More dataisdepressing than dataisbeautiful
this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2024
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The graph is about young people, not the entire population. Young people in America are historically more progressive than older people.
Also why does liberal and conservative have to be on an absolute scale? The words liberal and conservative seem to me at least be about pushing politics in one direction or another. Because policy is always subject to change, shouldn't the words liberal and conservative be relative to the political system they exist within?
Yes, "liberal" and "conservative" are relative, not absolute terms. There's a concept known as the Overton Window which describes exactly this shift of what is considered the "center" and what is considered a radical left/right position in any given society at any given time.
The idea that people should vote for their representatives, for example, was once considered an extremist take that could ruin civilization itself if implemented. The Overton Window shifted and nowadays even most Fascists will at least pretend in public to agree with it.
And, I did miss that important detail.
It doesn't have to be an absolute scale of course, but then why show 4 countries where all seem to deviate from the center? Are these country graphs even comparable?
Yeah I agree, it's not a very good graph. I just get frustrated when people ridicule the US political system for everything. We have a lot to fix (like what's causing women to become more liberal), but I think we need to focus on what's actionable and reasonable to fix. We can't become +20 more liberal overnight.