source link:
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/12/20/234230/07
Quote:
The glass is half empty: Americans and Civil Rights for Muslims (MLP)
By jolly st nick
Wed Dec 22nd, 2004 at 11:07:13 AM EST
The Media and Society Research Group of Cornell University conducted a survey in November of Americans with respect to their attitudes towards Muslims. Nearly half (44%) of respondents favored restricting the civil rights of Muslims in some way.
The press release, with links to the report, is available at http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/st...ww/story/12-17 -2004/0002639656&EDATE=
For example, over a quarter of the respondents felt that Muslim should have to register their whereabouts with the federal government.
Naturally, there were differences between Republicans and Democrats, religious and non-religious people. Nearly 40% of Republicans favored federal tracking for Muslims as opposed to only 24% of Democrats and a mere 17% of independents. Curiously, the opinions expressed by highly religious respondent was almost the same as that of Republicans respondents, except that relatively more Republicans thought that government officials lie (62% vs. 49%). Democratic answers tended to follow the same patterns as low religiosity voters, but not nearly as closely (they appear slightly less "liberal").
Another interesting distinction is people who pay attention to television news vs. those who do not. People who get their news from television are much more likely to be scared and to favor restrictions in Muslim civil rights than to people who don't.
Perhaps a less alarming way of looking at this is that 48% of Americans did not favor the curtailment of Muslim civil rights in any way. Strong majorities continue to believe in the right to criticize (66%) and even protest (60%) government actions. These rights were even supported by a slim majority of highly religious persons.
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this is obviously summary, but the data it talks about is interesting.
the complete results are available here:
http://www.comm.cornell.edu/msrg/report1a.pdf
and are, if anything, more alarming than the summary version.
notice the correlation between folk who watch tv is and those who favor restricting the civil rights of muslims....restrictions that extend to the stuff debated on this thread. for some reason, i am less surprised by the correlation of christian beliefs and favoring restrictions. so much for brotherly love and all that.
this correlation between support for restrictions on civil liberties and television viewing is interesting, and is not a little alarming. i wonder if similar results would be had here. i suspect so. similar patterns seem to obtain for support for the iraq war, the belief that saddam hussein had something substantive to do with "terrorists" and so forth.
given indices like this, it is hard to hear conservative complaints about the "liberal media" and not laugh.