Doug has a post called "If I were a liberal" - where he proceeds to setup a big straw man and kick it's ass. You can find any number of right wing blogs that do essentially the same thing.
Doug claims that we need to "return" (as if it ever existed) to the "moral foundation" of Christianity. He screeches about the evil of the homos. He slags on liberals for not cheering the rain of death on the "terraists"... The thing he never does (nor any other right wing loon blog) is actually substantiate their argument.
Just once Doug.. Just one time if you could actually substantiate any fucking word you write - I'd likely have a heart attack from the shock (resulting in one less Liberal.. you win!)
So what is this great political debate anyway? It's a philosophy that guides society. What do we value in society? Things like education, health care, wages, crime, equality, justice. The list is long.
If you compare liberal to conservative states, the liberal states are far supperior in every measure. A new report has the proof.
Health care:
A new study released this week revealed that Americans' health care varies dramatically from state to state. It should come as no surprise that in general Southern states ranked at the bottom in almost every category. After all, whether the issue is health, education, working conditions, or virtually any indicator of social pathology, things are worst in precisely those states that voted for George W. Bush.Wages:
The Commonwealth Fund report, "Aiming Higher: Results from a State Scorecard on Health System Performance," examined states' performance across 32 indicators of health care access, quality, outcomes and hospital use. Topping the list were Hawaii, Iowa, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine. Bringing up the rear were the Bush bastions of Kentucky, Louisiana, Nevada, Arkansas, Texas, with Mississippi and Oklahoma. The 10 worst performing states were all solidly Republican in 2004.
But health care isn't the only area where denizens of the Republican heartland suffer relative to their blue state brethren. As Perrspectives detailed in January, minimum wage levels also vary significantly from state to state. Unsurprisingly, many of the "bluest" states lead the way in exceeding both the previous ($5.15 an hour) and recently passed ($7.25) federal requirements, with Washington, Oregon, California, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut mandating wages as high as $7.93. Only one of the 21 states (New Hampshire) mired at $5.15 an hour voted for George W. Bush in 2004.Working conditions:
And the minimum wage is just the beginning. A December 2005 report Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts showed that Americans' working conditions in general closely follow the 2004 electoral map. The report's Work Environment Index (WEI) rated the quality of Americans' working lives by a weighting of three factors: job opportunities, job quality, and job fairness. The top five states were Delaware, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Vermont and Iowa, the bottom five were South Carolina, Utah, Arkansas Texas and Louisiana. Unsurprisingly, all five of the cellar-dwellers are so-called "Right-to-Work" states featuring outright hostility towards union organizing.Education:
When it comes to educational achievement, faithful red state Republicans do a little (but not much) better. Earlier this year, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce released a study titled "Leaders and Laggards: A State-by-State Report Card on Educational Effectiveness." The report looked at seven different performance categories, including return on education investment, workforce readiness, teacher skills, and academic achievement of low-income and minority students. Again, the top five states (Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Vermont and New Jersey) backed Democrat John Kerry in 2004. Only two of the bottom 15 states similarly supported Kerry.Crime:
The same dismal pattern applies to a wide array of measures of social dysfunction and pathology. 8 of the top 10 states with the highest murder rates are squarely in Red America. 7 of the 10 states with the lowest murder rates were in the Kerry column. (Interestingly, six of those states have no death penalty statute.)Divorce:
The 10 states with the highest divorce rates in 1998 all went for Bush in 2004. Red states constituted 9 on the top 10 in terms of out-of-wedlock births. And the Bible Belt has the greatest percentage of births to women under age 20, with the worst 15 states nationwide all among in the GOP ranks. By almost any measure of societal breakdown that so-called Republican "values voters" decry, it is Red State America where moral failure is greatest.The underlying cause?
If the Republican electoral map closely correlates with social dysfunction, it is frequent church attendance which strongly predicts Republican party preference. Which is probably a good thing. Because if you live in a state that voted for George W. Bush, you're going to need all the help you can get.When right wing loons like Doug advocate for pushing more Jesus and "conservative" values - what they're really trying to do is drag secular/liberal states down to their level.
Fortunately, it's pretty obvious we're not going to let them do it.
* blatently stole the pic from Jesus' General
12 comments:
I think the last paragraph kills any real credability said study might've had. People will find what they want to find, regardless of the truth.
You didn't read the source. It was an opinion piece that referenced independpent studies.
Sorry, a psuedo-scientific analysis of study done by people with no qualifications and that didn't actually participate in the study is very compelling. Very compelling indeed. Especially due to the fact that they NO obvious bias...seriously.
And because I hate the minimum wage arguement...
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/08/16/opinion/main1901101.shtml
It's a good thing congress spends months helping 1.5% of Americans.
Seriously.. go read the post I wrote about binary thinking. I gaurantee you would be totally unsuited to a career in software development. You have a singular inability to sort through the irrelevant and connect the data with the point.
What that group opined about the independent studies makes absolutely no difference to the data itself.. the data was the point, and I happened to agree with the opinion.
The point is the difference between the quality of life in liberal versus conservative states - and the data is the data and the point is obvious.
Jesus...
Wait, my inability to comprehend a comment like
If you compare liberal to conservative states, the liberal states are far supperior in every measure
and then citing study which doesn't support such broad and rediculous notions makes me unsuited to software engineering and a "binary thinker'?
I laugh at the fact that you call me a binary thinker in a post about Red vs Blue, but I'll ignore the obvious irony their in favor of perhaps a more substantial arguement. Low hanging fruit as it were.
You go on to argue that the groups opinion makes no difference, it's the study that is relevant. Well, in that case, why not link the study with more than just a hyperlink, do some of your own critical thinking, and analyze the data. God forbid I should think the part of the post that takes up 9/10 of it's area and word count is the real content of your post. Where would I get such preposterous ideas.
The data is the data? Should I be commiting this to memory aristotle? If data is data, why are there entire fields of study devoted to interpreting data such as epidemiology, statistics, and actuaries to name a few. But remember, data is data. Wow...
Also, I can tell you havn't actually read the report, or you would realize the broad claims you make don't hold up even in this particular study.
For instance, 2 of the most staunch Liberal states, California and Rhode Island, rank in the bottom 10 for education. New York is 22, Oregon 23, Maryland 25. California is also 39th on overall healthcare. Scoring low on both of your criteria for standard of living, yet still so liberal. Oregon rates 34, NY rates 22, Maryland 19. Hawaii is #1 in healthcare, and 45th in education. See, you can't make blanket statements like that about broad secular trends without first analyzing the data about each particular location/event/person. But, that isn't your goal. You just enjoy preaching to the choir.
Oh, and the minimum wage thing is still a joke.
California isn't quite as liberal on average as you might think. It certainly does have some of the most liberal cities in the country, but the state is huge and not homogenous.
Certainly there are outliers for any state, but there really is no denying the over-all trends. I suppose it might be worthwhile to develop a weighting system for the various categories in the studies then compute an aggregate score for each state, then rank them by score and red vs. blue.
weighing system? ranking? red vs. blue? what's the point of all that anyway?
for a platform that prides itself on equality, you'd think liberals in general would be over the whole 'look how much better we are than you' angle.
for the record, i'm pretty middle-of-the-road. registered libertarian.
The point of it is - comparing the "values" of red versus blue states by measuring their comparative qualities of life. The point is establishing which ideology is superior.
You misuse the term "equality". In public policy, you don't treat a bad idea and a good idea equally.
The republicans have their terrorists, the democrats have their republicans.
It's the binary thinking. See, I read the post a while back, but I can apply that post to more than just what Greenwald is talking about. And, being fair, it actually applies to both parties. Republicans see the war on terror as us vs them. Both parties see politics as us vs them. You see it in the news, in the policy, and in the blogs, such as this one. It's an us vs them mentality.
Politics in America is us vs. them. It's a two party system.
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