On the cluttered deity table in my office stands a statue of Guan Yin, given to me by my Qingdao University students just before final exam time in the spring of 1994. No doubt they hoped that since Guan Yin is the Goddess of Mercy, she might help soften the usual harshness of my grading standards at that crucial time. In fact I appreciated the gift because Guan Yin is my favorite deity: a benevolent and forgiving goddess who actually used to be a god in Buddhist India before she underwent some kind of celestial sex change operation on her way to China.
I wonder if I were to burn a little incense to Madame Guan Yin she might find a way to relax and enlighten Bill Maher, who spends entirely too much time beating up on religion. According to him, religion is not only responsible for most wars, it also causes the enslavement of women and does lots of other awful things.
But religion doesn’t cause these things. It would be more accurate to say that religion may be brought in like a flunky/character witness to justify one group’s treatment of another, but it is typically brought in after the fact of the mistreatment.
White southerners were already committed to slavery – for economic reasons -- before they began rooting through the Old Testament to find some way to declare that God said it was OK for them to dehumanize and enslave African families. The men of the Arabian Peninsula were subjugating women long before the angel Gabriel gave birth to Islam by dictating it to Mohammed.
Religion didn't cause slavery and the subjugation of women; it just helped the enslavers and male chauvinists to justify their self-serving behavior. Against these examples there are plenty of cases in which religion modified nastiness rather than enabling it.
Religious beliefs grow out of the cultures in which they appear and tend to mirror those cultures. The Judeo-Christian-Muslim family of religions grew out of societies in which patriarchal clans and families were the norm, and loyalty to the clan was virtue number one. Because of this male-dominated cultural setting, all three of these religions imagined God to be a wise and powerful father figure to whom one must be absolutely loyal. Even Satan is a male figure in these religions.
God
Dante's Satan
Satan is actually more variable and interesting than God, given his youthful rebelliousness. Let’s face it: Satan is cool. He flouts authority, takes chances, and knows how to have a good time. But, like God, he’s unmistakably a “he.”
He’s only mentioned a few times throughout the Bible, as, for example, when he instigates Job’s troubles. In Dante’s Inferno, he’s depicted as a huge, three-headed animal who sits in a freezing pit. Yes, freezing.
There seems to have been a long-standing division between Middle Eastern and European notions of Hell, with the Europeans seeing it as a place of bitter cold while the Middle Easterners were sure that it was hot and fiery. Given current cartoon depictions, I’d say the Middle Eastern vision finally won out. On my old Gary Larson screen saver, for example, Hell looked like a fiery cave and the devils in charge were horned and tailed. They were also definitely male.
All these shared notions of Gabriel, God and Satan point to the common origins of Christianity and Islam. These two religions also share a belief in Jesus. For Muslims, however, Jesus is not the Son of God, but rather a prophet of God. Moses, Abraham and other Old Testament figures are also counted among the Muslim prophets. Devout Muslims are inclined to say “Peace be upon him,” every time they utter the name of a prophet. I recall an Arab American Imam who lectured on our campus about Islam and Christianity and who repeated the phrase “Peace be upon him,” every time he mentioned Jesus.
Mohammed
(Picture not available)
Mr. Maher is wasting his time by focusing his hostility on religion. Not only are Christianity and Islam similar to each other, religious people and non-religious people are similar to each other in that we’re all trying to figure the world out in light of what we believe. The problem is not in religion per se, but in fanaticism.
Fanaticism starts with the idea that one’s own beliefs are the right ones and the world needs to benefit from them whether the world realizes it or not. Little good can come of this mentality, but it is not always rooted in religion. The anti-religious fervor of Stalinist Russia easily matches the brutality of al Qaeda and the Taliban.
So, Bill, my advice: Take a chill pill on religion. I’m not saying you need to go so far as to burn incense to Guan Yin (though she did come through for my Qingdao students). I’m just saying our real enemy is not religion, it’s fanaticism.
Guan Yin with Dragon
I had a terrific time last week attending the American Anthropological Association meetings in New Orleans -- site of my debauched youth, and still one of my favorite cities. This is particularly true now that I managed to purchase, in a funky French Quarter shop, an intriguingly sinister cane. For a handle it has a glassy blue knob decorated with silver bats. And “bats” is what Darla implied I was when I bought it, but I still think it’s kind of cool.
Anyway, the anthropology convention was rewarding. There are an awful lot of brainy people in anthropology and what I particularly like is that so many of them have been to interesting places and are able to talk about them with first-hand knowledge. One session I attended focused on Afghanistan, and there I learned that even though I’ve read a bit about that conflict, my ignorance of the real situation is so profound that if I were in Barack Obama’s place I wouldn’t want to make a move on Afghanistan policy without first consulting with such experts as Thomas Barfield, Andrea Chiovenda and Noah Coburn. Mr. President, proceed with caution.
In another panel, Georgetown University Professor Rochelle Davis made the point that American officers and enlisted personnel in places like Iraq and Afghanistan tend to regard American style democracy and American society generally as so clearly superior to anything the local people might be doing that resistance to “Americanization” seems either foolish or evil, if not both.
Actually, it’s not just the “boots-on-the-ground” guys who are misled in this way. The actions of Viceroy J. Paul Bremer, when he gutted the Iraqi economy and attempted to set up a “free” (i.e., “corporate-friendly”) economy in Iraq, show that this “Our way is best and they better get with it,” mentality was shared all the way up the chain of command. As I have argued before, the arrogance of this mindset is responsible for much of the bloodshed and suffering that Iraqis and Americans have experienced since the early days of “shock and awe.” For a definition of “shock and awe,” see “terror.”
I’m kind of bragging on my fellow anthropologists here, but naturally there are plenty of disciplines in the academic world where people motivated by a yearning to understand things have managed to accumulate a treasure trove of knowledge. It seems to me that the best way to make sense out of what's happenin' in the world is by consulting these experts.
During the years of Y2K fever, for example, there were all kinds of irresponsible reports about how disastrous the turn of the millennium would be. To me the simplest way to gauge the level of the coming “disaster” was to check in with my friends in the computer science department here at Rollins. Their report: “Don’t worry, Y2K has been adequately handled ahead of time so that problems will be minimal.” Consequently I wasted no time or nervous energy fretting about it.
I have heard different factions of the Tea Party denouncing the Federal Reserve as though it were an agency of Satan, so I asked some of my pals in economics what the story was here. “Well,” they explained, “the anti-Fed fanatics are just a subcategory of those people who resent government in general.” Got it.
It seems to me that America is splitting into two separate worlds, Education World where people respect what curiosity-driven knowledgeable experts have to say and Fox World where people depend on cheesy self-promoters in the profit-driven media, people like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity.
Here’s a simple True-False test to figure out which World you belong to:
T F Barack Obama is a socialist.
T F Smaller government means more democracy.
T F For the good of the country, Congress should dedicate itself to undermining President Obama.
T F Our taxes are higher than ever these days, especially for the rich.
T F So-called "global warming" is a hoax perpetrated by evil scientists who are plotting to...I don't know, do something evil.
T F We should all apologize to BP for the mean things everyone said about them last summer.
T F Sarah Palin would make a fine president.
T F Reigniting the nuclear arms race with Russia is a smart way to make us safer.
T F Barack Obama is a Muslim.
T F FEMA camps are being prepared where innocent Americans will be incarcerated.
T F We would all be so much better off if President Obama had just allowed the economy to collapse last year.
T F Fox News is fair and balanced.
Well, I’ll let you figure out how to score this quiz.
Really, isn’t this split into Education World and Fox World the very thing that underlies the irreconcilable partisan divide now undermining our government’s ability to act? Well, IMHO it is. I’m old enough to remember the days when reasonable Republicans like Richard Lugar, could make deals with reasonable Democrats like Barack Obama, and our country was able to accomplish great things thereby. Are those days gone forever? And if they are, how much responsibility does Fox News hold for this condition? IMHO, lots.
Here follow some pictures from Morocco, a place I've learned about from my anthropologist friend, Professor Rachel Newcomb, and from Noureddine, my friend from Fes.
Professor Newcomb and Noureddine with Camel
A Moroccan Village
A Couple of Friendly Moroccan Chaps
Village Kids Playing Soccer
Leatherworkers of Fes
Household Courtyard
Moroccan Pool Players
Berber Tent, Set Up for Hospitality (The politically correct word for Berber is "Amazigh.")
Farewell, Friendly Fes
Anthropology, Education and Morocco: three things I believe in.
The Tea Partiers and other conservatives keep telling us that our government should be "smaller." By this, I gather they mean weaker and less able to tend to its core business: looking after the interests of the people who elect its leaders.
The utopia the "small government" advocates talk about resembles Mayberry but, like the Mayberry of TV-land, it does not and cannot exist. As soon as governmental power, that is, the power of our democratically elected representatives, is hobbled, corporate power moves in to take its place.
If BP angered us with its callous contempt for safety standards and dishonest response to the oil-spill disaster last spring, imagine how it would have behaved had government been "smaller," that is less able to enforce safety standards or demand restitution for the damage its mad grab for profits caused.
Actually, you may not have to imagine it if the small government conservatives have their way; you may actually find yourself living it. Instead of a public-dependent, one-person/one-vote democracy, our lives will be dominated by a profit-oriented, one-dollar/one-vote corporatacracy. Good luck getting a sympathetic, public-spirited response from the likes of BP, Halliburton or Citigroup once we live in ConglomoCorp-World.
New York Times columnist, Frank Rich, with his usual insight, has highlighted in his column today some of the trends that have pushed us more and more under the domination of the super-rich in recent decades, i.e., since the current conservative revival began.
Here are a couple of the highlights from his piece:
"The wealthy Americans we should worry about instead are the ones who implicitly won the election — those who take far more from America than they give back. They...are all but certain to cash in on the Nov. 2 results. There’s no one in Washington in either party with the fortitude to try to stop them from grabbing anything that’s not nailed down."
"The Americans I’m talking about are not just those shadowy anonymous corporate campaign contributors who flooded this campaign. No less triumphant were those individuals at the apex of the economic pyramid — the superrich who have gotten spectacularly richer over the last four decades while their fellow citizens either treaded water or lost ground. The top 1 percent of American earners took in 23.5 percent of the nation’s pretax income in 2007 — up from less than 9 percent in 1976."
"The bigger issue is whether the country can afford the systemic damage being done by the ever-growing income inequality between the wealthiest Americans and everyone else, whether poor, middle class or even rich. That burden is inflicted not just on the debt but on the very idea of America — our Horatio Alger faith in social mobility over plutocracy, our belief that our brand of can-do capitalism brings about innovation and growth, and our fundamental sense of fairness. Incredibly, the top 1 percent of Americans now have tax rates a third lower than the same top percentile had in 1970."
Well said.
Rich cites a source that says the process of super-rich domination began when Carter was president, which surprised me, since I always saw the beginning of the trend with Reagan's rise. Of course one of the primary culprits in this trend is the expense of presidential and congressional campaigns; this expense means elected leaders must defer to the super-rich in order to get into office. It may well be that Carter's era saw its beginning even before Reagan took office.
In any case, it would be nice if those who keep demanding "small government," would acknowledge that the government we have is already too small and too beholden to corporate wealth to adequately serve and protect us. And let's thank Mr. Rich for pointing out that shrinking our democratic institutions is not the road to utopia.
Frank Rich of the New York Times
A Reliable Source
So that’s what an ass-whuppin’ feels like; 1994 was so long ago that I had pretty much forgotten.
Honestly, I have to confess that I manage to enjoy every election, even those like this year’s when our frenemies, the Republicans, sweep the table. I remember in 1992 when I took Little Four-year-old Grace Marie to the polling place with me, Mom Darla, in an effort to keep our daughter’s feet on the ground, made it a point to explain to her that “not every grown-up gets as excited about election day as your Dad does.”
“OK, Mom,” she replied.
Tuesday morning, after I cast my (pathetically ineffective) vote, I started my walk to school and by coincidence the first tune to pour out of my iPod was Springsteen’s “Born in the USA.”
I ask you, how cool is that?
Anyway, here’s what I think: America is fantastic – Abraham Lincoln! Rally to Restore Sanity!! Election Day!!!
On the other hand, America is a mess – Sean Hannity? Governor Rick Scott?? Flowbee???
My Island Buddy, Steve, recently sent me some comments highlighting the more frightening features of the “America is a mess” side of the story, some of which I will present here as my own ideas. Since he is my buddy, I'm figuring he won't sue me for stealing some of them.
The basic political story of 2010 is this: In the infamous Citizens United decision, conservative Supreme Court justices voted to allow corporate moneyed interests to continue screwing us with increasing vigor and this has doomed Americans to serfdom. The day is just around the corner when we will have to beg BP to please allow us to spend our free time cleaning their oil off our beaches at which point the BP executives, if they are in a generous frame of mind, will nod to their Senators and other Congressional minions who will write a law allowing us to do so.
OK, maybe we aren’t there yet. But I do think that at the very least Schoolhouse Rock needs to update its cute little “How a Bill Becomes a Law” video. I was introduced to this wonderful educational cartoon by My Favorite Student, who, when she was a little girl, got together with her pal Meryl and did performances of some Schoolhouse Rock scenarios for Darla and me.
In the original version, an adorable little rolled up and ribbon-bound bill sits on the steps of Congress waiting while House and Senate committees debate it. Then Presto! it becomes a law after the wise ones of Congress vote for it and the president signs it.
The little bill was sent to Congress in the first place because concerned citizens wanted a law which would prevent school buses from being crushed by trains at railroad crossings. What could be simpler or more benign?
1. Citizens see a need and consult their Congressional representative who
2. writes a bill on behalf of America’s school children, and finally,
3. after a lot of jingle singing, it becomes a law.
But I would like to propose a new, more realistic version of “How a Bill Becomes a Law.” This updated version would open on a scene in which a group of thuggish characters sit around a bottle-littered table in a smoke-filled room barely illuminated by a single dangling light bulb. On the wall hangs a poster of Satan who looks surprisingly similar to Dick Cheney and who smiles with self satisfaction as his tobacco-stained fingers gently stroke a little model of an oil derrick which reclines in his lap. Metallica’s “Master of Puppets” plays in the background.
So the thugs put together a bill that makes it unconstitutional to ask any member of Congress where their campaign funding comes from and which contains a supplementary clause prohibiting any citizen from complaining about oil on beaches, residents, clothing, children and all accouterments thereunto appertaining.
The bill produced in this foul little room is then made public (to the tune of the Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil”). As the bill shoves its way through throngs of protesting citizens, it swaggers up the capitol steps where members of Congress genuflect before it and quickly rubber stamp it. Then President Palin signs into law.
Of course it isn’t set in stone that things will turn out this way. After all, America has survived crises in the past and I still have faith that we will survive this one too.
You may well ask, “But, Comrade CultureWorld, what can we do to keep Satan from taking over America?”
Naturally, I’m happy to advise. First, as a general rule, you should favor Democrats over Republicans in your voting because Democrats never use dishonest or unfair ads in their campaigns.
Oh all right, so Florida Democratic Congressman Alan Grayson used a grossly dishonest and unfair ad against his Republican opponent this year, but that’s only one.
OK, OK, so Democrat Jack Conway used a ridiculously stupid and unfair ad that tried to make Rand Paul look like a slave of Aqua Buddha. Very well, I admit it. Democrats can be creepy too. But the main advantage of the Democrats is that they are somewhat less in thrall than Republicans are to the corporate money that has been steadily smothering our democracy since 1980. In other words, in order to fund their campaigns, the Democrats frequently go whoring with Satan; the Republicans, however, are happily married to the Prince of Darkness.
The second thing I recommend is that you not watch FOX News…unless you simply want to keep tabs on what the Forces of the Dark Side are up to. If you actually believe that Fox is “fair and balanced,” it may be too late for you.
I would like to recommend as an alternative to Fox, the Morning Joe program on MSNBC, hosted by Joe Scarborough. I know, Joe Scarborough is a conservative Republican, but he’s still cool. (Yes, I said cool – now bear with me here.)
You know those types who go around saying nutty things like “Obama is a Muslim,” as if they were idiots? (And I use the phrase “as if” liberally here.) Well, Joe treats them they way they deserve to be treated, i.e., as though they inhabited their own little Sims World where anything they want to make up can be true.
Being a conservative Republican, Joe is a bit askew on some issues, but what distinguishes him from those right-wingers who seem to have Ph.D.s in ignorance (e.g., Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck), is that he respects people whose views he disagrees with as long as their views aren’t just plain wacko. And his program has people like Eugene Robinson and Katrina vanden Heuvel on it -- smart people who actually know stuff and who are not slaves to the corporatacracy.
So, I say, turn off Fox and turn on Morning Joe.
Anyway, back to my original point: Even given the new influence secret money now has on our elections, and the newfound power of crazies like Michelle Bachmann, I still have faith in our country. We may be in for nasty weather, but after all, we more or less survived the Bush presidency, so I believe we will survive the current rise of the right. In the name of Aqua Buddha, I do hope so.
Aqua Patriots
From Vintage American & ARose Books
As promised in yesterday's post, here is an old op-ed piece of mine, from 2005.
___________________________
Look Inside, Will You Find a Liberal?
The Ledger, Tuesday, April 12, 2005
Robert L. Moore
Whether you know it or not, you may already be a liberal. Most Americans today have qualms about the death penalty, believe that Social Security should not be privatized and think gun show retailers shouldn't sell assault rifles to nut cases.
Yet, these same Americans are unwilling to label themselves as "liberal." Obviously this is because the vast, right-wing conspiracy is so cunning it has fooled millions of Americans into thinking they're not liberal when they actually are.
I'm here to put an end to this.
To do so, I have devised a simple, fair-and-balanced quiz that will let you know just how liberal you really are. And I mean "fair and balanced" in the Fox News sense. That is, I will write whatever suits me, and if anyone disagrees with me, I'll accuse them of being biased.
Simply answer a, b, or c to each question below.
1. Social Security, which has ended widespread poverty among America's elderly, has long been targeted for destruction by conservatives, but today:
a. We should "strengthen" it by dismembering it into private accounts.
b. We should adjust it as necessary to ensure its perpetual preservation.
c. We should use it as a blunt instrument to beat up on the GOP.
2. Since 1980, a large and growing proportion of America's wealth has been shifted away from the middle class and into the pockets of the superrich. This means:
a. This question is inciting class warfare.
b. We must ask whether upsetting the traditional balance of wealth and power will undermine our democracy.
c. The fat-cat Republican scheme to own everything and turn us into serfs is working.
3. Gay people:
a. Love Satan, which is why they refuse to do sex right.
b. Have been shown by a growing body of scientific evidence to be responding to undeniable, natural proclivities.
c. Are cool, except for those Log Cabin Republicans -- what's up with them?
4. Many Americans have been led to believe Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 massacre, even though the special committee appointed by the president established he was not. This means:
a. Saddam was involved -- and questions such as these only help the terrorists.
b. Some politicians have found it useful to mislead the public on this issue in order to advance their self-serving agendas.
c. No one died when Clinton lied.
5. The economy today is:
a. A-OK!
b. Problematic given current oil-price rises and the ballooning deficit.
c. Doomed and can only be saved by next year's surge in "Don't Blame Me, I Voted for Kerry" bumper sticker sales.
6. Concerning the Iraq War:
a. Mission Accomplished!
b. The costs in lives and treasure have been so high that our strategy in that war, and perhaps even the war itself, may have been terrible mistakes.
c. "W" stands for "Warmonger."
7. The "W" in Dubya really stands for:
a. Wonderful.
b. Walker.
c. What the heck is he thinking?
To score: Give yourself one point for every c answer, two points for every b and three points for every a.
If your total is:
12-13 Yes, Virginia, you are a liberal.
9-11 Dennis Kucinich is your man.
7-8 Are you sure you're not a communist?
14 You're just plain wishywashy.
15-16 You're a conservative.
17-19 Tom DeLay is your man.
20-21 Are you sure you're not a Nazi?
Honest Abe - The Original Modern Liberal, famous for using big government to provide justice for the oppressed (thereby infuriating southern conservatives!)
Robert L. Moore, a native of Lakeland, is a professor of anthropology at Rollins College in Winter Park and director of international affairs at the college's Holt School.
Last week my Vietnam War class cornered me during a discussion of the 1960s counter culture and forced me, in the interest of honesty, to admit that I had experimented with marijuana in my youth. Had I been completely honest I would have pointed out that I carried out a very thorough series of experiments, running approximately 3,000 tests over a period of fifteen years beginning in 1967. My experimenting tapered off and ended shortly after 1982 when I married my beloved wife who does not share my scientific curiosity on these matters.
At any rate, at the end of the test series I was able to conclude that the lyrics of the Band’s Music from Big Pink are much easier to hear and understand when you are stoned, but it is not a good idea to attempt to balance your checkbook in this condition. Science marches on.
Music from Big Pink - Worth listening to even for squares
The counterculture of ca. 1965-74 is of continuing interest to me. Of course it occurred during my college “coming of age” years, and it seems to me that whatever is going on in an individual’s life during their late adolescence and young adulthood winds up permanently coloring their worldview. For one thing, people seem never to tire of the music they learned in their youth, and are less likely to go for new musical trends that emerge when they are 30 or so.
But the counterculture was significant even for people who did not live through it. I think of the beginning of this movement as the "swell-cool divide" because it was at this time that the slang term “swell,” which had become wildly popular during the 1920s youth rebellion, was phased out and replaced by the new, all-purpose slang term of approval, “cool.”
Some other dimensions of change marking this divide stemmed from the Civil Rights movements. First there was the African-American movement led by people like Martin Luther King, and this was quickly followed by a resurgent women’s movement, and movements demanding equality for Hispanic Americans, Native Americans and gay Americans. The counterculture aligned itself with these movements, while conservative institutions opposed them. These battles are not over, but the trend continues to favor counterculture pro-Civil Rights values.
Anti-Vietnam War protests were also crucial for the counterculture, and, in fact, the peak counterculture years of 1965 to 74 are particularly marked by this ongoing war.
And let’s not forget the sexual revolution. Before 1965 premarital sex was considered naughty for males and disgraceful for females. Post-counterculture rules have changed. When Mary Richards (of the 1970s' Mary Tyler Moore Show) and Lou Grant mused about how many affairs a woman was allowed to have and still maintain her reputation, Mary came up with the answer: six.
See how things have changed?
And then of course there were haircuts and clothing styles. It was possible, in 1968 for example, to know something about a young man’s political ideals and attitude toward pot smoking simply by his haircut. Women of the counterculture also had favorite hairstyles, typically long and “natural.” However, nothing females did was quite so striking and, for conservatives, so obnoxious as was long hair on males. From the conservative "establishment" point of view, any guy with a beard or long hair was in need of a bath and was probably a dangerous criminal.
A short and entirely true story will illustrate this. In the summer of 1968 our family was staying at a vacation resort on Longboat Key. I, with my beard and appropriately long locks was in the swimming pool with my brother and sisters. My Mom sat poolside and was soon joined by a friendly lady from another family. That lady nodded toward me and remarked to my mother, “You have to wonder about some of the creepy characters staying at this place.”
“Before you say anything more,” my mother replied, “I should warn you that he’s my son. And yes, I do think he looks creepy.”
Thanks, Mom.
The counterculture also completely overturned student dress codes. Pre-1965 college students dressed as though they were going to church; post-counterculture students dress as though they’re headed for the beach.
Finally there is the environmental movement. The counterculture embraced the ideals that promoted limitations on consumption and waste, and protection of the environment generally. On the first Earth Day in April 1970 students on my campus in California buried a V-8 engine as a hopeful symbolic gesture highlighting the dead end that our oil-based economy was leading us down.
In a way the counterculture may be said to have won almost every fight it had with the conservative establishment except two of the most important ones: peace and economic justice. George W. Bush proved it was just as easy to drag the country into a dreadful war through deceit as it had been in 1965, and Ronald Reagan showed that the tax code could be rewritten to favor the rich over the middle class and saddle the country with a humongous debt while doing so.
The Tea Party, with its preponderance of white males, seems like a rearguard action by those who wish there had never been a 1960s counterculture. President Obama, in some ways, represents the counterculture, which is perhaps why so many Tea Partiers hate him. He has admitted to smoking marijuana in his youth, and he built his reputation by his outspoken opposition to the Iraq War. Then he broadened his support during the primaries with an extremely eloquent speech on the issue of race relations.
But perhaps his most unforgivable sin was his rejection of the high paying positions at prestigious law firms that were offered to him right out of law school. Instead of taking these jobs, he dedicated himself to community organizing in impoverished areas of Chicago. This is just the sort of choice made by thousands of counterculture youth who joined the Peace Corps or VISTA. But it is not the sort of choice likely to impress Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck.
Which is to say, the dramatic clash of cultures that began circa 1965 continues. Interestingly there are a lot of issues that the counterculture succeeded in getting the country to accept and as a result we are in many ways much more liberal than we were in 1964, even though we may not realize it. At least according to recent polls, those Americans who describe themselves as conservative far outnumber those who call themselves liberal. But do we really know our own hearts?
A few years ago, as a selfless public service, I composed a quiz that was designed to reveal our misperceptions about our unconscious liberal tendencies. The quiz may be a little dated now, but I think it might be worth reviving for my next posting. Stay tuned.
