Armed revolution may be necessary? - US poll

[CaramonLS]

29% of Americans agree with the statement 'In the next few years, an armed revolution might be necessary in order to protect out liberties.'

Link
Link 2
Link 3

Not much of a shock as to which party these people are from.

But really? I honestly can't believe the amount of people in the US that would actually agree with that statement.

[GreenLantern2814]

Racism sure is dead...

[GGG]

The crazy thing is that 27% of independants and 18% of democrats believe it. Thats nuts. Even in the moderate party 1 in 5 think revolution will be necceessary

[nik-]

I'm sure this will all die down when the next white dude is back in the Oval Office.

[Maritime Q-Scout]

Originally Posted by nik-

i'm sure this will all die down when the next white, male, Protestant, Republican is back in the oval office.

fyp

[Thor]

Make for great TV if it did happen

[DuffMan]

Something like half of americans think Jesus is going to come back to earth by 2050 also, so...

[Senator Clay Davis]

I mean I never thought racism was dead, I'm just surprised its still so prevalent. And remember Obama is half white, so I can't even imagine how insane it'd be with him being 100% black.

[peter12]

Sample size is 863. You can say literally anything with a sample size that small. Discard and move on.

[Itse]

The idea of armed citizens possibly needing to fight their government is pretty much a part of the All-American set of ideologies, so as long as the question is "an armed revolution MIGHT be needed", my guess is that many in the US consider it almost a patriotic duty to answer "yes" to a question like that, no matter who is in power.

Plus there is notable group of disgruntled "liberal lefts" who hate the downturn in civil rights that has been going on for the last decade now. Some of those people will surely say YES in a poll like this. Think "occupy" but more radical.

That said, yeah, propably Obama being in power might have something to do with it. Or not. Obama is really quite a moderate and right-wingish for a democrat. If a more left-leaning democrat had been elected, the crazy Republican media might have more ammo to spin their conspiracy theories about the oncoming socialist takeover. Even if that guy was white.

I'm sure he had been the wrong kind of white anyway.

[peter12]

Yeah, but don't over-complicate it either. Your analysis is all conjecture. It's as meaningless as this poll.

[Vulcan]

IMO the radical right are led around by their noses and the biggest threat to their freedoms are the people who are leading them.

[Itse]

Originally Posted by peter12

Yeah, but don't over-complicate it either. Your analysis is all conjecture. It's as meaningless as this poll.

True. A simple yes/no poll on a topic like this doesn't really tell us much about why people gave the answers they did.

And I don't really like that kind of guessing, but since we are doing it anyway, I wanted to point out that the "obvious answer" might not be very accurate.

[mustache ride]

Was it the radical right that was protesting banks and ####ting in parks during occupy?

[peter12]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasty_generalization

[nik-]

Originally Posted by Itse

True. A simple yes/no poll on a topic like this doesn't really tell us much about why people gave the answers they did.

And I don't really like that kind of guessing, but since we are doing it anyway, I wanted to point out that the "obvious answer" might not be very accurate.

Because they couldn't answer the "why". A lot of these people who say things like "I don't like what's happening to our country" can't even give concrete examples of what "what" consists of. It's vague ideas like taking undefined freedoms away and crap like that.

[Senator Clay Davis]

If this were an outlier, I'd agree its tough to tell, but since we've had:

- Birthers
- He's a Muslim
- Socialist (Health care bill = Biggest handout to private corporations ever)
- Marxist
- Anything that ends with Ist no matter how little it applies
- Coming for guns and freedoms (guns sales never been higher, every legislation defeated easily)

I'd say that if Barack Obama was John Williams, white guy from Omaha, Nebraska, and not Barack Obama, black guy from Chicago, things would be going completely differently.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by Senator Clay Davis

If this were an outlier, I'd agree its tough to tell, but since we've had:

- Birthers
- He's a Muslim
- Socialist (Health care bill = Biggest handout to private corporations ever)
- Marxist
- Anything that ends with Ist no matter how little it applies
- Coming for guns and freedoms (guns sales never been higher, every legislation defeated easily)

I'd say that if Barack Obama was John Williams, white guy from Omaha, Nebraska, and not Barack Obama, black guy from Chicago, things would be going completely differently.

The 9/11 Truther movement started under George W. Bush. Crazies are always crazy.

[CaramonLS]

Peter is doing some major damage control to make sure that no one catches wind of the upcoming libertarian revolution.

[Senator Clay Davis]

Originally Posted by peter12

The 9/11 Truther movement started under George W. Bush. Crazies are always crazy.

Ok, and that changes this being racism how? Almost a nice deflect, but not plainly relevant. Also the 9/11 truthers represent a much smaller and less vocal group than the Birthers. Not even close. If you can tell me how many Presidential candidates believe in 9/11 conspiracies, I'd like to know, because several of the Republicans who just ran are birthers.

Since we can't possibly know how this would go if Barack was a white guy from the heartland, its all kind of moot. People will believe what they'd like.