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No, actually it doesn't. Nixon started with the situation as he had it at the time, which was very different than ours. If he made some decisions during his years that pushed the country to the left (among the many that he made the pushed it to the right), that can't easily be compared with today's situation because when he left office the country was far right of where it is today. We've had many liberal politicians push the country left since then, far beyond the US Nixon saw.

The question is this: if Nixon were president today would he be making as liberal (as we understand it today) decisions as Obama is? No, he would not. If Obama had been president back in Nixon's day, would he have made those same liberal decisions? Yes, and many more.

By the way, it's pretty much invalid to make comparisons across long periods of time, just as it is to make them across countries. The definition of liberal and conservative is by no means stable. It used to be that the south was the heart of the Democratic party. Then there was a long period of time when the east was liberal and the west was conservative (with California the conservative powerhouse). Today the coasts (at least, the urban areas) are liberal and the heartland is conservative. The people haven't changed all that much. The issues have. And those issues differ from those in Europe and other areas by so much that there is little point in using the same words to describe political leanings on two sides of the pond.

How employees vote doesn't necessarily define how the institution that pays their checks leans politically. The media is as liberal as the multi-national corporations who own them, which is to say, very little. One of my right wing friends (PHD in politics and very active statistical researcher) explained this to me years ago.

Classic bully comeback - "I was just kidding! Watsamatter, you can't take a joke?"

When you can't address the merits of an argument, revert to preschool playground tactics. I guess it's true that everything we know we learned in kindergarden.

How dare you call me a bully, you heartless monster!!!
You have sent me into a shame spiral and over the
Feel Bad Rainbow.

Wanna go to group with me, Dewey? I really think
we can make some progress.

Re: Dewster's comments about corporations setting the political tone of the news.

I guess I don't agree. Despite the vilification they receive, corporations are about maximizing profit, not pushing ideals, and that becomes more true the larger they are (which tends to lead to less concentration of ownership). On the other hand if you ask a reporter or editor why they went into their field there is a very good chance that they will respond that they wanted to "make a difference." Aggregated across the thousands of people working in that field, it's an all but unstoppable force.

Further, it's quite the myth that leaders of corporations tend to be on the far right politically. There's a wide dispersion, with many of the biggest companies in America (including those that own news outlets) being led by very liberal people.

It's a valid argument, though, so let's accept that liberal reporters and editors doesn't necessarily lead to liberal news (I still believe it does, in practice, obviously).

Perhaps the way to think about it, then, is to compare people's opinions of the media. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a conservative who did not agree that essentially all media is left of median. On the other side of the spectrum typical left-leaning people that I know (I am in a relatively liberal location and sphere) consider most news more-or-less fair and balanced (excluding fox). It's rare to find a liberal complaining about any news outlet besides fox.

(Btw I don't believe fox is particularly trying to push an ideal either--there's not a lot of money in ideals. They have just realized that everyone likes to hear news that validates their preconceived opinions and 50% of the country doesn't get that from other stations. So they are more actively fighting the natural tendency of their reporters in an effort to maximize profit.)

If we assume that the media is centered in the political spectrum, one is hard pressed to explain why half the country feels that the media is biased and the other half generally doesn't. Mass delusion doesn't count as a valid explanation, by the way. It's not true that there's a disparity in education, rationality, or intelligence between the sides of the political spectrum. Anything contrary to that is just rhetoric used by radicals on both sides to disparage the other.

TMI from some of folks.

It would be very helpful if there were a standard, widely accepted definition of what right and left or liberal and conservative "mean" nowadays. For example, is Pat Buchanan a liberal or conservative (left or right)?
http://original.antiwar.com/buchanan/2013/04/04/is-war-with-north-korea-inevitable/

Is Ron Paul a liberal or conservative?

The reality is that those words don't matter one iota. Here's the reality of the situation in the US all in one simple cartoon.

ha ha ha - that's me under the left foot!

Could You give some examples for possible effective personal actions to be taken to make it better, beside voting or posting here and on other fora?

Interesting discussion.

From discussing a WSJ article about the N2, to discussing whether the article was biased (marketing for Yamaha), to discussing media bias in general, to discussing politics in general. I like it.

This thread could very well have degenerated into a Yamaha-Kawai-Roland-Casio flame war. But it didn't. I guess it's because we all agree that we know a few things about pianos and music, and therefore concede that what some people like in keyboards, others don't.
But for some reason, some of us claim to have the answers on political questions. And I'm guessing most of us don't know more about politics or economy than about music. So we offer our opinions.

And with all this discussion, I don't even know if the WSJ is left-wing or right-wing. If it was one or the other, would this make Yamaha tend left or right as well?

Lol. Well, Yamaha is a corporation, so I suspect a true socialist would define it as being on the side of evil (whichever side that is). Whether the guys in Japan consider themselves right or left is beyond me. I have no idea what politics are like there.

It's much, much, more sinister than that...
not only are they a corporation they
are a ..... GASP!!!!... conglomarate!!!!!


For Our Less Learned Friends

Well, nobody of my young collegues, many of them techno freaks, did know, that the logo of their motocycle consists of 3 .... tuningforks!

As I bought a new DP, next day morning I told them: I have bought a YAMAHA !!!
(In reality it was a Kawai, but I rather needed this name to be manipulative - as this topic is mostly about. And we know it now, Yamaha = DP anyway)

The first questions were: What PS? How much cubic centimeter?

Yamaha Conglomerate on Wikipedia

Good question. Seeing as the EU institutions are completely undemocratic and disinterested in the needs of individuals within nation states. Their political agenda has nothing to do with my needs and aspirations and they are so remote from me I have no way of making my voice heard. So what's the point of doing anything? The European situation is one part of the reason people have become alienated by politics. People are apathetic and don't get involved like they used to because they just don't believe their views count anymore. No one is listening. No one in Europe cares just so long as we (the British) keep on pumping in billions and billions each year.

For the record I have no problem with cooperation and common markets and useful, friendly relationships between nations. But I don't want to be a citizen of "Europe". By Europe I mean a single political entity with law-making powers that take precedence over national sovereignty. Because certainly with the current structures it is essentially undemocratic. Unelected bureaucrats making decisions with wide-ranging effects on millions of individuals and those decision-makers are totally unaccountable. It's not right.

Millions of people lost their lives fighting for freedom and basic democratic rights - for themselves and on behalf of others. And now like lemmings we have apparently happily surrendered those hard-won rights and freedoms. And let's face facts - without the British and Americans (and others) continental Europe would have succumbed permanently to a tyrannical, cruel and genocidal dark age. So theJourney can look down his nose at whinging Brits and Americans all he likes but he owes his freedom to them both. Yes, that may be 70 years ago but history is there to teach us...

And here I thought those were tuning forks.


History of the Yamaha Logo

As long as we're talking Europe, I remember an article in Time magazine many, many years ago where someone started with say 1500 British pounds, travelled all through Europe exchanging currencies though 10 or so countries, and at the end of trip had not spent one cent and had very little money left over.

I for one when on vacation in Europe enjoy using a single currency. I like that member states have the same rules and regulations. I like that truck drivers from Poland have to sleep x number of hours per day, the same number of hours imposed on Dutch drivers.

The list goes on and on. It's not a perfect union but it's a civilized and intelligent start.

I just recently read "The Other" by Thomas Tryon, my typo was one other deep impact of that other tool. (Otherwise I don't use it very often on the fields...)

Reminds me of last year, when I bought my Yamaha C2. I bought it on March 31st in Sindelfingen, which is also the headquarter of Mercedes-Benz. And Mercedes also has a C-class in their product range.
So the next day I called my parents and said: "I went to Sindelfingen and bought a C class. April's Fool or not?"

I don't even own a car, and if I bought one, it would most likely not be a Mercedes.

But not in Eastern Europe - here owed people their previous freedom to the Sowiets then? Or the Allies who trusted Stalin (but Churchill)? But seriously: between the 2 WWs there were just 2 decades. Since then 70 years. It all is history. Not much different than the influence of historical events in the past in centuries ago and in distant countries.
Otherwise You are right:
But this has another simple reason: You have a King/Queen. US have a President. But the EU has a Comittee. A complex distant structure, with very weak personal incarnation of power. Very abstract, distant thing, not suitable to integrate, to mobilize our atavistic evolutionary mind to participate, to trust or to criticize or to elect in person. Abstract structures of power are always suspect for the folk and target of conspiracy theories.
And the real benefits, obvious all-time conveniences of the EU which Dave correctly describes, wan't be attributed to the instances forged them or to distant countries paying for them. Nobody is aware of or grateful for contributions of people in other countries in my experience. But what I described is a common communication problem.