Americans flee Democrat ruleFollow

The opinion/blog section of internet tabloids are a credible source of information, and a healthy part of this balanced breakfast.

Is that really the only/major determinant? From the list of states that gained a lot of population, it seems like other factors could be in play: external migration, % of latinos, average temperature, proximity to Mexico, low median income, high reproductive rate, etc...

It seems a bit premature and simplistic to assume this trend is attributable solely to income tax rates.


Edited, Nov 17th 2010 6:13pm by RedPhoenixxx

Yes, income and corporate, that's what I meant. The point is still valid.

And if I refrained from commenting on any non-French/UK issue, I would never had had 7k posts. Not saying that would be a bad thing, just that I need something to keep me occupied while I wait for my Norwegian lesson to start. Blame this thread for being at the top of the page.

With a decline of manufacturing in the US, people are leaving northern manufacturing states and moving to the sun belt?

Wow, this is real news.

Also Texas grabbing 4 seats has absolutely nothing to do with the tax rate and everything to do with raw population growth, most of it being the Mexican minority. In fact, the Hispanic group represents nearly all the population growth in Texas from at least 1980.

Edited, Nov 17th 2010 12:51pm by Allegory

I feel this thread has gone about as far as it usefully can, and so I'd like to ask Varus and gbaji a question that bears no relevance to it:

Do you feel the so-called "religious right" actually reflects conservative values?

Predicted answers: "yes" from Varus, a bunch of drivel that amounts to a half-assed "no" refusal to answer from gbaji.

Actually, that's a fairly reasonable answer. :-D

To be honest, I'd mostly agree with that and that most of the people who self-identify as part of the "religious right"... well, they're right-wing but not conservative. I guess that's the best way to put it.

That having been established, could you please smack Varus in the mouth every time he claims he's conservative, because he isn't due to that specific distinction?

Well the most accurate way to put it would be that they are conservative, just not an element you happen to like associated with conservatives.

Not at all. The very objective of imposing or opposing a law based on which group it benefits is in opposition to conservative ideology. Period.

If someone is arguing in support of a law which imposes a religious belief on others, that person somewhat by definition is not a conservative. Why you think so is because conservatives also do not oppose people for their beliefs or their group. Thus, when presented with a proposed law which we feel imposes on religious freedom itself, it's often interpreted by those who have adopted the "pick a side" mentality as conservatives supporting the "other side".

From that derives the idea that conservatives are somehow all about imposing religion on everyone. Which is patently absurd.


To put it in a less controversial context, imagine that some people like strawberry ice cream and some like chocolate. Both sides push for laws to help their flavor "win" (whatever that means). Both of those "sides" can arguably be called "liberal". There is another group called "conservatives" who may like one or both or neither flavors personally, but believe that it's wrong to create laws which unfairly advantage one over the other.

What happens when the strawberry people are winning the war against the chocolate people? Let's imagine that they've managed to pass several laws which subsidize strawberry icecream, and place taxes on chocolate. They've banned advertisement of chocolate, and made sure that the benefits of strawberry and the harm of chocolate is taught to all children in public school. Now, the chocolate people are on the run, right? They're losing the battle for ice cream flavor supremacy! So they go up to the conservatives and say "Help us! It's not right for these evil strawberry people to ban our flavor, tax us unfairly, and otherwise turn people against us". And what will the conservatives do? Yup. They'll act to oppose those bans, and taxes, and fight against unfair representation in our media and in our schools.


Do they do this because they like chocolate and hate strawberry? Not at all. They think it's unfair is all. However, from an outside observer (and certainly to a strawberry ice cream supporter), it would appear as though the conservatives were "pro-chocolate". And if this goes on long enough, you might even have people starting to think that being a "conservative" was really about being "pro-chocolate". After all their agenda is firmly in opposition to the pro-strawberry agenda, so they just have picked a side, right? And just to muddle the issue further, you might even find some pro-chocolate people claiming to be "conservative".


The interactions of politics don't (or shouldn't) change the core principles at stake. The point I'm trying to make is that liberals today are for certain things and against other things. In a century, the liberals of that day might be for and against completely different (and perhaps even completely opposite) things. Conservatives will be for making choices based on *not* taking a side, but those future liberals will likely still define conservatives as being "against" whatever they happen to be "for" at that time. It's kinda funny to think about it though. Imagine if the "religious right" somehow managed to "win" and started imposing laws mandating prayer in school and whatnot. Who would oppose them? Secular liberals would, of course. But guess who'd join them? Conservatives. Because to them, it would be just as wrong to impose religion on people as it would be to deny their own religious freedoms. That can sometimes be a hard path to follow, but that is the ideology upon which modern conservatives operate.


Um... That also doesn't necessary have anything to do with party though. Parties change over time as well. It's somewhat silly to try to compare the positions and actions of political parties over time with the ideological positions I'm talking about.

Ah! But that's its own pickle, isn't it? Definitions change based on where you are and who you're talking to. I'm hampered by the fact that the question was asked using what is really the wrong term. "Conservative" can mean a wide range of things, but broadly has to do with slow/minimal change rather than fast/significant change. How that manifests within a society will vary greatly.

Since the question was about "conservative principles", and specifically mentioned the religious right, I interpreted the question to be in the context of what modern (mid 20th century forward) conservatism in the United States is about. The more correct term (and even that term is subject to different meanings) is: Classical Liberalism, which is more correctly contrasted to Social Liberalism. Both of which we are also still talking about in the context of US politics.

Classical liberalism is "conservative" because social liberalism is the "newer" ideology in the US. The US was founded on the principles of classical liberalism (hence the name), so in the US "conservatives" are going to tend to oppose the newfangled ideas and changes that exist within the ideology of social liberalism and thus support the ideas of classical liberalism.


It is from the principles of classical liberalism that the idea that we should treat people equally under the law and not "pick sides" comes from. Sorry if that was confusing, but unfortunately it takes a bit of explanation to get from one word in one context to another.


Um... But to be fair, social liberalism isn't really about "picking sides" either. It just tends to manifest that way in modern society. Social liberalism is really about the idea that the government can and should intercede in our lives to make them "better". It also tends to place the importance of providing a more balanced outcome across society higher than ensuring maximum liberty. It's from that desire which comes concepts like the idea that a large gap between "rich and poor" is bad, or that we should provide some minimum amount of safety net for all people, or some minimum amount of services and living level for everyone regardless of their own contributions.


And that objective tends to require the "picking sides" thing I talked about earlier. It's not really part of the principle itself, but it's how those principles are taught and how you get people to follow them. It's terrifically hard to make an argument based on philosophical concepts about broad social needs and rights. It's terrifically easy to say "we should help poor people, so let's create government programs to help poor people". Same result in the long run, but one is just easier to manage. But the downside is that you're "helping poor people" instead of pursuing an agenda based on the principle that total social outcome can be improved if we only equalize the individual outcomes a bit. And that lends itself to being "for or against" poor people.



Yeah. To be honest, both animal rights and environmental causes tend to fall outside the normal rationales. But I think you're still making the mistake of thinking that your ideology is about the things you support or oppose. You may not support animal rights groups, but you do agree with the idea that it's ok to use government to pursue the things you do agree with. It's that ideology which you share with those activists, even if you completely disagree with what they want to do.

Which is what I was trying to explain earlier (and apparently failing to some degree).



I disagree. I also think you're arguing a moving target here. You're correct that individuals have underlying philosophies and collectives don't. But if collectives are made up of people who agree with a given thing, then that distinction is kinda moot. Also, we do tend to adopt said philosophies based on a common agreement with other more basic concepts. And those things to tend to be "defined" in ways that exist outside the individual.



Now you're talking about a political party though. That's not the same thing.

Hai2u gay marriage.

In my mind, the term "religious right" implicitly implies conservativism, so it could be that your definition of said group is inaccurate. Not all people in the religious right are like the patrons of the Westboro Baptist Church; on the contrary, they just happen to be conservatives who hold strong religious beliefs, instead of religious zealots who just happen to vote Republican.


There's not much doubt that Varus is a "conservative." However, he also has an IQ that's smaller than his vertical, and the writing skills of a three-year-old with downs syndrome.

Some traditionally "red" states will slowly go from red to purple. That's not to say they'll immediately become swing states or whatever but when you have a bunch of people move from Place A to Place B, Place B's demographics will begin shifting.

Witness the slow shift of Virginia from a "southern" state to a "Mid-Atlantic" state demographically and the slow shift in N. Carolina as young professionals move into the Research Triangle. Or the shifts in the western states. It's not an instant thing and I'm not dumb enough to say 2008 proves these are all swing states now or anything but the incremental changes are occurring.