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Well, a lot of them voted for Nixon, or they would have had the "Don't blame me I voted for McGovern" stickers on their cars.
As I said, not all the state's residents are the same. 54% of voters went for McGovern, 45% for Nixon. Most people don't have bumper stickers on their cars, I think it's a good guess that most who put the bumper sticker were McGovern voters. The most Irish-American county (Plymouth County) with demographics closest to South Boston went for Nixon, though Boston went heavily for McGovern. Interestingly there was more of rural-urban divide than today; the most rural county (Franklin) went the most for Nixon. That area seems a bit like Vermont, with some mill towns. Northern New England used to be heavily republican (at one time, old New England Yankees voted Republican, "white ethnics" voted Democrat) but it flipped parties completely.
The problem with that rationale is that often people reach their social political philosophy and economic political philosophy independently. That is to say there are plenty of social liberals or libertarians who are fiscally conservative. And interestingly enough, amongst conservative circles in the Republican Party today, even being fiscally conservative and socially moderate will get you considered a liberal. For all of Romneys talk about being severely conservative, many in the party call him liberal. Interesting how card carrying liberals will consider a social moderate a moderate but card carrying conservatives often consider a social moderate a liberal.
Re: bolded, I won't consider those people liberal, though it depends what fiscal conservatism you mean. When the thread mentioned liberalism, I wasn't thinking of social issues all that much, just as one of many
They're usually somewhat connected; verging into political philosophy, I think this is the most important distinction.
There is, rather, a right-wing and a left-wing party, in each case relatively speaking. The Republican Party is relatively right-wing and the Democratic Party is relatively left-wing.I’m using my own idiosyncratic definition of “right” and “left” here, but it’s an idiosyncrasy I’m increasingly fond of. The distinction between “right” and “left” in my view has to do with the relationship to “winners” and “losers” in society. The right is more interested in rewarding winners. The left is more interested in helping out losers.
Social issues really aren't a coherent thing at all; there's no conflict at all between being for gay marriage and against gun control, for instance. Abortion, gun control, gay marriage, and some other hot-button issues are logically independent; any correlation between them has another cause (and has burned politicians who assume there is such correlation when there isn't)
There's also issues which straddle the boundary -- taxes, for instance. Seen as merely revenue, they're an economic issue. But liberals want to use them to punish winners (or less pejoratively, "level the playing field"). Conservatives also want to use them to reward people and behavior they find morally superior (e.g. marriage and having children).
When I say Bloomberg is a fascist, it's because
1) He's for big business and from that background and
2) He wants to make everything government business down to the amount of soda you drink, and give government extraordinary powers to enforce its will, e.g. stop-and-frisk and random subway searches.
I think density encourages the second part. The more people you have around you, the more tempting it is to want to control their actions.
nei- The quote oversimplifies the left, which is more interested on the economic front in helping those who are on the losing economic end into BECOMING economic winners. The right is more interested in economic Darwinism.
But ultimately both left and right seek to pick/determine economic winners. One example for the right is defense contractors. Even when the military does not need a thing, the right is more concerned with keeping defense contractors winning than with what the military needs to succeed. And of course the left has its picks too such as green energy.
So the quote actually misses the bottom line, which is both left and right seek to implement policy which drives who becomes or remains winners and who is just left to fend for themselves. But then amidst that bottom line of political sides exists people who are more pragmatic in their view- so that you only continue to support green energy that has a realistic chance in the market, and you only continue to support defense contractors to the extent their product is actually needed by the military.
The right would tend to end unemployment compensation, the left to extend it indefinitely, and the pragmatist to offer it with a time limit and then use the money to 100% focus on working with business to create basic training to qualify potential hires for available jobs. Welfare to Work, a Clinton/Gingrich collaboration, was an example of pragmatist legislation. It discarded the right's desire to let the market pick winners and too bad for everybody else, discarded the left's desire to forever compensate the jobless to sanction a win for them, and instead use temporary means to help the jobless get what they need to obtain and maintain success for themselves, and then end the help and let the individual determine their own success. So the lazy are allowed to be losers and those who had prior economic advantages because of what family they were raised in are not the only ones who end up succeeding.
At the end of the day, both sides seeks to drive who wins in the economic society, so it is a false notion that the right wants to help the winners and the left wants to help the losers. If defense contractors would lose because the military doesn't need their product any more, the right would still want to help them and not let the military market need determine if they lose.
Social issues really aren't a coherent thing at all; there's no conflict at all between being for gay marriage and against gun control, for instance. Abortion, gun control, gay marriage, and some other hot-button issues are logically independent; any correlation between them has another cause (and has burned politicians who assume there is such correlation
While it is true that they are intellectually independent, there IS a tendency for Democrats to think similarly across those issues and for Republicans to think similarly across those issues, notwithstanding libertarian-minded pols who happen to be Republican. In campaigns for POTUS, the candidate from each party tends to take the same set of position on those issues as their party in general. The tendency of presidential races is to NOT see a disconnect between each of those issues. You may find some moderate leanings but you tend not to find a combination of true liberal stances on some and true conservative stances on others of those social issues.
So for presidential politics, social issues ARE a coherent thing.
Location: On the "Left Coast", somewhere in "the Land of Fruits & Nuts"
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Do liberals move to cities or do cities make you more liberal?
What do conservatives everywhere, have in common with rural areas? Well aren't they both really about preserving the ''status quo'' and resistance to ''change'' or ''uncertainty''? Which BTW, is something urban folks have to be able to contend with all the time... while rural folks, not nearly so much.
So sure, there are also the rural/urban differences in education levels, classes, race, etc., but IMO those are just the 'symptoms' and 'byproducts'. And anyone who has moved to a small town from a much larger urban area immediately notices how quickly the locals react to anything that's perceived as ''different'' (aka, ''you ain't from around here, are 'ya?'')!
What do conservatives everywhere, have in common with rural areas? Well aren't they both really about preserving the ''status quo'' and resistance to ''change''? Which BTW, is something urban folks have to be able to contend with all the time... while rural folks, not nearly so much.
So sure, there are also the rural/urban differences in education levels, classes, race, etc., but IMO those are just the 'symptoms' and 'byproducts'. And anyone who has moved to a small town from a much larger urban area immediately notices how quickly the locals react to anything (and anybody) that's perceived as ''different''!
I've lived in both Liberal and Conservative areas..
I found that the more I live in the Liberal areas, the more Conservative I become.
And the more I live in the Conservative areas, the more Liberal I become.
Psychologically, I'm always against the "status quo" of the area it seems.
Liberals move to the cities... they love to ride trains and other forms of mass transit. When they move to a city that doesnt have great mass transit they whine up a storm.
I've lived in both Liberal and Conservative areas..
I found that the more I live in the Liberal areas, the more Conservative I become.
And the more I live in the Conservative areas, the more Liberal I become.
Psychologically, I'm always against the "status quo" of the area it seems.
I find that happening to me, too.
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Do liberals move to cities or do cities make you more liberal?
