Pick A Side!
Whenever election time comes around and all the candidates become poised in partisan battles the urge for people to label their peers liberal or conservative becomes more appealing.
I always find this cycle tiring because friends, family and readers try to slap some sort of label on me and they almost always fail miserably. Generally the political identity they paint me with tells me a lot about how they identify themselves.
I realized this today when I was checking my Email. I received an obnoxious forward from an Egyptian friend, born and raised in the U.S. and who talks as if he has a live feed from George Bush wired right into his ear.
He’s a republican but not for any governmental policy reasons, he’s a republican because he hates gays, immigrants and “terrorists”. He’s the, “they attack us because they are jealous of our freedom” type. Sometimes talking to him about politics is like talking to an Alabama baptist preacher who goes hunting on Saturdays and to Ku Klux Klan rallies on Fridays. Essentially, he’s like most Social Republicans, paranoid and terrified of the world around him.
His email today had the header, “This is more for my Liberal wack job friends!”. Unbelievable, we’ve had our fair share of conversations about politics which usually consist of him repeating something he heard in a George Bush Speech or on Hannity & Colmes and me telling him how irritating I think it is. Somehow that makes me some liberal “wack job”.
Ironically I was having a conversation with a young idealist Egyptian friend the night before. He’s your stereotypical college liberal who believes the world can be a utopia, poverty can be eradicated, plants have feelings, and we should all ride bicycles to work because cars are bad for the environment. He’s the “free tibet and the Dali Lama” type. Conversations with him are beyond frustrating, its a lot like talking to someone on LSD, and for all I know that might be the reason for his radically illogical liberal views. For some reason I enjoy talking politics with him because part of me believes I can bring him back to the real world.
On this occasion he asked for my views on U.S. foreign policy and in the course of the conversation he discovered that my views were critical of U.S. foreign policy and his response was, “wow I thought you were a conservative nut job”. What the hell is going on here?
Well its not that complicated to understand the issue with both of these assholes. I’m a moderate, I’m in the middle of the spectrum, some conservative principles makes sense to me and some liberal principles makes sense to me, thats hard for people to understand though. People’s minds enjoy labels, they like to see black and white, gray is much harder to process.
To a conservative I’m liberal, to a liberal I’m conservative. You can test this phenomenon yourself. Ask a liberal if the media is conservative or liberal and ask a conservative the same. The liberal will almost always say its conservative and the conservative will almost always say its liberal. To them it is, anything to the center of their position is the opposite to them. For my readers, especially new ones, my position can be hard to understand, they come looking for one definitive side of the spectrum. Sorry you wont find that here, you probably never will.
A long time ago when this blog was in its infantile stages I was talking to Sandmonkey and he gave me some advice, he said “you need to pick one definitive side and go with it”, explains a lot doesnt it ;). I dont deny that readers respond more to the demagoguing of political affiliations but thats not the answer, progress requires balance, it requires deep thought and passionate heart felt opinions, if those opinions are spread along the spectrum than so be it. To be honest, I dont really care if everyone who reads it gets it.
In my life I’ve learned the most from those with balanced views and most people do they just do it differently, maybe they listen to balanced opinions, maybe they have the discipline to listen to unbalanced individuals of both sides separately.
My advice, if I’m worthy of giving it, is to stay away from extreme conservativism or liberalism, extremes of anything are destructive, the answer is in the middle.
i haven’t been around for a while but i can see you’re still getting it done.
I consider myself a conservative, but i have an open mind. I listen to all of the arguments and i mostly agree with the conservative view points. I’m more of a logical thinker, i want proof, i want historical examples, etc. It seems to me that most of the liberal positions are based in emotion and don’t make sense. I don’t like to talk in absolutes because no side or ideology is perfect, but what i will say is that the media IS biased. Most print and t.v. media is liberal. This is not a statement of opinion, it is fact. I have done numerous posts on my blog with the statistics and anecdotal evidence to back that up. Talk radio of course is overwhelmingly conservative.
May 16th, 2008 at 9:20 amRhino, my favorite conservative. I missed you. Well I see where you’re coming from for the most part and I agree. But as far as the liberal media thing goes, I’m not really sold. If anything media might have recently become more polarized as Fox News ushered in clearly sided news opinions and straight liberals rose in comparison for ratings, like Keith Olberman. But hey, I might be wrong.
May 16th, 2008 at 10:57 amYou know what? Fox didn’t usher in the “clearly sided news opinion” they answered it. They recognized an underserved market and decided to serve it.
True, Fox is more conservative than most but they’re not extremely right. In fact they’re somewhat to the left.
MRC has done studies on how many times statistics were quoted from liberal and conservative think tanks. Fox was found to be left of center. or how many stories quoted dems or reps and fox slightly to the right.
Yes, Fox definitely has “news opinion” but so does every other network. The differnce is that you notice it with Fox because they don’t sound like EVERY OTHER NETWORK. You don’t notice the bias at cbs if you’re alternative is msnbc, but then you see fox and you realize that Brit Hume might be quoting James Inhofe instead of Al Gore. So the other side of the story gets told at Fox. That’s not the norm.
This is also my theory on why Fox kicks the crap out of every other cable network. Because liberals or middle of the road guys like yourself can go to any network or even newspaper or news weekly like Time or Newsweek or the NY times to get your angle, but conservatives can go to Fox or talk radio. That’s it. (maybe the Wash. Times)
Even still though i watch the libs all the time, like matthews(uber lib), and the greek midget that worked for clinton, and meet the depressed (i like russert and think he’s generally fair). I’m sensitive to the bias so i notice it all the time but it can’t be avoided on either side. Hannity is conservative, matthews is liberal. They both spin it their way. The difference is there’s a lot more matthews than hannitys.
Olberman however is a complete idiot so i throw him out of the equation, like the score from the soviet judge in the olympics in 1980. Throw out the top and bottom scores because you know they’re whacked.
May 16th, 2008 at 2:11 pmAs far as Fox being left of center I’ve read a fair share of analysis which explain why Fox tilts that way on that study. The fact is that studies method of gathering information is faulty. Of course Fox quotes democrats more, thats why I love watching Fox news, to see how they spin it and ridicule it. Their purpose in the news is to put horns on Liberals, make it a bad word and boost the Republican party by celebrating their hate for Democrats.
I try not to buy into documentary info too much but if you watch OutFoxed and take it for independent research its clear to see how Fox news intentionally pushes a conservative agenda to the extent of intimidating employees to vote Republican and to the extent of firing employees who dont walk the republican walk.
As far as the supposedly Liberal media, with the exception of FOX News (Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, John Gibson, Neil Cavuto, Steve Doocy, E.D. Hill, Brian Kilmeade, Brit Hume), Clear Channel, Laura Ingraham, Dr. Laura, Rush Limbaugh, Hugh Hewitt, Ann Coulter, Newsmax, G. Gordon Liddy, Michael Reagan, Michael Savage, Sinclair Broadcast Group (WLOS13, Fox 45, WTTO21, WB49, KGAN, WICD, WICS, WCHS, WVAH, WTAT, WSTR, WSYX, WTTE, WKEF, WRGT, KDSM, WSMH, WXLV, WURN, KVWB, KFBT, WDKY, WMSN, WVTV, WEAR, WZTV, KOTH, WYZZ, WPGH, WGME, WLFL, WRLH, WUHF, KABB, WGGB, WSYT, WTTA), David Horowitz, Rupert Murdoch, PAX, and MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, its true.
May 16th, 2008 at 7:47 pmInteresting. However it seems you did actually buy into that “documentary” and i put it in quotes like i would “farenheit 9/11″
Lets put that aside for a minute though. In your list of conservatives, how many are on tv? How many are on radio? and how many are writers like coulter?
You don’t even want to attempt to challenge me on the #’s because print media is so overwhelmingly biased that they even voted for Jimmy Carter in 1980. In fact, 51% voted for carter, 24% for the independent and only 25% for Reagan! Reagan CRUSHED Carter. Do you think maybe the media was a little bit left of the electorate???
Well that hasn’t changed. The print media votes overwhelmingly democrat, as do the tv people.(i can prove it if you want me to but it’s just the comments section) Talk radio is the only area that is dominated by conservatives and i’ve already given you my theory on why that is.
Finally, i don’t want to defend Fox news, but i think you should take a look at what you wrote. Their purpose is to put horns on the liberals? They’re the only station that puts the Conservatives and Liberals together. What show on MSNBC has that? olberman? NO matthews? NO. Even the commie’s at the NY Times say MSNBC is a liberal haven.
At least Fox puts colmes with hannity and brit hume has that chick from NPR and Juan Williams. (williams book “Enough” was very good)
By the way, the big 3 outdraw cable by tens of millions of viewers and they are all liberal.
May 19th, 2008 at 2:53 pmYou have your finger on the issue here.
September 1st, 2008 at 7:21 pmThe key word is “labels”, and I’d like to add another word : “Grouping”
People seem to not be able to deal with one another without grouping them and putting a nice clear label on each group.
What happened to people’s individuality?
How come it ended up that you had to be either liberal or a conservative?
It’s probably the result of the never ending human yearning for belonging to something, they would give up their individuality for it…. if not their reasoning and free thought.
And i’m not confining the argument here on left and right, it’s about all aspects of life.
The reason that drives people to do this is simply because it is much easier to adapt the opinion of another than to form your own, with requirements as severe as researching and reading and other time and energy consuming activities.
Generalizations, it seems, are the public’s answer to easy living.