Most of you know about the monolog from Brian Rohrbough on the CBS “Free Speech” Segment this Monday. On the Tuesday night edition, Katie made a comment that the majority of the feedback received on Brian’s comments was negative. If not, you can find my post on it here.
The mailman nearly suffered a hernia hauling in sacks of comments over Monday’s “freeSpeech” segment. (We took a few packages that were ticking and threw them in the creek…) Surf around the CBS News website and you’ll find all sorts of ideas and opinions about this. A tell-tale sign that this was going to be an especially interesting week: nearly every comment, on every post, for the last three days, has had something to say about “freeSpeech,” no matter what the topic.
Personally, I was struck by how many of the people who posted began their comments with one word: “Shame.” As in “Shame on you, Katie Couric.” (I might mention here that the majority of people wagging their fingers and using that word would proudly label themselves free-thinking, tolerant, progressive, maybe even liberal. Tolerance, it seems, has its limits.)
This all has me thinking about the numbers. Are there more liberals than conservatives, more left that right? Are we really in a world where the an utterance against abortion and the admonition of the Godlessness of our schools is really something that gets the masses in an uproar – or do we just have a vocal minority who are quick to take action and make their voices heard? And, most importantly, how do we answer that question?
Before I come back to the question of Political Life, the Universe and Everything, we should take a quick moment to set a baseline. The response to a CBS evening news commentary cannot be used to measure the numeric superiority of one group or another. CBS is, in the opinion of most conservatives, a liberal news outlet, and so not regularly watched by conservative minded people. We conservatives would be more apt to watch Fox News or a more conservative news source. That being the case, the response received should be in line with the viewers. The equivalent, if you will, of someone using Fox News to accusing Christians for the increase in school violence.
It dose, show us that people like the news to be agreeable to them. I am sure it was quite a shocker to most of the CBS news watchers on Monday night.
Also, before returning to the question at hand, a brief moment to shake my head at those enlightened liberals (i.e. Reed at De Rerum Natura with his article entitled “Brian Rohrbough is an Idiot”) who are attacking this man, personally, for what amounts to a video opinion column. Disagree with his comments, disagree with his sentiments, but it is bad form to attack him personally. Shame on you.
Now to the question at hand: how do we factor out as right and left in terms of minority and majority? I am certainly not the first to ask this question, so I rather than recreate the wheel, I pulled from some high quality sources.
I reference in the attached the following two studies: The American and Religious Landscape and Political Attitudes(2004) by John C. Green and The Eagleton Institute Ethnic Breakdown of Citizenry and Ethnic Voter Participation (2002). Sadly I was unable to find any more current data, even from the local library (ick – hard copy).
So what do these studies show?
42% of the US population aligned themselves with the Democrat party.
38% of the US population aligned themselves with the Republican party.
20% of the US population aligned themselves with another political party.
Over 70% of the US population considers themselves to be “Christian”, the majority (over 50%) also believing that the Bible is absolutely literal and factual, including its position on abortion, creationism, and homosexuality.
Only 10% of the US population considers themselves to be Secular (not religious) or Atheist/Agnostic.
68% of those surveyed by the American Religious Landscape study said it is Important that the President have Strong religious beliefs. Oddly, that included 24% of the Secular and 6% of the Atheist / Agnostic groups.
76% of those surveyed by the American Religious Landscape study said it was important for Organized Religious groups to stand up for their beliefs.
63% said that religion was important, or somewhat important, to political thinking.
62% said the US has a right to engage in preemptive war. I am sure that numbers has gone down some in the two years since the study.
On the flips side, only 35% of the population agreed with the US support of Israel over the Palestinians. (38% against, 27% no opinion).
On abortion, 52% said Abortion should be legal in all or most circumstances. 48% said Abortion should be illegal in all or most circumstances.
51% of the population is against any ban on stem cell research. (32% support a ban, 17 have no opinion).
Only 27% of the population supported same sex marriage, with 55% supporting only traditional marriage, and the remaining 18% supporting civil unions.
Both studies contain a considerable amount of additional data on various subjects. I have linked both above in case you are curious as to what else they have to say. If I do find more current data I will provide an update to this post.
So – what dose this all say about the political makeup of the country in general? I think it points to a roughly equal split between Democrats and Republicans with the Democrats holding a slightly higher major in numbers, though a noticeably lower % of Democrats vote. It also shows that we still consider ourselves to be a nation based on religious beliefs with the vast majority of people, be they Republican or Democrat, believing religion has its place in government and politics and it is important in choosing our leaders.
I think the numbers also show the being a Republican and Democrat is much less about a principle or belief makeup, and more about other unidentified issues. Perhaps many Americans choose a political party based on family history or geography. The voting record and belief constructs do not fit neatly into the two party systems. The Religious Landscape study actually broke the groups down into 10 major groups and another 12 smaller groups based on religious beliefs (or lack there of) and party standing.
Zooming back into the Brian Rohrbough issue, I think these numbers show that the vast majority of Americans not only would not have been offended by Mr. Rohrbough’s comments, most would agree with him. Even on the abortion issue, which is much less clear, the majority of Americans support some limits to abortion – only 17% believed it should be unfettered and at the whim of the woman.
There where not questions in the studies specifically about Intelligent Design vs. Evolution, so we have to assume that of the 70% who call themselves Christians most would support a creationist view point. At the very least we have to assume that the 50% who believed that the Bible is completely factually and literally accurate would take a stand supporting Intelligent Design over Evolution.
So, CBS, you are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Most of the American people agree with Brian Rohrbough, but most of your regular viewers must not.
And to those of us who are a majority, we need to make more noise. I hope we do not lack the courage of our convictions for silence in our political system is akin to concession. The vocal minority has the right of it, I cannot fault there fervor even if I cannot agree with the stand on most issues.
Thanks Brian, for speaking up for the rest of us.