some people ought to get out more!
oh i just can't resist a dally in the Empiricism Down and Dirty Motel! but others are doing it so i shall too. it tickles me silly that a look at the general social survey scares up the following:
Is it the government's responsibility to provide health care for the sick?
38.6 DEFIN SHOULD BE
47.3 PROB SHOULD BE
10.5 PROB SHOULD NOT BE
3.5 DEFIN SHOULD NOT BE
The government should spend less on benefits for the poor.
3.5 STRONGLY AGREE 13.4 AGREE 20.5 NEITHER 44.3 DISAGREE 18.3 STRONGLY DISAGR
On the whole, do you think it should or should not be the government's responsibility to: A. Provide a job for everyone who wants one.
16.4 DEFIN SHOULD BE 26.6 PROBAB SHOULD BE 30.6 PROB SHOULD NOT BE 26.4 DEFIN SHOULD NOT BE
It is the gov't's responsibility to provide a decent standard of living for the unemployed?
15.3 DEFIN SHOULD BE 37.2 PROBAB SHOULD BE 31.2 PROB SHOULD NOT BE 16.4 DEFIN SHOULD NOT B
etc. see, deal is: people are pretty ambivalent about a lot of this. and so you actually have to listen to people and figure out how to approach the question instead of assuming from the get go that you'll encounter nothing but resistance and rejection. thing is, you won't get what you want. you won't hear support for communist revolution, but you will hear a lot of disgust with the way things are. and if you don't beat them over the head with the pessimism and with the constant attacks on the inadequacy of their ways of thinking or expressing themselves, hey you might get somewhere. disheartening, difficult, distressing, and disagreeable work. yes, indeed.
more fun to classify navel lint i suppose....
kelley
At 08:57 PM 7/6/00 -0700, michael at ecst.csuchico.edu wrote:
>what country does have a sophisticated political culture? I am not
>defending the U.S. I was fairly impressed with Cuba -- just talking with
>people on the street, but my Spanish is beneath rudimentary.
>
>furuhashi.1 at osu.edu writes:
>
> > American political culture isn't very sophisticated, in my opinion.
> > Try arguing for national health care, and you find someone piping up,
> > "that's socialism!" in an effort to derail discussion. There is an
> > ideological reason why America has the least developed welfare state
> > among rich nations, aside from rampant racism, and the culture of
> > red-baiting seems to me to be a big culprit. The ACLU must be a CP
> > front, and Hilary Clinton a feminist radical, in the American
> > ideology. :)
>
>
>--
>Michael Perelman
>Economics Department
>California State University
>Chico, CA 95929
>
>Tel. 530-898-5321
>E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu