The right is very angry right now, even more angry than the early Clinton years. And they are only going to get more agitated.
De -masculinizing the military was Clinton’s only real mistake, as the military fraternal order and its meme of group-persistence are conservative’s most agitating sentiment.
Obama’s transfer of risk from the poor (unenfranchised risk creators) to small business owners and professionals (enfranchised risk takers), and his general attack in word and deed on the right’s social status and values, plus the sentiment that the ‘rules of the game’ (the constitution, which is the core value of The Classical Liberal wing of Conservatives) were violated to pass the healthcare bill over the will of the populace, have inflamed them.
Furthermore, the right lives in a consciousness of the status-economy, which consists of accumulated sacrifices in order to achieve status, and status which increases the probability of opportunity, and opportunity which when combined with risk, create wealth and security. This status-economy is universal, permanent, and material, and vastly amplified in any heterogenous empire. (Conservatives don’t wear funny hats as identity symbols, everyone else wears Conservative hats in order to enter the conservative status-economy.) Just like taxes which are a cost, there is a maximum amount of wealth transfer that a group will tolerate. The political problem is no longer money. It has become a status problem in a heterogenous empire. Empires break because of such differences. (Empires break for two reasons: excess cultural heterogeneity and insufficient institutional calculability: religion and law are insufficiently marginal influences in heterogenous urban societies. No civilization has survived the transition from homogenous to heterogenous density, because it ceases to be in group interests to pay the opportunity cost of respecting institutions whose underlying causal pressure to conform to them diminishes with anonymity.
And for your side, the left, it would help if one did not confuse preferences with truths. Because equality, as a value, is contra-logical to the status economy. There is no evidence that people are equal, nor that equality can persist for any period of time. There is a minimum interpersonal, and inter-class, status delta that is tolerable in any society, and the more diverse that society, the more exaggerated must be the delta. This is as much a law, as is supply and demand. And only silly people think otherwise.
As for exemplary European models applied to the US, and perceived happiness thereof as a metric, the power-and-weakess discount must be applied to europeans, as demonstrated by the written record of migrants, almost all of which choose the USA model over the european simply because of decreased costs.
The opinions europeans hold of their policies are not met by the opinion of european and american expatriates, who actually possess the information to make such a valuation. The popular opinion is nothing but the reversal of power and weakness postwar. Combined with the homogeneity of the germanic countries, this creates an opinion-bias that makes european opinion irrelevant to American policies.
The problem for our nation, is that we are an empire that used to be 80% homogenous, becoming an empire whose cultures are increasingly at material odds. In particular the status-discount whites have been paying is reaching intolerable proportions.
Why? Because there is a maximum cultural delta, not the least of which is driven by IQ variances. But primarily driven by the human preference for similar-looking and similar-acting people. That preferences is material because of the STATUS economy experienced by people who compete across racial and cultural boundaries. In other words, for the majority, there is a status advantage, and therefore an economic advantage to group identity.
In other words – Cultures do not integrate when status deltas reach a cliff-effect. Instead, they hunker-down in tribes. The data is becoming quite clear that the american melting pot was a myth post-european integration. It is a myth here, and will be a myth here and everywhere.
And when people do not integrate, they do not tolerate redistribution. It’s funding you’re opposition. This is the reality of human existence.
As for the popularity of leftist sentiments versus conservative sentiments, the country is vastly center right. But our universities, are vastly left. Our business community is vastly right. One of these communities is an outgrowth of theology. The other operates using practical techniques. Conservatives never forget this. Liberals (the left kind) always choose to.