New Silent Majority
Mary at Exit Zero has 16 questions to help you decide if you're part of what could be the new Silent Majority (also known as the liberal hawks who tilted the last election toward Bush and away from Michael Moore or whoever it was Bush was running against).
Here's a few of them:
And so forth. Note: It's impossible to get a perfect 16 unless you managed to vote for both Bush and Kerry, but it doesn't take long to realize whether you're going to fit this profile or not.
[Hat tip, Judith]
Are we the new silent majority? I don't know about majority, but I do hope we have enough vote-weight to keep both parties from coccooning into caricatures of themselves.
One thing that defines us, I think, is an instinctive revulsion against hate-crusades. We distrust, and tend to align against, people whose primary political motives are white-hot, blind, relentless loathing of someone or something on the other side.
Obviously there are such in both parties, and how we see the balance of power in each party determines which we accept, with clothespins on our noses, as temporary allies. They tend to be most prominent in opposition.
We tolerated more than we should have from the Clinton Administration, because the people who simply hated him in a lying-awake-at-night-gnashing-their-teeth way seemed far more dangerous. We put up with some bad ideas, and much bad execution, from the Bush administration for the same reason. It's another reason both Hillary Clinton and Condi Rice make appealing presidential candidates to me.
Here's a few of them:
- You think firemen and soldiers are heroes, while terrorists and flag burners are not.
- You voted for Bush and you still think Rick Santorum is an ass.
- You wonder when a petulant hissy-fit became the same thing as social activism
- You know that the idea that Arabs can’t handle Democracy is racist.
- You realize that Jack Kennedy would be called a NeoCon if he were alive today.
- The people who agree with you prefer freedom over stability, and the people who don’t favor the status quo. You wonder who the conservatives really are these days.
And so forth. Note: It's impossible to get a perfect 16 unless you managed to vote for both Bush and Kerry, but it doesn't take long to realize whether you're going to fit this profile or not.
[Hat tip, Judith]
Are we the new silent majority? I don't know about majority, but I do hope we have enough vote-weight to keep both parties from coccooning into caricatures of themselves.
One thing that defines us, I think, is an instinctive revulsion against hate-crusades. We distrust, and tend to align against, people whose primary political motives are white-hot, blind, relentless loathing of someone or something on the other side.
Obviously there are such in both parties, and how we see the balance of power in each party determines which we accept, with clothespins on our noses, as temporary allies. They tend to be most prominent in opposition.
We tolerated more than we should have from the Clinton Administration, because the people who simply hated him in a lying-awake-at-night-gnashing-their-teeth way seemed far more dangerous. We put up with some bad ideas, and much bad execution, from the Bush administration for the same reason. It's another reason both Hillary Clinton and Condi Rice make appealing presidential candidates to me.
