Re:Most Scientists in the U.S. Are Democrats. That's a Problem
by DanielBMarkham on Thursday December 09, 2010 @05:06PM
(#1989409)
This leads to a very curious phenomenon: pick any 2 random U.S. Citizens of either party. Take them out for a beer and start talking politics.
If both of them are fairly secure in their beliefs, within a very short amount of time you'll realize that they are very close on maybe 80-85% of all these issues, although they each adopt talking points from their chosen party to describe their differences!
This is a natural consequence of only having two parties to choose from. Extremely fascinating stuff.
I wonder how the parallels hold out in multi-party systems?
EDIT: Wanted to clarify that I agree with you that folks have a huge variety of opinions on all sorts of issues. I just wanted to point out that even then, they are much less attached to the issues themselves as they are to the talking points their party has around those issues
If both of them are fairly secure in their beliefs, within a very short amount of time you'll realize that they are very close on maybe 80-85% of all these issues, although they each adopt talking points from their chosen party to describe their differences!
This is a natural consequence of only having two parties to choose from. Extremely fascinating stuff.
I wonder how the parallels hold out in multi-party systems?
EDIT: Wanted to clarify that I agree with you that folks have a huge variety of opinions on all sorts of issues. I just wanted to point out that even then, they are much less attached to the issues themselves as they are to the talking points their party has around those issues
It's a strange thing.