The Daily Kos (yeah, yeah, I know) had an independent agency survey a bunch of self-identified Conservatives to see what exactly their beliefs are. Here are the interesting results:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/2/2/832988/-The-2010-Comprehensive-Daily-Kos-Research-2000-Poll-of-Self-Identified-Republicans
QuoteShould Barack Obama be impeached, or not?
Yes 39
No 32
Not Sure 29
Do you think Barack Obama is a socialist?
Yes 63
No 21
Not Sure 16
Do you believe Barack Obama was born in the United States, or not?
Yes 42
No 36
Not Sure 22
Do you believe Sarah Palin is more qualified to be President than Barack Obama?
Yes 53
No 14
Not Sure 33
Should Congress make it easier for workers to form and join labor unions?
Yes 7
No 68
Not Sure 25
Would you favor or oppose giving illegal immigrants now living in the United States the right to live here legally if they pay a fine and learn English?
Favor 26
Oppose 59
Not Sure 15
Do you support the death penalty?
Yes 91
No 4
Not Sure 5
Should openly gay men and women be allowed to serve in the military?
Yes 26
No 55
Not Sure 19
Should same sex couples be allowed to marry?
Yes 7
No 77
Not Sure 16
Should gay couples receive any state or federal benefits?
Yes 11
No 68
Not Sure 21
Should openly gay men and women be allowed to teach in public schools?
Yes 8
No 73
Not Sure 19
Should sex education be taught in the public schools?
Yes 42
No 51
Not Sure 7
Should public school students be taught that the book of Genesis in the Bible explains how God created the world?
Yes 77
No 15
Not Sure 8
Should contraceptive use be outlawed?
Yes 31
No 56
Not Sure 13
Do you believe the birth control pill is abortion?
Yes 34
No 48
Not Sure 18
Do you consider abortion to be murder?
Yes 76
No 8
Not Sure 16
:weary: So much fail, so little time.
Quote
Should contraceptive use be outlawed?
Yes 31
No 56
Not Sure 13
Yoinked
Quote from: Requia ☣ on February 03, 2010, 12:05:51 AM
Quote
Should contraceptive use be outlawed?
Yes 31
No 56
Not Sure 13
Yoinked
Oddly enough the same people probably think welfare recipients should be sterilized.
Quote from: The Buddha Dada on February 03, 2010, 12:38:43 AM
Quote from: Requia ☣ on February 03, 2010, 12:05:51 AM
Quote
Should contraceptive use be outlawed?
Yes 31
No 56
Not Sure 13
Yoinked
Oddly enough the same people probably think welfare recipients should be sterilized sold as bratwurst.
Fixed for a new decade.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on February 03, 2010, 02:33:24 AM
Quote from: The Buddha Dada on February 03, 2010, 12:38:43 AM
Quote from: Requia ☣ on February 03, 2010, 12:05:51 AM
Quote
Should contraceptive use be outlawed?
Yes 31
No 56
Not Sure 13
Yoinked
Oddly enough the same people probably think welfare recipients should be sterilized sold as bratwurst.
Fixed for a new decade.
Somebody's gotta feed the starving Midwest.
Quote from: The Buddha Dada on February 03, 2010, 02:47:26 AM
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on February 03, 2010, 02:33:24 AM
Quote from: The Buddha Dada on February 03, 2010, 12:38:43 AM
Quote from: Requia ☣ on February 03, 2010, 12:05:51 AM
Quote
Should contraceptive use be outlawed?
Yes 31
No 56
Not Sure 13
Yoinked
Oddly enough the same people probably think welfare recipients should be sterilized sold as bratwurst.
Fixed for a new decade.
Somebody's gotta feed the starving Midwest.
The Haitians are sending care packages, I hear.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on February 03, 2010, 03:04:28 AM
Quote from: The Buddha Dada on February 03, 2010, 02:47:26 AM
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on February 03, 2010, 02:33:24 AM
Quote from: The Buddha Dada on February 03, 2010, 12:38:43 AM
Quote from: Requia ☣ on February 03, 2010, 12:05:51 AM
Quote
Should contraceptive use be outlawed?
Yes 31
No 56
Not Sure 13
Yoinked
Oddly enough the same people probably think welfare recipients should be sterilized sold as bratwurst.
Fixed for a new decade.
Somebody's gotta feed the starving Midwest.
The Haitians are sending care packages, I hear.
You'd think they'd get tired of curds and Old Style.
Quote from: The Buddha Dada on February 03, 2010, 03:09:07 AM
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on February 03, 2010, 03:04:28 AM
Quote from: The Buddha Dada on February 03, 2010, 02:47:26 AM
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on February 03, 2010, 02:33:24 AM
Quote from: The Buddha Dada on February 03, 2010, 12:38:43 AM
Quote from: Requia ☣ on February 03, 2010, 12:05:51 AM
Quote
Should contraceptive use be outlawed?
Yes 31
No 56
Not Sure 13
Yoinked
Oddly enough the same people probably think welfare recipients should be sterilized sold as bratwurst.
Fixed for a new decade.
Somebody's gotta feed the starving Midwest.
The Haitians are sending care packages, I hear.
You'd think they'd get tired of curds and Old Style.
Not Wisconsin and the UP. Never gonna happen.
You guys are missing the important one:
QuoteShould public school students be taught that the book of Genesis in the Bible explains how God created the world?
Yes 77
No 15
Not Sure 8
77 fucking percent. How is that even possible?
same way evaporation causes cooling. All the non crazies are leaving so the average crazy level keeps getting higher.
Quote from: Iason Ouabache on February 03, 2010, 07:06:11 AM
You guys are missing the important one:
QuoteShould public school students be taught that the book of Genesis in the Bible explains how God created the world?
Yes 77
No 15
Not Sure 8
77 fucking percent. How is that even possible?
Um, the way it's worded it doesn't sound too bad? I mean, the way I read it, it sounded like a trick question at first:
"Should public school students be taught that the book of Genesis in the Bible explains how God created the world?"
versus
"Should public school students be taught how God created the world as explained in the book of Genesis in the Bible?"
to be honest, any school that
doesn't teach the creation myth(s) of the dominant religion(s) in society is pretty shitty. just for the same reasons that american schools and european schools should emphasize different things in their history classes. and I don't mean big things, but the detailedness.
anyway, yeah, I realize this way too optimistical of me, but that's what the question sounded like to me. so I thought, hey yeah, apart from teaching the basic beliefs of christianity in schools, we might also want to teach some fundaments of Islam over here, with all the muslims living in our country by now. I mean, if your neighbour is wearing a headscarf, you oughta know why, right?
Unfortunately, to a Republican, that sounded like
SHOULD WE TEACH OUR CHILDREN TO BE CHRISTIANS, OR LET THEM BE GODLESS ATHEISTIC NAZI EVOLUTIONISTS? OR WORSE, JOIN OTHER RELIGIONS???
What is interesting is there is at least 7% response in each question which disagrees with the typical Republican response. I wonder if those are the same people answering most questions against the party grain, and if they are, why the hell are they still members?
Those are the bankers. They don't actually like any of the social-conservative stuff (except gay bashing, which is why that has the lowest disagree rate), but they'll put up with it to ensure more deregulation.
*Has met these people.
Yep. Sounds about right. :horrormirth: Also, the level to which they want to marginalize the rights of gays is just...sickening.
Meet the homosexuals, the NewNegroTM of the US. (I know this is old news, but damn it chaps the hide)
Quote from: Jenne on February 03, 2010, 07:02:52 PM
Yep. Sounds about right. :horrormirth: Also, the level to which they want to marginalize the rights of gays is just...sickening.
Meet the homosexuals, the NewNegroTM of the US. (I know this is old news, but damn it chaps the hide)
Then I guess the homosexuals need to man up and cause a ruckus.
Quote from: Requia ☣ on February 03, 2010, 04:58:46 PM
Those are the bankers. They don't actually like any of the social-conservative stuff (except gay bashing, which is why that has the lowest disagree rate), but they'll put up with it to ensure more deregulation.
*Has met these people.
Or NeoCons...which are mostly Jewish IIRC, and a bit more secular in their tastes when it comes to the morality stuff.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on February 03, 2010, 07:06:01 PM
Quote from: Jenne on February 03, 2010, 07:02:52 PM
Yep. Sounds about right. :horrormirth: Also, the level to which they want to marginalize the rights of gays is just...sickening.
Meet the homosexuals, the NewNegroTM of the US. (I know this is old news, but damn it chaps the hide)
Then I guess the homosexuals need to man up and cause a ruckus.
Bump because it got buried the same moment I posted it.
The republican party is all the supervillainy america needs.
Quote from: Sigmatic on February 03, 2010, 07:40:29 PM
The republican party is all the supervillainy america needs.
Well, tough shit. America gets the democrats, too. :lulz:
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on February 03, 2010, 07:41:20 PM
Quote from: Sigmatic on February 03, 2010, 07:40:29 PM
The republican party is all the supervillainy america needs.
Well, tough shit. America gets the democrats, too. :lulz:
(http://file046b.bebo.com/1/large/2009/03/12/07/9092206a10323811342l.jpg)
Quote from: Jenne on February 03, 2010, 07:06:04 PM
mostly Jewish IIRC
No. Not just because it is not true, but also because saying that legitimizes the "hatred of necoconservatism is antisemitism" meme. To whit:
QuoteFirst, 'neo-conservative' is a codeword for Jewish. As antisemites did with big business moguls in the nineteenth century and Communist leaders in the twentieth, the trick here is to take all those involved in some aspect of public life and single out those who are Jewish. The implication made is that this is a Jewish-led movement conducted not in the interests of all the, in this case, American people, but to the benefit of Jews, and in this case Israel.
and
QuoteIn truth, people labeled neocons (con is short for 'conservative' and neo is short for 'Jewish') travel in widely different circles..."
Yes, people got paid to write this rubbish. And yes, the meme is considered recieved wisdom among certain crowds.
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Jews-Liberals-Norman-Podhoretz/dp/0385529198/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265226777&sr=8-1-catcorr
:roflcake:
Even a very conservative Jew think that Jews are more liberal......(and then writes a book about why he's not happy about it, but still...)
Quote from: Mangrove on February 03, 2010, 07:55:08 PM
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Jews-Liberals-Norman-Podhoretz/dp/0385529198/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265226777&sr=8-1-catcorr
:roflcake:
Even a very conservative Jew think that Jews are more liberal......(and then writes a book about why he's not happy about it, but still...)
But regardless of which side he's on, how does he have the credibility to speak for an entire people?
Pod-man is suffering from some form of like, really early onset dementia, with violent overtones
Quote[Norman Podhoretz] detects, he claims, resemblances between the United States of today and Great Britain in the years after World War I. Similar distaste for combat occurred then to the extent 'that the Illiad...could no longer be comfortably read.' England itself was discredited in the eyes of the young; the place seemed drearily middle class. The young rebelled, some of them becoming Nazi sympathizers, others Communists or fellow travellers. 'That Auden and Burgess were both homosexuals,' says Podhoretz, 'clearly had something, perhaps everything, to do with their need "completely and finally to rebel against England." And indeed it is impossible to read books like Children of the Sun or Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory without being struck by the central role homosexuality played in the entire rebellious ethos of the interwar period in England.'
'...Homosexual feeling,' Podhoretz says, 'also accounted for a good deal of the pacificism that rose out of the trenches and into the upper reaches of the culture after the war was over.' One would have thought, actually, that the fresh memory of the most wantonly bloody war in human history might have had something to do with it. Shortly thereafter, we get to the guts of the matter: 'No wonder, then, that so many of those who resented their own country...should have been or should have chosen to become, homosexuals. For whatever else homosexuality may be, or may be caused by, to these young men of the English upper class it represented — the refusal of fatherhood and all that fatherhood entailed: responsibility for a family and therefore an inescapable implication in the destiny of society as a whole...they were rejecting their birthright as successors to their own fathers in assuming direct responsibility for the fate of the country.'
It's a short leap now to the conclusion: 'Anyone familiar with homosexual apologetics in America today will recognize these attitudes.' That is: England appeased in the '30s; there were homosexuals in England; therefore homosexuals caused appeasement. Watch your ass, Neville Chamberlain. Specifically mentioning Allen Ginsberg, James Baldwin and Gore Vidal, Podhoretz says we 'find the same sort of pacificism [with Vietnam naturally standing in for World War I], hostility to one's own country and its putatively dreary middle-class way of life, and dersion of the idea that it stands for anything worth defending or that it is threatened by anything but its own stupidity and wickedness.'
Short of direct charges that Commie faggots are running the State Department, it is hard to conceive of a more hysterical and willfully demagogic posture: America is getting soft on Communism; America's population includes declared homosexuals; homosexuals are pacifists and soft on Communism: finally (though this is as yet unstated), homosexual Communists run America.
–Alexander Cockburn, 'Poddy on the Threat', Village Voice, 1977
:lulz:
Quote from: Cain on February 03, 2010, 07:49:40 PM
Quote from: Jenne on February 03, 2010, 07:06:04 PM
mostly Jewish IIRC
No. Not just because it is not true, but also because saying that legitimizes the "hatred of necoconservatism is antisemitism" meme. To whit:
QuoteFirst, 'neo-conservative' is a codeword for Jewish. As antisemites did with big business moguls in the nineteenth century and Communist leaders in the twentieth, the trick here is to take all those involved in some aspect of public life and single out those who are Jewish. The implication made is that this is a Jewish-led movement conducted not in the interests of all the, in this case, American people, but to the benefit of Jews, and in this case Israel.
and
QuoteIn truth, people labeled neocons (con is short for 'conservative' and neo is short for 'Jewish') travel in widely different circles..."
Yes, people got paid to write this rubbish. And yes, the meme is considered recieved wisdom among certain crowds.
I was just going based on the the 90's Bill Kristol et al bandwagon that trained Bush in the 2000's. I never equated the two, but I can see the correlation.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on February 03, 2010, 07:58:32 PM
Quote from: Mangrove on February 03, 2010, 07:55:08 PM
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Jews-Liberals-Norman-Podhoretz/dp/0385529198/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265226777&sr=8-1-catcorr
:roflcake:
Even a very conservative Jew think that Jews are more liberal......(and then writes a book about why he's not happy about it, but still...)
But regardless of which side he's on, how does he have the credibility to speak for an entire people?
No. Because nobody has the credibility to speak for any group of people.
More Podhoretz!
QuoteIt has always struck me as odd that so many of the dissidents in Czechoslovakia, all of whom were passionate anti-Communists, should have made heroes out of [Allen] Ginsberg and other icons of the counterculture, all of whom were equally passionate anti-anti-Communists. Thus, when on a visit of my own to Prague in 1988 I was taken to meet Vaclav Havel, then the most prominent of the dissidents (and later, of course, to become president of a free Czech Republic), the first thing that hit my eye upon entering his apartment was a huge poster of John Lennon hanging on the wall. Disconcerted, I tried to persuade Havel that the counterculture in the West was no friend of anti-Communists like himself, but I made even less of a "dent" on him than Ginsberg had made on me thirty years earlier.
Conversely, I always thought the Communist governments were stupid in failing to understand that cultural radicals like Ginsberg, who did everything in their power to undermine American resistance to Communism, were their de facto allies in the cold war. I mean, when Ginsberg ridiculed the cold war in a poem like "America" ("The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take our cars from out of our garages" and so on), whose political purposes did Havel on the one side and Castro on the other think were being served?
America is getting soft on Communism; America's population includes declared homosexuals; homosexuals are pacifists and soft on Communism: finally (though this is as yet unstated), homosexual Communists run America. circa 1977
So nothing's changed in American politics in over 30 years?
QuoteFollowing the break, Norman Podhoretz and William Buckley–two of the grand old men of the Grand Old Party–begin to feud. Podhoretz will not stop speaking–"I have lots of ex-friends on the left; it looks like I'm going to have some ex-friends on the right, too," he rants[.]
[...]
Today, he is a bristling gray ball of aggression, here to declare that the Iraq war has been "an amazing success." He waves his fist and declaims, "There were WMD, and they were shipped to Syria. ... This picture of a country in total chaos with no security is false. It has been a triumph. It couldn't have gone better." He wants more wars, and fast. He is "certain" Bush will bomb Iran, and "thank God" for that.
[...]
A few floors away, Podhoretz tells me he is losing his voice, "which will make some people very happy." Then he croaks out the standard-issue Wolfowitz line about how, after September 11, the United States had to introduce democracy to the Middle East in order to change the political culture that produced the mass murderers. For somebody who declares democracy to be his goal, he is remarkably blasÃÆ'Ã,© about the fact that 80 percent of Iraqis want U.S. troops to leave their country, according to the latest polls. "I don't much care," he says, batting the question away. He goes on to insist that "nobody was tortured in Abu Ghraib or GuantÃÆ'Ã,¡namo" and that Bush is "a hero." He is, like most people on this cruise, certain the administration will attack Iran.
"I keep telling people we are in World War Four," Podhoretz declares. He fumes at Buckley, George Will, and the other apostate conservatives who refuse to see sense. He again declares victory.
Quote from: Cain on February 03, 2010, 10:06:47 AM
Unfortunately, to a Republican, that sounded like
SHOULD WE TEACH OUR CHILDREN TO BE CHRISTIANS, OR LET THEM BE GODLESS ATHEISTIC NAZI EVOLUTIONISTS? OR WORSE, JOIN OTHER RELIGIONS???
What is interesting is there is at least 7% response in each question which disagrees with the typical Republican response. I wonder if those are the same people answering most questions against the party grain, and if they are, why the hell are they still members?
Well, a lot of muslims do identify as conservative.....
It is wholly ironic that Muslims identify with the very party that would bomb them from the earth with little to no provocation.
You have to be a kind of interbred cross between UKIP and the BNP, basically.
BUMPED for a new poll:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/3/23/849763/-Confirmed!-GOP-batshit-insane
QuoteConservatives were outraged at our January poll suggesting that Republicans were batshit insane. But it wasn't so much the results which they challenged, but the veracity of the pollster and of us. Rather than argue that Republicans weren't birthers (they are), they tried to discredit the organization commissioning the poll (us).
Well, another non-partisan pollster, Harris (http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-03-22/scary-new-gop-poll), has reported similar results:
Quote* 67 percent of Republicans (and 40 percent of Americans overall) believe that Obama is a socialist.
* 57 percent of Republicans (32 percent overall) believe that Obama is a Muslim
* 45 percent of Republicans (25 percent overall) agree with the Birthers in their belief that Obama was "not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president"
* 38 percent of Republicans (20 percent overall) say that Obama is "doing many of the things that Hitler did"
* Scariest of all, 24 percent of Republicans (14 percent overall) say that Obama "may be the Antichrist."
The GOP base is full of all-out lunatics, motivated and fueled by Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and the rest of the neo-Birchers of the conservative movement. As long as they hold sway with the Republican Party, compromise will be impossible. They won't allow it.
BANKERS ARE THE JEWS FOR THE KENYAN MUSLIM SOCIALIST ANTICHRIST'S OVENS!
Conservatives /are/ essentially insane, in some way or form. Especially if you use the definition "doing the same things over and over believing you will get a different result" for insanity. People who wish for static reality or the reactionaries who wish to actually /go back/ in time to an earlier "perfect" age, are crazy. They are nuts, bonkers.
I WISH THINGS TODAY WERE THE WAY I REMEMBERED THEM AS A CHILD WHEN I DIDN'T UNDERSTAND WHAT WAS GOING ON!
\
(http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/dolgachov/dolgachov0612/dolgachov061200073/679069.jpg)
Quote from: Kai on March 24, 2010, 11:43:45 AM
Conservatives /are/ essentially insane, in some way or form. Especially if you use the definition "doing the same things over and over believing you will get a different result" for insanity. People who wish for static reality or the reactionaries who wish to actually /go back/ in time to an earlier "perfect" age, are crazy. They are nuts, bonkers.
Well, the thing that used to define conservatism (aside from "fiscal responsibility") wasn't so much being reactionary as being suspicious of large changes. For example, Edmund Burke, who a lot of Americans who haven't read Edmund Burke supposedly look up to, wrote a damning book about the revolution in France and the terror it unleashed. At the same time, he was a supporter of the American revolution against the Crown (a surprisingly large number of Parlimentarians in England were sympathetic to the American revolution, if you do some reading on the period). That was because the French revolution sought to create an entirely new and radically egalitarian society - one which totally abolished the feudal system France had suffered under and destroyed the power of the Church - within the space of a couple of years. The American revolutionaries, on the other hand, kept much of the trappings of the English constitution, including seperation of powers, recognition of the traditional liberties accorded to the English and an artisocratic (in reality if not in name) overclass who kept everything under control. Burke's pragmatic conservatism was hugely influential on English and thus American society.
Then, by contrast, you have Joseph de Maistre, a Savoyard diplomat and philosopher. de Maistre, as opposed to Burke, was a true reactionary, decrying all sorts of attempts of progress as attacks on the throne of the king and the altar of god. He blamed the Terror on atheism, for example. Constitutions and rulers, for him, were appointed by God and not man, and hierarchical society was the highest good. de Maistre was briefly zeitgeisty in the early 19th century, but faded quickly, forgotten for everything except his (deserved) reputation as a viciously brilliant writer. Isiah Berlin, the British political philosopher, thinks de Maistre gave the first possible voicing to a fascist worldview. It is therefore unsurprising that Pat Buchanan praised him as a "great conservative" in 2006.
The problem with de Maistre's reactionary tendencies, other than their obvious lunacy, is that they're not even based on how France really worked. While he extolled the virtues of the hierarchical state and the authoritarian King...well, read Machiavelli's description of France. The feudal lords had a lot of leeway and, at times, so did several other groups. The King was a powerful figure, but power in the country had always, in a sense, been decentralized from the capital, at least until the Revolution itself.
Much like that, most American conservatives want to return to an imaginary past, which never actually existed. That is why they are doomed to constant failure. They're trying to build something which not only never happened, but in many cases never could happen. Free market capitalism along with pious Christianity, for example. Good luck with that. When you decide which of your two conflicting principles will eventually apply to pornographers, get back to me. Until then, STFU.
Quote from: Cain on March 24, 2010, 02:58:28 PM
When you decide which of your two conflicting principles will eventually apply to pornographers, get back to me.
Great line.
this merely highlights the inadequacy of the terminology that we use, and insistence of summarizing the whole of politics into a one dimensional 'spectrum'.
from
(http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_DVFl8ZPKJso/SPP1Vdqtd7I/AAAAAAAAATw/j4x5LwhDHWE/s320/inside-stewartbook.jpg):
"Together, the two parties function like giant down comforters, allowing the candidates to disappear into the enveloping softness, protecting them from exposure to the harsh weather of independent thought...Each party has a platform, a prix fixe menu of beliefs making up its worldview. The candidate can choos one of two platforms, but remember - no substitutions. For example, do you support universal health care? Then you must also want a ban on assult weapons. Pro-limited government? Congratulations, you are also anti-abortion. Luckily, all human opinion falls neatly nto one of the two clearly defined camps. Thus, the two-party system elegently relflects the bichromatic rainbow that is American political thought."