Come here to the Bay Area! I feel good in that I don’t know how far I’d have to drive to get to an area represented by a conservative, but it would be pretty far.
Honestly, Stoneberg, I think you poisoned your own thread by voicing your opinions on the issues, rather than asking why it hasn’t been resolved one way or the other.
yeah I agree that the OP’s two questions have been answered clearly and satisfactorily without writing a full blown book on the matter (“Why is that?” is pretty vague and asking for a big drawn out answer). He/She is not accepting what’s been explained for their own personal reasons (i.e: not the answer they were looking for?).
The second one, I mean you may as well replace the “US” part with “Planet Earth”. But they chose to mention the US.
Not only that, but honestly an earlier poster had it right. Why do the Swedes, who collaborated with the Nazis during WWII, think they have a moral superiority over the USA just because they pay high taxes and thus get soclalized medicine in return?
I thought Brevik was in Norway.
I’ve tried reading this a few times, but I honestly don’t understand what kind of message you’re trying to convey. Care to clarify?
The US never resolves these issues because there is a large religious voting block that opposes resolving it, therefore it continues to be an issue.
The Op claims that Sweden has the moral highground over the USA. His main point is that the USA has just a new and untried socialized medical system, but Sweden has a better one. Thus, the USA can’t resolve important issues.
OK, but Sweden was neutral in WWII and traded extensively with the Nazis. Moral highground lost.
And yes, I agree, Sweden has a better socialized medicine system, but they pay dearly for it in the form of extremely high taxes. Thus, it’s just a matter of choices. They made a choice, and they think it is better, but that’s a matter of opinion.
I don’t think it’s the 50 states that fully explains why the Culture War rages so fiercely in the US. There is a national argument taking place over these issues–on cable TV, on the internet, on the presidential campaign trail and in Congress.
It’s really more of an urban/rural divide (I haven’t read the entire thread), and social conservatives are everywhere, with some states simply having preponderance. But I don’t think the OP is about legislation so much as the persistence of controversy over so many issues.
As some of the posters in this thread have demonstrated, Americans are an arrogant people who can’t stand the the idea that anyone can be better than ourselves. And when we associate people acting better-than-us with disagreeing with us on the issues we dig in our heels.
The US became such a successful, dynamic country that Americans developed a highly mythologized view of our history. We’ve achieved great prosperity and were the victorious Good Guys in a series of wars, and many see the divine hand of Providence in the this. Conservatives see “small town” Americans and specifically their “values” as the very embodiment of the stuff that made America great. And there is no separating out biblical fundamentalist beliefs from more relevant values like hard work, entrepenuership or a strong sense of military duty. So to stop believing in the fundamentalist world view is to stop doing the things that made us a great country and we’ll stop being a great country.
I still fail to see what Sweden’s actions seventy years ago has to do with today’s medical systems. Do you also think that anything Germans do today is morally invalidated because of what their grandparents did seventy years ago?
Tu quoque fallacy ftw.
Oh, if he can bring up Sweden’s history in World War II, surely the Swedes can point out our genocide of many American Indian tribes. We used to hunt Indians for sport. There goes OUR moral high ground …
But the Swedes colonized the Delaware River valley before the British got there, and records show they cheated the Indians there (the Lenni Lenape) out of land. Not hunting them for sport, though. Jeez.
I wonder if the history of slavery and our decimation of Native Americans plays any role in the issue raised by the OP. Europeans appear to be responding to the guilt of their violent and oppressive past by being extra-liberal. Perhaps the “Red-Staters” have responded to their collective guilt by wrapping themselves in the Bible. Just a theory.
I never liked “Urban v. Rural” meme.
According to this link, the raw population numbers of “urban” folk outnumber the “rural” folk 4 to 1. That should be sufficient to ramrod any changes via the ballot box.
It’s my impression that the Liberal/Conservative divide is more closely matched than that. So there must be plenty of Urban Conservatives. (As well as educated ones, non-religious ones, etc.)
Try “suburban conservatives.”
I don’t get it. Looking at my link, that would only move another 10%. (Making it a 70/30 split.)
I don’t accept that there are no Urban Conservatives.
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No disagreement on urban conservatives, etc. Despite my reference to “Red-Staters” above, I don’t think the geographic distribution is all that important in terms of how issues play out in the national media.
But I don’t think this thread is about resolving issues through legislation or at the ballot box but whether there’s consensus vs controversy among the population as a whole.