Liberal Forum

As several reviewers mentioned, Dr. Alterman makes 'liberal' use of Pew polls to argue that Americans are really quite liberal. Here are a few of the examples he uses to butress his arguments: (1) 'roughly 70 percent of all respondents believe that the government has a responsibility "to take care of people who can't take care of themselves"; (2) 69 percent of the people believe that the government should guarantee every citizen a place to eat and sleep; (3) 65 percent say corporate profits are too high and about the same number say that labor unions are necessary to protect the working person; (4) 69 percent agree that we should put more emphasis on fuel conservation that on developing new oil supplies; and (5) 60 percent would be willing to pay higher prices in order to protect the environment. I found the wording of these, along with the percentages of respondents interesting, and compared these to another set of poll results I had recently seen, these the results of six nationwide polls across both democrat and republican party members as well as independents, taken mid 2007(see [...] Here are the top ten results: (1)96% believe that it is important for the President and Congress to address the issue of social security in the next few years; (2) 95% believe we have an obligation to be good stewards of God's creation for future generations; (3) 94% believe that children should be allowed a moment of silence to pray to themselves in public school if they desire; (4) 93% believe that Al Qaeda poses a very serious threat for the United States; (5) 93% believe that, in the worker visa program, each worker should take an oath to obey United States law, and to be deported if the worker commits a crime while in the United States; (6) 93% believe that it is important to acknowledge today that the reference to God in the Declaration of Independence-that we are endowed by our Creator with rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; (7) 92% believe that our focus should clearly be to provide long term solutions instead of short-term fixes; 91% believe we should dramatically increase our investment in math and science education; (8) 91% believe we should hold local governments to the same standards for cleaning waste water as are applied to private industry; (9) 90% approve of a Christmas tree or a Menorah being placed on public property during the holiday season, and (10) 90% believe we should give tax credits to home owners and builders who incorporate alternative energy sources in their homes, like solar, wind, and geothermal energy. While taking all polls with a grain of salt, in comparing the two sets of results, I note that the percentages in the second set are all significantly greater than those used by the author, not just a majority, or even say two thirds, but 9 out of ten respondents across the political spectrum. I leave it to the reader to decide to what extent the polling results support his contention that the country is moving in a liberal direction.