Could we please stop conflating liberals and hippies? I’ll go back to the person who taught me what liberalism is: my mother. Catholic to the core, she adored Adlai Stephenson, hated racism, censorship, and homophobia. She also loved America and was very patriotic, was against substance abuse of all kinds, and valued politeness, decorum, and neatness. That, to me, is what liberalism is. She was never a hippie-- she was too old to be one. Liberalism existed before hippies and should not be defined by them. They were one component of the liberal movement, but why is it fair to define all of us by that standard and those values? It’s a straw man, is what it is.
I don’t know what you mean about liberals being “at the helm”, but what you’re decrying is the messiness of freedom. In the bad old days it was powerful institutions and social conventions trampling on people’s rights.
That’s not true. John Wayne, the quintessential strong and silent guy, was punching people who mouthed off left and right. I mean, watch Rio Bravo - he’s shouting at everyone. His acolytes. His love interest. His rancher friend. The hotel manager. The only guy he’s civil to for the whole movie is the villain ! And that’s true of all John Wayne movies : they all star him as a seething ball of barely restrained anger. Hell, his most famous and quoted line is “Somebody oughta belt you in the mouth, but I won’t. I won’t. LIKE HELL I WON’T ! bam”, that’s the time when people were peaceful and well mannered ?
Errr, sorry, but that’s not true. At all. Even if you restrict that statement to the gangsta rap culture, the operative word is “don’t show emotion or pain, or someone will take advantage of it to make you his bitch”. As for the rest of society, you know, us, we do consider people who just blow their tops uncouth. They’re not empowered, and they’re not affirmative. Ghandi was empowered. Saying “No.” is empowering. Losing your shit isn’t enlightened, by definition.
We do realize that keeping one’s feelings bottled up is not a good thing, I’ll grant you that. It’s not a good thing because when you do that, eventually you just snap. Which is what we want to avoid. Hence, the interest in stuff that helps one vent : heavy rock, brutal video games, gangsta rap, a punk pogo, movies with 'splosions. Take your aggression, your frustration and your fear, and release it in a vacuum, where it won’t hurt anyone. Then get on with your day. That’s what’s accepted. That’s what we think is better than the strong, silent type. Wife beaters, murderers, school shooters, violent thugs, what makes you think they’re being celebrated or glorified ? Can you give me one example of that ?
Ever think that maybe we are fucked because we are too conservative? If you compare the US to the rest of the world we are much more conservative; no universal health care, less of a social safety net, more money spent on the military, more religious, less workers’ rights, etc. Yet the US has among the highest rates of incarceration, teenage pregnancy, and drug use.
Maybe we should be more like Northern Europe? Hell, even in the US conservative states are much more fucked up than liberal Massachusetts, Oregon, California, Vermont, and NY.
Getting back to the OP, trying to measure how angry people are in general compared to earlier historical periods is a very complex issue.
But it does seem that various categories of people are angered by different things, and this can evolve over time.
For example, in the 60s, conservatives would get very angry guys with long hair, and nothing, but nothing, made them angrier than the thought of black men having sex with white women. There’s less of that kind of anger now.
Conservatives may be somewhat less angry overall, but there’s still great deal, although it appears to be more of a steady hum of the free-floating kind. It’s less about a reaction to behavior that shocks their individual sensibilities than about the right-wing punditocracy keeping their base perpetually stirred-up.
As for blacks, during the Jim Crow era, they had plenty of good reasons to be angry, but for the most part they acted deferential because they knew how much trouble they’d get into if they expressed their anger.
But more recently they have tended to express an anger level that is out of proportion with any victimization they themselves have experienced. Blacks these days are brought up to be angry, and they frequently point to history and get angry all over again.
I’m not sure about young people in general, though. Their music sure seems to express a lot of anger, but this may be an artistic fad that won’t go away rather than an expression of actual grievances on the part of their generation.
It seems to me that many liberals on this board define “conservative” as “people who approve of things I don’t.” Ditto the conservatives.
Anger, rudeness, and general impoliteness don’t follow party lines, and there’s a lot of ludicrous stereotyping on both sides here.
This is a perfect example. Substitute Protestant for Catholic and make an allowance for cigarettes and a glass of Scotch after work and you just described my father and his definition of conservative.
Have we ever had a more racist political group in this country than the Southern Democrats? Where did this “conservative=racist” meme come from?
And here’s the flip side. I think most liberals favor sex education and distribution of condoms, so the STDs are more the fault of the conservatives. I very much doubt these “viscious criminals” have any political ideology driving them. I’m glad that such adored conservative icons as Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter aren’t “crass and vulgar and classless and feel free to act like assholes to everyone else.”
No. Criticizing the President wasn’t the issue. I didn’t even like Bush and what the Dixie Chicks did pissed me off. Criticize the U.S. government all you want here, but it’s inappropriate to go and tell people in other countries how ashamed you are. We have enough image problems around the world without celebrities trash-talking the government overseas.
This is the first time I’ve heard anything like that. Homophobic? Really? And I may be a bit too young to have experienced the “real” hippie days, but going to high school & college in the 1970s exposed me to a lot of the hippie movement and I never saw anything even remotely misogynistic.
You got that partially right. It was about freedom.
Do have any idea how few self-proclaimed hippies actually ran around naked, put flowers in rifles, or fucked in the mud at music festivals? It was a pretty tiny percentage.
Despite the fact that the words “dirty” or “filthy” seem to be attached to “hippie” an awful lot, I knew a whole lot of well-groomed hippies. They weren’t wearing business suits and ball gowns, but their clothes were clean, they bathed, and their hair was brushed. Sure, there were unwashed stoners flopped on sidewalks, but they were just as likely to be surfers 
There are filthy-rich God-fearing homophobic liberals, and there are drug-crazed abortion-preaching atheist conservatives. I think a lot of Americans need to stand back from their political party and realize that most of these stereotypes are carefully-crafted political B.S.
It’s also MY theory that it’s not so much that there’s more violence and sexual immorality nowadays – it’s just with the advance of mass media, we SEE it more. Had we had CNN since 1900, can you imagine the images from the two WWs that would have come out? Or the Russian Revolution, the Irish rebellion, the early labor movements, etc?
It SEEMS like things are worse just because we’re able to access footage of events around the globe like our parents and grandparents weren’t.
Where did this “Democrat = liberal” meme come from? Southern Democrats were conservative, and a lot of them became Republicans eventually. Many people who profess strong liberal political feelings either don’t particularly identify as Democrats (myself included) or hold their nose and choose Democrat because there’s really no other choice. But please, don’t confuse being a Democrat with being a liberal. There’s overlap by they are by no means synonymous.
The Democratic party has been associated with liberalism since the 1960s, when civil rights legislation was put forward. Likewise, the Republican party has been considered the more conservative party since that time.
Hi, it’s me again.
I tuned out for awhile. It was getting way too contentious.
Okay, okay, anger has been around and will always be around. Anger motivates change not always for the better, but some good things do come out of it. Popular culture is but a mirror, although it seems to me it not only echoes but aggravates at the same time.
Is their any way that we as a society can decide to become more polite? Perhaps to agree that a little emotional control is not always a bad thing? How do we lessen this anger, even if it’s been around since the dawn of time?
Yes, you don’t have to tell me this. However, not all Democrats are liberal. That is also a fact. Also, some people are a hybrid of liberal and conservative ideas, a nuanced concept that is apparently lost on people painting with very broad brushes.
Yoga.
Just saying things doesn’t make them true. You’ve offered no support for this theory - which I find bizarre, as if taken from an alien planet - except John Wayne movies. And you don’t even seem to have seen very many John Wayne movies.
Good God, not again!
Where did this “Southern Democrat=liberal” meme come from? SD’s were among the most conservative people in the country prior to the 1970s. It’s an interesting and complex story of how liberals and conservative basically swapped parties in the mid 20th century.
I’ll grant that most conservatives these days are liberal on matters of race (and as I’ve often asserted, political correctness is a form of conservatism), but there’s no getting around the fact the racism is conservative. It’s a traditional value. The movement for integration and civil rights for minorities was a liberal reform movement and to oppose such a movement on the grounds that it would upset the social order is to hew as close to the definition of “conservative” as you can get.
Nonsense. Remember, the Dixie Chicks said that they were ashamed that Bush was from Texas. As representatives of their state to international music community, the needed to reassure their fans in the land of the Beatles that not all Texans (or country singers) are evil Bushies.
Also remember that hundreds of Britons were subsequently killed as a result of the decision of GWB to go to to war in Iraq, so in a certain sense these weren’t foreigners but fellow subjects of King George.
And the resulting backlash was a bona-fide, dyed-in-the-wool (albeit comparatively minor) example of fascism.
I could have sworn I’ve seen literally hundreds of times when leftie posters on this board make no distinction whatever between conservative/Republican. Given that you guys are in the vast majority around here, and that since one tends to ‘be what they eat’, perhaps the responsibility lies with you guys for the ‘when in Rome’ tendency for conservatives and Republicans around here to paint you with the same broad brush that appears to be de rigueur for you.
But the idea that Republicans are conservative and Democrats are liberal didn’t solidify until after the 60s had played out. So pointing out that Jim Crow era racists tended to belong to the Democratic party back then doesn’t mean they were something other than conservatives.
If you don’t like it when someone does something to you, the polite, well-mannered (read: conservative, in your world) thing to do is NOT do it back, but to correct their error in a reasoned way. Or are you only for politeness and being well-mannered when it’s your opposition in question? Can you chuck your ideals out the window when some yahoo on a message board says something that irritates you? Then I would say your principles aren’t as dearly held as you claim they are.
The other flaw in your reasoning is that American politics have skewed rather sharply right in recent decades. That is, Democrats are in the center, with some being more to the left and some over the center line into moderate conservatism. Most Republicans are firmly on the right side of the spectrum. Barack Obama, who you know I like and support, is not liberal enough for me. He’s on the left side of the center, but not to a great extent. This is why I chortle with great amusement when people say he’s a socialist. He ain’t no socialist, trust me.
If you wish to fight my ignorance, point me to some avowed Republicans who you would say are liberals. There are some Democrats who I could easily point out who are conservative.
Well, like I said, we’ve all been caught up in the assholing of America, and I’ve been affected by it to a certain degree, along with most everyone else. What I champion however, is a society where people are expected to be polite and civil and considerate of one another, not necessarily the Straight Dope Message Board. Having said that however, I’m not infrequenly complimented for my civility and politeness, which seem to be regarded as especially unlikely in the face of my EEVIL Republican/conservative philosophies.
Hah!
The flaw in your reasoning is that you are confusing my view on society with your view of politics. There is no question that American society has become increasingly liberal since the late sixties regardless of which party was in the Oval Office or in control of Congress, and it is the effect of liberalism upon society at large since that time that I am most critical of, with disdain for liberal/Democrat governance a secondary grievance.
Arlen Specter comes readily to mind.
Huh? Politeness is politeness. If you don’t like it when people tar you with some offensively broad brush, don’t do it to other people, regardless of the situation. Or are you saying that, hiding behind anonymity, your value of politeness and civility can be disregarded? Hmmm.
There’s also no question that the Democratic party has become more conservative in the last few decades. What this has to do with my view of politics v. your view of society I have no idea. We were talking about Democrats as liberals, not your view of society, which reminds me, it would be nice if you could have a conversation without dragging your view of society into it…
You have failed to do what you think you did there. A Republican becoming a Democrat does not make him liberal, which is my very POINT. Many Democrats aren’t liberals. Would you say Arlen Specter is a liberal? I wouldn’t. He’s just a Democrat, which might make him more liberal than a Republican, but not actually a liberal either. There are Democrats who are liberals, of course, and some who are conservatives, but this is what I’m arguing: that there are no Republicans who are liberal. Show me a Republican that the average liberal or centrist would agree is an actual liberal. I’m really not trying for a No True Scotsman thing here: you might prove me wrong on this one. I look forward to it.
I thought your question was which Republicans would I call liberal. This seemed to me to be asking which politicians would I consider to be liberal Republicans as contrasted with conventional liberal ideology.
Sorry. I picked up a copy of Christopher Buckley’s new book about the passing of his parents William F. and Pat Buckley (about whom he’s said ‘larger than life doesn’t twice describe them’) and I’m faunching at the bit to get started on it so I’m afraid I’ll have to bid you adieu for now.