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Is our country more Liberal or Conservative today compared to where we were on January 1, 1966?
Go back to 1964, when the U.S. was in the midst of a long period of economic growth, when the Cold War was easing, when a major civil rights bill had just been passed.
Back then, 77 percent trusted the government to do the right thing all or most of the time. A decade later, after a divisive war, racial and generational unrest, a president driven from office in scandal, the number had dropped to 36 percent. And in the four decades since, it has never hit 50 percent, not even in the surge of patriotism after 9/11.
That’s about 40 years’ worth of alienation from the government of, by and for people.
Federal spending on two costly wars piled onto the debt, bailouts and no-bid government contracts. Add to that, record low tax rates for the richest people in the country, and debt will naturally soar. The Iraq war alone cost 50 years of tuition free public college in America. Pretty crazy. But thats what we get when people elect corporate puppets who think Wall Street should run the economy, the military industrial complex should run our foreign policy, and the drug companies should control our health care policy.
True enough, and to suggest any real change to the status quo, perhaps to prevent special interests and/or business interests from having their way in Congress, and conservatives bock. Meanwhile, our "downfall" is all because of liberals...
Well at least we can thank the conservatives this time around for offering up yet another splendid solution to consider with Donald Trump. At last (again) someone who can make America great again.
The U.S. is way more liberal in regards to the 1960's I mean look at the state of our country with political correctness limiting free speech left and right, the LGBT movement gaining rights and rather large amounts of support with the exception of the transgender restroom issue and most of our more liberal policies are obviously in place because we have a Democratic president though in my personal opinion we've gone in some cases overly liberal.
The U.S. is way more liberal in regards to the 1960's I mean look at the state of our country with political correctness limiting free speech left and right, the LGBT movement gaining rights and rather large amounts of support with the exception of the transgender restroom issue and most of our more liberal policies are obviously in place because we have a Democratic president though in my personal opinion we've gone in some cases overly liberal.
Political correctness does NOT limit free speech. In fact, Trump has made part of his campaign for POTUS about not being PC, and I don't see him too held back from being just about as rude or insulting as he wants to be!
For me anyway, people who complain about political correctness are either people with too much time on their hands or people who just wish they could be a little more free to express their bigoted or racist or general views intolerant of people not like them.
The poll is fundamentally flawed because it fails to differentiate between economic and social values. As a longtime (small 'l', please) libertarian, I'd have to say that the overall movement toward both economic freedom and personal autonomy on social issues has been positive. The disturbing part of the process, however, which has emerged mostly over the past twenty years, and has been intensifying, is the hijacking of this trend by various groups on the fringes. The growth of "crony capitalism", the stubbornness of the most vocal among the Religious Right, and the emergence of increasingly-eccentric psycho-sexual minorities are all examples of this.
And all of the dissatisfied malcontents within those groups see access to the monopoly on the use of coercion granted to the nation-state as the remedy to their frustrations. In addition, there is the always-changing crazy-quilt of logically-inconsistent absolutes known as Political Correctness.
The emergence of Donald Trump is currently the most prominent manifestation of this unrest, and that, in turn, can be laid directly upon the doorstep of the usually young and oversheltered, and unbelievably arrogant Social Justice Movement, coddled by an "educational" lobby determined to force too much sensitivity upon all of us in the name of "gender neutrality" -- when the proper response should be to nurture and spread the instinctive distrust of authority and overcentralization of power to our young women, as well as our young men.
We continue to face a day of reckoning with regard to the fact that the artificial advantage which English-speaking North America enjoyed over the rest of the world since the close of World War II will continue to erode. That, in and of itself, will solve the problem of illegal immigration, but the problem of how to fill the roles at the bottom of the societal pecking order that no one wants to assume will intensify in proportion, Whether this can be resolved by harnessing the natural spirit of autonomy and rebellion that has always separated North Americans from the rest of the world (and has unfortunately become more visible only among the struggling classes) is possibly the most important question of all.
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 05-16-2016 at 04:09 PM..
Definately, we are much more liberal today. IMO, that's not a good thing.
If you are a liberal, that's a good thing. If you are a conservative, that's not a good thing...
Let's take the Civil Rights movement as just one of countless examples we might use to judge. Generally, conservatives fought against Civil Rights advances while liberals fought for, so of course if you were conservative, like say George Wallace, none of that was a good thing. If you were more liberal, like say the Kennedys, that progress was a good thing.
Women's rights, gay rights, work place improvements, labor laws, dress codes, help for the poor (children and elderly), access to health care, smoking regulations, environmental protections...
Are we better off today than we were before? I think in many ways yes.
Unfortunately in too many ways we've still got a long way to go, but that's not because of liberals...
this is the first time I ever saw a poll on this website where a majority of people said they leaned right, much less a supermajority
If you hadn't noticed the very strong right leaning bent to city-data then you are not following the threads here. This is a very right-wing site with strong shades of stormfront thrown in.
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