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Comment by alextgordon | Hacker News Reader

From a British point of view this reads as "How academia's bias against the far-right is killing social science". A thoroughly ridiculous premise.

"Liberal" and "conservative" are not natural categories. Anybody can be right or left from anybody else's perspective. The US democratic party does seem to be more conservative than the UK conservative party, so from that we could say that 98% of Americans are conservative.

It is unsurprising to me that the involvement of the far-right would lead to starkly different conclusions in any science.

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I actually think moderate Republicans in the US are more similar to the UK's Conservative party. They have very similar campaign promises and very similar actual legislative agendas. A good example of a moderate republican in the US would be Mitt Romney as governor or Scott Brown, both republicans who served on the East Coast. To me it is a myth that the US is very conservative, they elected Barack Obama twice. I would most certainly say that Barack Obama is more liberal than any members of the UK Conservative party. From an ideology perspective, Tony Blair is very similar. If the US pres was in the UK, I am nearly positive he would be in the Labour party.

true but that was true back in the 50's one nation Tory's and Eisenhower republicans. Its just that the GOP appears to have been take over by entryists from the hard right.

A bit like how the trots tried to take over the labour party from the hard left

I don't see how you got to that conclusion from reading the article other than perhaps assuming that in the American context conservative equals far-right. Perhaps its a matter of perspective but while there are plenty of far-right people in the US I don't think it's fair to assume that conservative is synonymous with far-right in the US.

Many things that the Republican party says and does strike me as far-right.

I'm not sure if I can bring up specific issues without this thread turning into a political mud fight, but the UK Conservative party is mostly OK about climate change being a real thing, abortion and gay marriage. Even their worst-case dismemberment of the NHS would be far more socialist than "Obamacare".

On the economic side of things, it seems that America tends towards classical liberalism (i.e. conservatism), for it lacks any kind of social democratic or socialist thought. When is the last time you heard a major American party call for something to be brought into public ownership?

But this is exactly my point. While it seems to me that there are very few on the left in the US, I am but one data point. Right and left, liberal and conservative are completely meaningless as descriptions of anything.

There's certainly no bias inherent in your categorization of "most Americans" because clearly you aren't just pulling numbers that fit your worldview out of your ass, right?

Or maybe I misread and you're going for a super gooey layer of irony.

Most Americans support either Republicans or Democrats. There are no significant political parties to the left, and those Democrats with somewhat left of center views are considered to be on the far left of the party.

You don't really need statistics or bias to conclude that most Americans conservative. What part of that upsets you so much?

No part upsets me. Why read emotional content into this?

"Most Americans support either Republicans or Democrats."

Here are disapproval ratings[1]: Republicans: 62%. Democrats: 50%

1. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/americans-views-of-obama-congres...

The 98% number is the number of voters that voted for either Democrat or Republican presidents in 2012.

I admit because of turnout we can't claim to know about the opinions of non-voters. But it's safe to assume that most Americans are either Democrat, Republican or somewhere in between.

asserting that your assumptions are valid is not the same as having valid assumptions. just like downvoting me isn't the same as saying anything useful or factual.

yes

here in Canada our "right wing" government would be on most issues to the left of US democrats --- certainly Obama

in any case these left-right classifications are unhelpful at best

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