Do you think there is, on average, a personality difference between Conservatives and Liberals?

They both have their flakes. An average liberal and an average conservative is a normal person with their own views. Being too liberal or too conservative makes a person a flake and very much annoying. It’s hard to label a person a liberal or conservative because most people have views that are on both sides of the fence.

Yes.

At base, conservatives are afraid of change and what is different, while liberals are not.

I agree with Mikewlf337.

I’ll say that for far right conservatives and far left liberals, there are differences. I don’t know any far right conservatives, so I can’t comment on them. Far left liberals however are incredibly smug and arrogant and convinced that they are so much smarter than everyone else. They encourage people to be open minded while closing their own minds to any opinion other than their own, and love to trot out the latest trendy cause to try and feel superior to others and paint themselves as some kind of saint for powerwashing a decades old depiction of a Native chief off the side of a building.

In my experience your personality has almost nothing to do with it. It seems to be whichever “side” gets to you first has the most influence, and you may develop into your own over time.

are confusing personalities and ideologies? The two aren’t necessarily the same. The “off the hook extremes” may mash their personalities and ideologies into one cause. Thankfully most people don’t let thier personalities get wrapped up in their politics…or do they?

I think there is. For now I would have to say it’s the fiscally conservative vs the non fiscally conservative. That’s the personality difference. Basically different ideas about how to handle money.

@woodcutter ideologies shape personalities and vice versa. I would say it’s impossible to separate the two in a conversation like this.

@ninjacolin well I suppose what one’s definition of “on average” means to them. A person who is a dyed in the wool whatever, is bound to be able to label others accordingly and split them into different groups. It could be part of the origins of intolerance, doncha think?

I don’t know. But what I have seen is friends from the right tend to be very black and white. There are good guys and bad guys. There are right actions and wrong actions. This makes it easy for them to plow ahead in life and stay focused. Friends from the left tend to be indecisive and see things in shades of gray. All things could go either way depending on circumstances. So yes, this is a wrong when this type of person behaves this way but OK when another person behaves this way because of their background and point of reference. Etc. Never ran into issues with either type but I am kind of in the middle so I always see multiple sides.

I think that empathy is a key difference between the two. I’m not saying that Conservatives are heartless, but it seems that when they try to help, they prefer to do so in a calculating, impersonal (and often ineffective) way as they are often only really concerned with people in general insofar as the well-being of the people affects the well-being of the Republic. Liberals, on the other hand, generally don’t care so much about the country as they do about the people in it.

That is why you don’t see many Conservative Democrats or Liberal Republicans.

Great question. If you look up the word conservative in the dictionary then think about the political right in America today, you will see that there really aren’t many conservatives left. They have been marginalized as RINOs or purged from the Republican Party, What we have now are reactionaries, regressives, revolutionaries, and anti-Federalists. They are a diverse lot and I am certain that if they seize power, they will set immediately to fighting among themselves to establish which particular far-right movement is right. But one unifying thread is they are typically fearful of otherness. They often come from homes where they were told to beware of strangers and those people that “are not like us.” Much of the vehement vitriol of their rhetoric, and the references to guns and 2nd amendment remedies comes from this base of paranoia and fear of a world full of otherness that can’t be controlled without force.

For a great view into the mind of the right wing authoritarian followers and a chilling insight into what makes an authoritarian leader; see Dr. Robert Altemeyer’s pioneering book, The Authoritarians. It’s available as a free PDF download and is definitely enlightening. It documents decades of research he has done on the topic.

I don’t know…no good with politics. To me it seems like ideas we created, but both (and other political stuff.) seem more or less fueled by the same kinds of things.

I have read that liberals score higher on IQ tests. Really

Of course there is no way to generalize, but, I’d say the names sort of speak for themselves.
I’m a liberal apolitical, howzat. ;-)

To toss a couple of easily understood words out, I’d say Anal vs. free spirited thinkers.

But, we are all, far too complex to categorize, ultimately.

Running, ducking…..they call her the breeze

Do you think there is, on average, a personality difference between Conservatives and Liberals?
Ya, sure. Liberals have one.

My friend Sally likes the line “Anyone under 30 who isn’t a liberal hasn’t got a heart. Anyone over 30 who isn’t a conservative hasn’t got a brain.”

The right beleives in doing it their self while the left thinks the government should do it. Was surprised to learn middle class conservatives give more to charity than anyone else.

This question arises out of something I wrote on my previous question about what it means when people say, “I want my country back.” I was talking to a colleague today about this and at some point we started talking about the spitting rage that Conservative pundits often serve up over the airwaves, and wondered why there were so few liberals who did the same thing. Why don’t liberals get spitting, slaveringly angry nearly as often as conservatives do?

He said there was a study about this. The researchers were looking at the effect of losing on testosterone and cortisol levels. Most people, it turns out, have reduced testosterone and cortisol levels when they lost (say their team loses or they get fired or their political candidate loses). However, conservative cortisol and testosterone levels rise after a specific kind of loss: the loss of their political candidate.

So conservatives get much more angry in response to political losses. Liberals have lower testosterone and cortisol when their candidate loses. They lose affect and get depressed.
I don’t know why there is this difference. It would be interesting to offer a theory or two. Perhaps conservatives have higher testosterone levels in general. Perhaps having higher levels make it easier for people to flip out. Whether testosterone increases a desire to affiliate with conservatives, or being conservative raises your testosterone level, I have no idea.

Perhaps it’s a whole lifestyle and life choices thing. More of a willingness to fight or take tough responses to just about anything they don’t like. I’m just speculating. But I do think there is a general character difference between conservatives and liberals.

I think it fits together with many of the other things people have said. Conservatives tend to see things more in terms of right and wrong. No shades of grey. They are more likely to come from families where the father was the ruler of the household, and what he said went. They learned to follow orders, except it was called “respect for authority.”

Conservatives believe in the personal responsibility idea—at least as far as the government is concerned. They want to help others, but prefer to do it through charity. I think this is because they would rather choose who they support, then give it to a government whose choices they are suspicious of.

Now both liberals and conservatives believe in personal responsibility and in entrepreneurialism. But their personalities differ here, too. Conservatives are more likely to go for a winner-takes-all situation, instead of working on compromise where both sides win. Conservatives would win at any cost. Liberals want to negotiate. The conservative is very inflexible. Right is right. Wrong is wrong.

Liberals don’t believe in right and wrong. So they are willing to fudge things in every situation. Conservatives see this as evidence that Liberals have no values.

There’s lots more, of course. But I think there are distinct personality types and that conservatives and liberals can easily make each other feel very uncomfortable. It’s a kind of visceral thing, I think—at least, for some of us.

There are, also, people in the middle. I’m not sure how Conservatives see them, but I think liberals tend to wonder how they can be in the middle. Don’t they have values? Or are they apathetic? Often they don’t seem to think ideas and policy matter. Like it doesn’t relate to them.

That’s a personality type, too. I think centrists are more focused on “what’s in it for me?” They don’t think the public sector matters, so they want to stay focused on their own lives and not on big ideas. They probably go along to get along more. Then again, there are also centrists who seem quite alienated. They express it as both extremes being corrupt and unwilling to listen, but in their lives, I think they feel powerless.

Enough for now. I hope this has stimulated some thought—either giving people ideas, or making people mad (mostly conservatives will get mad, if I’m right).

Yep, rigidity vs. fluidity.

The conservative say’s ’ my way or the highway’, the liberal say’s ’ lets build a new road.’

@wundayatta conservative-ish here and I find your theory to be interesting and far from making me mad.

Personally, with the exception of radicals and extremists, I feel that there is no difference. My more standard/set/basic/strong personality is similar to friends I know who are mildly liberal, strongly liberal, and strongly conservative. We are all pretty patient, free thinking, open to new ideas, and hard to anger and they all have very similar moral standards and all of them seem to hold true to them as well. (I’m probably the only one among them who is questionable due to my antics and nihilistic beliefs).

Just as with any ideology there are certain personality traits that, if possessed, will persuade the person in question towards that ideology. For example, if I’m emotionally vulnerable but enjoy being around people I’m more likely to be convinced to join a sect than if I were very emotionally stable but an introvert.

In the case of extreme political stances the two opposing sides tend to be perceived, based on my experience, as follows:

Far Right: Bigoted, heartless pricks
Also, realistic, responsible and hard working.

Far Left: Naive, elitist pussies
Also, empathic, reasonable and educated.

I apologise for the crude language, but I wanted to give a realistic depiction of people’s perceptions and my friends have quite a diverse set of political views so harsh insults, when describing opposing ideologies, are not above them. All the same, it’s evident that there is some fashion of ostensible difference in personality between those who favour differing political stances.

@Nially_Bob

I like it!

@wundayatta I agree with all your points except the statement that “Liberals don’t believe in right and wrong.” I certainly believe in right and wrong. I strongly feel that what the Arizona shooter did was WRONG. I understand he may be schizophrenic and thus perhaps not able to control himself, but that doesn’t make killing 6 people including a 9 year old girl

I don’t see every issue in a pure black vs. white way, which I notice a lot of right wingers do. I can see nuances and subtlties to many questions. But that is far from saying anything goes and there is no such thing as right and wrong. I frankly don’t know eny liberals, even those that are on the extreme, who have no standards of right or wrong. I think only the mentally unhinged would fall into that camp.

@Nially_Bob The far right strikes me as reality proof rather than realistic. This last year is tied with 2005 as the warmest year since climate records have been kept globally. 9 of the top 10 hottest years came in this decade. We are experiencing worldwide weather events of biblical proportions. Australia has a flood now covering an area the size of Germany and France together. Nearly 350 are dead from mudslides in Brazil. 600,000 people have been displaced in Indonesia. The US West coast was inundated and Texas and Nashville flooded this year. Near record snows, as predicted by climate change, have struck the US, Europe and Russia. And yet right wingers will swear that we are cooling down and that we should go right on polluting as usual, and even “drill baby drill.” I don’t call that realistic or responsible.

Phillip K. Dick said. “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” Few liberals would quarrel with that. Those of the far right do not see it that way. Ideology trumps facts for them. In their view, if the facts don’t fit their ideology, then obviously the facts are wrong.

I think that any summary given by any of us on the differences in the personalities of liberals and conservatives will blatantly show off our own biases.

Fluther’s liberals will say that conservatives are afraid of change, racist, tote the party line, hateful, and so on, and Fluther’s conservatives will say that liberals are wishy-washy, lack values, are wimps, are hypocrites, etc.

All of which are opinion based.

In that case, I’ll let Michael Shermer, editor of Skeptic magazine sum it up for me, more or less.

@Season_of_Fall Was surprised to learn middle class conservatives give more to charity than anyone else. that’s because they got all the money and liberals have either; given all theirs away, or don’t want to ride piggy back on the working class.

i think some people on the left think that Conservatism is a disease that demands eradication, i’m not sure that is sensible, but certainly it is a problem that needs addressing in the interests of Cosmic justice. This isn’t really a fault of conservatism in it’s purist sense, it is the fact the conservative electorate have been seduced by unwholesome forces, playing on their insecurities, both sexual and material. in order to gather support for their global ambitions, it seems to me that the left have to try and draw their attention to this point, it is exasperating though, dealing with that level of mental constipation..

Actually it irritates me no end that the American religious right have made such a horrible mess of the Christian faith, that most rational people are driven to atheism or either anti-theism in disgust. The latter being quite a sinister prospect and actually used to justify the military intervention of Afghanistan.

@wundayatta Maybe in the right wing, I hate to use the word conservative for my comment here, there are more muscle guys? More people who do blue collar, physical work, with less education? And, the Dems have more medium build educated people? So, the people likely to be Republicans are likely to have more testosterone? I say this, but in the back of my mind there are certainly minority groups in the Democratic party who are likely to be blue collar workers, and many factories are full of democrats. I don’t know if the study looked at these sorts of things? People tend to follow group behavior, so if everyone around them is a Democrat, they are probably more likely to be a Democrat, so certain careers, and certain communities tend to be more one way than another politically.

My experience is my friends towards the middle, even if they identify with the other party, are very similar to me. As we get out towards the extremes we can see more differences. Both extremes seem pretty sure they are right, and can be obnoxious, intolerant, and angry.

I think if I generalize I see more differences between the very religious, and the not so religious. The religious tend to think more black and white, good and evil, fire and brimstone.

@JLeslie there was a time i guess, when the working class, were very much under the influence of the left wing, maybe that is an overly idealistic retrospective, certainly in the developing western industrialised nations the anxieties of that demographic was ruthlessly exploited by the far right, who ceaselessly play upon their deepest anxieties and prejudices for political support. The capitalist elite and the ruling class eventually realised, they can no longer ignore the working class; the proletariat, the Bolshevik, the peasant labourer, the petit bourgeoisie, they have to win them over, or it’s game over.

George Lakoff’s Moral Politics : How Liberals and Conservatives Think offers some observations not unlike Shermer’s.

I find it annoying that so many liberals think that liberals are more educated than conservative when I know a ton of highly educated conservatives. Alot of biased conclusions and gross generalizations here.

@mammal, You rewrote it correctly but did you miss the middle in middle class in that statement. @wundayatta, your right I would much rather give my money to organizations that I know are doing trench work charity without waste, greed, and misuse of my funds. A Government, with either political party, which is wrought with typical human nature toward corruption. laissez-faire!!! @mammal, I would like to see you sit down in front of my wife and make your argument, watching you make your generalization to her, while we are struggling financially because I refuse to let go of or reduce the pay of my workers in my small five person company. It boils down to a perspective on human nature. You all are so hell bent to get any reference of God out of everything that your throwing a standard of human decency (I call these morals), out also. But what really flabbergast me is how absolutely perspective centric you are. How you all are soo profoundly convinced that you are so right and we are so wrong.

If I am so black and white why do I believe both sides are needed to make our country great while I’m getting from you that all conservatives need to shut up and get our of your way.

Most of you have not even had an inkling to say what is common between us. I too want a world where children are fed, no abuse or violence is dispensed (physical, emotional or verbally), where all humanity can pursue life liberty and the pursuit of happiness, where no one is taken advantage of by greed. Lasting good for all of humanity.

I am being as ignorant as you throwing my generalizations at you, but please realize this is what I’m getting from my vantage point. Not all the people on this page are like this but why are we arguing rather than rolling up our sleeves and getting at the goals that we hold common.

Wouldn’t it be something profound if we were talking about win win scenorios and how we could work together to bring change. Talk about what we agree on and where we can find common ground rather than digress into a name call match. There are things liberals do better and perspective they hold that are better, but there are also things that conservatives do better and perspective they hold that are better.

Other countries give us examples of complete social states, and they are either broken or moving back toward capitalism. I’m not arguing for capitalism, no, Im arguing for balance. Balance of beliefs and common cooperation with tolerance and repect for each other.

This comment is a huge generalization, I know, and I’m sure it’ll draw criticism from the Conservatives among us… but in the media, at least, Conservatives seem to be outwardly much angrier and more abusive with their language, more polarizing… while Libs seem to have a better sense of humor.

@Austinlad, I think it’s whoever isn’t “in power” and right now the conservatives are feeling defensive. When conservative candidates are in power I don’t hear plenty of sharp nasty criticism from liberals.

@mammal I think the religious rights movement to the Republican party changed some of the dynamic of the working class being aligned with the left. I also think the right has effectively spoken to the working class regarding hatred of paying taxes to support people who are a waste in their minds. They tied it with a bow, by making giving personal charity a Godly thing, but money to taxes to help others evil. I see this blatently in the south, but I also have friends from PA, Jersey, and a little more west, who have very similar attitudes. They definitely tend to have a build that would suggest plenty of testosterone. My whole paragraph there was total stereotyping I realize, but I am not trying to paint a broad brush, just telling you my personal experience with specific individuals.

The Republicans have plenty of highly educated, white collar people in the party. I think if they are northerners, big business types, my guess they are less to get all angry and stirred up about disagreement in politics, but I might be completely wrong. Again, I am going on the people I know. Those men I am thinking of, these northern Republicans I describe, are likely less religious and interact with a variety of people every day.

@Mikewlf337

“I find it annoying that so many liberals think that liberals are more educated than conservative when I know a ton of highly educated conservatives. Alot of biased conclusions and gross generalizations here.”

It’s only a “gross generalization if it’s not supported by the data. And the assertion that liberals are, as a whole, more educated, is well-supported by the data, such as this study by the well-respected Pew Trust, which found that 46% of liberals had a college education, as compared to 25% of conservatives. They also found that 19% of liberals were non-religious compared to 3% of conservatives.

So yes, you can know college-educated conservatives, as one in four has a college education. No one is stating that none of them do.

This is a very interesting topic, at least as it pertains to the information @wundayatta has come across regarding testosterone levels. (Most of this thread is just liberals and conservatives pissing each other off with the usual assertions, factual or not).

@wundayatta Do you have a link to this study? To really discuss this from any sort of substantive micro/macro sociological perspective, I need to understand how the study was conducted. I always approach these studies with a very skeptical eye, looking for flaws in controls or unconvincing conclusions. Should the study prove highly inconclusive/incomplete, there is little to discuss in the way of personalities of these “types” of individuals.

I’ve been thinking about this on and off since I saw @wundayatta‘s post about it on the other thread, and without knowing who they studied, I can only guess about it. Did they compare extreme right to extreme left? Moderate left to extreme right? Vice versa? Were the political philosophies of the individuals “scored” and then attempts made to normalize extreme views? Most importantly, were only males studied (I’d imagine so, but maybe not).

I’d be surprised if, assuming the study was done convincingly, that extremists on either side would be significantly different. Also, I’d guess the moderate left to moderate right have similar personalities, grading out as one gets further from the center.

We know hormones influence behavior. I wonder if the study suggests increased hormonal levels result in clouded judgment, resulting in extremism. But this is sort of a chicken and egg thing.

@cockswain I would also guess that more moderate members of both sides also have similar personalities.

@cockswain I agree we need to know more about the study. How many partcipants, is it truly a fair crossection, etc.

Im conservative, we contribute to the homeless shelter, my wife teaches ballet to under priviledge children for free. I pay taxes and am proud to do so. I have a small five person company, everyone and everything gets paid before me, we are just below water on making it but I havent let anyone go nor lower pay. I offer profit splits in my company, Come on lefties (said with affection) what else, how do the conservative generalization fit me?

@crisw Oh really? To bad I know that study to be untrue. I live in a part of the country that is for the most part conservative and most people here have a college education. So I refer your posted links as biased garbage made by people who are biased. I don’t need to prove anything to a person like you because your opinion has no weight on the world. Most people go to college these days and that includes conservatives. Conservatism is a politically view and to judge a persons education on a political views and religious views is nothing more than arrogant. You have a high opinion on yourself and that is something that pisses me off about liberals. Liberals like to say they have an open mind but are very upset when they hear someone who disagrees with them. When I said annoying flakes on both sides of the fence. That is exactly what I am talking about. I don’t believe everything that is posted on the internet or studied by a smug person. Research and studies can be biased. you can’t study every singe person in the world so I can take everything you say and every link you post with a grain of salt.

By the way. You say liberals embrace change. Change is not always good. Change can be good or bad. Why do we all have to change to what you think we should be? I know why because you are smug and arrogant and feel that your views are perfect and ours are flawed.

@crisw I agree the Pew Research Center is a trusted and respected institute. The conclusion of the data you provided goes against large generalizations of dividing the nation into liberal and conservative camps. That was the researchers conclusion, not mine.

If you would please, explain something to me about the demographics poll and your conclusion. The survey was of 2,000 people. Based on six questions, these 2,000 were sorted int four categories based on combinations of socially liberal or conservative and economically liberal or conservative. The four catagories were populist (conservative socially and liberal economically), liberal, conservative and libertarian (conservative economically and liberal on social issue).

These four catagories combined accounted for 58 percent of the 2000 people surveyed. Populist at 16 percent, Liberal at 18 percent, conservative at 15 percent and libertarian at 9 percent. This is because another 42 percent were ambivalent or “included people with a mixture of views, or who declined to offer opinions on several of the six questions in the test; this large non-ideological group (42%) is labeled the “ambivalents,” according to the research.

Based on all this, the demographics portion of the poll shows in all 27 percent of the 2000 surveyed are college grads, 24 percent had some college and 49 percent had a high school or less educational experience.

Of these 27 percent as a whole who Pew identified as liberatarians, 30 percent were college graduates. Of the 27 percent who graduated college, 25 percent of the conservatives, 22 percent of the ambivalents, 48 percent of the liberals and 16 percent of the populists graduated high school.

Am I reading this correctly?

@Mikewlf337 Pew Research Center is actually considered to be pretty unbiased and is nonpartisan.

@Winters Ok then I was wrong about Pew Research Center. I still however don’t believe that study. Why? Because for that to be accurate you would have to ask everyone not just a set number of people. I know it not to be true.

@Season_of_Fall I am going to assume you are a Republican, why are you with that party? What part of being a conservative or Republican draws you to identify with them?

@Mikewlf337 neither do I, just thought it was in need of a little clarification about how biased they are.

I think I found the study. Stressful politics: Voters’ cortisol responses to the
outcome of the 2008 United States Presidential
election. I’ll be interested to see what you think about it, methodologically and substantively. The person who told me about it was increasing the significance of the report, but that’s what we all do, I think. I just couldn’t get a sense of how representative it was.

I am laissez-faire. I grew up with a single mother, with state assistance at times. She had to raise the last four of eight of us. I entered adulthood with nothing and no advantages. I put myself through college and now own my own business. I believe in God and beleive society with out him will decline in moral faberic and come to ruine. I beleive the state of our schools are evidence of this. I beleive Reagan was one of the last great presidents we have had. I believe most young people like the progressive attitude of the democratic party but were not around to remember the state of this country in 1979, to date no lower points across the board. Didn’t spell check Im at work and need to get back to it.

@wundayatta Excellent, it will take me a while to digest. I’ll post my thoughts at some point.

@jerv That would be my guess too. If I was to put forth a hypothesis with no data, I’d guess that any distance from center would have similarities, then the extremes would have similarities as well. I’m picturing a graph of a bell curve of sorts.

Just at an immediate glance, there may not be a large enough sample size. I also worry, just at a glance, that they didn’t study enough of a geographical distribution. But I understand, budgets and resources are limited. It may prove a good point, or as many studies do, point to the need for a larger study involving several thousand subjects.

1.1. Subjects
Data were collected from 80 participants (27 men) in Durham, NC and from 103 participants (34 men) in Ann Arbor, MI.
Eleven Durham participants’ data and nine Ann Arbor participants’ data were omitted from the analyses, because theydid not vote in the election or failed to complete all aspects
of the experiment.
The final Durham sample (N = 69) consisted of 24 men and 45 women (21.07 ! 0.46 years old).
The final Ann Arbor sample (N = 94) consisted of 33 men and 61
women (21.12 ! 0.49 years old).

Three subjects who voted for third-party presidential candidates were excluded from
statistical analyses.

Subjects were recruited through flyers that were posted throughout the two communities as well as through university subject pools for both course credit and payment.

In Ann Arbor, 17 participants voted for McCain and 75 voted for Obama and in Durham, 12 participants voted for McCain and 56 voted for Obama. Thus, in both study sites,
exactly 18% of participants voted for McCain and 82% voted for Obama.

@Mikewlf337 It is a long accepted scientific technique to make conclusions about the overall population based on a sample of that population. Most scientists report their results with a measure of confidence that their sample does replicate the overall population. To say they did not survey the entire population is a reason to disbelieve the study goes against all of the scientific evidence assembled since statistical techniques first began to be used.

And @Winters you don’t even give a reason for disbelieving the study. I would like it if people used a higher standard of argument in this conversation than to just assert prejudices without admitting they are prejudices. A number of people have admitted to prejudice, and I don’t have a problem with that. It’s just when you act as if you are saying something valuable when it is unsupported and based on your (unacknowledged) prejudice, that I weary of it. It’s just flapping mouths at that point. I know we can do better.

I understand that it is easy to get into stating our prejudices, and that is definitely part of the conversation. However, difficult as this may be, I would like to challenge you to identify parts of political beliefs that might be associated with personality types. We might ask ourselves how we became whatever it is we are.

Then ask things like is selfishness associated with one and generosity with another, as we have been, with unclear results. It seems like there is a different kind of generosity and selfishness associated with the farther ends of the spectrum we are talking about. I might draw the conclusion that conservatives prefer that their generosity be a personal choice and personally directed.

Liberals might think that it’s not really a personal choice. We are all in this together. Therefore we should use public policy and taxation as a way to be generous. This might reflect personality types. Perhaps conservative don’t trust groups as much. They prefer to have control in their own hands. Maybe liberals don’t trust individuals to do the right thing, and prefer us all to act collectively as that is the fairest way to go.

Based on this, liberals might look a conservatives and accuse them of supporting inequality and unfairness. Conservatives might look at liberals and accuse them of taking power away from individuals’ hands because they think they know better.

Ok, that’s part of the rhetoric we see in the real world. But behind it, is there the same desire—to help people who need it—but different ways of going about it, or is there something else behind each ways motivations? Perhaps conservatives want to keep more money for themselves. That’s why they want individual control. Perhaps liberals don’t really care for people, so they want to do it through taxation so they don’t actually have to see the poor, or whatever.

And if you can bring in data or research about your point of view—all the better.

@wundayatta similar to @Mikewlf337 I don’t trust sample surveys all that much.

@Winters Why don’t you trust sample surveys? I could see having a problem with a small sample size, but if the study suggest reason to invest in a larger one, would you still have issue with it?

@wundayatta To sample a small portion of the population and study them to make a conclusion on the rest of the population is very inaccurate and pretty much pointless.

@cockswain 2,000 people for this sort of survey is a very very small sample at best, thus IMO very unreliable.

2000 samples showing salival cortisol levels in conjunction with grading their political beliefs on a spectrum would be very unreliable? Even if you took 100 people from 20 locations? Could you elaborate why?

@Mikewlf337

“To sample a small portion of the population and study them to make a conclusion on the rest of the population is very inaccurate”

Can you point out any significant particular statistical problem with this study? As others have said, researchers routinely make conclusions from data sets. There are sophisticated statistical tools that can inform you, quite accurately, about the validity of conclusions from any data set.

Frankly, you are acting like a conservative here :>) You are being presented with a piece of data that contradicts your world view, and, rather than accepting the data for what it is, you’re reflexively lashing out at it and refusing to believe that it may be true. Isn’t that an example of the fear of and resistance to change that conservatives are said to have?

For the record, here’s a short lecture outline on survey sampling statistics. You probably need some knowledge of basic stats to make much sense of it, but it shows that well-designed small surveys yield results that are accurate and that, after a point, more respondents doesn’t mean significantly more accuracy.

So, help me with this. 540 of the 2000 surveyed were college graduates. Of the 540, 259.2 were liberals who had graduated college. Of the remaindor of the 540 who were not liberals 502.2 were college graduates. What am I putting in wrong?

@bkcunningham

I am not really sure what, exactly, you’re getting at. What’s your question about the data? What are you trying to show with your calculations?

Where are people getting the number 2000 from? The sample size appears to be under 200 by my understanding. I’m only getting this from the “subjects” section of the paper, which I pasted above.

@crisw I posted a question earlier and it clarifies the sampling into the groups. The thing that confuses me is how the ambivalents fit into the demographic poll.

@cockswain

“Where are people getting the number 2000 from?”

Two studies are being discussed here- the cortisol study and the Pew survey. The latter had 2000 respondents.

The Pew survey provides nothing on the size of the confidence interval used or confidence level, which in turn makes it unreliable, or shows that they used a very large confidence interval (I’ll trust that they remained within 95–99% on the confidence level) which in turn means that the truth could easily lay way below or way above the the obtained results.

@bkcunningham

“The thing that confuses me is how the ambialents fit into the demographic poll.”

Again, I’m not quite sure what you’re asking. Fit in what way?

@crisw You simply accept that study because you want to. You can’t sample a small portion of the population to come to conclussion of the entire population.

@crisw Thanks, I was on the cortisol study only.

You know, considering how controversial the Pew study is, do you think the study should be repeated on, say 10,000, or even 50,000 subjects? Difficult to obtain funding I suppose, but this poll is brought up and debated so often it would be nice to make it more difficult to pick apart.

@Winters

The Pew methodology remains pretty consistent across studies; you can read about it here. There is some good info there on their sampling sizes and sampling error.

“We report a margin of sampling error for the total sample for each survey and sometimes for key subgroups (e.g., registered voters, Democrats, Republicans, etc.). For example, the sampling error for a typical Pew Research Center for the People & the Press national survey of 1500 completed interviews is plus or minus 3 percentage points with a 95% confidence interval. This means that in 95 out of every 100 samples of the same size and type, the results we would obtain will vary by no more than plus or minus 3 percentage points from the result we would get if we could interview every member of the population. Thus, the chances are very high (95 out of 100) that any sample we draw will be within 3 points of the true population value.”

I agree the sample size is way too small. I think samples are a legitimate way to draw conclusions, but this study is interesting but not valid in my opinion. Plus Ann Arbor and Durham are not representative of many states in the US in my opinion. Both are near highly respected universities. It doesn’t mention race, demographic, religion, unless I missed it, which I think would influence results. Or, I mean I am very interested to know if you break the groups down among several different lines, if the results change, depending on which characteristic you pick out among the participants.

@Mikewlf337

“You can’t sample a small portion of the population to come to conclussion of the entire population.”

Again- why do you say this? What data do you have to back you up, and what statistical methodology are you using to draw this conclusion?

@cockswain

“You know, considering how controversial the Pew study is, do you think the study should be repeated on, say 10,000, or even 50,000 subjects? ”

No. Again, if you study basic statistics, you’ll see why. After a point, you get diminishing returns- more sampling doesn’t make your conclusion any more significantly accurate. And, again, you can analyze your data set and see just how accurate your conclusions are.

@crisw The united states has a population of over 380,000,000. 2,000 people are a small fraction and doesn’t speak for everyone. It also depends on the area. If you go into San Francisco where there are more liberals than conservative then most people who are liberal. Go into Cincinnati and more people will be conservative. Not to mention that most people don’t even know if they are liberal or conservative. Like my original post most have a mix of both. Not everyone is a bleeding heart annoyance.

@Mikewlf337 Samples are not about speaking for everyone, it just shows statistical likelihood or tendencies. I am not saying this particular study is valid or not, just saying sampling a population has value.

@crisw I have the chart in front of me from the Pew Research Poll. The Demographics of Ideological Groups. Maybe I’m totally misunderstanding something and that is why I was asking if you can help me understand.

Let me start again. The ambivalents were the majority of the 2000. Is there any way we can know if they fit any of the other four categories and be counted in the percentages. I just took it that they didn’t answer certain questions but could have been more liberal or conservative leaning on the six questions if they had answered. They are an unknown somehow and I just wondered how they fit into equation of liberals are more educated.

The survey was of 2,000 people. Based on six questions, these 2,000 were sorted int four categories based on combinations of socially liberal or conservative and economically liberal or conservative. The four catagories were populist (conservative socially and liberal economically), liberal, conservative and libertarian (conservative economically and liberal on social issue).

These four catagories combined accounted for 58 percent of the 2000 people surveyed. Populist at 16 percent, Liberal at 18 percent, conservative at 15 percent and libertarian at 9 percent. This is because another 42 percent were ambivalent or “included people with a mixture of views, or who declined to offer opinions on several of the six questions in the test; this large non-ideological group (42%) is labeled the “ambivalents,” according to the research.

@crisw I have studied that and understand what you’re saying. But my career has led me to find smaller sample sizes work for more similar populations, like bacteria. Humans come from such a diverse variety of backgrounds that I do fear that 2000 people, although it casts light on a statistically significant trend, hasn’t proven the trend conclusively. I understand that increasing sample size could approach a limit, but possibly this study should have a larger sample size per geographical area.

I’m not disagreeing with you though. I don’t apply stats frequently, only occasionally, so maybe you can explain my problem. I’m going to read the methodology of how Pew conducts it’s survey in the link you posted so I can understand it better. Maybe then it will be clear to me why you don’t think extending the study would serve a purpose, but it isn’t yet.

Note that alot of liberals become conservative and vice versa so that study is inaccurate.

@crisw OK, I read the link. Particularly the info regarding probability sampling, sample size, and data weighing. I also read exactly what you pasted above. I do agree that increasing sample size will not yield a significant change in the trend of this study. Pew employs PhD statisticians, and although some claim stats are smoke and mirrors, that opinion is based on not studying statistics and having the probabilities proven to them. I’m not a stud statistician, and can barely recall what a Bayesian is, but your link reminded me of a lot of fundamental stuff I’d let leak out.

So increasing the sample size should reveal the same trend. The power of stats allows them to study a smaller size than the whole population and reach a 95% confidence interval.

Therefore I have faith (on my god I said it) that the Pew folks reached an unbiased conclusion drawn from their data.

I personally think the Pew poll is valid and accurate. What I’m having trouble with after reading the conclusions and the documenting evidence is a broad statement about liberals being more educated than other groups.

According to Pew regarding the poll:

“While dividing the public into liberal and conservative camps may be useful for helping to simplify and understand American politics, this analysis shows that most Americans defy such easy categorization. Only about a third of the public holds consistently liberal (18%) or consistently conservative (15%) opinions on political issues. Nearly one-in-four Americans are ideologically consistent in their outlook, but don’t fit the liberal or conservative labels (9% are libertarians who consistently oppose an active government in both the economic and the conservative spheres, and 16% are populists who consistently favor an active role for government). And the large plurality of Americans (42%) are in the ambivalent middle, and do not hold ideologically consistent views at all.

Not a Bipolar Nation

“This variety of ideological viewpoints in the public, combined with the large number of Americans who are not ideological at all and the institutional factors that favor a two-party (as opposed to a multi-party) system, lend a pragmatic flavor to American politics. Pew’s 2004 political typology, for instance, which sorted the public into nine groups based on their political values, beliefs and partisan affiliation, demonstrates that substantial portions of the major partisan coalitions co-exist only uneasily with their co-partisans. Indeed, the very names attached to some of the typology groups (such as the Republican leaning “Pro-Government Conservatives,” who make up 9% of the public, and the Democratic leaning “Conservative Democrats,” who account for 14% of the population) reflect the ideological tensions that exist even within political alliances.

“In short, while the influence of ideas in U.S. history and American politics should not be underestimated, the impact of ideology is less clear. Far from being an ideologically bipolar nation divided between liberals and conservatives, the U.S. is much more accurately described as an ideologically multipolar polity, with many ambivalent non-ideologues occupying a large middle ground.”

I don’t want to comment on the scientific accuracy of this, but laureth posted this TED talk on the moral positions of liberals and conservatives that instinctively feels very accurate.

I think that the polarity that exists seems to stem not from what we want as liberals or conservatives (using both terms loosely) but rather how we do it and the institutions best suited to get us there.

I really think everyone should look at that talk. It’s illuminating.

As someone who does not identify with liberals or conservatives, the only thing this topic has proven to me is how arrogant and self assured liberals are.

@syzygy2600 Funny. I’ve always thought of Conservatives as the arrogant ones thinking that only they know what is best even when history has proven that many of their ideas don’t work. Sure, there are cocky purple on both sides, but I can’t remember any Liberal that wanted to enact laws to make people worship their god or legislate what consenting adults can/can’t do in their bedroom.
I say that door swings both ways, and if either side is more arrogant, it’s the Conservatives.

Look at the responses in this topic and try to tell me liberals aren’t arrogant.

-We’re smarter!
– We care more about others (funny how the people who say they care are often the ones who sit on thier ass and do nothing to actually help)
-We’re more open minded (and yet, totally close minded to any opinion thats not liberal)

You’re right about conservative politicians vs liberal politicians. But we’re not really talking about politicians, we’re talking about normal people.

@syzygy2600 – liberals are arrogant. Admitting that doesn’t mean that conservatives aren’t arrogant too.

And it’s certainly flawed when you’re using data from a site where the majority of the people appear to be liberal. Of course you’ll get a higher instance of liberal arrogance.

This whole thread has been a joke. I started a thread about what we have in common and what we can accomplish together and it was a flop. Go figure.

@Season_of_Fall – “This whole thread has been a joke.”

Bullshit. Much of it is problematic. But there’s also a lot here that is about people trying to determine common starting points.

@Season_of_Fall I think your topic failed because people (liberal and conservative) are more interested in saying “I’m right and you’re wrong” then actually having dialog about what the two sides have in common.

Ok, I agree with that, but the majority of the critisism is crap. Generalizations over and over and over. A starting common point would be very good.

@syzygy2600 I complete whole heartedly agree with that and in doing so I made that very point. More conservatives were present with sincerity.

@Season_of_Fall – I don’t think that position (more conservatives were present with sincerity) is (1) defensible (this is a liberal leaning site, and therefore you probably will get more open conservatives on here anyway) and (2) beneficial to an attempt to open up any dialogue (you’re just going to put people on the defensive).

Ok, agreed

@Season_of_Fall – I totally understand your frustration, though. It seems that people are more interested in their positions than in the actual interests we all share.

I wish we had a more mediation-focused approach to politics rather than an adversarial polarizing one.

@Season_of_Fall I like what you’re trying to do, and saw your other question this thread spawned, and I’ve tried reaching similar ground in the past with mixed success. It is so easy for a thread with a civil discourse to get shot off course by one person showing up with a closed mind, then it goes to shit. Usually the people having a good discussion in the first place end up moving on, generally having agreed to some points of similarity.

It is just so easy to get frustrated with these sorts of discussions and fly off the handle, pissing off the other side, creating polarization. I know I can definitely become a raging prick pretty easily, and I’m definitely not the only one.

I would love it if a Golden Fluther Thread could be created in which we see all political differences finally discussed to a point of perfection, with all sides agreeing, and no sources are found lacking. But this won’t happen. I think the benefit to these discussions is to just keep having them. One learns what the hot button key words are that set the other side off and is very careful in how such topics are presented.

The key to bringing both sides together is both sides learning to adhere to the certain basic rules of civil discourse (whatever those may actually be). No one will make any significant changes to their immediate point of view, it will happen gradually with many thoughtful, persuasive arguments. A clever debater will only frustrate the opposition if they feel defensive.

We can endlessly repeat the same unconvincing stuff to each other, or find a more effective way to communicate our thoughts, conclusions, and how we’ve reached them.

Finally, @Season_of_Fall, I don’t think this thread, nor the other, is a waste. At a minimum @wundayatta has put forth an interesting paper for us to discuss. If our goal is to find points of commonality, it would be wise to limit ourselves to discussing one thing at a time.

Ok, I conceade my position that it was a waste. I was only seeing the dogmatic accusations and entrench positions when I thought such, but yours and others points have softened that opinion.

@Season_of_Fall Further, I’ve noticed that once people reach a point of agreement, they generally move on. However if there is disagreement, people get fired up and threads can get hundreds of responses. That observation is interesting to me.

So one of the issues that inflame the relations between Cons and Libs is education. There is the question of whether, on average, Libs have more education than Cons. The discussion here presents an object lesson in the difference. Clearly, some of the Cons discussing the studies have not had any education in statistics. If they had, they could not say what they said.

I refer to the issue of sample size. It is a rule of thumb among statisticians that if you can get a sample size of around 1000, you can say things that are pretty accurate about the American public. Most of the tracking polls during elections have a sample size around 1000 plus or minus 200. They are very accurate at predicting the results of the election these days. Not perfect and always seeking to improve, but damn good.

I’m struggling with how to talk about the differences between folks of different education and how they can talk to each other with mutual respect. People without education have a tendency to mistrust educated folks. They think they are being sold a bill of goods, and they are anxious about their lack of education.

As a result, they do several things. They will bluster and try to sound educated in an attempt to bully others away from their assertions. They will attack the validity of the education, claiming it is a biased education. They will put themselves in a position of saying that anything the educated person says is wrong because of their lib bias, or just because they are educated and education is suspect.

What I think is going on here is people without an education are seeking desperately to hide the sense of inadequacy they feel due to that lack. This contributes to a bullying way, because if you can’t outsmart someone, then you have to rely on physical strength to get your way. On the internet, that doesn’t work, so you take a bullying tone.

Educated folks, on the on the other hand have a different problem. They have difficulty talking to uneducated folk because they have to educate the less educated in order to have the less educated understand what the more educated are talking about. This is very frustrating. Is it the educated liberal’s job to educate the uneducated (conservative or not)? Why can’t they educate themselves so we can have a decent conversation without having to explain what margins of error are and what sample size means.

As a result, I think academics often come across as sounding elitist. Surely a person of the people would be glad to hand out free education. These liberals just seem to dismiss us Cons because we don’t have that education, and that just isn’t right. Nor is it friendly. In fact it’s downright unfriendly.

No one likes having others look down their noses at them. No one likes being condescended to. I know this, and yet I’m not sure if I am succeeding at not doing it. To be honest, I do find it frustrating when we are not on a level playing field as far as education is concerned. And it’s so important because Cons might not believe what they believe if they had more education. There’s evidence to support that idea. Which leaves Cons in the weird position of having to refuse to be educated in order to keep their culture and ideologies. It’s an untenable position, and they tend to do all kinds of rationalizing in order to make it seem like it makes sense.

I really don’t mean to be mean or elitist or condescending. I try very hard to explain why I think what I think. I sincerely want people of very divergent views to have conversations where they actually listen to each other, instead of always thinking of buts. But this and but that. We will never get anywhere if we don’t learn to pay honorable attention to each other. In other words, to respect each other.

There’s so much involved here: ideology, personality, history, background, education, ways of expressing ourselves—and we could talk about each and the differences between us on each of these dimensions, and talk for decades. We’ll all get frustrated because we all want action. Unfortunately, we have to talk, first. If we want any sensible action, that is. But there’s a tendency for people to shoot from the hip instead of thinking things through. Probably both sides are guilty of that one.

Anyway, I do think you guys are doing a great job with this discussion. It’s very interesting, and I have been reading everything the Cons have to say. Not that I remember it, but that’s another issue. ;-)

GA, @wundayatta. I think something that could muddy the waters on the education issue for Cons is my guess that an educated Con might be more likely to know other educated Cons. If one knows hundreds of educated Cons, they would detest the assertion that they are less educated. But unfortunately the Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia also likely self-identify with the basic principles of Con philosophy and they are, like it or not, stuck with that stupid baggage.

It is a little hard not to generalize when most of the people you’ve seen that belong to a particular group act a particular way. Personally, most of the educated people I know are Centrist or Liberal while most of the Conservatives I know are not well educated.

@Season_of_Fall Now then, where to begin, Ronald Reagan was an amiable fool, everybody liked Ronny, he yearned to be loved, but his jolly, avuncular persona belied a despicable campaign of menace against the world’s impoverished, people fighting with their life’s blood for the most elementary human rights, a chance at basic education, the prospect of decent shelter, sanitation. sterile water, basic medical care, all these ambitions (to us they aren’t ambitions at all, they are a given), all these desperate aspirations were spat upon by Hawkish Republicans and dismissed as dangerously communist. i’m guessing he was the kind of guy who received CIA briefs relating to the latest US sponsored horror story in Latin America with a cursory nod and a wink, before reading out the script he was handed at the next press conference about the perils of Soviet influence.

Thankfully on the brink of senility he found it within himself the tiniest flickering of humanity, or was it a horrible realisation like his presidential predecessors? that, however much we loathe Communism, it isn’t quite worth a nuclear holocaust, smart guy he worked it out in the end, whilst the world shat themselves and worried themselves sick, or lived like the next day could be their last, it slowly dawned upon your cherished B Actor cum President that the world was on the brink of annhilation because not everyone in the world thinks, Ronny Reagan the actor/president, American Democracy, Hollywood, Rock & Roll and Steam boat Willy is the best thing since McDonald’s fries.

You said you were 39 right? So in 1979 your would have been, lets see, eight. Well maybe you remember. Let me remind you, interest rates were, around 17%, The view of America in the world was a joke, Russia was beginning to march outwardly as aggressive as Hitler in the late 1930s, our current President Jimmy (wonderful human) was paralyzed in resolving the fact that Iran had us by the balls in the form of American hostages, and unemployment is equivalent to what it is in this current screwed economy. By the end of his presidency all of these were at the other end of each of their respective spectrums.

The cold war was raging and president Reagan had the sense to know that sometimes surges result in more good than bad. The cold war was shut down and Russia was compelled to begin to dismantle a geographic spread they never should have been holding. Tell those countries how Reagan didn’t care about humanity.

How the hell can anyone argue with that? Sure you can go in and criticize this element or that element of what he did or didn’t do, but overall President Reagan was a blazing success. Congratulations mammal for picking a fight with me that you don’t have enough first hand memory to look like anymore than a damm fool. Anyone under 45 please don’t bother responding to this, because your biased sources of secondary information on this will not be given my attention or response. I will respectfully hear any argument by anyone at or over this age point.

Then there is your second statement, Please, please continue to display your perspective centric arrogance, its to my advantage.

I have to get to work on something so I will not grammar or spell check this.

@Season_of_Fall well, if i was fresh out of college, you’d have a point, so it is particularly infantile of you who should be mature enough to know better, incidentally, to drag age into a political debate in an attempt to exploit numerical advantage, nevertheless, whatever the economic woes of that time frame, they certainly didn’t justify the absolutely horrendous US foreign political imposition upon countries like Nicaragua and Guatemala, and subsidising every sadistic regime from Columbia to Iraq in order to boost the poor ailing American economy….. or maybe you think it was. who knows, are you still there?.........No, don’t go i want you to explain how you think Arming the mujaheddin in Afghanistan, or was that Carter? was such a blazing success. blazing it surely was.

I’ve known many people with college degrees who aren’t educated or intelligent.

@bkcunningham, do you relate intelligence with someone aligning with your perspectives and beliefs?

@Season_of_Fall absolutely not.

A person with a college education doesn’t always mean that person is smart. I know some college graduates who are dumb as a brick.

@Season_of_Fall It is entirely possible for intelligent people to use the same data and sound logic to arrive at different conclusions, so that isn’t it. However, making up your own facts and using the same type of logic used in the Chewbacca defense is dumb.
BTW, just because Reagan pulled something off in a quite different situation, that doesn’t mean that his policies are a panacea, nor does it mean that magnifying them ad absurdium will make the country perfect. Reagan was a president, not a god like many Conservatives seem to think.

I still don’t see the connection between politcal views and education. College is easier than ever to get into. Most people can easily get student loans.

Excellent bridge building going on here. Once again, an attempt to find common ground deteriorates by personal attacks and insulting generalizations.

@jerv, I agree, if I gave you the impression he was the be all and end all president. I appologize, not the case. I do purport that his successful accomplishment of the issues at the time were of a significantly higher rate than most presidents in my life time. Therefore, I beleive an overall rating of his presidency was very successful. Let me use a phrase we might all think is a good measure. We were better off as a country on many issues at the end of his presidency than when he began. I’m sure there were many typical politcal tactics and policies that were not good for this group or that group and even likely wrong (davistating) for some (references made by mammal). What president doesnt have a bag of successes and failures.

I don’t want to argue the legitimacy of this or that historical source, but I do want to limit any debate on this subject with people who were of an age to be aware of and having first hand witness of the state of this country from before his presidency to the end. That is not a statement of ability with regard to anyone below that age, it just eliminates sources that are most likely biased (from what ever side the history books were written).

Lastly jerv, the ad absurdium approach, I think you should review a lot of your own post.

How old are you Jerv?

I’ve been waiting for a message back from a friend in Czech Republic. She is about my age, I asked her opinion of our past President Reagan and this is her response verbatum.

“as for Reagan…wasnt easy to make up my mind about him ..as there was communists period in my country and they said- Reagan is a hollywood clown, very bad person and an enemy of all good people..
later after our Velvet revolution I could finally get free information about anything and I found more about him too… he was right in his war against communist, but I didnt like this ” cold war” it scared me”

Thats my opinion. We could go round on this for hours. Go ahead you get the last say, have at it. Would definately like to hear from someone my age or older from the Democrats perspective on Reagans overall success on making the country and world a better place or not. Not a debate on his methods but on the effective results he accomplished.

Let me try to circumvent our entry into a vicious circle, I hear you that there were unacceptable devistating impacts on people from his Presidency. You could argue from that vantage point all day long, and I endorse the legitimacy of your points. We should have a perfect world where all decisions are good for everyone. Show me a Presidency that was perfect and did not have to make decisions for the greater good for people at the expense of others.

@Mikewlf337 That is part of the problem. Isn’t a large part of the reason we are in the current financial mess because there was so much easy credit out there and people borrowed beyond their ability to repay? I know that my ability to repay has decreased in the last few years, and I am one of the lucky ones that managed to get a job (at about half of my former income) after losing a high-paying one.
Still, most of the Conservatives I deal with are either more Right-leaners than full-blown, hard-core Conservatives or are ignorant about lots of things and show no interest in (or even an active opposition to) learning much of anything. They know what they know, and don’t care to know more because they already know it all. Now tell me, if you worked a job that involved computer-controlled machinery, wouldn’t you want to learn how to use the computer at least well enough to operate the machine without supervisor assistance? They are not well-read, not at all curious, and generally show no tangible signs of education past the third grade, often not even having basic math skills.
One thing I love about Fluther is that there are Conservatives here that are intelligent enough to actually have a conversation with; a stark contrast to my AFK life.

@Season_of_Fall I have a bad habit of stretching a point in an attempt to show how ridiculous things can get if you go too far in a certain direction. For instance, if tax cuts are a universal solution then that means that we should set the tax rate at 0% for optimal revenue. In that case, it is an attempt to show that the Laffer Curve is closer to the truth than the political ideology of many people.
Unfortunately, I tend to come across wrong; I have a hard time choosing the right words to effectively communicate my true thoughts.
I am old enough to think that Reagan should’ve quit after his first term because, while he did do great things during his first term, he seemed to lose it during his second. Not his fault since Alzheimer’s is rough that way, but I think his second term may have ruined things for John McCain; now the American voters are afraid to vote for any candidate with too many candles on their birthday cake. I also recall losing my faith in the Electoral College in 1984, not because Reagan won re-election, but because a 59/41% split turned into a 525/13 landslide. Talk about ad absurdium! Usually, when I see math like that, I go back and try a different equation in order to bring the formula closer to reality. (I favor tabulating electoral votes by district, not by state.)

I suppose a valid clarifying question at this point is, “How do you define Conservative?” Are we talking people like Colin Powell, or are we talking more along the lines of the current crop of zealots who made many of my Conservative friends leave the Republican party? I have to admire the Tea Party in that they are doing a good job of weakening the two-party system that has been in place for far too long, but it’s also doing such a good job of bringing the wack-jobs out of the woodwork to the point where even the Tea Party founders are trying to distance themselves from their creation. The answer to that question actually has quite an effect on my answer to the original question as it seems that “Conservative” no longer means what it did.

BTW, if you want a Democrat’s perspective then don’t ask me. I am more of a “Devil’s Advocate” Independent who doesn’t bother noting party affiliation when I step into the voting booth. It just so happens that, like Bernie Sanders, I often find myself on the Democrat’s side because many of the things that the Republicans want are either discriminatory, based on faulty math, erode the Constitution, or are otherwise inherently flawed to the point where they actually piss me off.

@cockswain A sad sign of our times. There was a point where the two sides merely disagreed, but that time has passed. It’s one thing to build a bridge over the Mississippi River, but it’s quite another to build one across the Pacific Ocean, if you catch my drift.

The over riding personality trait to emerge from this thread with regards to the conservative type, is the overwhelming sense of selfishness and willful ignorance. i’m all right Jack, everyone South of the Border can go to Hell, Just as long as me, the missus and the kids are living the life. i’m not saying it’s stupid, but it is self-centred, the other typical response, is anger whenever this glaringly obvious failing is pointed out, complete denial, complete shutdown, i don’t know if that is justified indignation, or an uneasy conscience. Liberals tend to be more curious about the world and more humanitarian as a consequence.

Here’s something to add to the discussion. Not sure what it proves or doesn’t prove. I just thought it was interesting:

“One of the Arizona shooting victims was arrested Saturday and taken for a psychiatric evaluation after authorities said he took a picture of a Tea Party leader at a televised town hall meeting and yelled, “You’re dead.’’

“James Eric Fuller, 63, objected to something Trent Humphries said during the forum in Tucson that was taped for a special edition of ABC’s This Week with Christiane Amanpour, Pima County sheriff’s spokesman Jason Ogan said.

“Fuller was in the front row and apparently became upset when Humphries suggested that any conversations about gun control should be delayed until all the dead were buried, KGUN-TV in Tucson reported…”

http://www.npr.org/2011/01/16/132974721/ariz-shooting-victim-accused-of-making-threat

@bkcunningham – I am incredibly impressed at your presentation of that information – rarely do we succeed in presenting information without our spin on it – I should try to take cues on this.

I started to comment but it got more about Second Amendment rights than the topic at at hand.

So I’ll say otherwise that I was thinking about this today or the other day…and I think that the right will say “This is my land” while the left will say “This land is our land” with all the associated cliches in tow.