More than any other myth, this one is the one we need to kill once and for all. It's another "conventional wisdom" myth that even the most progressive media personalities fail to call out. Check out this clip from Chris Hayes show:
http://on.msnbc.com/1RQegsf
At 5:02 the conservative nation claim per usual goes unchallenged. And I'm not picking on Chris here. I love his show, but I feel like I hear this myth repeated hourly on MSM outlets. The proper response to this claim would be "Hold up a second; polls show the democratic socialist beating the businessman by 17%, 60% of Americans support single payer health care, people overwhelming say ‘live at let live’ on gay marriage, what's your evidence we're a conservative nation?"
Likely two points can be made:
- Congress is GOP controlled A congress put in office by 34% voter turnout. that STILL required tons of gerrymandering to to turn Republican can not be held up as evidence of overwhelming support for a "conservative" agenda. The voters that did not show up are still there. There issues and opinions are still real, regardless of whether they've been disheartened into believing their vote doesn't matter.
- "Self Described" polls that ask people if they are "Conservative or Liberal" Older polls show that a whopping 33% of American call themselves "Conservatives" as opposed to only about 27% that call themselves "Liberal". But those polls don’t even hold up anymore as Self Described Liberals have caught up to conservatives www.gallup.com/… And let's not talk about the 40% that reject both labels. My parents would call themselves conservative. They go to church they have been married for over 50 years. They'd prefer lower taxes. But when it comes to politics they are live and let live. They don't care about gay marriage they don;t mind paying a little more taxes if government is actually going to do something worthwhile with the money. They also love Bernie Sanders. Also effecting this "self described" trend is the massive propaganda campaign to deride "liberals" or "libtards" by Fox and the talk radio empires funded by billionaires. They've been marginally successful in turning liberal into a four letter word.
Our political universe should not be portrayed as binary choices between Liberal or Conservative Democrat or Republican. Those labels serve the establishment to dumb down the discussion to us versus them. Don't think or study or analyze just believe whatever label we've paid to have thrown on it.
We are a nation of doers, dreamers, and problem solvers who don't care about what label you throw on something so long as it works. We are not averse to change or taking big chances.
That's not conservative. In fact when we believe in ourselves and actually come out to vote progressive candidates of change dominate.
Notice the "Reagan Revolution" that allegedly proved we were a conservative nation was driven by paltry 53% voter turnout. So he had active support of about 28% of the people. Hardly a revolution. Imagine if we got our turnout above 65-70%… It's no coincidence that democracies with voter turnout in the 80-90% range all excel in happiness index scores, and are rated as some of the best places on earth to do business. Also note that most are (or have had ) Democratic Social governments. Coincidence? People show up to vote and, SHOCKER, they get the things they actually want, and their government works for them.