We're Just Different People

[Sweetwater]

Originally Posted by spence

Liberals and conservatives don't have all the same beliefs???

STOP THE PRESSES!!!


Let's look at the actual poll instead of snippets...

Reason-Rupe Surveys : Reason Magazine

What it seems to indicate is that the majority of Americans don't fit into either of the two categories presented above.

What it also seems to indicate is that when broken down by party, people who would identify as democrats and independents scored pretty close to each other.

Another element is that the category questions separate "libertarian" from "conservative" while in the real world these are often combined. The net effect if this is to concentrate the "conservative" numbers. This is reflected when you look at the difference between the two tables.

If anything this poll confirms what we already knew, that our nation is made up of a diverse set of viewpoints, but that we share more in common than some would like you to believe.

-spence

Right, the terms "liberal" and "conservative" do not represent everyone. But that's not the point. The point was to take the two ends of the political extreme (thus leaving out libertarians and commutarians or not comparing democrats to republicans which are more politically ambiguous designations) to best illustrate the differences. These differences are important because they show that people don't value the same things and just pursue them in different ways (as some often think is the case), rather, they value completely different things and have sometimes incompatible world views.