The science comes in the form of a Pew poll on the use of social networks, which finds that despite their aggressive claims to be tolerant, loving, harmless lightworkers, liberals are the most intolerant bunch around.
Politics can be a sensitive subject and a number of SNS users have decided to block, unfriend, or hide someone because of their politics or posting activities. In all, 18% of social networking site users have taken one of those steps by doing at least one of the following:
- 10% of SNS users have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone on the site because that person posted too frequently about political subjects
- 9% of SNS users have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone on the site because they posted something about politics or issues that they disagreed with or found offensive
- 8% of SNS users have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone on the site because they argued about political issues on the site with the user or someone the user knows
- 5% of SNS users have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone on the site because they posted something about politics that the user worried would offend other friends
- 4% of SNS users have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone on the site because they disagreed with something the user posted about politics
Of course, that means that 82% of SNS users have not taken any steps to ignore or disconnect from someone whose views are different – or have not encountered any views that would prompt such a move.
Liberals are the most likely to have taken each of these steps to block, unfriend, or hide. In all, 28% of liberals have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone on SNS because of one of these reasons, compared with 16% of conservatives and 14% of moderates.
The finding is so shocking you could knock Ace over with a feather!
Liberal intolerance for the opinions of others has been on full display over the past week or two, in the Rush Limbaugh saga. Rush said a couple of words that leftists found usefully offensive, so they have responded not with calls to love their errant brother in humanity, but in a very energetic campaign to destroy his reputation, and his livelihood, and even toss him in jail.
All, over two words, but really, over an opinion that the Media Matters hive mind finds objectionable. The words were just fulcrum levers, and they have turned that conflict of opinion into a modern, secular version of the Inquisition. Liberals’ tendency to be intolerant leads very naturally into this kind of overkill, because they combine it with self-righteousness and a rigid secular piety. That secular piety is probably most visible in today’s college campus speech codes, which literally spell out what freedoms of speech students must give up in order to obtain a modern education. But it shows up in all sorts of interesting places. What does “GCB” really stand for again? Oh, right.
Today’s liberals would be aghast at the accusation that they’re a bunch of Torquemadas reborn, but spend a few minutes debating with them in any liberal web site’s comment room, or here until they inevitably start issuing personal threats or threadjack, and what they are will be clear soon enough.
Can’t agree about Rush. His language was uncalled for and the liberals’ reaction was entirely predictable – which is why he shouldn’t have said what he did. He handed them a stick to beat him with. His mouth is becoming a liability to the conservative cause.
On the other hand, I do agree about the liberal version of intolerance. Liberals are the new Puritans. As much as they scream about conservatives invading their bedrooms or their female reproductive organs, they themselves feel no compunctions about meddling in every other aspect of private life, thought, and behavior. Actually, I’d speculate that they don’t recognize the concept of privacy at all.
The blazes we, or anyone, should keep their mouths shut because “it might offend”! That’s how we got into this mess in the first place, people not speaking up so we knew how many others felt the same.
In addition, the Leftoid Liberals freely offend everyone who disagrees with them in order to shut up the opposition, and as they were the loudest voices in the room, they thought they had the majority. Do you recall how the outpouring of patriotism after 9-11 astounded them? We had shut up to “avoid offending”, so they thought they had taken over.
“Offend away, Rush.”
Not only do they feel that they are right to meddle in everyone’s personal lives, they believe they are morally correct in doing it. I encounter leftists regularly and they don’t consider it censorship if it’s done in the name of good vs. evil. That is, Rush is clearly evil, so one is defeating evil, not censorship. That’s only something “evil” people do and since they are Progressives/Liberals they aren’t (by definition) evil. Therefore what they are doing must be the right thing.
There is a difference between vulgarity and a pattern of hate-speech. The guy said he was sorry, acknowledging his error. The Left wants to parse Limbaugh as someone who indulges in hate-speech but without ever finding that pattern aside from employing anti-Holmesian dog-whistles and “code.”
The Left itself conspicuously indulges in a constant pattern of not only the same vulgarity, but obvious hate-speech against white folks and men in particular. The basis of every gripe of every race-based organization or law from the Congressional Black and Latino Caucuses to affirmative action to school busing to La Raza to even the frickin’ YWCA is white folks, mostly men. Those gripes have no force of proof on their side but only suppositions that amount to nothing more than cheap psychology and anecdotes. But point out the very real and documented wholesale crime emanating from the black and Latino communities and then all of a sudden excuses have traction. Go into any prison sometime and see who’s there; the idea they’re all innocent marks is absurd.
Should we even call them liberals anymore? What they are is the modern day fascist movement.
That’s why I always call them lefties or leftists, or even statists, because that’s what they are.
“Liberals” have no interest in liberty, and “progressives” have no interest in progress. all clear now?
Oh, and they’re the ones who celebrate free speech by shouting down opinions with which they don’t agree.
Really, it’s all so simple…
Way to cut through the fog, alanstorm. Nice and succinct.
I can be more verbose if you’re paying by the word…
Yes, but don’t you see: if you can make the message disappear, in their heads it no longer exists. You don’t have to deal with it any longer, and thus your personal echo chamber is secure.
This is the “La La La I can’t HEAR you” factor.
This is news?
For those of us who have lived in Blue Areas, for me Boston, NYC metro, LA and SF Bay Area, liberals being intolerant is a given.
isn’t this like the most obvious thing ever?
I was banned from the Atlantic for making just one comment about what would happen if Ta-Nahesi Coates challenged himself to go one year without talking about race. Since this is something virtually every person I’ve known in my life does effortlessly I didn’t see why it would be expecting so much. Guess what: on the race-obsessed political Left in America it is expecting a lot.
Americans had to engage in a dialogue in WW II because of the depraved Nazis and we have to unfortunately address it again. We had to have this dialogue in a good way in the ’50s and ’60s and we won, unless you’re on the Left – on the Left Jim Crow will never disappear as they find it too useful to explain away the failures of their constituency.
Left to my druthers, if Coates and his panoply on the black Left will knock it off I’d be most happy. America has other fish to fry than the constant racialism of 12% of the population strained through the Presidency.
How’s this for intolerance:
Let’s amicably divide the country. We can all be as tolerant as we like once we get away from each other.
The liberal fantasy that we can all live together in harmony means we can all live together in THEIR harmony. Where has this idea of a “rainbow world” gotten us? We put up with bloody, nasty civil wars and consider relocation as the ultimate sin. The logic the liberal employs that “uprooting people” is worse than being thrown into civil war is so outrageous it could only come from people willing to sacrifice others for the sake of their politics.
People with fundamental differences should be allowed to live according to their wishes, not be forced into a dehumanizing one-size-fits-all world. I’m done with them.
Funny thought experiment: my guess is that no matter what 50% the Conservatives had that in a few decades, all the members of the Rainbow Coalition would want to live there as it would be less lawless, more of a meritocracy, and more rich. Third World immigrants and the poor in the Liberal half, finding their own source of entitlements gone bankrupt, would sneak in but unfortunately, with no anchor baby laws and sanctuary cities, they would find themselves on the next bus out and with their own seized assets used to finance the trip.
I enjoyed that 60 sec. where my country wasn’t a multicult airport at the service of the Third World with me a fuming and racist baggage handler.
Pretty hard for liberals to castigate Rush while SlutWalking.
it might be obvious to you, but numbers are really nice. numbers help one crystallize nebulous thoughts.
Like, my personal favorite- the one that only 10% of all marriages fail. That is a fraction of the despair meme: 50%. 50% applied to one single generation, during one year, and probably mostly referred to second marriages. Couple that with ” the one thing that keeps marriages together is that both partners wish to remain married” and ” if you marry after six months of dating and before 2 years, you’ll probably stay married”, then it’s easy to bless young couples and wish them well, rather than sigh, and say ” so, you’re gambling with 50%.”
or, say 50% of white, college- educated women suffer from post-partum depression. then, it’s not a global failing needing psychological therapy. it’s just holding a lottery ticket. That level of detachment- that it’s just the mother of all PMS events- made it possible for a friend of mine to get off unnecessary meds and start fixing her family’s life. She said ” the drugs can’t stop my husband from working 18 hour days. They can’t stop him from spendng too much time with a female co-worker. But- I can, if I’m all there.”
Obviously, that 50%- some women need help- and it’s a lot of women- but that one women could pin it down to a lottery ticket, rather than some deep Freudian issue requiring a babysitter for the kids, hours weeping in a psych’s office ( cash only) and enduring remarkably unpleasant drug effects…..
And,we all have to deal with liberals. It helps to know that it’s them, not us. Them. It’s easier to not be surprised when they go rabid dog on an innocent email, or comment, or something.
Anybody here ever heard of Free Republic?
(throwing flag)
Tu quoque argument!
25 yard penalty for an obvious logical fallacy.
I’ve heard of Free State in New Hampshire for libertarians. And every bit of my energy is now focused on moving there. What’s Free Republic? I’m all ears.
Secession – it’s a right, granted by the Declaration of Independence, guaranteed by the guns of the right.
Oh, but the blue states would so hate to lose their red state slaves…but war is not the answer – they told us so.
War? If it ever came close to it, the left would go straight into full-blown Stockholm Syndrome, jump up, grab a gun, shoot a moose, and then pee themselves.
But an amicable division of the country–ie. another Velvet Revolution, like when the Czech Rep. and Slovakia just decided to call it quits–would be all that was necessary.
Just like their busom buddies, the jihadists.
What is SNS? Shouldn’t you write out an acronym the first time you use it?
Truthfully, the described methodology doesn’t protect against subject self-selection effects.
I see no measure of “con”, “mod”, or “lib”.
I see no measure of “disagreement” vs “inscrutable” vs possible difference of determination or ability to comprehend messages. (e.g., Poes, unintentional Poes, or garbled strings of text)
However , you didn’t analyze all data types. The last questions indicate same tolerance toward agreement and disagreement, independent of ideological categorization.
Reconcile all data, including the intervening data, and an inferred conclusion is that conservatives spam less discriminately.