Take Our New Poll: Biggest Challenges Facing Moderates Today
It’s that time again: I’m curious to discover what our readers see as the main challenges for American moderates in 2009 and beyond. Find the poll in the column at far right, click on the question to open it, and add your own votes. (You can select up to three choices this time.) Then find out how you compare to your fellow moderates. I’ll let the votes collect for a month or so before I report the results to you. (But you can sneak a peek simply by reopening the poll link.)
Now for the results from our first poll: “What are the most dangerous influences in the U.S. today?”
Well, we seemed to conclude that, on the whole, the right poses more of a threat than the left. The biggest single vote-getter was “The Religious Right,” with 26% of the votes. “Big corporations” accounted for another 16%, and “Wall Street” garnered 11%. That’s a total of 53% for combined right-wing threats.
On the left, “Big Government/Big Spending” nabbed a healthy 21% of the vote (second only to the Religious Right), and the “Far Left” trailed behind with 11%. That adds up to 32% for left-wing threats.
Politically indeterminate choices like “The Internet,” “Lobbyists” and “Other” accounted for the remaining votes. Shockingly, not a single poll respondent voted for “Texting While Driving.”
THE NEW MODERATE 
The “religious right” is the greatest threat to our country? They are ignored and ridiculed by commercial media, and “God is dead” was proclaimed back in the 1980’s! It seems seeking out the evils of devout believers in religion is a politically correct witch hunts from the good old days of our country. Once those pesky people are silenced, who’s next on the list to be handled? However, the homeless, hungry, and battered women with children do find shelter and help from those crazy extremists. That’s okey if we drive them out of town. The atheists have philanthropic groups, don’t they?
I think a lot of people see the religious right as a kind of American jihadist movement: fanatics who would kill (as in the case of abortion doctors) to force their beliefs on everyone. I don’t feel that way, but the left tends to get all hissy over Bible-believing Christians.
Glad you don’t agree on that point, and lay the blame on the left. Very moderate of you. Glad you can see both sides of this! What is the moderate view on abortion anyway?