Perhaps not coincidentally, the mid-2000s were the last time the Catholic vision of the good society — more egalitarian than American conservatism and more moralistic than American liberalism — enjoyed real influence in U.S. politics.
.. Whereas eight years ago, a Catholic view of economics and culture represented a center that both parties hoped to claim, today’s Republicans are more likely to channel Ayn Rand than Thomas Aquinas, and a strident social liberalism holds the whip hand in the Democratic Party.
Can Your Genes Predict Whether You’ll Be a Conservative or a Liberal?
Conscientiousness, which predicts conservative voting, moderately correlated with proximity to the equator. And Extraversion, which is associated with liberal voting, correlated strongly with greater distance away from the equator.
Temperature also mattered. Hotter climates correlated strongly with Conscientiousness. So even though a political spectrum runs through all populations, groups closer to the equator (and in hotter environments) have a more conservative average group disposition than groups living further away from the equator (and in cooler climes).
Rand Paul: Turn the Democrats into the Party of War
“The thing that could transform our country and transform the youth vote and transform a lot of votes would be if, all of a sudden, the Democrats become the party of war. I think they really essentially are now,” Paul said in an interview. Young people “fight all the wars,” he said, and might look to the GOP “if there were a Republican Party that were more reluctant to go to war.”
Against Overheated Metaphors: Nazis, Lynching and Obamacare
We’re awash these days in metaphors as overworked as our political debate is overwrought, and it’s impossible not to wonder how much one contributes to the other. When nuance and perspective exit the language, do they exit the conversation as well? When you speak in ludicrous extremes, do you think that way, too?
..The hyperbole and hysteria make any constructive debate impossible, and they insult the past, robbing important events of the specific meaning and individual detail they deserve. Consider our recurring “-gate” mania.