Question:
Is the United States more conservative, or more liberal?
Let’s first give a quick definition of a liberal and a
conservative:
“Someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who
welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare
of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their
civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break
through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if
that is what they mean by a liberal, then I’m proud to say I’m a liberal.”
(John F. Kennedy’s acceptance speech upon receiving
the nomination for the presidency of the New York Liberal Party on Sept. 14,
1960)
Kennedy’s words seem just as
fitting today as they did 47 years ago.
I figure if I am going to use a quote from JFK, it’s only
fitting that I also use a quote from Ronald Reagan.
“I proposed a new spirit of partnership between this
Congress and this administration and between Washington and our State and local
governments. In forging this new partnership for America, we could achieve the
oldest hopes of our Republic -- prosperity for our nation, peace for the world,
and the blessings of individual liberty for our children and, someday, for all
of humanity.” (Ronald Reagan, State of
the Union address, Jan. 26, 1982)
OK, on to the question at hand; is the United States more
conservative, or more liberal.
If we use the last few elections as a gauge, there seems to
be a great divide. In 2000, Gore won the
popular vote and Bush, ultimately, the Electoral College vote. Gore received
approximately half a million more votes, and in a country this big, that my
friends, is a close vote.
Then in 2004, Bush won both the popular vote with more than
3.5 million and the Electoral College vote.
Bush widened the vote margin, but does that mean the country
is more conservative because of the vote count? Maybe for those days leading to
the election and some days past, but in the 2006 election the democrats took
back the House and Senate, so are we now more liberal?
I remember seeing maps of the United States after each of
the above elections, broken down by county and with each county colored red for
republican and blue for democrat, and I’ve got to tell you, there was a heck of
lot more red than there was blue.
But take a closer look at those maps and you could see that
the major cities and urban areas on both coasts, and several in between, were
mostly blue.
So does that mean that urban areas are more liberal and the
suburbs, farms, and agriculture centers are more conservative?
That is exactly what it means. Most major cities are
predominantly liberal, and the opposite is true for the suburbs and agriculture
centers.
The United States seems to be closely split as to who is
blue and who is red, with the rest being independents or some other party. I
don’t think that we are more conservative, or more liberal, I think that we are
a true nation divided…