No wonder you guys (Americans) are at each other's throats

[dsheinem]

liberal arts colleges

I am saddened how many people probably do believe that the mere presence of the word "liberal" is "all the evidence you need!!"

Someone should have educated them about how to use a dictionary.

[Ack]

Indeed. I had a professor in high school who would say "I used to be a Republican, then I went to college and got an education." And my college's campus newspaper once had a story on a conservative rally, and the people they interviewed were talking about how they felt oppressed by the liberals.

There's a lot of good research that pretty definitively links the amount (and quality) of education one receives to their political leanings (more/better education = more progressive political views). From what I recall, some of that research isn't strictly about college education, either...there's a "liberal bias" in all education, to the extent that education is invested in the new and the future much more than it is in the old and the past. The more you get exposed to new ideas and other ways of thinking, the less likely you will find conservative politics endearing.

The issue is when this becomes entirely one-sided. As an example, studying a conservative and a liberal take on the Vietnam War can lead to starkly different views. But neither is wholly accurate in their own right, it takes a combination of both. Yes, education is investing in the new, but to fully discard the past is just as much a folly as it is to look solely to the past with no regard to the future.

[ZeroAX]

The issue is when this becomes entirely one-sided. As an example, studying a conservative and a liberal take on the Vietnam War can lead to starkly different views. But neither is wholly accurate in their own right, it takes a combination of both. Yes, education is investing in the new, but to fully discard the past is just as much a folly as it is to look solely to the past with no regard to the future.

That's what multi-party systems and coalition governments are for. Because a 2 party system offers binary solutions to complex issues.

[Ack]

The issue is when this becomes entirely one-sided. As an example, studying a conservative and a liberal take on the Vietnam War can lead to starkly different views. But neither is wholly accurate in their own right, it takes a combination of both. Yes, education is investing in the new, but to fully discard the past is just as much a folly as it is to look solely to the past with no regard to the future.

That's what multi-party systems and coalition governments are for. Because a 2 party system offers binary solutions to complex issues.

Yes and no. Having two parties makes them appear binary, but because two parties effectively have to represent the wide spectrum of American points of view, there's actually quite an interesting variety of views contained within. It's just that both parties struggle with perception, and our news services generally report on the division of ideas with a party as a dividing of the party itself.

If anything, that would be another issue within our media: the portrayal of our political system as starkly black and white. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as people view these differences and focus entirely on them, and politicians harp on these differences as a means of political expediency to support votes.

[MrPopo]

Yes and no. Having two parties makes them appear binary, but because two parties effectively have to represent the wide spectrum of American points of view, there's actually quite an interesting variety of views contained within. It's just that both parties struggle with perception, and our news services generally report on the division of ideas with a party as a dividing of the party itself.

I thought The West Wing did a really good job of showing this to be the case. The show definitely has a liberal bent, but I really liked how it depicted the general machinery of the government and the sort of working to gain support for votes that you aren't guaranteed of getting simply from party affiliation.

[ZeroAX]

Yes and no. Having two parties makes them appear binary, but because two parties effectively have to represent the wide spectrum of American points of view, there's actually quite an interesting variety of views contained within. It's just that both parties struggle with perception, and our news services generally report on the division of ideas with a party as a dividing of the party itself.

That last part is interesting.

But don't you think it would be better to have proportional representation? If only 15% of Americans care about guns, then have only 15% of parlimanet be about that. How many democrats are just democrats because they support gay/minority rights? How many are democrats cause they have more left-ish economic policy ideals? How many are democrats cause they believe in the social state? And how many just vote cause they are the unions' party and just promise higher wages to teachers?

In my opinion a proportional representaiton is healthier for democracy. It teaches parties how to compromise and it helps even the lesser voices get heard.

And if you are curious, in Greece we managed to have a system that brings the worst of both systems. Proportional representation, where the first party gets to rule by itself as long as it wins 33% of the votes (it's given 17% of the seats in parliament as a "first place bonus")

[Jmustang1968]

Indeed. I had a professor in high school who would say "I used to be a Republican, then I went to college and got an education." And my college's campus newspaper once had a story on a conservative rally, and the people they interviewed were talking about how they felt oppressed by the liberals.

There's a lot of good research that pretty definitively links the amount (and quality) of education one receives to their political leanings (more/better education = more progressive political views). From what I recall, some of that research isn't strictly about college education, either...there's a "liberal bias" in all education, to the extent that education is invested in the new and the future much more than it is in the old and the past. The more you get exposed to new ideas and other ways of thinking, the less likely you will find conservative politics endearing.

Also depends on what they study. It seems the more liberal leaning move on to being professors and these academia type roles. Many of those who enter the workforce, and especially the engineering and tech fields, tend to lean more conservative. I know we have discussed this before.

[Flake]

The thing that bothers me about the modern conservative movement is how much of it is predicated on a platform of being terrified of fucking everything. Everyone is out to get your money, jobs, guns, benefits, rights, guns, guns, guns, borders, and women. The more die hard conservatives I know are so spun up 24/7 that they don't even recognize the contradictory concepts they hold in their heads at the same time.

- Smaller government but somehow also have a border patrol that can control the entire border!

- No more taxes but keep the roads built and somehow fund the military

- It's okay to restrict voting and reproductive rights but get your hands off my guns!

- This is a country of religious freedom but please only practice the locally acceptable version of Christianity

- No more welfare but hey, corporations need huge tax breaks!

This isn't to say that liberals are better. Die hard liberals can be annoying naive and optimistic but optimism is much more attractive to me than living in such fear. The confirmation bias in media today only makes the whole thing worse. I used to be able to at least talk to my dad who is a bleed on the flag to keep the stripes red Republican where I am at best a kinda sorta independent / mostly socially liberal. Now he takes every single drivel that comes out of Matt Drudge's anus as the god honest truth, twice on Sundays as long as it's about something Obama did/didnt do.

[ZeroAX]

Also depends on what they study. It seems the more liberal leaning move on to being professors and these academia type roles. Many of those who enter the workforce, and especially the engineering and tech fields, tend to lean more conservative. I know we have discussed this before.

Have you seriously never met a programmer? :S. We're so liberal we'll be the first to marry alien species when we meet them.

This isn't to say that liberals are better. Die hard liberals can be annoying naive and optimistic but optimism is much more attractive to me than living in such fear. The confirmation bias in media today only makes the whole thing worse. I used to be able to at least talk to my dad who is a bleed on the flag to keep the stripes red Republican where I am at best a kinda sorta independent / mostly socially liberal. Now he takes every single drivel that comes out of Matt Drudge's anus as the god honest truth, twice on Sundays as long as it's about something Obama did/didnt do.

Thanks Obama.

[Ack]

Well, the US has tried a few times to build up a viable third- or even fourth-party option, but it generally collapses for a few reasons: if one party does it and fragments, then the other party begins dominating elections. We do have a Green Party(which generally pulls votes from the Democrats), and a Libertarian Party(which generally pulls votes from the Republicans), as well as a Constitutionalist Party(pulls from Republicans) and a Socialist Party(yes, we have one, it pulls from the Democrats), etc. We've also had parties based around racist values(the Know Nothing Party), single issues(the Liberty Party), as well as populist social ideas(the People's Party).

The truth is, to get an effective system where we have multiple parties, both major parties would have to fragment at the same time. Otherwise the dominant surviving party will win elections due to its broad base while the weakened two parties will scrabble for a few votes and likely just end up cannibalizing each other to form a single party again.

And this is the way the American political landscape has been basically since inception, starting with the unorganized Pro-Administration Party against the equally unorganized Anti-Administration Party(which were offshoots of opinions on the Constitution of the United States), into the Federalist and Democratic-Republican parties, and solidified in the late 1820s with the formation of the Democrat Party(which faced the National Republican Party, which became the Whig Party) and the 1850s with the formation of the Republican Party from the Whig Party.

In short, we've tried, and in the first century of our country, the political party system was actually pretty fluid. But we've cemented ourselves in the last 150 years(likely due to the Civil War), and while there have been shifts in demographics and philosophies since then in various ways, our party system has remained largely static.