Is America Turning Left? (Not a Candidate Diary)
Thu Mar 27, 2008 at 02:56:04 PM PDT
A lot of people have been theorizing lately that America is turning blue, steering left, becoming more liberal. There's a lot of talk about Obama being the most liberal presidential candidate yet getting the most widespread support. There's a lot of talk about more Americans becoming more liberal about the environment, the Iraq war, and so on. But I think this article released today by The Economist magazine may show us that all of this talk is just, well, a lot of talk. Are we seeing a trend toward liberalism, or are we just seeing an anti-Bush backlash?
The Economist released a comparative analysis today of right and left in America and Britain. I have to say, I was quite surprised at the results. In fact, in both religion and social values and also in national interest, America's left was far to the right of Britain's right.
To get the best picture of these results, you should literally look at the picture. They have a chart that shows U.S. and British responses on a spectrum, and there is actually a huge gap between their right and our left in these three categories. That's right, our left is substantially further right than their right.
Now, I think we all already understood that religious and social values would be more conservative in the U.S. and more liberal in the U.K., but I was surprised to see any gap at all (I expected to see some overlap in every category), much less such the huge gap seen in this chart.
I have a sort of weird spectrum of political beliefs. My liberal friends say I'm mostly progressive with a conservative bent. My conservative family doesn't know what to think of me, but they are constantly explaining to me how important education is to ensuring conservative beliefs -- they seriously think my schooling in California (they were all educated in rural Tennessee) screwed up my ideology. So, I've learned to take both left and right with a grain of salt.
Ok, first we need to operationally define "left" and "right". It's definitely more complex, but this is the boiled down version of The Economist's definition:
"left" implies a big-state, secular, socially liberal, internationalist and green outlook; right, the reverse
I'll start with the interpretation and then drill down. They had a fairly interesting interpretation of the similarities found between Britain and America. Their conclusion is that both Britain and America push the rest of the world to be more capitalistic, and most people in both countries believe it's ok to push our style of democratic government onto the rest of the world through military intervention:
So some sort of Anglo-Saxon particularity appears to exist; and complacent, even triumphant, America and Britain have urged on the rest of the world their own prescriptions: lightly-regulated capitalism red in tooth and claw at home, and military intervention where needed to promote democracy around the world. Both seem rather less than winning strategies these days.
It is most interesting when you drill down to this chart of the individual questions.
I was particularly surprised to see that only 30% of Americans believe in evolution, and 60% see the Bible as explaining the origin of the Earth. Whereas only 10% of the British see the Bible as explaining the origin of the Earth. I found myself saying, IS THIS FOR REAL? Can we please bring science back? For the record, I am the only person in my family who believes in evolution, but I thought that was because they were extreme, I don't want to know that they're the norm...
A full 70% of the British say it's perfectly acceptable to have premarital sex, while less than 25% of Americans say the same. I guess everybody's a sinner.
Here's something the British and Americans agree on. The answers were almost identical for both countries on bringing the American troops home from Iraq. When you add up the people who want the troops to come home from Iraq by 2008, by 2010, and now, you've got about 70%. The weird thing is, when they change the wording slightly to include British and American troops, the answers change somewhat -- notably, more Americans want the troops to stay in that scenario. Maybe it's the principle of social proof/consensus at play?
About 55% of Americans said that free trade is often harmful, but just over half of the British sample thinks free trade is a good thing. Surprisingly, the answers were a little closer together on most of the globalism answers, but significantly more Americans believe globalism is a bad thing.
Both countries answered the immigration question identically. This surprised me because I was raised on the meme that we are a nation of immigrants, but of course that is currently countered by the current controversies of border-crossing immigrants. About 50% believe immigration does not help the economy. Just under 20% believe immigration doesn't have an effect, and only about 25% think immigration has a positive effect on the economy.
But here's the one that really got me. Iran. Should military action be taken to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons? Almost 50% of Americans said yes. This shocked me. I'm not sure that the average American understands the implications of a war against Iran. If people think it's tough in Iraq, they need to take another look at Iran.
Don't me wrong, I believe we have the best military in the world, but I also believe it's best not to kill them off in a war against Iran. And this is a huge statement for me. I come from a military family and this statement, which I will repeat again, "it's best not to kill them off in a war against Iran" is the first time I've spoken out against any war in my life. I understand it's a mild statement, but it's a big step for me. I seriously believe my father would disown me if I ever participated in an anti-war protest. Seriously. But I am telling you now, we do not want to go to war against Iran, and I am believe it is the road we are heading down if we elect McCain. Almost 50%!
Maybe it's just because I was raised in Tennessee (we aren't called the volunteer state for nothing), or maybe it's because I was raised in a military family, but I believe we are a nation of war hawks. And even I was shocked at how many people think we should intervene militarily with Iran. We also were significantly more willing to take military action "to pursue our interests" which seems to me a fairly sweeping statement. Really, what does "pursue our interests" really mean? We should not be saying yes to that.
One area that did impress me was this:
Britons are more willing than Americans to curb civil liberties in pursuit of security.
Can someone please pass that conclusion on to the Bush administration? I'd like some of my civil liberties back please.
And this was an interesting tidbit:
Of the current presidential candidates, British Tories would vote for Barack Obama; Labour supporters prefer Hillary Clinton by a narrow margin.
And this was also particularly interesting:
74% of Americans believed that war is sometimes necessary to obtain justice, around 66% of Europeans thought the opposite.
Note: You can read the full results of the surveys conducted on behalf of The Economist here.
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