Well, it wasn't hard to look at the actual survey questions<http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/questions/pt_survey_questions/march_2011/questions_communism_march_12_13_2011>, all of which are very straightforward, and not veiled ways of creating a red scare. They don't ask, "would national healthcare be superior to the system of private insurers we have today in the US?" and then conclude from that that everyone's a communist. Instead they ask, "Is the United States system of politics and economics morally superior to communism or is communism morally superior to the United States system of politics and economics?"
I'm not an expert on these things, nor do I play one on tv or in a classroom, but, that being said: . . .What someone understands as "communist" is left wide open, as is the question of what someone considers "The United States system of politics and economics." And the implication is that communism is more or less totalitarian politics and a planned economy, as opposed to democratic politics and free markets, but that only becomes clear in the later questions. I wonder what would happen if they had asked the first question last? In any case, I'm still inclined to think that it is more likely to understate those who think something called communism might be viable, even if it's unclear what communism is and that the 11% might have wildly different, even contradictory ideas about it. Here's the whole, quite short, survey: 1* Is the United States system of politics and economics morally superior to communism or is communism morally superior to theUnited States system of politics and economics? 2* In practical economic terms, do free market economies work better than communist economies or do communist economies work better than free market economies? 3* What system is better for middle class workers-- the United States system of politics and economics or communism? 4* Is communism a failed ideology? 5* In terms of world history, how important was the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe? NOTE: Margin of Sampling Error, +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 1:01 PM, Jeffrey Fisher <[email protected]>wrote: > Right. I do get the logic of trying to pump up the communist threat. I > suppose we ought to look at the survey and see what we think about that. > > > On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 11:31 AM, Doug Henwood <[email protected]> wrote: > >> On Mar 18, 2011, at 12:21 PM, Jeffrey Fisher wrote: >> >> > is it unreasonable to conclude from this that the survey is more likely >> to have reduced the actual number of people who believe in the moral >> superiority of communism? that's what it looks like to me, but I have a bad >> feeling that it may not be fair for some reason I'm not seeing here. >> >> It's hard to say. Their wording usually skews right, but the technique >> they use seems to attract extremes of opinion. So it may be that they >> attracted passionate commies. Or they wanted to talk up the commie threat. >> Or maybe one in nine Americans wants to socialize the means of production. >> Hard to say, since Rasmussen is so unreliable. > > >
_______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
