emotionally equipped to deal well with people who are allowed to disagree with them. Just look at the people who show up from such ideologically moderated forums, who are incapable of dealing with a forum like this one; they tend to have little ability to actually discuss things and instead spew memorized propaganda & dogma they can’t defend. And they usually either soon run away or get banned after breaking the rules.
*A non-Republican example: Ever notice how absolutely terrible most Communist propaganda was? Or just look at some of the bizarre stuff coming out of North Korea.
Conservatives is such a big category. Can you narrow it down?
Why “Democrat”? Why not some other kind of label? I mean, as far as the politicians go, the Democrats are mostly a conservative lot. Look at the president, he is a curly whisker to the left of Reagan. I get the sense that a fair number posters here are pretty fed up with the Democrats, but right now, the established alternative is a horrific thought to entertain.
Not only that, but all of the mods are shamelessly liberal, and moderate according to that bias. Rand Rover got suspended over a group “insult” that liberals never get sanctioned for, as the most recent example. In the Boston Marathon thread, Tea Partiers were smeared on the first page, with no mod sanction, but as soon as someone took a shot at liberals, all of a sudden here come the jackboots and mods are all over it. That sort of clear favoritism is routine here, and the mods deny it happens. It’s pretty clear the mods wish all conservatives would leave this board, and they’ll do whatever they can to make things unpleasant for us here.
It’s partly because there are more Democrats than Republicans out there, according to polls (example). The only reason Democrats don’t have an overwhelming advantage in elections is because the voter turnout is greater among Republicans.
So they go about flaunting their liberalism like shameless hussies? Luring in and corrupting innocent conservatives with their wanton debauchery no doubt.
“Shamelessly liberal”? Really? How 19th century.
Thats what I was gonna reply, but you seem to have done it better than I could! I can’t seem to post without excessive sarcasm.
SDMB Rules!
This talk about “welcoming” reminds me of an issue I confronted in a couple of UU congregations where the issue was welcoming LGBT folk. I didn’t give a fuck about welcoming folk based on their sexual orientation. Instead, I was interested in welcoming folk whose beliefs were consistent with what I understood to be UU principles. Didn’t care who or what they were or weren’t fucking.
I find it funny - and sad - when liberals castigate themselves for not spreading their reach so wide as to include even those who actively work against their strongest core beliefs. Don’t hear a lot of conservative groups moaning over a need to attract more liberal folk.
Hell, conservatives are welcome here as everyone else is. But when they spout selfish, intolerant bullshit, they will be called on it. And conservatives don’t seem to like that too well.
Yet they won’t go away.
Hope you stay, I enjoy your company despite the disagreements.
I don’t know if reality leans left, but wackiness and humor certainly do, and the SDMB has that in spades.