Update: I have a new angle on why so few Southerners are reading HDB blogs, even fine ones such as yours: we’re too busy enjoying ourselves! Not that I can vouch for this study, but having spent 90% of my life in the LA towns mentioned I’m admittedly prejudiced. http://www.ijreview.com/2014/07/159540-five-happiest-cities-america-one-state/

I’m not sure what’s up with Alabama, although it’s probably due to staying worked up over the Alabama-Auburn game. Interesting (to me) bit regarding Arkansas: it’s divided into a SE half and a NW half, exactly as your main map shows. The SE, homely half is happy like LA and MS. The NW, beautiful half is kind of sour like MO. So if Arkansas is rated as a whole I’m not surprised to see that it scores medium. Hope my NW Arkansas relatives don’t read this… naw, I’m more likely to struck by lightning.

Apparently it’s a misconception that wines necessarily get better with age…it seems some wines get better, other wines stay about the same, and still other wines get worse.

Tho on a cosmic scale all matter will progress towards Iron-56 as the universe nears heat death, so I suppose all wine eventually gets worse with age.

I think it is curious how few visitors were from El Norte. Call it by a Spanish name if you like, but there are still more white non-Latinos in El Norte than in the NYC Metro area, and I have found them to be ambitious and well-educated, at least the ones I associate with. Unfortunately the sample size is rather small, and anomalies could simply be the result of a few people leading their Facebook friends in HBD awareness. Supposing it is not an anomaly, I think there is greater acceptance of class/race division in El Norte (as also in the South), and it is a less humble or reflective sort of person who continues to pursue luxuries only a few miles away from poverty. Incidentally, I chose “The Left Coast” though I currently live in The Far West (and 14 years in El Norte) because I spent the most number of years there and feel greater kinship with the more intellectual sort I found there.

Another thing, 10 percent of readers from the Far West sounds like a big overrepresentation.

Although to see what characterizes your readers you’d really want some liberal blogs to compare with. I suspect they have a lot middle aged white male readers too although they’re probably less interested to talk about it.

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Thanks for clarifying. I guess it’s pretty hard to creat simple political dimensions. Although economically, there does seem to be a high-tax interventionism versus a low-tax freedom dichotomy. Some say this is the essence of left and right. At least here in Sweden, there is no strong correlation between economic politics and social liberalism in terms of drugs, pornography etc.

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I don’t support affirmative action. I haven’t on principle since long before I knew to reject blank-slatism, the principle being that we should all be treated as individuals . AA is contrary to my idea of social justice and certainly not fundamental to it.

Opposing AA puts me outside of the mainstream of current liberal opinion, but I’m hardly alone in it.

Just as nothing in conservative principles requires religiosity or anti-environmentalism, even if rejecting those puts one in the minority among his cohorts.

Liberal and conservative are just adjectives. Hopefully none of us thinks we’ve joined a club that requires us to swallow some list of beliefs whole.

, since I think what JayMan was after was to know who his readers are, I suspect that he understands what I meant by liberal, both economic and social.

Keynesian is not the right word for my philosophy, which is moral, not economic. I haven’t studied economics and have no economic theory.

I have to get long-winded to describe what I favor. I believe that there is no moral justification for private ownership of land and natural resources. They never belonged to anyone to begin with and wouldn’t belong to anyone now if people hadn’t seized them and used the power of state to protect what they took. If it were up to me these things would be in public hands and everyone would benefit from them. That would make me a radical of some sort, except I don’t expect or propose to see private ownership go away in my lifetime. What I do favor is more public wealth.

Saying that someone favors higher taxes is kind of a strange way to put it; no one favors higher taxes for their own sake. High taxes is a means to have less wealth in individual hands and more in communal hands, used for communal purposes, because everyone has a claim on the wealth of the planet and because everyone submits to the authority of the community and has a right to expect certain things in return. What is owned by the 1% is in my mind clearly ill-gotten. The fact that it was obtained legally is of no importance. The legal system that was designed so that it could be accumulated is man-made by the powerful. It can be re-designed to favor other ends.

People who think capitalism and private property and the current legal systems that support them are the natural order of the universe seem to me to be sorely lacking in imagination. There is no natural order.

Call this what you will. I don’t have a name for it. For Jayman’s purposes, I am clearly left of center and I assume that’s what he wanted to know.

Not much representation in the Tidewater region, huh. I live a town where racial politics is visibly observable just from the city’s architecture. I’m a 25 year old person who hasn’t completed college yet due to schizoaffective disorder, but I like to think that the disorder comes from being more acutely perceptive than others my age. Also pretty conservative.

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Yes, with that distinction there are probably some issues we can disagree on. It would be a matter of preference, although I suspect that America illustrates that the cost of a permissive attitude may be too high for any society in the long run. But that’s HBD too – the Dutch can do pretty much as they please and they are not out of control, except on the issue of immigration. (I also agree with Clark.)

@ Denise:

The people referred to as ‘liberals’ in the US (such as yourself) and as ‘social democrats’ in Europe are really more Keynesians in economic terms, not ‘economic liberals’. Social liberals, yes. Economic liberals, definitely not.

Many nationalist conservatives actually also favour interventionism in order to protect the power and wealth of a country and its people.

Low taxes, free trade, free enterprise, capitalism – these are favoured by ‘economic liberals’.

High taxes, government interventism, etc. – these are favoured by Keynesian economists.

I too voted liberal on both social and economic values though perhaps slightly less so for the latter.

, it’s a matter of definition I suppose, but I can’t tell what your view is unless you specify what you think are the basic values of social liberalism and what is orthodoxy. Personally, I mean that ideas of social justice as implemented by affirmative action is part of it and this obviously is done with the blank slate as a premise.

Social liberalism in no way depends upon the blank slate.

Of course, liberals as a group have some cherished assumptions and misguided policies that go with them that they really need to let go of, but so do people of all other political stripes. This doesn’t have to involve abandoning their basic values. It does have to involve abandoning some ideas that have become part of a current orthodoxy, but we shouldn’t have any orthodoxy anyway. Orthodoxy is for cultists and the intellectually lazy. No shortage of those all across the political spectrum.

I know what kind of society I would prefer to live in. The extent to which people are born who they are doesn’t alter either my preference for it or my belief that it’s achievable.

As someone who identified myself as both economically and socially liberal, I meant economically liberal in the sense in which it’s generally been understood in the United States. I favor higher taxes and intervention, as you say. In fact I might go further and say that property is theft, but the poll only gave me two choices.

I’m surprised there would be confusion about this. I thought what was meant by liberal and conservative in America was generally clear.

Having spent a fair amount of my youth in the south, I’m not the least bit surprised your low southern readership, for the reasons Brian gave above and others. I’m slightly more surprised by the large Left Coast readership, personally.

That all depends on how you define “liberal” and “conservative”. I tend to define “conservative” as “wants to preserve the world as it is, or as it recently was.” They’re not keen on change–they want to conserve. This is just a basic personality tendency and does not imply any particular a priori stance on economic issues, other than “that stuff I believe has historically been successful.”

Liberalism is highly correlated with openness, to new people, things, and ideas. Liberals are interested in change. Again, this doesn’t imply any a priori stance on economic issues, only that they’ll be likely to favor changing the economic system.

I assume that if something like 320 people responded to the where are you from the USA that roughly 130/450 are non Americans? in addition i am surprised by the average age because as a early 20′s male i thought this not so mainstream subject is mostly for the younger people but i guess i was wrong.

we can roughly estimate the average iq of your readers by multiply by the average education:

according to wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient

43%*125+36%*113+13%*105=108 after adjusting its probably something like 107 with a really strong smart fraction

The economic political attitude part of the survey gives options ranging from ‘extremely liberal’ to ‘extremely conservative’.
I guess I didn’t make my point very clear.
‘Conservative’ political parties [Republicans in US and Conservatives in UK] are, ironically, actually liberal [laissez fare] in economic political terms.
While on the other hand, supposedly ‘liberal’ political parties [Democrats in US and Labour in UK] are not very ‘liberal’ economically [favour higher taxes and greater interventionism].
So ‘left wing’ does not equal ‘liberal’ in economic political terms.
Nor does ‘right wing’ equal ‘conservative’ in economic political terms.
At least in my opinion.

Not that it matters very much, I guess I’m being too pedantic.
I enjoyed taking the poll and I enjoy reading your blog – keep up the good work.

Lol, nice to know us 30-somethings are ‘middle aged’!

The liberal/conservative definitions can potentially create issues. An ‘economic liberal’ is somebody who would likely support free trade and capitalism, yet many supporters of allegedly ‘conservative’ political parties hold these economically liberal views.
‘Neo-conservatives’ favour ‘liberal internationalism’ as a foreign policy doctrine [eg Iraq war].
Many poor people are in favour of a progressive or redistributionist taxation system and might vote for the Democrats in the US [or Labour in the UK], which are considered ‘liberal’ political parties, yet those types of voters often hold very socially or morally conservative personal views.
So there are many grey areas.

I’m glad there are so many liberals here, although I’m not sure what that would social liberalism means if you take away the Blank Slate. Then again reading doesn’t necessarily mean agreeing.

Thanks Jayman!

I could see how a liberal would be offended by race and IQ realism . There was a good video at the occidental observer abut both republicans and democrats falling into this free-will solution to poverty BS.

Sorry I missed the poll, Jay, otherwise you’d have another liberal female. Oh, well.

I suspect the apparent high numbers of conservative readers from more liberal areas is partially a reflection of blogs like yours providing a critique/response to certain aspects of liberal ideology, in this case, “blank slate” ideology, race is a social construct, etc. To respond to these ideas requires first some familiarity with them, which proximity facilitates. Conservatives who don’t have much contact with liberals have a different set of priorities.

Jayman, speaking as a lifelong (59 years) Southerner: I think your low Deep South numbers are mainly a reflection on low interest down here in intellectual internet content (or intellectual anything) in general, and HBD in particular. I’ve tried to explain HBD to my neighbors (mostly professionals), but it usually provokes a good-natured “so science has caught up with common sense, has it?” That goes for blacks and for whites. I know this is powerful stuff among those unfortunate enough to be born outside of the South, but blogging about race being real… it goes down around here like blogging the sky is blue. This is a small college town, so there are a handful of professors who probably would find HBD hot stuff, but most would be more focused on the bird dog trials. Except for a couple of communists focused on the World Cup. I’m considered quite peculiar (but harmless, nobody cares) to show interest in blogs like yours, which I consider first-rate, but you really can’t expect much Southern readership. I mean, it’s not like you post on LSU football, jalapeno bourbon grits, or Purdey side-by-sides. But that doesn’t matter to me, please keep up the good work!

As far ask the conservative bent, I’d imagine your blog appeals to libertarian minded types that don’t mind thoughtcrime, which there was no option for on the survey, and simply marked conservative as they don’t agree with hard-left dogma. I doubt the conservative readership here is the same as your typical self-identifying conservative.

http://anepigone.blogspot.com/2011/03/size-of-secular-right.html

Jayman any way you can ban cinka above ^ for being exceptionally crude??? Thanks in advance from the rest of us who like a good intellectual discussion instead of whatever he is spreading.

This is a really interesting question. I’m gonna compare apples and oranges here, but I tried to look this up. A 2009 gallup poll (The latest I could find that breaks liberal/conservative ideology by gender: http://www.gallup.com/poll/120857/conservatives-single-largest-ideological-group.aspx) has 44% of men identifying as conservative, compared to 37% of women. If we plug that into the weighted average formula and apply it based on the current gender breakdown in this poll (89% male to 11% female), that should yield us 43.23% conservative. But the total here is 58% for social political (16%+26%+16%) and 62% for economic (16%+27%+19%). Again, that’s an apples and oranges comparison because Jayman split the question, so not exactly scientific, but clearly there’s something more going on than a simple gender disparity. Not sure what the explanation would be but it’s fascinating.

I thought the same thing. LOL.

Wow. Biggest surprise is how many of us are conservative even though your readers were skewed from the NE and the Left Coast. Maybe it was because so many men read your column?

I’m glad to see I’m not actually the only liberal.

i’m surprised we’re all so old. huh.

maybe we’re like a bunch of fine wines! or stinky cheeses. (~_^)