I'll bump it again but I think we have a pretty good idea of the proportions in the different groups. I have not gone through the psots to count up how many were in one group when they thought they were in another. I think part of that is that many people who thought they were conservative thought conservative meant personal individual freedom. It doesn't. Conservative means you want the government to impose personal values on everyone. Most want the government to impose their personal values on everyone else, but it doesn't always operate that way. Something about who is in charge gets to choose what personal values are forced on everyone else. To me, a good example of this is during the reformation, if your lord (meaning nobility, that's why it is not capitalized) was a Catholic, you were a Catholic. If your lord was a Protestant, you were a Protestant.
To me, being civilized means giving up some personal freedoms to allow us to live in a society. Which and to what degree we give up those personal freedoms will determine what type of civilization we have. I think it has worked here so far because when it gets too far out of balance one way or the other, we get moved back away from the extremes. I think this poll shows we are pretty well balanced.
I have lived in anarchy, the delta region of Nigeria. All of Africa and all of Nigeria is not in anarchy, but this section was pretty close. I worked for one of those mean, nasty, despicable, greedy, morally corrupt oil companies. There are a lot of villages and people living in the delta region, divided into different tribes and communities within the tribes. There was an Itsekeri village right outside our compound where we we build schools, clinics, provide drinking water and electricity. We did that for a lot of villages in the delta region, but this village was across the river from our compound, in clear site. We could not do all of the villages at the same time. Every three or four years, the Ijaw would burn that village and kill some of the inhabitants, making sure they destroyed any of our improvements. The raid was usually tied to politics. If you scatter a village beore the election, they can't vote. Part of it was tied to jealousy. That village has these improvements and mine doesn't. It wasn't just this village. It happened throughout the delta region. Part of it was that the Ijaw did not like the Itsekeri, though sometimes one Ijaw village would raid another Ijaw village to destroy their improvements. It wasn't just the Ijaw. The Ileji, Nimby and others would do the same. If you want frustration, try to figure out how to run electric cable through the swamp to get electricity from one village to another in a way that somebody cannot come along and steal the cable to sell for scrap. You can't hide it. You are going to leave signs, plus the ones that know how to steal it without being electrocuted are the ones that installed it. I've seen anarchy. I'll pass.
