The debate over American intervention in Syria has the media even more confused than usual. Republicans such as Senator John McCain, Robert Corker, and Representative John Boehner support intervention as do Democrats such as Senators Harry Reid, Robert Menendez, and Richard Durbin. Meanwhile, Republicans such as Senators Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, and Tom Cole oppose intervention, as do Democrats such as Senators Mark Udall, Joe Manchin, and Chris Murphy.
How can it be that the issue doesn’t divide along party lines, or at least on “liberal-conservative” lines? One writer goes so far as to argue that there are 22 different political views being expressed on the issue.
Reality is a lot simpler than that but more complicated than just liberal-conservative. As the World’s Smallest Political Quiz shows, political beliefs have to be measured on more than one axis: there is a fiscal axis and a social axis. But this quiz is missing at least one more axis, one for international issues.
Even though the physical & touching strains of cardiovascular illness frequently take a levy on a couple s cherished cheapest sildenafil 100mg find my drugshop deeds, well, there have been found a wide reason to persist. Like other branded drugs, they effects of cialis too are categorized in two kinds of pharmacies, each having a different kind of authority for selling products online. The clinic has recognized a drug that acts as buying that bulk generic viagra. It is because Kamagra is the best-known generic of respitecaresa.org buy levitra. The World’s Smallest Political Quiz asks five questions for each axis, or ten in all. To this, I would add five more questions on international issues:
- Should the U.S. offer foreign aide to alleviate suffering in poor countries in other parts of the world?
- Should the U.S. maintain military bases in more than 60 countries around the world?
- Should the U.S. intervene in civil wars to support opponents of existing dictators?
- Should the U.S. attack countries that use “weapons of mass destruction”?
- Should the U.S. attack countries that may be sponsors of terrorists who have attacked the U.S.?
Given three axes on the above chart, there are eight possible political views as indicated in the table below. The table assumes that support for international interventions is the “liberal” view and opposition to international actions except in strict self-defense is the “conservative” view. This was the case before World War II, but if you are unhappy with that, feel free to switch the labels around.
| Fiscal | Social | International | Political Group |
|---|---|---|---|
| Liberal | Liberal | Liberal | Liberal |
| Liberal | Liberal | Conservative | Dove |
| Liberal | Conservative | Conservative | Populist |
| Liberal | Conservative | Liberal | Neoconservative |
| Conservative | Conservative | Conservative | Paleoconservative |
| Conservative | Conservative | Liberal | Hawk |
| Conservative | Liberal | Liberal | Libertarian Hawk |
| Conservative | Liberal | Conservative | Libertarian |
Unfortunately, I don’t have good names for every view in the table, so I invite your help in identifying either names or interest groups that seem to support one set of views or another. The names I feel most certain about are Liberal, Dove, Paleoconservative, Hawk, and Libertarian. Neoconservatives are hard to pin down: are they socially liberal or conservative? Does anyone fall into the category I’ve labeled “Populist”?
The World’s Smallest Political Quiz has been around for a long time, yet the media still labels anyone who is fiscally liberal and socially conservative (or vice versa) as a “centrist.” Thus, this Second-Smallest Political Quiz is not likely to make much difference. But at least those who study the issues in detail should be able to speak more intelligently about political divisions, and this chart helps to do that.
I long ceased to consider “liberal”, “conservative”,”neoconservative” as nothing more than name calling, and not useful in discussion of issues. For example, I used to assume that “conservative” meant a balanced budget. In 2000 the Republicans with a proposal for a balanced budget amendment in their contract with American inherited a balanced budget. The sensible course would have been to immediately pass a balanced budget amendment. Then if they wanted to cut taxes they could have sensibly but spending. Instead they cut taxes, increased spending, increased the deficit and comfortably re-nominated a vice president who was publicly saying that deficits didn’t matter, when he could easily have been retired using the excuse that he had heart problems. So much for “conservative” values.
The current Syrian issue is the worst possible situation to run the “smallest political quiz” on, because so many people are flip-flopping on this issue. Certainly if a President McCain were seeking the authorization, then Senators Obama, Kerry, Hagel and Clinton would be voting against it, and also many Republicans would flip and oppose it.
Also, there is a strand of internationalism that only supports military action that enforces certain “human rights”, but only when it is not otherwise in the interest of the US — i.e. actions like Kosovo, Lebanon, Somalia, and probably Syria.
The quiz, like all attempts to label global political attitudes, lacks context.
I believe that how the average person views these situations has little baring on how things play out on the global stage. The US has repeatedly ignored genocidal dictators, suffering populations, terrorist sponsoring states, states that harbor terrorist that have attacked the US and states with weapons of mass destruction. It seems that proximity to Israel and/or oil resources is the only actual determining factor for military intervention for the US in recent history (post 2000). We wag a finger at N. Korea. Other than some humanitarian aid we all but ignore the continent of Africa, even when US embassies are attacked (Egypt being the lone exception. See: proximity to Israel). But if shit starts to go down in the Middle-East, then we act. We’re not the worlds police, we’re mercenaries.
The one thing that the Syria situation has brought about is true “bi-partisanship”.
In this case, I have seen politicians, who normally parrot anything the administration says as gospel, actually refusing to go along. Fantastic!
For the first time in a long, long while, I see some hope that maybe we can work together.
There was quite a bit of bi-partisan consensus re: the NSA and their shenanigans as well.
Bipartisanship? Like the greasing of hands that goes o in backdoor deals? The difference between the two parties is nil and the so called left vs. right dichotomy is dead in the water. Just two wings of the same bird of prey.
Interesting article arguing “SUBURB HATING IS ANTI-CHILD”.
http://www.newgeography.com/content/003916-suburb-hating-anti-child
Interesting article. I both agree and disagree with some of the author’s assertions:
“…public schools in large cities are, by and large, awful. So, for the most part, families that have the means to move out of cities when their children reach school age flee to the ‘burbs. Most middle and upper-middle class families that do stay send their children to private schools. 30% of San Francisco children go to private schools, and my guess is that the figure for Manhattan and other dense, hip urban centers is close to that.”
It’s not just that public schools in large cities are awful. Public schools are awful everywhere, including the suburbs. (I’ve taught in both urban and suburban schools in Portland and Seattle.) The author is correct about 30% of children in dense urban cores sending their children to private school; that stat is also true in Seattle. Why? Because large urban districts are generally worse than suburban schools in part because they are far more bureaucratic and unresponsive. But make no mistake: Suburban public schools are not much better and share many of the same problems.
“But private schools not only cost a lot of money. They also destroy neighborhood life for children.”
Really? Private schools “destroy” neighborhood life? This is a hyperbolic load of excrement; in my neighborhood, I see private school students walking down the neighborhood’s central avenue, interacting with the community and public school students. Just because they don’t attend the centrally located overcrowded and dilapidated public school, staffed by ineffectual burnouts, it doesn’t follow that their “neighborhood life” has been destroyed; one could argue the opposite: that the public school destroys neighborhood life, especially when students from the south were bused in to the neighborhood; they brought gang culture, drugs, weapons, and vandalized and terrorized the neighborhood. One could also argue that since public schools are predicated on force, public schools are in fact the destroyers of neighborhood life because, by force, they bring together people that may have chosen never to associate, thereby creating tension and resentment.