Apropos the post below, sociologist Arthur Books looks at some data about hate in politics. He uses the "thermometer test" used by the National Election Study to measure how "warm" voters feel toward various people and groups. Not surprisingly, people feel "cold" towards those with whom they disagree. But, contrary to the stereotype of the angry right-winger, Brooks finds at least as much "hate" on the left as on the right:
Some might argue that this is simply a reflection of the current political climate, which is influenced by strong feelings about the current occupants of the White House. And sure enough, those on the extreme left give President Bush an average temperature of 15 and Vice President Cheney a 16. Sixty percent of this group gives both men the absolute lowest score: zero.
To put this into perspective, note that even Saddam Hussein (when he was still among the living) got an average score of eight from Americans. The data tell us that, for six in ten on the hard left in America today, literally nobody in the entire world can be worse than George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. (snip)
In 1998, Bill Clinton and Al Gore were hardly popular among conservatives. Still, in the 1998 ANES survey, Messrs. Clinton and Gore both received a perfectly-respectable average temperature of 45 from those who called themselves extremely conservative. While 28% of the far right gave Clinton a temperature of zero, Gore got a zero from just 10%. The bottom line is that there is simply no comparison between the current hatred the extreme left has for Messrs. Bush and Cheney, and the hostility the extreme right had for Messrs. Clinton and Gore in the late 1990s.
This is reminiscent of an article from political scientists Louis Bolce and Gerald De Maio who found the growing secularism of the Democratic party was typified by delegates to Democratic national conventions who, using the same thermometer method, registered an antipathy toward Christian fundamentalists (Bolce and De Maio's term) that they felt for no other group:
In 1992, the average thermometer score of Republican delegates toward union leaders, liberals, blacks, Hispanics, and Democrats, for example, was 17 degrees warmer than their mean score toward feminists, environmentalists, and prochoice groups (44 degrees versus 27 degrees, respectively). Similarly, the mean thermometer score of Democratic delegates that year was 21 degrees warmer toward conservatives, the rich, big business, and Republicans than their average score toward prolife groups and Christian fundamentalists (34 degrees versus 13 degrees, respectively). Of the 18 groups tested by CDS, the most negatively rated group was Christian fundamentalists. Over half of Democratic delegates gave Christian fundamentalists the absolute minimum score they could, 0 degrees, and the average Democratic thermometer score toward this religious group was a very cold 11 degrees.
Funny enough, Bolce and De Maio find that "intense dislike" towards Christian fundamentalists was very high among those who "strongly agree" that "one should be tolerant of persons whose moral standards are different from one's own."
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