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Thursday, September 20, 2007
Mainstream poll after mainstream poll has consistently shown solid majorities of your fellow citizens -- often 2/3 or more -- endorse all of these progressive positions:
--the government should provide more, not less services
--the government should take care of those who can't take care of themselves
--the government should guarantee health care for every American
--the distribution of wealth in this country is unfairly concentrated
--the wealthy pay too little in taxes
--the minimum wage should be raised
--there is a moral imperative to pay workers a living wage
--undocumented immigrants should have a path to citizenship
--Democrats reflect the nation's moral values more than do Republicans Together, these constitute bedrock progressive principles and policies.
The mystery in question here arises, when Americans are asked to describe themselves as liberal, moderate or conservative.
If more than half, often 2/3 or more of Americans espouse these progressive positions, shouldn't 2/3 or more of Americans describe themselves -- given the choices liberal-moderate-conservative -- as liberal?
They should, but they don't.
Two organizations have been asking this question for decades.
In short, National Election Studies found 23% liberals, Harris only 18%.
If you told your friendly local right-winger, that Americans hold overwhelmingly progressive positions on most every issue, your friendly local right-winger could throw the Harris and NES polls back at you.
So how you should you respond?
Here's how.
First...
For details, listen to the podcast! You'll learn about self-described conservatives who actually hold progressive positions. And in fact, you'll hear in his own words, a self-described ultra-conservative realizing that he supports many positions that are progressive. How does this happen? Under gentle but probing questioning by yours truly.
(PS: Right-wingers, if you want to write in to me, fine, but at least do me the courtesy of listening to the podcast first. Please don't respond just on the basis of the brief preview above. Thanks!!)
For those who aren't familiar with podcasts, podcasts are a series of mp3 audio files that you download to your computer or portable music device (iPod or other) and then can listen to whenever you want.
You don't need an iPod to listen to podcasts.
Podcast software like iTunes will automatically check a podcast at intervals you specify, and download any new installments.
iTunes is free and very easy to use. http://www.apple.com/itunes/
In iTunes, if you want to subscribe to my podcast, just click on Advanced at the top right, then choose Subscribe to Podcast, and paste in the URL http://feeds.feedburner.com/blasttheright
That's the URL to use for other podcast-friendly software programs as well.
Alternatively, you can just manually download new episodes from my podcast home page as they become available. Here is a link to my podcast's home page: http://www.therationalradical.com/podcast.html
Enjoy!!
Jack Clark 8:07 PM [+]
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