Your behavior and gloating over the last Presidential election didn’t make you very many friends. And objectively, the current administration has screwed the pooch pretty badly, so you should probably review some of your arguments from back then and see if they hold up as well-reasoned and supportable.
As for why the board is so liberal – probably because the Republicans have aligned themselves with the religious right and bedrock social conservatives (a group which might be composed largely of decent people but which is characterized by a large proportion of scary, anti-intellectual wingnuts). Readers of a column that famously analyzed the “How many calories in semen” question aren’t likely to be socially conservative.
Further, the current Administration has made heinous foreign policy decisions (lying to its people in the process), mishandled the economy to a tragic extent, and abandoned any pretense of being the party of fiscal responsibility and small government by running up the deficit and creating the bloated Homeland Security bureaucracy. So unless you’re passionately devoted to one of the Republican platform’s hot topics – repealing abortion, limiting gun control, or prohibiting gay marriage – there’s just no reason to support them at this point.
What is passed off as ‘conservativism’ in America is really so fringe, out there, and so out of touch with America that using it as a basis point skews all point of reference.
SDMB is a great cross section of competant, reasonable, and creative people who form their own opinions on issues. In a very meaningful sense, the consensus values here are center or centrist. Reading this board is a good check of your personal compass bearings to see how off course you are.
And I as a conservative of course believe all these things.
Seriously, a piece of advice, Dopers: the best way to be taken seriously is to not be ridiculous. Admit that the other side is not necessarily the dumbest thing you’ve ever heard, and that everyone who disagrees with you is not necessarily a victim of a severe head injury or inbreeding.
I don’t want to confuse intelligence with academia, but I think that we have a high proportion of academic-types – I don’t necessarily mean people who teach, but there’s a certain academic point-of-view, mindset, view of life, that I think many Dopers share.
And academia tends to be somewhat more socialistic/leftist, for whatever reason. Perhaps because they don’t earn enough money to be Republicans.
The board has a liberal bias because the internet has a liberal bias, because the western world has a liberal bias. In fact, therefore, it’s not a bias, it’s just the norm.
Although they seem to have time to listen to, and call into, talk radio for hours and hours.
I think it might be as simple as people here on the SDMB seem to have more life experience; many here have traveled around the world, are living in or have lived in larger urban environments, have worked with people from various cultures and minority groups and, if not highly educated, at least show some curiosity and interest in learning more about those who are “different” from themselves.
If you have life experience with those who might not look and act like you do, it at least gives you the insight to realize that just because others are different from you in some aspect, it doesn’t mean their views are automatically less worthy. I think people who think like that are more often than not labeled as “liberals”.
I can’t believe I’m the first to raise this – I’ve found the board leans left, but there were more than a few conservatives around a few years back. More than a few, but probably not a majority or even close. Until the Iraq war in 2003. My feeling since then has been that the conservatives, or at least supporters of that war, fled the board, aside from some dead-enders (no names offered) who still defend it (or even think the WMDs are in Syria, god help us). The board has been much more Left, and to my mind less interesting, since then.
It’s not just Buckley that the right is missing. Almost all the intellectual standard-bearers of the right are dead.
When I was young, the conservative/libertarian/free market torch was being carried by the likes of Milton Friedman, Ronald Reagan, Ayn Rand, Robert Heinlein, Ludwig Von Mises, William F. Buckley, and Friedrich Hayek. They were intellectual/popular powerhouses.
Milton Friedman was a brilliant economist, but he was also a tireless crusader for capitalism with the public. He wrote “Capitalism and Freedom” and “Free To Choose”, which were best sellers. He created a TV show on PBS based on 'Free to Choose", and it was seen by millions. He was a staple in the news media, constantly giving interviews and engaging in public debate. He traveled the world and spread his ideas to other countries. He was a giant, and his death was a tragedy for libertarianism.
Ronald Reagan, lampooned as a buffoon by the left, was actually a deep philosophical thinker. He was well read of Hayek, Friedman, Kirk, Burke, and others, and his ideas and policies were always grounded in solid conservative/libertarian philosophy and economics. And he wasn’t ashamed to talk about it, and use the Presidential bully pulpit to extoll the virtues of the market and freedom.
Ayn Rand of course was massively influential among young people in the 50’s and 60’s, and her books are still cited as some of the most influential of all time.
Robert Heinlein, though a ‘mere’ science fiction writer, espoused a libertarian philosophy that was deeply compelling to millions of young people, and he had a tremendous influence on the culture of the 50’s and 60’s.
William F. Buckley made it cool to be a conservative on campus. He made conservatism look like the smart person’s politics. He was a one-man refutation of the liberal notion that conservatives were dumb hicks. As such, he showed a lot of very smart people that it was okay to be a conservative.
These people are now all dead, and their influence is waning.
There has been no one to really step up and take their place. There are no great conservative/libertarian thinkers who are both intellectually rigorous and yet able to capture the public’s attention. They’ve been replaced by people like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, who have replaced deep thinking with sound bites and angry tirades. When they write books, they aren’t books which make intellectual arguments championing freedom, such as Friedman’s “Free to Choose” - they are partisan polemics which exist merely to point the finger of blame at the other side.
Maybe this is the result of Republicans being in power for so long. Perhaps a few years in the wilderness will cause them to search for their principles and turn to people who can mount a principled defense of limited government that is economically sound. I sure hope so. Because without the balance of a vigorous defense of freedom and limited government, the rapacious growth of government is going to be a disaster for us all.
That’s a remarkably honest appraisal. I imagine it’s pretty difficult to own up to the fact that one’s side has lost its way, as it must be for the left when the same thing happens.
I’d say that this is because the board reflects the real life endorsements.
The issue was pointed out in this thread and further so in Post #20.
If you truly consider this board to be filled with “smarter than average” people, then I’m not surprised that there is a lean to the left, not because of Liberal vs. Conservative political parties, but just simply because of the way the intellectual endorsements have gone.
The problem with this is that these really are things that Conservatives have said in this campaign about Barack Obama. And there really are people stupid enough to believe them. So Conservatives are trying to win over the idiot vote.
Now, admittedly, it may work as a tactic for winning elections. But if Conservatives want to form a political alliance with the stupid fringe, they shouldn’t be surprised when their movement gets discredited for it.
And how does that compare with the things said about Sarah Palin?
Getting back to some of the earlier ideas expressed, I just don’t have an hour or two to put together a list of cites. It’s just not worth it to me. I’m sure that if you look at the quantity and quality of statements made about Palin vs. Obama, you’d see a big difference. How many Dopers actually said Obama is a Muslim? Or a terrorist? How many dragged his children into the debate? But I have to go to work tomorrow. Someone has to keep the economy going.
Now now, I was just looking for more than the obvious quick answers. If I asked about the Star Wars characters I’d exclude the same ones you did, because I’m not looking to find out something I already know.
The answer is much larger. There was certainly talk that Palin isn’t competent, was picked solely because she was a woman, that she abused her office for family business, that she’s too extreme in her religious beliefs - but these are all opinions based on some degree of actual facts. The only thing that was said about Palin that was outright false was the story about her not being Trig’s real mother - that was wrong but it was quickly dismissed and never got the kind of continuing play that stories like “Barack is a secret Muslim” have received.
