Take a look at this interesting report from Rasmussen Reports. Here’s how it begins:
Sixty-two percent (62%) of voters say that American society is generally fair and decent…. 26% disagree and believe that American society is basically unfair and discriminatory….
Republicans, by an 80% to 12% margin, say that American society is generally fair and decent. Unaffiliated voters agree, but [by] a 59% to 24% margin. However, Democrats are evenly divided. Forty-six percent (46%) of John Kerry’s party say that American society is fair and decent while 41% say it is unfair and discriminatory.
Overall, two thirds of voters believe that those who move to the United States should adopt our nation’s culture, language, and heritage. Nineteen percent (19%) disagree. Eighty percent (80%) of conservatives believe that those who move to the U.S. should adopt our cultural heritage along with 63% of moderates and 50% of liberals.
Just 22% of voters believe that most Americans are racist. This includes 31% of Democrats, 22% of unaffiliateds, and 14% of Republicans.
I have long thought, and reasonably often written, that the Democrats’ main problem is not that they reject the religious values of many (most?) Americans but that they do not honor what most Americans think of as American values, primary among them the principle that every individual (not group) has a right to be judged without regard to race, religion, or ethnicity.
UPDATE [16 Nov. 10:40PM]
Although he never mentions the non-discrimination principle (an oversight), Andrew Sullivan says something very similar here:
A large part of the pro-Bush vote … was a vote against the left elite and the cultural attitudes it represents in the public imagination. It was a vote not so much for Bush or his often religious policies (or even the war on terror) but against the post-9/11 left, against Michael Moore and political correctness and Susan Sontag and CBS News, among a host of others….
The truth is, there is a conservative majority in this country not because the religious right is a majority but because Republicans have been able to corner the market on the themes of achievement, individualism, energy, and action. And they have also won over those who disdain the politics of resentment, whining, and permanent criticism….
Since the “without regard” non-discrimination principle is a core, constitutive ingredient of the American variety of individualism, Sulllivan in effect did mention it after all.
The non-discrimination policy is not an American or individualistic one, neither it is a true principle. No one has the right to be judged by private parties, or exempted from judgement. There is a hopelessly irrational contradiction in the anti-judgemental doctrines which at the same time involve saying that one is against prejudice. To be against prejudice is only sensible if there is some right time to judge. If that time can never come, there remains also no argument against any prejudgement.
John — are you any relation to Michael?
Please explain.