Welcome friends!
So many types of conservatives trying to do a number on the old USA these days it’s getting a little hard to keep track of who’s who. Fortunately I ran across an article this week that discussed a little political typology prepared by the Pew Research Center based on some opinion surveys they conducted this past summer. According to their interpretation of the results conservatives of one sort or another comprise 42 percent of the American electorate compared to 51 percent who lean more toward the liberal side of the aisle with an addition 8 percent classified as bystanders, which adds to 101 percent so I suppose must be a bit of rounding in there somewhere. That bit isn’t exactly news. I think we all figured out some time ago we weren’t really all on the same page. No, the interesting bit for me was the way Pew divided conservatives into four separate groups based on distinctive and sometimes contradictory attitudes and beliefs. If you’ve been reading my little blog at all you’ll know that trying to figure out the various types of conservatives and what they really think is something of a hobby of mine. Indeed I’ve previously come up with three types of conservatism based on what appear to me to be different intellectual frameworks as opposed to shared attitudes or beliefs although I suppose they might equally represent simply different styles of talking: economic conservatism, political conservatism, and social conservatism. This week I thought I’d take a quick look at the Pew classification scheme and compare it the scheme I’ve been using in my previous posts. So let’s get to it... Sorry but only selected archived (previous year) posts are currently available full text on this website. All posts including this one are available in my annual anthology ebook series available at the Amazon Kindle Bookstore for a nominal fee. Hey, we all need to make a buck somehow, right? If you find my timeless jewels of wisdom amusing or perhaps even amusingly irritating throw me a bone now and then. Thank you my friends!
