Why do so many people assume liberal views whether religious or otherwise are necessarily lukewarm?

Question

It's as though if you have liberal views you can't hold them as sincerely, which to my mind is plain wrong!

Answer 1

I do no think that liberal views are lukewarm at all. I am a liberal and I have very strong convictions. The views that I hold are as follows:

1. A social "safety net" including support for Medicare, unemployment benefits, health insurance, and preservation of existing Social Security and welfare programs
2. Adherence to the principle of separation of church and state
3. A reasonable progressive tax system
4. Government role in funding or subsidizing public education and public transportation
5. Regulation of business practices through OSHA, child labor laws, anti-trust laws, and minimum wage laws.
6. The belief in a woman's right to abortion by Roe v. Wade standards
7. Government responsibility to supervise ports and infrastructure in the public interest
8. A spirit of international cooperation and strong alliances
9. Advocacy of federal funding for embryonic stem cell research and support of scientific study
10. Gun control and regulation for safety
11. Opposition to censorship of the media.
12. Marijuana or hemp legalization for medicinal, industrial, or recreational purposes
13. The right of the terminally ill to end their life

Answer 2

Lukewarm?

Either you're not from the US, or you haven't been paying much attention.

For decades the right has been demonizing liberals: Liberals are terrorists who hate America; want to destroy the country; want to enslave everyone; are Satan's best friend; etc., etc., etc. (You have an example of such thinking in a previous answer, a few above mine.)

Troll around the Politics category of this site.

Lukewarm would be a compliment in comparison.

Since most Americans are liberal, the right has been on this campaign to make "the 'l' word" into a four-letter word, as the only hope they have of getting votes.

It's been working to quite an extent.

The only other explanation I can think of is that (at least in the world as a whole) liberal is considered center, not left.

Thus, liberals are seen as neither right nor left; thus, "lukewarm."

It would have been helpful if you'd given examples or context or something.

Answer 3

Watch Alan Combs on Fox News' "Hannity and Combs". He is the definition of a lukewarm moderate liberal, and hes represented as being a typical liberal on the show. I think thats a source of alot of the misconceptions.

Answer 4

christianity and different faith are literally conservative simply by fact the exist to look after the instructions of a few historical individual for destiny generations and authentically interpret their historical meaning with comprehend to widespread life. conservative religionists are slow to settle for that modern life is meaningfully diverse from 10, 20, a hundred, 500, 900 years in the past. liberal religionist carry that there are significant adjustments from 900 and 500 years in the past. there could be adjustments from a hundred years in the past. there is not often yet possibly adjustments from 2 an prolonged time in the past. A liberal coaching could be that capital punishment is immoral simply by fact the technologies of prisons assures public protection in assessment to a hundred years in the past. A conservative coaching could be that simply by fact Jesus and his Apostles have been all male that clergy might desire to be all male regardless of the diversities in the jobs of ladies and men human beings over the an prolonged time.

Answer 5

what is your liberal left view?

leftists are modern socialists nothing more!
and really the "free" part appeals to the underbelly of our society
you know pot smokin losers or alchoholics who are lazy and really just look and expect a handout from govt services that I and others like me who work hard at 40 hrs or more a week pay for with taxes! you libturds would love to just take it over and "redistribute" the wealth!
liberals appeal to some because they live to do away with personal responsibility and accountability!
you shoot yourself hey not your fault its the gun makers fault
you cut yourself in kitchen you sue the knifemaker its not you fault
if u break in a store to steal but cut your hand you sue the store owner for getting cut.
thats you and your B U LL S H I T liberal views and thats the world they create

oh and have a nice day

Answer 6

Sorry I've no time for liberal/lefty views...look at the damage they have caused to this country.

Answer 7

To make a long story short, I hope you won't focus too much on folks who assume liberal views are lukewarm, because to some degree it's human nature and it's not worth fighting. Just in case your question wasn't rhetorical, I hope that rather than worry about it just keep yourself informed and open-minded and get your news from lots of different sources and question everything, digging past what people tell you every so often to find things out for yourself. If others choose not to do that, that's their own choice.

As a linguistic aside, I think part of it is confounded by the linguistic mauling the word "liberal" has undergone in recent years. The classical political sense of the term (see Merriam-Webster dictionary for an example) has in many circles has come to represent something along the lines of "Northeast/Intellectual/Socialist/Atheist/Decadent/Anti-American/Anti-Religious..."
...I could go on but you get the idea. I'm not going to recap it, but if you go to the M-W link below, read sense number two and compare that with how you hear it used today. Here I'm taking your use of "liberal" as meaning something more along the lines of the Merriam-Webster definition, link (1).

Now, to address your direct question:

One of the more informed views I've heard on this subject comes from an article in _The Washington Post_ (see link below). It's better to read the article, but it points to a group of studies presented at a conference on social psychology focusing on a psychological tendency for individuals who are heavily committed to a position to be more inclined to screen out information which goes against their own point of view. Link (2) below is the news article, Link (3) is one of the papers by Drew Westen. Link (4) is Westen's page at Emory University. I provide the links not so much to have you read the study, but to make the citation more grounded than what one sees coming out of many blogs from the political left or right.

Note that although the article focuses on Republicans, I think that the basic psychological dynamic is equally applicable to far-left types who demonize corporations at every turn. I don't think that it's appropriate to conclude anything about Republicans or Democrats from this study. In fact, I see the newspaper article as flawed by appearing to want to do that. However, I think that the studies it cites as describing a quality of human nature that many of us recognize from time to time: Regardless of what political party you're in, we all see what we want to see.

I think general tendencies for people to naturally filter information are tempered by some folks who seek to learn about the world from many different sources, and heightened in others who by various means both internally and externally seek out sources of information that reflect a particular point of view that is comfortable to them.

Naturally, if enough of people of the latter sort find each other and form a community, it's not hard to see how such a community winds up sounding like an echo chamber.

For better or worse, there seem to be many conditions which conspire to make it easier to form echo chambers rather than open them up to create a more balanced and informed public debate. You can cite the slow ongoing decline of mass media and the rise of the Internet which allows people to seek out information in a highly selective fashion as both being contributors.

Not only the media but the way we approach it is a factor. I think a good perspective on this is _Whose Freedom_ by George Lakoff, a cognitive scientist a UC Berkeley. While I don't agree with all the political viewpoints he espouses, I think that if you can read past that it's very readable and informative regarding how language is manipulated in political speech. You have to work to separate this concept from Lakoff's political perspectives, but I believe it's worth the effort.

It's also true that larger social forces are at work. An interesting possible influence might be a phenomenon cited by Robert Putnam, professor of Public Policy at Harvard. In his book _Bowling Alone_ he notes that changing demographic patterns have caused large-scale shifts favoring close relations and groups that tend to be more inward-looking and serving one's own close community rather than those with a more outward-looking orientation to serving all of society as a whole. It's a big, dense book but a great read if one's interested in taking on a 400-plus-page tome.

I don't even pretend to say that I've said the last word on the subject. I'm merely bringing up some readings that I found informative on the matter, but I don't pretend to have completely analyzed it, much less found a solution. I think it's a very human tendency to want to live in an echo chamber where all one's own beliefs are reflected back at them, and people choose either to reach beyond that or not.

It would be nice if someone thought up with some brilliant scheme that would let people try and understand each other rather than close their minds off and reject everything that doesn't fit their own preconceived notions. If it happened tomorrow, it wouldn't be soon enough. But I'm not holding my breath for it. I hope that perspective doesn't get you down. If you can think up something to do about the situation, you'll be my hero. But until then, I hope you get your news from a lot of different sources, that your mind stays open and you remain healthily skeptical without becoming too cynical, and that you steer clear of any echo chambers.