Right Wing vs Left Wing Thinking: FReepers and DUers

As I've mentioned before, I lurk at both Free Republican and Democratic Underground, spending roughly equal time at each in order to catch up on the latest headlines and whichever discussion threads are interesting. For those of you who haven't visited these sites, they're both sites for political partisans to discuss current events. Free Republic serves a mainly right wing audience: the "FReepers", while Democratic Underground is aimed at a largely left wing one: the DUers.

For me, the most striking thing when I compare the discussions at the two sites is how similar they are. That's not to say their users have the same views -- that's certainly not true -- but the users are more alike than they realize in the way they make their arguments.

That's an important point. Much noise has been made around the Blogosphere about how right wingers and left wingers supposedly reason differently. Probably the most prominent was Republican columnist David Brook's New York Times piece arguing that leftists work with words, while rightists work with numbers. In fairness, Brooks never claims that the two groups really think that differently; just that they work in different fields and have different habits.

There are two sorts of people in the information-age elite, spreadsheet people and paragraph people. Spreadsheet people work with numbers, wear loafers and support Republicans. Paragraph people work with prose, don't shine their shoes as often as they should and back Democrats.

I don't know where that leaves Slashdot -- the most prominent geek discussion site on the web is made up of computer techies who predominantly support Kerry. Meanwhile, even at JoeUser, people overgeneralize about how members of the Left and the Right reason differently, or think using their hearts vs their minds, or similar stereotypes, with little evidence other than anecdotes.

Looking at Free Republican and Democratic Underground was not what I expected. The style of discussions are similar, as are the jokes -- about different people, of course -- and irritation at the mainstream media. In fact, there are a number of media figures that are seen as representatives of the enemy, by both sides! You might think that they would focus on different news items, and while there are some differences, to a large degree they're focusing on the same stories and developments. At both sites, there are a number of users who seem basically irrational -- that is, they are persistently one sided in their views no matter what evidence comes to light -- while there are also calmer heads. Both sites make equal use of stylistically similar humor, some of which is funny and much of which is heavy handed.

So the next time you find yourself nodding in agreement to a claim that either the Left or the Right has cornered the market on straight thinking, you might want to give the other side more credit. A quick look at Free Republic and Democratic Underground will show you the partisans are more alike than they'd ever want to admit.

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