{"id":330,"date":"2008-10-24T07:47:47","date_gmt":"2008-10-24T13:47:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/crawler\/?p=330"},"modified":"2008-10-24T07:48:43","modified_gmt":"2008-10-24T13:48:43","slug":"myths-about-value-voters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/2008\/10\/24\/myths-about-value-voters\/","title":{"rendered":"myths about value voters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2008\/10\/23\/AR2008102301849.html?hpid=opinionsbox1\">Washington Post<\/a>\u00a0is running a story on common misperceptions about how American voters base their decisions on moral values.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The myths: (1)&#8221;Moral values&#8221; determine who wins elections. (2)\u00a0Americans\u00a0have broadly rejected &#8220;traditional values.&#8221; (3)\u00a0Americans are polarized and fighting a culture war over values. (4)\u00a0Traditional\u00a0values are &#8220;family values&#8221; or &#8220;moral values.&#8221;\u00a0(5)\u00a0Basic\u00a0values, properly understood, are compatible and harmonious.<\/p>\n<p>In support of myth #2, the Post draws upon the work of sociologist Wayne Baker.\u00a0<em><strong>MYTH #2: &#8220;<\/strong>Americans<\/em>\u00a0<em>have broadly rejected &#8216;traditional values.&#8217; &#8212;<\/em>\u00a0Actually, Americans retain our traditional values more than just about any other developed country in the world.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>That&#8217;s what\u00a0University of Michigan\u00a0sociologist Wayne Baker found in his 2005 book, &#8220;America&#8217;s Crisis of Values: Reality and Perception.&#8221; Baker uses the World Values Surveys to look at American values from a broad, global perspective. He describes human values on two planes. The first is a scale of values from traditional to secular-rationalist. Societies with more traditional values emphasize the importance of God and religion, family and parenting, national identity and pride and absolute standards of morality, not relative ones. Secular-rationalist values are pretty much the opposite: nonreligious, open to abortion and euthanasia, skeptical of national pride or patriotism and evolving away from family, duty and authority.<\/p>\n<p>The second range of values runs from survival values to self-expression ones. In less developed and safe societies, survival values reign. Procuring physical security and meeting basic material needs dominate; foreigners and ethnic diversity are seen as threatening; intolerance is exaggerated. Self-expression values concern creativity, self-fulfillment and lifestyle.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Fascinating. Read more about the other myths <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2008\/10\/23\/AR2008102301849.html?hpid=opinionsbox1\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Washington Post\u00a0is running a story on common misperceptions about how American voters base their decisions on moral values.\u00a0 The myths: (1)&#8221;Moral values&#8221; determine who wins elections. (2)\u00a0Americans\u00a0have broadly rejected &#8220;traditional values.&#8221; (3)\u00a0Americans are polarized and fighting a culture war over values. (4)\u00a0Traditional\u00a0values are &#8220;family values&#8221; or &#8220;moral values.&#8221;\u00a0(5)\u00a0Basic\u00a0values, properly understood, are compatible and harmonious. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39074],"tags":[39112,751,154,39115,42,66,117],"class_list":["post-330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sightings","tag-culture","tag-moral","tag-political","tag-politics","tag-religion","tag-theory","tag-trends"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":332,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions\/332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}