Posted on 03/04/2005 7:10:21 AM PST by dukeman
This one from DU speaks for itself. Enjoy:
amjucsc (104 posts) Thu Mar-03-05 10:43 PM
Original message
Why are Americans so damn conservative?
While this obviously dosen't apply to the people on this site, I always wonder why collectively Americans have strayed so much farther to the right than people in other first world countries.
Why exactly is it that people who embrace evangelical Christianity while opposing things like universal healthcare tend to wind up on this side of the pond? History? Demographic trends? National character? Something in the drinking water? (Turns out floridation was a left wing plot after all...)
I'm just curious if anyone has a good explanation for the red states...
Placebo (1000+ posts) Thu Mar-03-05 10:48 PM
Response to Original message
3. It can't be religious-based...
I mean, hell, Europe was ruled by religion for hundreds of years yet somehow it's turned out alright. [BWAHAHAHAHAHA!]
physioex (1000+ posts) Thu Mar-03-05 10:50 PM
Response to Reply #3
4. But that only took a few thousand years....
The people who came to this country came here to have religious freedom. Turn around what do we get, fudamentalists pushing their values on a secular country.
lagged_variable (5 posts) Thu Mar-03-05 10:53 PM
Response to Reply #3
11. Puritanism
Europe may have dealt with similar religious issues, but it wasn't founded by a mass of Puritans. A country founded by the Protestant ethic run amok, plus a strong sense of Rugged Individualism grown by a frontier (cowboy) fantasy, in my opinion, gets us where we are today.
pdurod1 (129 posts) Thu Mar-03-05 10:51 PM
Response to Original message
6. They're not conservative, just scared and ignorant or does that define a
conservative?
hedgehog (164 posts) Fri Mar-04-05 04:38 AM
Response to Reply #6
27. Absolutely, ignorant but not necessarily stupid
I remember one poll indicating a large number of Bush supporters who held views the opposite of his. They would have been Kerry supporters if they had understood which candidate they actually agreed with. This wasn't a case of letting one issue trounce the others; they thought Bush's positions were the opposite of what they were.
One reason for ignorance- when you're working 2 jobs, it's hard to keep track of politics.
solinvictus (1000+ posts) Thu Mar-03-05 10:52 PM
Response to Original message
7. It's a reaction due to Sep. 11 & years of propaganda.
Americans still cling to the Horatio Alger story as a cherished sacrament of our culture despite the fact that the very people proclaiming the glories of the free market are the last ones to believe in it. Unfortunately, the average, Freeper-type conservative has been lulled into believing that hard work, dedication, and competence will result in success. Due to this, the working class Freeper has a sort of political and economic version of Stockholm Syndrome in which they identify more with their captors than the very people who are seeking a bette life for them. Many here look at Freepers with disgust, but to a degree, I pity the ignorant, mean spirited bastards. Think of how many Freepers are working at dead-end **** jobs while professing their love for Big Brother.
physioex (1000+ posts) Thu Mar-03-05 10:58 PM
Response to Reply #7
13. Very well put....
And the less educated less read you are, the more likely you are to believe the lies....
El Supremo (829 posts) Thu Mar-03-05 10:52 PM
Response to Original message
8. Because it is safer for the uninformed.
When you don't know squat, it is easier to fall into line with the most vocal idiots.
BTW, not all evangels are bad. Fundamentalists in any religion are the root of all problems.
Kerrytravelers (408 posts) Thu Mar-03-05 10:52 PM
Response to Original message
9. I think 9/11
* was able to wrap himself in it. People are too lazy and too disinterested to learn what's really going on. Others just can't believe that someone would lie about going to war. It's misplaced national pride. It's no excuse, but this is what is happening. If 9/11 had not happened, I doubt * would still be in the Oval Office (unless, of course, he cheted again. He wouoldn't do that, would he? )
zulchzulu (1000+ posts) Thu Mar-03-05 10:58 PM
Response to Original message
14. It's generally just stupidity, ignorance & about being overwhelmed
Two jobs, two kids, two car garage with a two hour daily commute and being two months away from living on the street make the average American more than willing to watch two hours of mindless TV each night that doesn't have to deal with the hell that their lives are.
Microwave the food and flick on the tube after a long day overworked and underpaid and a traffic jam on the way home to pick the kids at daycare for two grand a month.
It's no wonder people believe Chimpy. They're too exhausted and too clueless about what's going on outside their miserable lives.
bob_weaver (358 posts) Thu Mar-03-05 10:59 PM
Response to Original message
15. Because Americans are selfish, and conservatism is selfishness put into a
political ideology
AndyTiedye (1000+ posts) Thu Mar-03-05 10:59 PM
Response to Original message
16. The Right Wing Owns The News & the Fundies Own the Voting Machinez
And once they push through the DRAFT they'll own our bodies too.
That's what Boosh** really means about this "ownership" thing.
The "pendulum" only swings ever further to the right now.
ljm2002 (453 posts) Thu Mar-03-05 11:47 PM
Response to Original message
18. Middle class values...
...I do not say that as a knee-jerk remark, I mean there is within the American personality, a tendency to think in terms of the obvious Goodness of material wealth and also to fantasize about the world around us: we see ourselves with a "homey" kind of vision, where there is this lovely middle class amber glow cast across the USofA, and that is Reality As We See It and we are happy to believe all that is told to us by our beneficient government from whom so many blessings flow, as well as to rally 'round any warmongering that may occur; and finally, we have an oddly strained relationship with the truth where our own immediate self interest and the status quo are concerned: we simplly insist on seeing things from the side that supports our own immediate self interest.
PurityOfEssence (1000+ posts) Fri Mar-04-05 02:23 AM
Response to Original message
20. Independence and selfishness are inculcated as the greatest virtues
Need I say more?
Extreme Christianity is total selfishness: save me and f*** them; they're inferiors anyway. Hell, you can't be picked from the crowd for happyland if the rest of them aren't such rotters.
Think about it.
okieinpain (1000+ posts) Fri Mar-04-05 03:13 AM
Response to Original message
23. easy, black males and crime. 9/11 just the icing on the cake.
Broca (30 posts) Fri Mar-04-05 03:39 AM
Response to Original message
24. Try corroborating this to the areas with the highest levels of Mercury
contamination or other factors that affect the brain's function.
ComerPerro (1000+ posts) Fri Mar-04-05 04:28 AM
Response to Original message
26. They aren't. They just think they are
Most Americans are just so uninterested that they go for whoever tells most, nicest, and most convincing lies. That is why the Republicans have been so successful (and 9/11, of course).
area51 (973 posts) Fri Mar-04-05 07:33 AM
Response to Original message
28. "Why are Americans so damn conservative?"
B/c of our conservative-biased media feeding them propaganda.
sniffa (1000+ posts) Fri Mar-04-05 08:54 AM
Response to Original message
29. americans aren't that conservative
it's smoke and mirrors.
Truly, you are correct. It's also interesting to note that ours is the only society that didn't have a period of upheaval and a bloodbath shortly after our founding revolution (see France, Russia, China,.....).
I think what they're saying is that those qualities really don't get you anywhere because the deck is stacked against you by the big money interests, corporations, blah, blah, blah. To the libs, we're all sheep to be be sheared by the elite few who control everything. It's all very cynical and dark.
I think my favorite is, "How Can I Miss You If You Won't Go Away?"
How can you stand to go to that site? You need to take a bath now. Wash all of that filth off of you.
"floridation" - That's funny. I guess flowers are a leftist plot?
I've visited there since just to try to peer inside tneir minds. They're very frank and extemporaneous. They are also paranoid and possess a stunning sense of self-importance (i.e., it's up to them to save the world from the dark evil of Bush/conservatism). For me, it's like rubber-necking as I drive by a car accident. I think I need help.... :-)
"To the libs, we're all sheep to be be sheared by the elite few who control everything. It's all very cynical and dark."
Thanks for explaining. They confuse me. I can't get my mind to grasp their 'reasoning.'
They reason in a circular way that even confuses them. I often see them "check in" with each other to see what their political position should be on some point or anotherr. It's like that 8th grade girl social question, "Do we like her?"
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