Liberals and Conservatives

[Fried]

Politics in America seem to be grouped by being a liberal or being a conservative. I was just wondering why conservatism seems to be on a rise. From talk radio to cable news channel and even some newspapers there seems to be a shift in America.

[Me$$iah]

Im not gonna bite,

Happy new year y'all

[john m]

You're a bit late. Conservatism has been on the rise for as long as I've been alive.

[jack]

lets see. one says you have to fend for yourself. the other says lets try to help each other. i think i prefer the latter.

[erik]

http://staff.bcc.edu/jalexand/Reading-1 ... etches.htm

[Caravan Ray]

I was just wondering why conservatism seems to be on a rise.

Obesity is also on the rise. And reality television. Obviously, an alien culture has drugged your cheeseburgers to make your people fatter and dumber so that you may be used as a future food source for their intergalactic colonisation programme.

[roymond]

Liberals are the fiscal conservatives these days. Be careful of labels.

[the Jazz]

Roymond is right. There are about a million and one ways to be liberal or conservative... http://www.politicalcompass.org is a cool site to visit, although I'm not suggesting it's any sort of final word on the subject. Just a different way to look at things, perhaps.

Oh and apparently I'm right by Ghandi.

[Caravan Ray]

Roymond is right. There are about a million and one ways to be liberal or conservative... http://www.politicalcompass.org is a cool site to visit, although I'm not suggesting it's any sort of final word on the subject. Just a different way to look at things, perhaps.

Oh and apparently I'm right by Ghandi.

Apparently I'd get on well with the Dalai Lama - although I don't look good in orange.

[jute gyte]

i agree with 15-16 puzzle.

[Poor June]

i was just a lil' away from the ghandi part... social libertarian...

[j$]

The final question of this quiz should be 'It is possbile to reduce political belief systems into leading multiple choice questions with arbitrary choice-boxes.'

By their reckoning, I am at the very bottom of the vertical axis, and smack-bang in the middle of the horizontal axis.

j$

[fodroy]

i was a little down and to the left from the dalai lama.

[mico saudad]

The final question of this quiz should be 'It is possbile to reduce political belief systems into leading multiple choice questions with arbitrary choice-boxes.'

By their reckoning, I am at the very bottom of the vertical axis, and smack-bang in the middle of the horizontal axis.

j$

hear hear

[Fried]

The final question of this quiz should be 'It is possbile to reduce political belief systems into leading multiple choice questions with arbitrary choice-boxes.'

By their reckoning, I am at the very bottom of the vertical axis, and smack-bang in the middle of the horizontal axis.

j$

Isn't that we just did with the presidential election? So I guess to answer you, YES!

[Kapitano]

Apparantly I'm like Ghandi, but an anarchist. Odd that Chomsky isn't on the list, 'cos I'd be near him.

Half the questions were meaningless generalisations. The other half were also meaningless generalisations.

A more useful test would be 'How confused are your politics?'

[sparks]

Isn't that we just did with the presidential election? So I guess to answer you, YES!

Don't be fooled! Underneath all that similarity, there is a miniscule amount of distinction that we are apparently supposed to guess at.

Like ah, let's see... running Democrats -say- they oppose gay marriage, but it's okay, it's just a facade for votes. Similarly, Democratic candidates -say- they support the war in Iraq, but come on, we know, right?

Similarly, Republicans -say- they want to ban abortion outright, and... er, wait... okay, Republicans -say- they want to spread democracy by intervention, but they really... er, wait...

You know, I never thought I'd say it, but the Republicans are the only ones with the security of position to say exactly what they want.

To answer the original question, though, I would have to point to the ever-continuing sine curve of political opinion. It's either generational, or a reactive response that leads the population from one extreme to another, a "backlash effect", right? Generally speaking, the trend is toward liberalism--that's rather the definition of liberalism, from a certain perspective. But I don't think anyone wants to have to look on that grand of a scale to get the answer they want...

[Daj Werkenhorse 1]

Ever since the 1940s or so, The Left AND The Right have been moving farther to the right. There were times back in the day (before the Red Scare) that Democrats were close to being communist/socialist.

Funny how things change.

[sparks]

I'd say the period you're describing was full of extremes to the left and right, both of which tempered themselves dramatically in the twenty or thirty years to follow. Unrest of the magnitude you see with the two World Wars (coupled with an international depression) does tend to promote extreme politics.

And I think it's fair to say that most of the communist movement in the United States in the 1930s was the direct result of the Great Depression. The Red Scare was in action after the first war too, remember.


Extremes aside, liberalism of one sort or another (not necessarily to be confused with the modern concept of political liberalism) has gained slow and steady momentum since whenever you'd like to say its inception would have been (for easy reference and to avoid going back indefinitely, I suppose you could say the Enlightenment). It's a clumsy statement, but relatively defensible.

[Daj Werkenhorse 1]

I get what you're saying, but you feel liberalism is on a steady rise? It feels like it's dying. I mean, even here in Oregon gay marriage was banned (I hate that it happened, I personally voted against the ban).

I know that's only one thing, and you can't base the idea of declining liberalism on that, but after this last election, I just feel really let down. But that's me personally: I hate having a stupid president who cares more about money than world policy.

[sparks]

Gay marriage being banned seems pretty obvious to me as a response to a steady rise in liberalism. Look at it this way--what would've happened thirty years ago if the issue of gay marriage came to the forefront of politics? Do you think we would have been surprised to see a 75/25 split against it then? Fifty years ago?

Just because the political atmosphere of the US is more conservative than it was a few years ago doesn't mean very much, does it? And all that argument aside, I'm talking about historically--generationally. An upward curve doesn't always go straight up.

[NeilThrun]

I think the idea of conservatism on the rise is silly. First off its not on the rise everywhere. Compare Madison,WI to Boston to Atlanta. To say that either conservatism or liberalism is on the rise is silly.

Also how does this rise in conservatism compare over the age demographics? Does it matter if Liberalism or Conservatism is on the rise in 90 year olds, since they'll die soon? Does it matter among 10 year olds, they'll most likely change their views before they hit puberty.

And how does one decide what is liberal and what is conservative. Both ideas are realative to the middle. With no official codex of liberal fallings or conservative risings, I think claiming that liberalism or conservatism is rising. Its not like the ocean, we cant just look at the moon and determine the tide.