Dear Jeanie;
Your P.S. addressed some of the issues I had with the survey questionnaire and how the typology breakdown was broken down. When preparing the survey the PEW people did their best to incorporate various political blocs into blocks of groups for reporting purposes. But the questionnaire did leave a little to be desired as far as classifications.
The overall results of the survey is that there are a lot of people in this country who have been brainwashed enough to believe that the STATE knows best. Unfortunately, to shatter that belief you have to foment a major Revolution and break the apron strings between the person and the STATE.
And to eventually do what Pres. Regan said needed to be done but he never did: Get the Government off the peoples backs.
Ron Getty
SF Libertarian
Jeanie Ring <jeanie_ring@...> wrote:
This is really scary, and worse meshes my experience with political
reality living in the South.
I would agree that there is a large, poorly represeted block of
voters described as here: lower-middle-class, socially conservative,
nationalist, endemically fearful, charged with status-resentment,
suspicious of outsiders and minorites, antagonistic towards luxury
but enthralled with the vision of respectably making it,
lethargically "capitalist" or "socialist" but firmly looking at
politics to ensure/restore their place in the system.
The thought of a political movement really representing these
people: Oh, Goddess. I hope this country doesn't need a history
lesson.
Jeanine Ring
P.S. What about those of us who are culturally overeducated but
personally broke, pro-choice, anti-war, socially ultraliberal, love
immigration... who don't think the system is just, think people can
make it (sometimes) but only by conforming in ways they should not
have to, distrust big business and think our corporatist society is
a warped product of the state and think the 'work ethic' is a
corruption of the concept of individual self-sufficency in the
service of patriarchal notions of property, predictability, and
pleasure... but who also oppose regulations on commerce, have no
love for the collectors of taxes, and think everyone should carry
guns unless they prefer katanas or broadswords? Oh, and who don't
like "capitalism" but totally get off at the concept of a free
market (no, I don't think they're the same thing).