I WILL TRY TO DO YOUR QUESTION JUSTICE
(If you think I have then please promote this piece)
PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE AND THE STATUS QUO
Progressive and conservative express positions relative to the status quo.
However, out of repeated use, this term refers to the difference between State control of society (left = totalitarianism), and ‘normative’ control of society (right = libertarianism).
NOLAN/ASPLUND POLITICAL CHART
However, the ‘NOLAN CHART’ is a more accurate and sophisticated view of politics as two dimensions. Left totalitarianism of the state via law, right totalitarianism of ‘norms’, and libertarian totalitarianism of commerce is probably the most accurate way of thinking about political biases.
The problem is. This chart helps you organize political biases, but it doesn’t tell you WHY WE HAVE THEM. So we need to look at something else. Because it turns out that we don’t, except for the statistically insignificant, ever change our political biases.
RELIGIOUS AND CULTURAL ORIGINS
In my own work, I’ve tried to show how totalitarian, normative, and libertarian biases tend to originate from different religious and cultural backgrounds in europe.
FAMILY STRUCTURES
And Emmanuel Todd’s work shows that these religious structures roughly correspond to our FAMILY structures. With conservatives in the nuclear family, catholics in the traditional family, jews in the extended family, and muslims in the tribal family. We are now able to trace the progressive left’s origins as an alliance between Northeast Puritan Women, The Feminist Movement, and the Jewish Communist Movement.
So Emmanuel Todd’s map of immigration and family structures, looks much like my map of religious structures (which you can find on the web now in a few places. It seems to be spreading a bit.)
AMERICAN DEMOGRAPHICS
So if you look at these maps of america:
It’s pretty clear, given everyone’s origins, where their political biases come from: their moral codes reflect their cultural origins, the relationship between their family structures, moral codes, and economic demands.
PRACTICAL IMPACT
If you understand this set of charts, you’ll quickly grasp, that all our political talk is purely entertainment and spent energy. Our political biases, like our moral intuitions, are not voluntarily chosen except at the margins.
The people who decide elections in america consist of two groups:
(a) Uninvolved, Uncommitted, and Unaware voters who represent from 7-14% of the populace (depending on who you ask), and who can be swayed by popular opinion and emotion rather than political conviction or reason, and (b) single mothers and young women who now represent a NEW FAMILY STRUCTURE, and who are highly biased toward the state (the left). It is these two groups who determine the outcome of elections, since everyone else is pretty committed and reasonably evenly distributed. (See Pew research.)
This is why conservatives use every trick in the book to retain the nuclear family and progressives eery trick in the book to undermine the nuclear family because the nuclear family, and it’s civic independence is the primary threat to state power. Religion has always been an effective means of resisting the western state. And conservatives use this because it means they get to establish their own moral grounds insulated from argument. Just as progressives try the same by different means.
SOURCE OF POLITICAL BIASES
(1) Genetics
(2) Gender
(3) Childhood family structure
(4) Culture
(5) Environment
(6) Willful Informed Adult Choice
GENDER BIASES
When we created representative democracy the head of household was a male with discretion over family use of property, and was the equivalent of a small or medium sized business owner today. These men had homogenous moral and cultural codes. They had relatively homogenous interests that differed only by scale. The opposing reproductive and therefore moral intuition for men and women was homogenized by the nuclear family structure. But the addition of women to the workplace and the voting pool eliminated that compromise. And as each generation passes, women increasingly are either single, or single mothers, and vote the female reproductive bias, which is to bear children and care for them but place responsibility for their support and upkeep on the tribe as much as possible. Other factors matter, but by and large it is women and their preference to press the costs of childrearing on the ‘tribe’ that has determined the gradual leftward motion in america, and left the conservative nuclear family with its emphasis on self reliance in the minority. There are more issues here but I’m attempting to emphasize that our political biases are not the conscious choices that we think they are. We are incredibly predictable.
RECOMMENDED READING
1) “Political Ideologies : An Introduction” by Andrew Heywood.
Political Ideologies: An Introduction: Andrew Heywood: 9780230367258: Amazon.com: Books2) “The Righteous Mind” by Jonathan Haidt
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion: Jonathan Haidt: 9780307377906: Amazon.com: Bookshttps://www.quora.com/Is-there-a-better-word-for-progressive-beliefs-than-progressivism