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Poll: Majority of Americans Believe Americans Are Immoral |
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A majority of Americans believe their countrymen are immoral… The right kind of "liberal" and the wrong kind of liberal… A legal cheat code for the stock market: Insiders MUST report their biggest trades. We cracked the code. See their next move – FREE
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Dear reader, |
I have written about the Iran conflict Monday through Thursday. This Friday, let us turn our thoughts from war — from kinetic war at least. |
Let us consider instead the moral war waged by Americans… against Americans. |
The Pew Research Center conducted a worldwide poll. |
It requested that citizens of the world's nations rate the morality and ethics of their fellow countrymen. |
What was the result? |
The result was that a majority of Americans rated their fellow citizens morally and ethically inferior. |
In no other nation did one segment of the population hold the other segment in such deep-dyed disdain. |
The "Wrong Kind of U.S. Exceptionalism" |
Thus the majority of Americans consider their fellow countrymen not merely mistaken, misguided or misinformed. |
They consider them immoral. |
Reports Pew: |
In nearly all countries surveyed, more people say that others in their country have somewhat or very good morals than say their compatriots display somewhat or very bad levels of morality. |
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The United States is the only place we surveyed where more adults (ages 18 and older) describe the morality and ethics of others living in the country as bad (53%) than as good (47%). |
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Commenting on the poll is a certain Olivier Knox of U.S. News |
Whether this is a consequence or a driver of our hyper-polarized politics (or both), the results are a bad omen for the future of bipartisan cooperation. It's hard to reach a compromise when you think your political opponent is not just wrong, but evil. |
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It's the wrong kind of U.S. exceptionalism. Fifty-three percent of Americans say the morality and ethics of their compatriots are somewhat or very bad. In every other country, a majority said their fellow citizens are somewhat or very good. |
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Nice, Polite Canada |
In which nation do citizens hold compatriots in the highest regard? |
You need not look far — the answer is the nice, polite, future 51st American state of Canada… eh? |
Some 92% of Canadians rate the morality and ethics of their fellows as "very good" or "somewhat good." |
A mere 7% rate them "somewhat bad" or "very bad." |
I am not convinced that liberal Canadians especially esteem conservative Canadians. |
Yet I let it go. |
India and Indonesia turned in similar percentages (9% and 8%, respectively). |
Here are the global results: |
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Source: Pew Research Center |
Liberals Believe Conservatives Are Immoral |
Yet let us focus our attention on these United States. |
Does one group of Americans disdain the other group with greater heat? |
The answer, evidently, is yes. And the divide centers upon political orientation: |
Democrats and independents who lean toward the Democratic Party are much more likely than Republicans and Republican leaners to rate fellow Americans as morally and ethically bad (60% vs. 46%). |
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This is not a partisan publication. It leans neither politically to starboard… or politically to port. |
And it is as likely to razz Republicans as it is likely to razz Democrats. |
It is this publication's belief that each party is shot through with fools, knaves, frauds, rascals, jacklegs, rogues, scoundrels, swindlers, grifters and chiselers. |
Yet I confess that Pew's polling did not knock me sideways. It did not surprise me one whit. |
In my experience — and here I speak generally — the divide exists. |
Not Just Wrong, but Immoral |
I have found, across decades, that the majority of "conservatives" consider "liberals" naive, foolish, gullible, idealistic, emotion-driven. |
Yet they believe their intentions are true. They mean well. They are merely misguided and impractical. |
Gorgeous visions fill their heads. |
Meantime, I have found that many "liberals" do not grant "conservatives" the same grace. |
They instead denounce them in the harshest moral terms — as intolerant racists, sexists, homosexual-haters, transsexual-haters and the agents of satanic corporations. |
That is, as moral inferiors. |
Again, here I paint the scene with a brush that is admittedly broad. By my own admission, I have encountered multiple exceptions. |
And as Pew notes: |
Previous research has shown that rising numbers of both Republicans and Democrats say people in the other party are immoral. |
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Yet in the main, I hazard that the claim of liberal moral superiority holds good water. |
From Liberal to Illiberal |
Journalist Glenn Greenwald is a man of the political left. Yet he himself has come under the excommunication of fellow liberals. Why? |
Because he is an "old fashioned" liberal consecrated to free speech and open debate. He does not claim a moral superiority over his fellows: |
All factions, at certain points, succumb to the impulse to censor. But for the Democratic Party's liberal adherents, silencing their adversaries has become their primary project… |
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For years, their preferred censorship tactic was to expand and distort the concept of "hate speech" to mean "views that make us uncomfortable" and then demand that such "hateful" views be prohibited on that basis… |
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This "disinformation" term is reserved for those who question liberal pieties, not for those devoted to affirming them. That is the real functional definition of "disinformation" and of its little cousin, "misinformation." |
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It is not possible to disagree with liberals or see the world differently than they see it. The only two choices are unthinking submission to their dogma or acting as an agent of "disinformation." Dissent does not exist to them; any deviation from their worldview is inherently dangerous — to the point that it cannot be heard. |
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Secular Bluenoses |
That is, many of today's liberals are moralists out to scotch sin rather than detectives out to pursue truth. |
To such individuals, dissent is of the devil, as are the dissenters themselves. They wage a sort of holy war. |
They are secular bluenoses. |
The old-fashioned liberal, the spacious and tolerant liberal? |
I am for this fellow. |
Yet the crusading liberal, the morally self-congratulatory and censorious liberal… |
I am against this fellow. |
Brian Maher |
for Freedom Financial News |
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