--- Dave Land <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Gautam, et al, > > I'm writing to retract my previous message. I reject > your > categorization of me as being out of the mainstream. > Moreover, I found > your message a little short on what I'll call > intellectual honesty.
I was pointing out - using a hypothetical - that your statements didn't even vaguely resemble rational thinking. It's a fairly obvious technique. But, again, I like to _reason_ about politics, and that does make it hard. > First, you admittedly pulled your numbers out of > your ... um ... head, > whereas this thread was discussing *actual* numbers > from a poll that > has been conducted for 15 years by the Pew Research > Center. Guess which > ones I consider to have more weight? Guess how much I care? Since I was using a hypothetical, they weren't supposed to be real numbers. > Right-leaning: > Enterprisers 9% > Social Conservatives 11% > Pro-Government Conservatives 9% > > Centrist/Unaffiliated: > Upbeats 11% > Disaffecteds 9% > Bystanders 10% > > Left-leaning: > Conservative Democrats 14% > Disadvantaged Democrats 10% > Liberals 17% > > As you can see, the Liberals *as defined by the Pew > report* are the > largest bloc. The "mainstream," one might say. Only if you believe that _conservatives_, that is, people who are _actually defined as conservatives_, "Conservative Democrats", are liberals. That is an odd definition. As a rule of thumb, if you ask people, "are you conservative, moderate, or liberal" they'll split ~40/40/20 pretty consistently. The Pew thing was based on a series of very strange questions - I took the categorization myself and ended up in a very odd place. It's not surprising that you scored as a liberal. If you're purely doctrinaire in what you believe, it's easy for a poll to categorize you. If you are a little more thoughtful in your positions, it's harder. Guess which one I think is more likely to be useful? In particular, the categories are not continuous, obviously enough. You have most Americans, and you have people who think that, say, the United States needs the approval of Communist China, Russia, and France in order to act in the world. These are not, in fact, positions on a continuum. The difference in our positions really comes to this. You selected a small amount of data, took it completely out of context, and then distorted it to support your own positions. Kind of like what you think President Bush did, I guess, but more blatant. On the other hand, I looked at what the data actually meant and pointed out that your assertion - essentially, the single largest group must be the mainstream - even when it was only 17% of the total - is, on its face, nonsensical. Which one of us has problems with intellectual honesty, again? At least this time you didn't quote me maliciously out of context, so I guess you're improving. Small mercies, I suppose. Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is not free" http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com Discover Yahoo! Have fun online with music videos, cool games, IM and more. Check it out! http://discover.yahoo.com/online.html _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
