How Far Left Has America Moved?

While the Republican Party has veered to the far right over the last two decades or more - pushed mostly by the Christofascists who want a form of Christian Sharia law imposed on the nation, and by the white supremacists who want to deport Hispanics and restore the Jim Crow laws - there is an argument to be made that the nation is actually moving to the left, at least outside of Fox News viewers who live in their own fantasy world.  The number of those professing no religious affiliation has soared, locally, once conservative country clubs and yacht clubs are accepting same sex couples as members, and many want the government to do more to rein in the vulture capitalism so loved by right wing Republicans.  An op-ed in the New York Times by a former Mitt Romney strategist suggests that the country is moving to the left.  Here are highlights:

FROM the earliest days of Barack Obama’s presidency, a comforting assumption developed among much of the center-right political world. The thinking went like this: President Obama was far more liberal than the majority of the country. But given his extraordinary political talents, the fatigue of the George W. Bush years, the economic crisis and the excitement of electing the first African-American president, the country picked him not because of his ideology but in spite of it.

Once this unique political figure was no longer on the ballot, America would revert to the less liberal, more center-right direction that was the norm after World War II. Under this scenario, President Obama wasn’t some profound historical shift but more of an eccentric diversion.

Now it’s February 2016 and an obscure socialist — O.K., a Democratic Socialist — from a tiny state just beat one of the most powerful forces in the Democratic Party in the New Hampshire primary. On the Republican side, a man whom National Review, the conservative movement’s flagship publication, has vigorously denounced, also won New Hampshire in a rout.

Though only 16 years separated the election of Bill Clinton and that of President Obama, the two politicians seemed to represent the same party in name only. The 1992 campaign was dedicated to defining “a different kind of Democrat.” That was basically a nicely packaged phrase to stress that Bill Clinton and Al Gore were not crazy — or weak — liberals like the party’s recent lineup of losers.

By 2008 a different set of issues emerged, addressed with a new vocabulary. Mr. Obama made the case that he and the Democratic Party were best able to deal with the crushing pain of disappearing jobs and escalating inequality. The urgent need to prevent any more terrorist attacks had morphed to an urgent longing to end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Liberals now called themselves progressives and embraced the label.

The Barack Obama legacy debate is just beginning. One point up for discussion: whether the president pushed the country left, or whether he was just in step with how people felt. He passed the Affordable Care Act, announced support for same-sex marriage, and has argued passionately (if unsuccessfully) for more gun control.

For Republicans, this mostly proves that the president is out of sync with the majority of the country, though on same-sex marriage, the country has clearly changed.  . . . . But so far into the 2016 election, conservatives are on the run. Democrats are battling over who can really move the country left. And the leading Republican candidate is a man who has previously praised Canada’s single-payer health care system and described himself as “very pro-choice.”

This starts to paint a very different picture of the direction of the country. Instead of President Obama representing a quirky left shift engendered by his charisma, Iraq and the Great Recession, what if he turned out to have been a transitional figure to a considerably more leftward tilt? What if in 10 or 20 years we look back on the Obama years and they seem as conservative as the 1992 “Different Kind of Democrat” years do now?

It’s happening elsewhere. Canada has turned left, and a socialist, a long way from the days of Tony Blair, leads Britain’s Labour Party. In this global economy that everyone talks about but no one seems able to define, maybe larger forces are nudging the United States left. Unemployment is low and yet only 23 percent of the country believes we are headed in the right direction. Something clearly is wrong.

Perhaps the reality of the new American economy is becoming too exhausting.

“Keep your government hands off my Medicare,” opponents of the president’s health care bill once demanded. Like that confused, plaintive cry, will this be the election cycle when voters in both parties accept that they want a growing benevolent government, as long as they don’t have to admit they need it?

The Republican Party still believes it is 1980.  However, the world and society have changed radically.  Just maybe the larger public is waking up to the fact that what the GOP is selling just doesn't work anymore and that progressive - or, gasp, liberal - policies are what are needed to face the changed circumstances. 

Canada: Conservatives Suffer Major Defeat in Canada

Justin Trudeau

After a campaign somewhat similar to what we are hearing from Republicans who pander to a shrinking base and push an agenda focused on please the party base, Canada's Conservative Party went down to a crushing defeat, the full scope of which is yet to be fully tallied.  A telling quote from the New York Times notes:

The election became something of a referendum on Mr. Harper’s approach to government, which, in the view of his critics, has often focused on issues important to core Conservative supporters, mostly in the West, rather than to much of the population.

Sounds familiar doesn't it?  Like our Democrats, Justin Trudeau, the leader of the victorious Liberal Party, believes that government and politics can be a positive force in the lives of a nation's people.  One has to wonder if the GOP will take pause and even take note of the election results in Canada.  Here are more highlights from the Times coverage:

The nine-year reign of Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative Party came to a sudden and stunning end on Monday night at the hands of Justin Trudeau, the young leader of the Liberal Party.

Starting with a sweep of the Atlantic provinces, the Liberals capitalized on what many Canadians saw as Mr. Harper’s heavy-handed style, and the party went on to capture 184 of the 338 seats in the next House of Commons.

Justin Trudeau, who will be 44 on Christmas Day, will become Canada’s second-youngest prime minister and the first to follow a parent into office. 

While the Liberal Party had emerged on top in several polls over the past week, its lead was short of conclusive and Mr. Trudeau was an untested figure. There was no ambiguity, however, in Monday’s results. . . . The Conservatives were reduced to 99 seats from 159 in the last Parliament, according to preliminary results.

“More than a hundred years ago a great prime minister, Wilfrid Laurier, talked about sunny ways, he knew that politics can be a positive force and that is the message Canadians sent today,” Mr. Trudeau told supporters in Montreal. “Sunny ways, my friends, sunny ways, this is what positive politics can do.”

The election became something of a referendum on Mr. Harper’s approach to government, which, in the view of his critics, has often focused on issues important to core Conservative supporters, mostly in the West, rather than to much of the population.

The focus of the campaign fluttered among issues, including a scandal over Conservative senators’ expenses; antiterrorism measures Mr. Harper introduced; pensions; the stagnation of the economy brought about by plunging oil prices; the government’s handling of refugees; the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact; and Mr. Harper’s attempts to ban the wearing of face veils known as niqabs during citizenship ceremonies.

After spending most of the campaign delivering standard speeches to invitation-only crowds, Mr. Harper took a more theatrical approach in the final days. At campaign stops, as he recited his party’s claims of what a Liberal government would cost individual families, a recording of an old-fashioned cash register bell repeatedly pealed through loudspeakers and audience members piled what appeared to be currency on tables.

As I said, some of the parallels are striking.  And yes, Mr. Trudeau is easy on the eyes.

Conservative Versus Liberal Values

Click image to enlarge

A friend posted the image set out above on Facebook which, to my mind lays out the difference in the values of today's "godly" conservatives and the liberals they detest so much.  The chart isn't perfect by any means but it goes to highlight the differences between the selfishness, fear and hate that are now the defining characteristics of conservatism in America.  It is important to remember that conservatism wasn't always like this.  When did it begin to radically change?  When the Christofascists rose to power within the Republican Party and the conservative movement in general.  These "godly Christians" are the antithesis of the Gospel message and true Christians.  They are a scourge on society.

Conservative Wants to Disenfranchise Yonger Voters

Demonstrating that conservative professions of a love for democracy is lip service at best, the National Review’s Jonah Goldberg has admitted that he wants the voting age increased to disenfranchise younger voters.  While he won't say what age he wants the minimum voting age increased to, he confesses that in his view it should be "much higher."   In short he wants to be able to send young soldiers to their needless deaths in fool's errand wars like the Iraq War, but these individuals who represent cannon fodder for old white men should have no vote concerning the nation's course.  One could argue that given the current state of the country, one might better argue that its the elderly who ought to be disenfranchised. Think Progress looks at this latest far right batshitery.  Here are highlights:

The National Review’s Jonah Goldberg is claiming that 18-year-olds should be denied the right to vote because they are “so frickin’ stupid about so many things.” In a video first posted by the Daily Caller, Goldberg laments the culture’s obsession with youth and argues that conservatives should “beat out” young people’s belief that “socialism is better than capitalism.” Goldberg is the third National Review writer in two months to face controversy:

GOLDBERG: Personally, I think the voting age should be much, higher, not lower. I think it was a mistake to lower it to 18, to be brutally honest….[I]t is a simple fact of science that nothing correlates more with ignorance and stupidity than youth. We’re all born idiots, and we only get over that condition as we get less young. And yet there’s this thing in this culture where, ‘Oh, young people are for it so it must be special.’ No, the reason young people are for it because they don’t know better. That’s why we call them young people. [...]
The fact that young people think socialism is better than capitalism. That’s proof of what social scientists call their stupidity and their ignorance. And that’s something that conservatives have to beat out of them. Either literally or figuratively as far as I’m concerned.

Do Gays Really Boost Property Values?

Friends and I frequently joke that if you want to raise property values and spur gentrification, then get the gays and lesbians to move into the neighborhood. We also have been documented as being a good measure of the attractiveness a city to the so-called "creative class." These stereotypes hold true in many areas even in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, particularly in Norfolk's Ghent area which has transformed itself form borderline slum a number of years ago to one of the most sought after areas replete with shops, restaurants and arts venues. The stereotype even extends to our neighborhood in Hampton which for the most part - sadly, we do have a few reactionary, bigoted residents - is gay friendly and has seen LGBT homeowners make major upgrades to properties. The same phenomenon has even been seen in Cape Charles on Virginia's Eastern Shore. Now a study has conformed the positive influence that gays have on property values. At least in liberal, open minded neighborhoods. In areas favored by conservative bigots, we don't work the same magic. Here are highlights from the Vancouver Sun on some of the new study findings:

A controversial new study suggests that in neighbourhoods where extreme conservatism prevails, the presence of one more same-sex couple for every 1,000 households is linked to a one per cent drop in housing prices. In liberal neighbourhoods, by contrast, researchers find the associated effect of gays and lesbians on housing prices to be positive.

The study, which appears in the Journal of Urban Economics, draws data from more than 20,000 home sales, and controls for such mitigating factors as access to amenities, racial homogeneity, education, income, housing characteristics and quality of nearby schools.

"Gays and lesbians feel that they're not welcome in certain areas," says Susane Leguizamon, a professor of economics at Tulane University. "This study suggests it's not just a feeling; people are responding to the presence of gays and lesbians in the ways we'd expect."

Leguizamon suggests cohabitating same-sex couples are actually quite visible to their neighbours, and thus can have an effect on what people will pay to come or go — much the same way ethnicity has been shown to do in other studies.

She and co-author David Christafore used voting outcomes of the U.S. Defense of Marriage Act to classify neighbourhood values (the Act stated that marriage could only be entered into by a man and a woman), and called on census data to determine the number of same-sex couples in the area.

Affirming previous research, their analysis showed that sexual diversity was positively correlated with housing prices in most neighbourhoods — and most significantly in very liberal areas, dubbed "gaybourhoods."

In communities with high levels of conservatism, however, greater concentrations of same-sex couples was linked with lower housing prices.

Importantly, however, research led by Richard Florida at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management has consistently shown that higher concentrations of gay people are linked with economic prosperity, innovation and creativity within a region.

U.K. Tories Back Full Marriage Equality

In yet another sign that so-called American conservatives and the GOP have ceased to be mainstream - indeed, as Andrew Sullivan argues, the GOP is now "a religious movement with radically reactionary political objectives" - and are slipping further and further into a fringe mindset, the United Kingdom's conservative government (Prime minister Cameron is pictured at right) has come out in support of fully marriage equality for same sex couples. The Independent looks at this development which few would have expected just a few years ago. It shows how conservatism does not require one reject medical and scientific knowledge out of hand in a desperate attempt to inflict punishment on those who do not submit to a particular set of religious beliefs. Here are highlights from the Independent article:

Lib Dem Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone today declared herself "delighted" to announce the Government's move to legislate for same-sex marriages before the next general election.

Addressing the opening day of her party's autumn conference in Birmingham, she spoke passionately about the need to reject prejudice and discrimination, and support the cause of women's equal rights and persecuted minorities across the world.

To rounds of applause, she said: "I am delighted to announce today that in March this Government will bring in a formal consultation on how to implement equal civil marriage for same-sex couples.

She added: "Civil partnerships were a very welcome first step, but as our constitution states, this party rejects prejudice and discrimination in all its forms. And I believe that to deny one group of people the same opportunities offered to another, is not only discrimination, it is simply not fair."

The Boston Globe was quick (and justified) to call out the GOP and its increasingly irrational and unjustified prejudice against same sex couples in the USA:

Today’s announcement that the Conservative government in Britain will push legislation to legalize same-sex marriage may shake up politics in the United Kingdom. But for the party of Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher to reverse itself on the issue may have just as significant an effect on politics in the United States.

The British Conservative Party has long been a model for Republicans; GOP presidential candidates invariably cite Churchill and Thatcher as heroes for articulating the fundamental tenets of conservatism. . . . . Now Cameron has decided that same-sex marriage fits just fine with his party’s cherished conservative values. The question is, will the reversal force Republicans into rethinking their position on gay marriage — or for that matter, their longstanding relationship with the Conservative Party?

While both parties share much in common, a key difference is that social conservatives — a strong contingent in the US — are not a factor in British politics. Same-sex marriage remains taboo to Christian conservatives, a constituencies that no GOP contender wants to alienate.

There are a few rumblings from some more libertarian-leaning conservatives in the US that it might be time for the party to moderate its opposition to same-sex marriage. GOP presidential candidate Jon Huntsman, the former governor of Utah, has stated that he supports civil unions, which are still anathema to the religious right.

[T]he shift by the British Conservatives to support same-sex marriage probably won’t lead to a sudden change of heart in the GOP. But their reversal shows how the political momentum for same-sex marriage is growing in the Western world, and signals that the Republican Party’s stance is growing increasingly out of step with even its closest ideological peers.

Homo politicus: brain function of liberals, conservatives differs

This is an interesting story on an interesting study (http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070909/hl_afp/scienceneuroscience_070909173324) which shows significant differences in brain function and reactions. It tends to re-enforce my view that conservatives in general (and religious conservatives in particular) seek to avoid having to have meaningful innovative thought and analysis. I guess it goes a long way in explaining Chimperator Bush's behavior. Here are a few highlights:

PARIS (AFP) - The brain neurons of liberals and conservatives fire differently when confronted with tough choices, suggesting that some political divides may be hard-wired, according a study released Sunday.

Conservatives tend to crave order and structure in their lives, and are more consistent in the way they make decisions. Liberals, by contrast, show a higher tolerance for ambiguity and complexity, and adapt more easily to unexpected circumstances.

Using electroencephalographs, which measure neuronal impulses, the researchers examined activity in a part of the brain -- the anterior cingulate cortex -- that is strongly linked with the self-regulatory process of conflict monitoring. The match-up was unmistakable: respondents who had described themselves as liberals showed "significantly greater conflict-related neural activity" when the hypothetical situation called for an unscheduled break in routine. Conservatives, however, were less flexible, refusing to deviate from old habits "despite signals that this ... should be changed."

Gay Parent Child Rearing

There's an interesting story on 365gay.com concerning a Canadian study that compared children raised in same-sex couple homes and "traditional family" structured homes. The results: little or no difference in the children. That's no surprise to me. What is a surprise is that the Conservatives tried to bury the study. I guess they are no different that the christo-fascists of the GOP: never let the truth get in the way of your agenda. The photo is a picture of the b/f and my two oldest children at a happy time before their mother began using them as pawns in the divorce wars. The other is a photo of my youngest daughter a year ago Christmas. Here's part of the story:

(Ottawa) A study prepared for the Canadian government shows children do as well, perhaps better, when reared by same-sex parents as they do by opposite-sex couples. The study has just now become public even though it was commissioned by the government in 2003 leading to accusations that the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper attempted to burry the research.

When the study was ordered the Liberals were in power and courts across the country were beginning to strike down federal restrictions limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples. The Liberals went on to legalize same-sex marriage in 2005. The party was defeated the following year by the Tories who promised to revisit the vote. The study on child rearing was not complete until after the Conservatives came to power.