Ethnic and religious breakdown of the voting

Now if only the poor weren't so instrumental in keeping the rich in power, it would be a much better world.

Well for those who do, it is certainly their choice.... wise, informed, ignorant, under duress,or whatever you want to call it. 

Sorry, I understand the difference in choices available to people depending on what we have to work with., but neither do I completely absolve anyone of the responsibility of walking through the door of that WalMart store. People choose to be awake or asleep.

Sorry for the thread drift.

some poor people wish to be rich and they would do the same thing rich people do now if they were in the same situation...some dont.

That's a lot of adjectives there,  Uncle John

I am sure you read my caveat, but if you missed it, sorry if I credit people with having a bit of discernment, backbone and free will and the ability to not let themselves be led about by the nose simply because they are poor.

Or if you want me to re-state it directly, I don't think Harper would be in power without the fact that a lot of poor people voted for his party, so we can't always be counted on  to act in our own best interest.

But sorry.... we are off topic here.

To all the people who think that it's inappropriate to discuss voting habits along religious lines. Were you voicing these objections when babble published this article by Murray Dobbin last year? (Quotes from Dobbin are in black)

If you have ever heard the Christian end-timers (who welcome Armageddon and The Rapture that follows for them) defend Israel and hope for an all-out conflagration in the Middle East you could almost be forgiven if you dismissed them as marginal whack-jobs good only for a kind of black humour entertainment.

I said almost forgiven. Because as Marci McDonald points out in her new book, The Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada, if you don't take these people seriously you may be quietly contributing to the demise of democracy and all the social democratic programs it has created in the past 50 years. (See her 2006 article on the subject here.)

So, Dobbin would seem to think that it's very important to be discussing how "Christian end-timers" are going to assert themselves politically. He certainly doesn't seem to be confining his analysis to class, as some on this thread have said is the only appropriate approach.

The churches of the Christian right -- in particular the Christian and Missionary Alliance where Preston Manning, Harper and Day all attend have huge churches across the country, many of them holding thousands. And they fill them. Members, if they are truly committed, give 10 per cent of the pre-tax income to their cause which is one of the reasons the Conservatives, in the last quarter, raised more money than all the other political parties combined.

Here Dobbin is quite explicitly talking about a particular church, The Christian And Missionary Alliance, rather than an economic class or even a political lobby. And he doesn't seem at all uncomfortable about making statements about which political party the members support.

So. Is Dobbin guilty of using irrelevant stats to divide Canadians along religious lines? And if so, was there a thread on babble where people expressed opposition to his views? And perhaps also to babble for hosting them?

[url=http://rabble.ca/columnists/2010/05/culture-wars-commoners-versus-end-ti...

I would never do such a thing jan 

al-Qa'bong wrote:

I wouldn't blame the poor for being "led by the nose" to the degree that I blame the rich for the same thing.  After all, the rich believe in the system, play along with it, and benefit from it, far more than do the poor.

Agreed. Although I don't completely absolve anyone, which was my point. I think to do so would insult a people's ability to think and choose for themselves, and I don't see the poor (or anyone) as sheeple.

I just cut the poor and vulnerable a lot more slack because they do have more pressures and limitations.

Northern Shoveler wrote:

Talking about religious institutions and their support of various political agendas is not polling individual voters to make ridiculous assumptions about other voters based on stereotyping.  Individual versus institution.  Christian apple versus Christian orange. 

Like I have said a few times, there is an attribution here that collecting data about connections between ethnic and religious characteristics characteristics and voting is ipso facto "making ridiculous assumptions". But no evidence of anyone around here using data or wanting to use data to that end.

Closing for length