27 non-political questions determine your liberal-conservative spectrum (Click Link)

"Please respond honestly and alone and we'll guess your brain's political ideology."

(Note: if you are using Safari on iOS, you may need to scroll to see all options. There are 5 responses for each scenario.)

"Who Are the Racists: Conservatives or Liberals?"

Conservatism as Counterculture

Excerpt from the March 9, 2015, issue of National Review

There is now the phrase “movement conservative.” When I first heard it, I thought it oxymoronic. Conservatism is establishment and tradition, not protest and reform. But “movement” suggests struggle against injustice, the overcoming of some oppression. So it is telling that many conservatives now think of themselves as part of a “movement” and refer to one another as “movement conservatives.” A great irony that slowly emerged out of the turmoil of the 1960s is that conservatism became the new counterculture — a movement that was subversive in relation to the established liberal cultural order. And, continuing this irony, liberalism became the natural home of timid conventionalists and careerists — people who find it hard to know themselves outside the orthodoxies of mainstream “correctness.” And what is political correctness if not an establishment orthodoxy?

What drives this conservative “movement”? Of course there are the classic motivations — a commitment to free-market capitalism, smaller government, higher educational standards, the reinforcement of family life, either the projection of strength abroad or, conversely, a kind of isolationism, and so on. But overriding all of this is a cultural motivation that might be called the “pinch of stigma.” The special energy of contemporary conservatism — what gives it the dynamism of a movement — comes from conservative outrage at being stigmatized in the culture as the politics in which all of America’s past evils now find a comfortable home.

This stigmatization is conservatism’s great liability in an American culture that gives dissociation preeminence, that makes it the arbiter of all other social values. Contemporary conservatism is, first of all, at war with this cultural stigmatization. Its ideas always swim upstream against the perception that they only echo the racist, sexist, and parochial America of old — as if conservatism were an ideology devoted to human regression. For conservatives, it is, in the end, a bewildering war against an undeserved bad reputation. And how do you fight a bad reputation that always precedes you? (read the whole thing)

Kevin D. Williamson: The New Royals

"I have trouble typing these words without pitching my computer across the room in a fit, but: On Wednesday, a federal judge — a by-God federal judge! — was obliged to weigh in on California’s ban on foie gras, and he threw it out on — God help us — constitutional grounds. I do not have an opinion on the legal merits of the case, but I am of the opinion that the fact that the case exists — that we need competing state and federal interventions on chopped liver — is a symptom of national insanity. There was once an expression advising against overreacting: “Don’t make a federal case out of it!” But if you can make a federal case out of fatty duck liver, you can make a federal case out of anything."

"Making a federal case out of it is the new status symbol, the new Cadillac. As in the case of the princess in Hans Christian Andersen’s 1835 story, so sensitive that she could feel the pea under 20 mattresses and 20 featherbeds, acute dissatisfaction with the tiniest, most ridiculous little details of life is how 21st-century progressives communicate to the world that they are indeed the new royalty, with sensibilities finer than those known to mere commoners. No normal, mentally healthy adult human being actually gives a good and sincere goddamn about the “emotional needs of chickens.” But that sort of posing, along with such daft enthusiasms as foie-gras horror, wetting oneself liberally over the fact that Bradley Manning’s Wikipedia page identified him as “Bradley Manning” for a full eleven minutes after he declared that he wants to be called “Chelsea,” sneering at SUVs and roomy suburban homes, insisting that Melissa McCarthy is a comic genius, using the word “mansplaining,” being terrorized by “thigh gaps” in advertisements, fretting about “micro-aggressions” — all of it is a way of saying, “Look at me! I went to a good school! (Or am truly at heart the sort of person who might have!)” There is a term for this that is uncharitable but cannot be improved upon: status-whoring. The old status symbols may have been shallow; the new ones are shallow, destructive, and a great deal less fun to drive."

"Smelling Liberal, Thinking Conservative"

"[R]esearchers found evidence that people are instinctively attracted to the smell emitted by those with similar ideologies. In one memorable instance, a female participant asked the scholars if she could take one of the samples home, describing it as “the best perfume I ever smelled.” The scent came from a man who shared her political views. Just before, a different woman with the opposite views had smelled the exact same sample, declared it “rancid,” and urged the researchers to throw it out. Ideological like-mindedness exerts a biological pull on our attraction, it seems — and deep disagreements can really stink."

I took this test back in the late 90's early 2000's and I was not surprised then to find myself in the purple. I am a little surprised, today, to find myself closer to the left. A quick inventory however, to use self help lingo, a quick rationale could be that the times, the zeitgeist, the things that define left/right now, have changed and I have changed along with them. As I went around the vortex. I think it also helped, or hurt, depending on your point of view, that I was a regular reader of the Althouse blog. I was traumatized ;) I'm kidding of course.

Upon further review, I believe the test is slightly skewed.

Video: Liberals Shoot Guns For The First Time

It's de Blasio time

“We are called to put an end to economic and social inequalities that threaten to unravel the city we love,” Mr. de Blasio said. “And so today, we commit to a new progressive direction in New York. And that same progressive impulse has written our city’s history. It’s in our DNA.”

“There are some who think that now, as we turn to governing – well, that things will just continue pretty much like they always have,” Mr. de Blasio said. “So let me be clear: When I said I would take dead aim at the tale of two cities, I meant it. And we will do it.”

‘Will Not Wait’ on Inequality, de Blasio Tells New York

"Americans keep moving to states with low taxes and housing costs"

"Where are Americans moving, and why? Timothy Noah, writing in the Washington Monthly, professes to be puzzled. He points out that people have been moving out of states with high per capita incomes -- Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, Maryland -- to states with lower income levels."

"“Why are Americans by and large moving away from economic opportunity rather than toward it?” he asks."

"Actually, it's not puzzling at all. The movement from high-tax, high-housing-cost states to low-tax, low-housing-cost states has been going on for more than 40 years, as I note in my new book Shaping Our Nation: How Surges of Migration Transformed America and Its Politics."

"Between 1970 and 2010 the population of New York state increased from 18 million to 19 million. In that same period, the population of Texas increased from 11 million to 25 million."

"The picture is even starker if you look at major metro areas. The New York metropolitan area, including counties in New Jersey and Connecticut, increased from 17.8 million in 1970 to 19.2 million in 2010 — up 8 percent. During that time the nation grew 52 percent."

"In the same period, the four big metro areas in Texas — Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Austin — grew from 6 million to 15.6 million, a 160 percent increase."

"Contrary to Noah’s inference, people don’t move away from opportunity. They move partly in response to economic incentives, but also to pursue dreams and escape nightmares."

Michael Barone - Washington Examiner

"Want to Win a Political Debate..."

Try making the liberal argument... the article doesn't say that outright, but, I read between the lines.

Gun control? Abortion? The new social science behind why you’re never able to convince friends or foes to even consider things from your side.

I started reading this article with some interest, until it dawned on me, the article is basically saying that "wining a political debate" is the worthwhile desired goal. Never mind the substance of the positions. Never mind why would you want to have a debate in the first place. 

Imagine that instead of arguing about the quantity of gun deaths, for example, you make the case that universal background checks will allow a mom with two young kids to feel less nervous about the strange, reclusive man who lives down the street. Now your point is much less threatening. People will never believe they help bring about the deaths of innocents, but they can believe they failed to consider the peace of mind of some person they don’t know. The argument is objectively weaker, but it’s more likely to be below the threat threshold that leads to automatic rejection. It might actually be considered.

None of this is to say that when somebody is unknowledgeable or uncommitted it isn’t best to use your most powerful argument. And for political parties the priority is often driving activism rather than changing minds, and thus threatening arguments may be a better choice. But if you’re trying to convince a friend to change his views, it might be worthwhile to go against your instincts and hit him with all your weakest points.

The article is not worth reading. Go ahead if you want to, I cant stop you. I'm just warning you that I made a mistake bring it to your attention. It's liberal propaganda of the pernicious kind. If its worth anything, it should be read as a sign of what to look for when the debating society comes at you with their "weaker argument" bullshit approach.