Politics & Current Events
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Re: Liberals or Conservatives: Who?s Really Close-Minded?
But let me present a complementary, more practical explanation: If you?re a conservative who lives in a major metropolitan area or who simply reads the New York Times, you get used to being outnumbered by liberals. Liberals, by contrast, get used to being surrounded by other liberals, both in person and in culture and the media. As a result, liberals speak their minds freely, often in ways that are harshly condemnatory of conservatives and their stands on issues. As a conservative, you can defend your values against friends and acquaintances who essentially just called you stupid and evil or you can keep quiet.
unless you're a liberal in any state between new york and california. at best being outnumbered is a crapshoot.
as for the website, if HALF the info on wikipedia is true then i'm loling about the whole freaking site, especially given that d!ck cheney is on the board of trustees). and i'm not at all shocked about the spin the author of the review gave it.
Isn't this like saying you're not a racist because you have friends who are minorities?
Try being a liberal in Texas.
so much of that is barf-tacular.
I am the 99%.
I don't understand. If most of the base is pro-gay rights, then exactly how is that scoring electorial points. Shouldn't it be doing the opposite?
my condolences.
I live in a blue area that has a reputation as liberal, yet I really, really disagree.
I don't feel comfortable at all offering liberal opinions. Yet, I constantly get emails from relatives or posts from FB friends who have no problem spouting conservative opinions. Fox News is in every state, blue or red, but MSNBC or Current isn't. Conservative talk radio is omnipresent and the message board replies to my local papers are overwhelmingly conservative - this despite the fact that my state hasn't voted for a Republican President since Reagan and often cannot find a Republican to run for state offices.
And on those local message boards, liberals are frequently condemned as 'libtards' or "dirty hippies" so I guess I'm not getting the sense that their views are understood! About the only area that I can imagine a conservative being openly mocked for their views, would be if they espoused the government legislating "family values". But if that same conservative were to complain about the goverment pushing separation of church to absurd extremes, they wouldn't get any pushback here.
I think you're interchanging "social conservative" and "Republican", which is exactly what I think the D/liberal side does that's so wrong. If you're for gay marriage, you're a social liberal on that issue.
I think cons would argue that staying in the party and being pro-gay rights is an attempt to take back the party.
And FWIW, I could see the issue. If you really believe in the economic platform, and you really really really disagree with the other side's economic platform, what are you going to do? You certainly aren't going to vote for the group you completely disagree with fiscally if fiscal is what you are voting based on.
And this is a poor analogy and I hope it doesn't come across as me comparing the two groups, only the situation. Seriously, please don't pile on about me about this. Is expecting socially liberal conservatives to come out in droves against the religious right of their party, the same as requiring regular Muslims to condemn the terrorists? I just ask because we generally don't require Muslims to regularly condemn the crazy part that many of them don't consider real Muslims anyways.
I agree that it's a way to score political points, but at the same time, it was what? 11 states that banned gay marriage in 2004? And those ballot initiatives that helped mobilize voters certainly helped George W. Bush get re-elected. So it can be hard to separate the two.
And while I'm sure that you've met plenty of people in the GOP who support gay rights, the fact is that the GOP still uses anti-gay positions as a wedge issue to drum up support. I don't really think there's any way around that. Also, if we're going to go to anecdote-town (not that this thread didn't a couple of pages ago), I know a lot of very religious social conservatives who absolutely believe that gay marriage will lead to the downall of the family and the downfall of society. It may not be a prevalent feeling in D.C., but in rural Indiana and rural Illinois and rural Texas, it absolutely is prevalent.
Not that any of the above has anything to do with whether liberals or conservatives are more open-minded.
Am I on crack or was this article discusing liberals and conservatives as individuals and not the GOP or the Dem parties as a whole?
Because this thread seems to be harped up on the latter.
Click me, click me!
I'm having this problem, also. I see the article as being about liberal vs. conservative, and based on the discussion of morality I think it's more geared toward social issues than fiscal policy. I can't think of too many real social conservatives on this board, actually.
I'd also say Mitt Romney has his talking points down pat--and he's not just looking for R votes, he's trying to grab independent votes, too. 'Cause there are plenty of independents (and dems, for that matter) that believe that gay marriage is wrong, and that life starts at conception.
Look, I'd LOVE it if religion had no bearing on the way that people vote. I'd love it if everyone believed that their religion shouldn't be legislated. But that's not realistic. I also think we'd get a lot farther if people would listen to each other and try to appeal to each other through understanding. Such as "I understand that you believe that God has said that marriage is between a man and a woman. While I don't agree, I'm not asking that you allow gays to be married under the laws of your God. I'm asking that you allow gays to be married in the eyes of the government. I will not force your church to marry anyone, gay or straight, that they feel do not live up to laws of their God and church."
<a href="http://www.thenest.com/?utm_source=ticker&utm_medium=HTML&utm_campaign=tickers" title="Home D
that is brought up every single time we have this debate. every time.
I agree with this and I also think this approach would be much more persuasive than the OMG YOU HATE GAYZ AND WANT TO KICK THEM ALL IN THE FACE approach.
I also think the render unto Caesar argument that adamwife put forth is a good one too.
Click me, click me!
The only real problem I have with this is the word "allow" and its derivatives.
When I say take back the party, that's what I mean. They shouldn't defect to the Democrats or Independents, but if they are really not concerned with the social conservativism that seems to be defining the Republican movement then they need to show that, not only by votes but by getting vocal. Start showing up at Republican rallies and make your voice heard when they start slamming the gays. Write letters to your Republican representatives telling them to knock off the pandering to the Pat Robertsons and Rick Santorums of the party. If they decide to keep doing it, then vote them the f*ck out. The problem is none of this is happening. These people are getting voted IN, the bills they're writing and their ballot measures are being passed.
Obviously there is a large chunk of the party that agrees with them, because most politicians are really only concerned with one thing and that's getting re-elected. They aren't going to do something that will jepordize that. And if they REALLY felt like their base was over their squawking about the gays and baby killers and ultrasounds and whatnot, they'd stop talking about it. Because they don't want to risk alienating them and not getting re-elected. The fact that pretty much all of them are still doing it says something to me.
Couldn't this also be an argument for not letting slaves marry?
Do you really think that those who opposed black people or slaves getting married really had an affinity for them as individuals?
I agree with this completely. But I think it's been framed that way a lot and people who are against it have simply ignored the part about gays not forcing every church to let them marry there. They aren't even allowed to get married at the courthouse. We haven't even gotten to churches yet.
It's been done. I don't understand how else to get to the Santorums at this point.
true.
over and over again, it's said, in big bold letters "we aren't going to force marriages to occur in your churches!" etc, etc, etc. But, apparently, others know our positions better than we do, because they say we're wrong on that.
I am the 99%.
I'm not talking this board. I'm talking in real life. On this board, that kind of discussion lead to Adamswife rethinking and changing her position.
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I think sometimes people forget that you can't force churches to marry heteros now, so what makes them think they'll be able to do so when the homos are able to marry?
It's a lame argument, imo.
I wanted to get married in a church, but was rejected because I was living in sin.
To build upon this... why does the party KEEP MOVING RIGHT if most/many of the members of the party don't agree with severe social conservativism? Where do the state legislators who propose things like transvaginal ultrasounds or SB1040 come from? How are they recruited to run on behalf of the party? Why are traditional, fiscal conservatives, with a small-government approach calls RINOS if they don't think banning abortion or gay marriage should be a major issue?
40/112
Eh, over half of Americans (almost 2/3, actually) don't know the length of a term for a US Representative or Senator. So, well, lowest common denominator. People don't overthink issues. Or think that hard about them at all.
This board is great, but one reason it's great is because the participants are by FAR the minority. People who actually follow politics. How novel!
40/112
Anything you can achieve through hard work, you could also just buy.
The way I see it, one of two things is happening with the Republican party.
A) Social conservatives have by and large taken over the party, and the social liberals (or the social-I-don't-give-a-f*cks) are becoming an increasingly small minority. But they won't or can't or don't acknowledge that, and prefer to believe that it's the social cons who are the minorities so eventually everything will work out. And while they keep their heads in the sands, their ranks continue to shrink and the party continues to run further and further right.
I defer to you on con law because I'm just not that into it and I'm sure you know way more about it than I do.
But 3 things stand out about your reply.
1)
FACT: Indiana can prohibit gays from adopting and marrying.
In your OPINION it flies in the face of the Constitution.
well... since they have not been stopped by a court, the presumption is that this is in fact constitutional.
2)
Family law may be "rooted" in the Constitution, but I don't know many family law laywers practicing federal law with their adoption, custody, wills, prenups and divorces. That's what I meant by family law. Concrete family law that is practiced daily, not the esoteric roots of it all.
3) So you are incorrect when you say that gays can have a family without national legislation
Are you saying that there are no gays with a family due to the lack of national legislation? Because families with gay couples do exist and their rights to a family do vary by state.
http://www.lambdalegal.org/issues/adoption-and-parenting
According to recent data, there are roughly 250,000 children in the United States being raised by same-sex couples. But the rights of LGBT parents vary widely among states.