Quote Originally Posted by Montmorency View Post
This is elitism. You assume the natural state of the ordinary citizen is to not have strong political commitments, rather than that most people are confused, bored, enervated, or alienated by the political circus and lack the time or education to engage with it.
I'm part of the intellectual elite, so are you, to pretend otherwise is just vanity. It would be like pretending I was working class just because I'm poor. In any case, this is my observation of actually going out and talking to people - most people don't care overmuch about politics, especially when there's no election going on.

Again, this is something you would have to develop empirically. To say that people trend one way or another is not to say that it has always been so, or that it must always remain so. It wasn't like that in the US until our lifetimes, and not all at once. It depends on characteristics of the electorate, the parties, and the issues of the day. In the United States today, it is so. I can't claim to know what's going on in Chile or Lebanon - i haven't checked.
One should always worry about Lebanon - it's one of the most important political loci in the world. Currently they're having a !quiet revolution" that cuts across sectarian boundaries.

Meanwhile, in the UK it's generally accepted that after about 10-15 years you need to "get the other lot in" and only the most staunch supporters of a given party will argue otherwise. This is because people are less strognly wedded to any ideology than the parties are themselves.

British Stoicism - it's even a national trait in Hearts of Iron IV.

Lol no. It's more like Scientology.
Scientology is actually a religion, sorry to tell you.

Hatred of "populism," which entails minimizing democratic input in governance and institutions while maximizing the stability of established actors, especially business. Deregulation, privatization, tax cuts, reliance on conservative economic and sociological expertise. Hostility to criticism of elite persons from below. There's a reason why in the present day it is so frequently identified with intellectual libertarianism and small-c conservatism.
You're just described a mish-mash of Right-Wing policies. Where's the social welfare? The neccesity for charity, both private and public? The provision of necessary regulation on (say) food standards and provision of basic infrastructure (which usually includes healthcare)?

You're just demonstrated you don't know where the centre is outside the US, and that the centre in the US is quite a ways over to the right - not even the Centre-Right in the UK.

The general theory of centrist governance is to advance minimally-disruptive (to stakeholders) policy and build out a bespoke coalition "from the center." I know it's what Bill Clinton and Obama explicitly maintained going into their administrations. It was a resounding failure. Practically what centrist intellectuals and policy makers are more concerned with than any policy agenda is neutralizing the influence of the "extremes." Look at Larry Summers telling us that high tax rates on the wealthy are bad because instead of donating to charity the wealthy will support fascism (more).
Outside the US Obama and Clinton are Right-Wing politicians, Clinton less-so than Obama over all.




Life-long ideology? As in, you think people outside the US don't tend to form and maintain political orientations durably? What is your evidence for this? I'd be surprised if the matter has even been studied in the English language.
It's a lot less common.

The realignment in the American party system (well, the 20th century realignment) took place over two generations, though of course it was immediately obvious to any observer by the end of the 1960s. I'm not prepared or equipped to assess early raw evidence in the UK. I'm sure the presence of national parties and the Liberal Democrats (whom I assume British voters interpret as "between" Labour and the Conservatives) complicates the picture. But don't be shocked if it turns out permanent shifts in voting behavior emerge in the medium-term.
There has been something like it happening across the Western world (at least UK, US, France) however, as explored by Thomas Piketty in his latest work. I don't care to look it up for you, but basically the mainstream soc-dem/center-left parties have gradually absorbed the educated and professional classes from the conservative/center-right parties while losing some of their original "working class" base over that time period.

OK fine, here it is. I've barely looked at it to be honest, who has the patience. You may want to skip to the graphs near the end. The ones simultaneously mapping 20 elections are visually hideous.[/QUOTE]

You've just described New Labour - 24 years ago.