{"id":13,"date":"2007-06-15T19:37:16","date_gmt":"2007-06-16T02:37:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peoplesdialectic.com\/?p=13"},"modified":"2007-06-15T19:37:16","modified_gmt":"2007-06-16T02:37:16","slug":"the-myth-of-american-conservatism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/peoplesdialectic.com\/?p=13","title":{"rendered":"the myth of american conservatism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>i imagine most of you are aware of the media matters for america organizational website, but if you&#8217;re not you should <a href=\"http:\/\/mediamatters.org\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Media Matters\">check it out<\/a> because they do a good job shining the spotlight on major new media when they aren&#8217;t walking the straight and narrow, so to speak.<\/p>\n<p>with all the sites i try to visit everyday, i admit i don&#8217;t go to this site very often, but i was browsing yesterday and came across a report that was put together by media matters regarding the progressive majority and the myth that america is by and large a conservative nation.<\/p>\n<p>personally, i&#8217;ve felt this way for a while, though clearly didn&#8217;t have this kind of data to back up my &#8216;hunch&#8217;. a similar (maybe in a more playful way) approach to this subject is taken up by Thomas Frank in his book <em><a href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=AJKrMcOyQ3wC&amp;dq=what%27s+the+matter+with+kansas&amp;pg=PP1&amp;ots=ADBVHA0lwe&amp;sig=bxjCV_4WNp1c-oWz3BmWnbFfUG8&amp;prev=http:\/\/www.google.com\/search%3Fq%3Dwhat%27s%2Bthe%2Bmatter%2Bwith%2Bkansas%26ie%3Dutf-8%26oe%3Dutf-8%26aq%3Dt%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26client%3Dfirefox-a&amp;sa=X&amp;oi=print&amp;ct=title#PPP1,M1\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"I grew up in Kansas!\">What&#8217;s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America<\/a>.<\/em> of course, it&#8217;s a great book that i recommend (if you ask nicely, i may let you borrow mine).<\/p>\n<p>anyway, the report, titled <a href=\"http:\/\/mediamatters.org\/static\/pdf\/progressive_majority.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Good stuff!\"><em>The Progressive Majority: Why a Conservative American Is a Myth<\/em><\/a>, is quite insightful (or at least i think so) and is full of statistics gathered over years by nonpartisan sources. while i&#8217;ve still got a bit to get through, i thought i&#8217;d share.<\/p>\n<p>while, as they say, the devil is in the details, and while this report doesn&#8217;t (at least not yet) go into details regarding issues, the numbers don&#8217;t lie.  the majority of the people in this country are at least progressive leaning, even if they wouldn&#8217;t use the term &#8216;progressive.&#8217;  i think this report is just what progressive need to direct the conversation away from the conservative talking heads and even mainstream news media.  i think this is a report everyone should read, especially those who don&#8217;t already call themselves progressives (i call myself a liberal, but mostly to annoy people).<\/p>\n<p>how can we begin framing the national debate in terms of what this report presents?  i&#8217;ve already started thinking about&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>i imagine most of you are aware of the media matters for america organizational website, but if you&#8217;re not you should check it out because they do a good job shining the spotlight on major new media when they aren&#8217;t walking the straight and narrow, so to speak. with all the sites i try to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8,12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/peoplesdialectic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/peoplesdialectic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/peoplesdialectic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/peoplesdialectic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/peoplesdialectic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/peoplesdialectic.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/peoplesdialectic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/peoplesdialectic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/peoplesdialectic.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}