Author’s note: I have not written in a while. Sorry for those of you who missed me. But now that the recent election is over, I will be doing some posts about it. The results of the 2024 election should […]
Liberalism
The New Southern Democrats
Large parts of the African American and Latino elements within the Democratic Party are the most moderate elements within the party, playing the same role as the mostly white Religious Right played within the Republicans. A surprising new force has […]
Which the Ideology, and Which the Coalition?
The definitions of ‘Republican’ and ‘Democrat’, and even ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’, seem to dance in circles. Even the nature of the parties shifts over time. One is an ideology, the other a coalition, they say. But even that fact tends […]
The Adams Map: A Different Spectrum, A Challenge That Still Speaks to Us
The little known [in the States] Canadian sociologist Michael Adams has suggested a new classification of American values, in terms of a four-way box. The culture wars of the era after Nixon and before Trump were primarily between the Status […]
What Christian Reconstruction Gave Me
As everyone who investigates me online knows, in my 30s I was a Christian Reconstructionist. Part of the appeal of that to younger people in that era was the specific blueprints for society and personal action that seemed to fill […]
Did Jesus Give Us Our Individualism?
Patrick Deneen has warned that modern ‘liberalism’, which includes American style conservatism, has stressed the individual and dominion over nature so much as to weaken community. In trying to liberate the individual, the state, and for conservatives the market, expand to protect […]
California’s Trump-like Moment, 22 Years Before Trump: The Adventures of Pete Wilson
The United States on the whole has seen a rather sudden pivot, or so it seemed, of ‘conservatism’ from a coalition of religious or moral conservatives, economic conservatives [the latter were split into ever lower taxes fiscal ‘conservatives’, and deficit […]
Who is the Santa Claus Party?
After the 2004 election, in which the states that went for Bush formed a relatively neat geographical unity and in all the states that went for Kerry maps and T-shirts were circulating labeling the Republican states as ‘Jesusland,’ I thought, […]
The Motivation of Conservatives and Liberals
In Gareth Cook’s article the psychologist Jonathan Haidt, following Romans 1, suggests that there are five inborn ‘instinctive’ virtues that humans recognize, though they do not always live up to, of course. These are: i. fairness, ii. not harming others, iii. […]
Beyond Red vs. Blue
Interesting. I scored New Coalition Democrat, not conventional liberal. Related: “Beyond Red vs. Blue” at PewResearchCenter