The poll's at the end if you want to skip ahead, but the reason I'm asking is that I've noticed a trend of personalizing politics. Here on Kos, we've framed Iraq as "unless you're willing to enlist, you have no right to support the war." And of course, conservatives have been doing this for decades. The abortion question, rather than one of "is keeping abortion legal good policy?", becomes "would you let your own child have an abortion?" Ditto on gay marriage.
It's certainly not a good way to make policy since you can obviously support gay marriage without actually being gay, but it's a powerful way to spread a message. After all, policy details are often way above the heads of the average person, but anyone can understand an appeal to personal preferences. My mother doesn't understand the first thing about Iraq or weapons of mass destruction, but when she saw me talking an Army Recruiter, she made up her mind on Iraq rather quickly.
And so I thought I'd apply that idea to an old-school liberal idea: the welfare state. I imagine most of us support some form of redistribution in theory, and I imagine that at least some of us are in a position where we can give, at least occasionally. I certainly can, but I don't always give to the people on the street, even when I'm sure that they're not pulling one on me, and that bothers me a bit.
Conservatism has this nice continuity between the personal and the political. Being a good conservative means, in addition to voting GOP, being a good Judeo-Christian and working hard via the free market. Besides voting, what does being a good liberal or progressive mean?
Hence the question: as a progressive/liberal, do you give to homeless people?
