Mainstream and not.

This is pretty interesting.

One of the things that is most interesting about these polls is that they illustrate how liberal the American public is on certain social issues. It's encouraging to read that 90% of Americans favor sex-education programs and that just 15% favor abstinence only. There's a pragmatism there that is refreshing. (Quick note: the Christian Right is usually about 15% of the electorate, so thats probably where it comes from). Nate makes the argument that democrats should use social issues against republicans where Republican philosophy is outside the mainstream. I think that sex-education is probably the most promising, of the issues that Nate brings up, for this approach.

Nate doesn't give much detail on abortion polls, but the divide in America over abortion is striking. More polls here and here. Most people believe Roe vs. Wade should be legal, but most people also believe that there should be more restrictions on abortions. This isn't surprising, considering the fact that American abortion laws are less restrictive than most countries in Europe.. As an otherwise conventional liberal, I can attest to the ambivalence I feel about certain abortion laws we have in this country; its not an issue where I feel myself to be on particularly firm moral ground, particularly once we start getting into the third trimester of a pregnancy and beyond. Anyway, the point is that the abortion issue also reflects a healthy pragmatism on the part of the American electorate; it is our abortion laws that are not particularly pragmatic--as opposed to those of western european countries, which are less dogmatically pro-choice.

I find the vast support for hate crime legislation rather fascinating, particularly given how unsympathetic mainstream America is to other features of discrimination and oppression (such as disproportionately large numbers of African-Americans in poverty and/or in jail). But I also don't think that most people will hold it against Sarah Palin for being against hate crime legislation. My guess is that if you asked most Americans how much they cared about hate crime legislation the response would be 'not very much'. Given that 70% of Americans will consider voting for someone who disagrees with their views on abortion (an extremely hot-button issue) its hard to believe that Obama could make much of an issue out of Palin's opposition to hate crime legislation.

Its not clear exactly what Palin's position on global warming is. I'm pretty sure the quote that Nate uses is in response to questions specifically about climate change in Alaska.. If it does turn out, however, that she is a straight-up denier of global warming--in the James Inhofe mold--that could be a huge problem. Nevertheless, I suspect that its not quite the case. As Nate's conclusion here illustrates, Palin's position on global warming is not really defined. That means she will almost certainly define it in a way that is passable on the national stage.

The rejection of evolution as an empirical, scientific theory, by the majority of Americans, is quite striking, except for the fact its not just Americans, half of the British population also share a similar disbelief. As cognitive psychologist Paul Bloom has points out repeatedly in his excellent book Descartes' Baby, the theory of evolution is, for whatever reason, profoundly counterrintuitive to the human brain. Children, are even when raised in secular households, are naturally predisposed towards a creationist view of the world. Another way of putting this is to say all of us are naturally predisposed towards creationism. This is not conditioning but, ironically, the way that evolution has wired our brains to think. In this sense, it makes sense that so many people reject evolution because they are predisposed to reject it unless they are conditioned to think counter-intuitively.

I'm going to try and post more about evolution and its conflict with human perception in the coming days. But for now, we can at least feel comforted to know that the majority of Americans reject evolution not because of some weird aspect of our culture that makes half the country ignorant. If its a cultural problem, as we sometimes think, then its a multi-cultural problem, one that across different countries and regions.