California Congressman Demands Videogame Warning Labels [Again]

[minuialear]

Now, I will grant you that Democrats are more liberal than Republicans, but on the political spectrum, almost everyone at the Federal Level of the USA is more conservative than, say Reagan or Eisenhower.

Saying that most people in the U.S. federal government are more conservative than Reagan is pretty wrong, unless you have an odd way of measuring conservatism. Or unless you have an extreme lack of knowledge about the U.S. government and rely on news stories to fill you in on it.

The thing is, a lot of the policies Reagan enacted that were conservative at the time have become common place today and many conservatives think we should take them even further. There has been a massive conservative shift in the US over the last 30 years. Reagan's tax cuts were cuts down to about the level we have them today. The current conservative position is that we need to cut them even further, but Reagan likely wouldn't have agreed, given that he raised taxes every remaining year of his presidency. He increased the national debt and federal government spending by more than 200% during his term.

Yes (except for the conservative shift; that is debatable, depending on how you want to define "conservative").

He was strongly in favor of and raised funding to entitlement programs such as medicare, medicaid and social security. Today the generally held "liberal" position is to maintain these programs and the "conservative" position is to cut them.

He was strongly opposed to nuclear weapons and appointed two Supreme Court Justices that refused to disagree with the decision of Roe v. Wade.

All of those positions are more liberal than most Democrats today.

...No? Many liberals/Democrats are still seeking to expand these types of programs (see ObamaCare, prescription drug laws, etc), are still opposed to nuclear anything, and continue to fight to keep Roe v. Wade as-is, and are actually seeking to expand on that in some ways. Democrats and liberals also still believe in raising taxes rather than instigating more tax cuts so that such social programs described above can be better funded by the government, among other reasons (raising taxes being a liberal stance and not a conservative one). Then there are the other examples of Reagan's conservatism, which also are not examples of Democrats being more conservative than he was.

Are some Democrats becoming less liberal and more moderate? Absolutely. Is it correct to argue that most Democrats are now less liberal than Reagan? I'd still say no, and I don't think any of the examples that you provided actually support your position (in fact many do the opposite).

I'd also point out that the fact that some of the more liberal congressmen who have lost their seats recently (e.g., Kucinich) did so not because of people becoming more moderate or because there is less of a desire to have very liberal candidates, but because that's what happens when states have conservative legislatures and governors who can change the boundaries of districts to ruin candidates' changes of winning elections. When more liberals are in charge, the same thing happens in the other direction.

 

[Andy Chalk]

Bit of a correction to the post: it was pointed out last night that I'd mixed up the study comparing studies that support and deny the link between violent gaming and violent behaviour. I wrote that studies claiming games are harmless outweighed those that made a link, but as anyone who actually looked at the post it linked to would know, I had it backwards. It is now corrected.