Interest Groups

Interest groups are groups of people that share a common ground of a certain issue and try to influence their government in order to persuade them to change policy on a specific issue. One major strategy that interest groups use is lobbying. Lobbying is the act of attempting to influence or persuade a politician on their actions, policies, or decisions.

The Federation For American Reform is a conservative interest group that focuses on America's immigration policy. They claim that their stance on wanting to reduce legal immigration through the idea that it will benefit the American population and future generations. We can tell this by looking at the statement "FAIR puts the interests of American citizens and future generations ahead of big business and partisan demands." They are making the claim that it is in the best interest for Americans to support FAIR.
One bias of this mission statement is that most conservatives believe in an extreme reduction of immigrants that enter the country. Although the manner of which this is written shows the reader that there is a much more fair side of the conservative immigration ideology. Often what is covered by the media when it comes to immigration is either when President Trump is talking about the border wall or when there is inhumane actions from ICE. There seems to be more bias in general media rather than this organization's mission.
The author uses pathos in order to appeal to the reader. This occurs when the author talks about how difficult of a decision it is to make when it comes to immigration. They state that these decisions are justified because they are described as "Tough decisions will... always be necessary".
As a liberal minority I find my own bias in the way I have seen most conservatives when it comes to immigration. Also with the liberal media that surrounds I haven't been able to see a different perspective from a conservative on the topic of immigration.
If I am going to find biases in the ideology of organizations and other people, I must also be able to find the bias in my own ideology. 

Political Ideology

My Political Ideology

Hello fellow humans, so I am new to the blog scene so I will try my best to share all information and be as precise as possible. I reside from Seattle, Washington, the Great Pacific Northwest, where Liberal and Democratic ideals are more present than rain in. While I have been surrounded by Democrats and Liberals all my life, I often times find myself trying to find the nuance between both major political parties in the US. I find my political ideology to consist of beliefs from both parties and do not consider myself fully liberal or conservative. 

In a recent political ideology survey that I decided to take I found that I am categorized as a Disaffected Democrat and as I was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest I do not find this to be as a surprised. Disaffected Democrats are defined as: These people strongly believe that the economic system unfairly favors powerful interests and that business corporations make too much profit. Majority of Disaffected Democrats believe that the government should do more to help the needy and homeless. These people often characterize the government as "wasteful and inefficient".

After a moment of self realization, I noticed that this result closely defines me based on the political spectrum. I view myself as only slightly left rather than entirely left as many people are in Seattle. I could say that I am politically socialized through news media and gender and ethnicity. Living in Seattle (one of the most liberal cities in the United States) I have been surrounded by a wide range of people from different races and backgrounds but a limitation when it comes to a politically diverse community. Often engulfed in left-wing news media, most of the time I only see through the lenses of a liberal. It is uncommon for liberal biased media to show conservatives in a supporting light, when the term conservative arises in left wing media it is often shown as a negative aspect of the political spectrum.

I dug into the website into a little deeper and was presented with a graph that showed how the different political typology groups compare on various categories in the US. I compared my position as a Disaffected Democratic to a Market Skeptic Republican (somewhat right from Moderate on the political spectrum) in order to see the difference on how certain things affect our political ideology and why we got the results that we did.

Trump approval percentage for all political typology groups

It is no secret that the more left leaning groups tend to disapprove of President Trump, while most Republicans and Conservatives approve which seems obvious as he considers himself as a Republican. What was surprising was the description under the Market Skeptic Republican which states; "Stand out from other Republican-oriented groups in their negative views of the economic system. Skeptical of banks and financial institutions, and support raising taxes on corporations." Both Disaffect Democrats and Market Skeptic Republicans believe that there is a problem with corporations that are not taxed enough and that the government is biased towards big businesses and corporation.

A policy issue that will always be relevant in the US is immigration. The survey shows results of each political group on their stance of America's Openness, which can correlate to the positions of liberals and conservatives on immigration policy. Disaffected Democrats results show that 81% of them say that "America's openness to people from all over the world is essential to who we are as a nation". This result reflects on the entire left wing and how they want to keep the US open to everyone and continue to grow in diverse population. As for Market Skeptic Republicans, the result showed that 51% says that "If America is to open to all people from all around the world, we risk losing identity as a nation". This result also reflects what the majority of the right wing thinks about immigration policy in the US. They want to make sure that immigration is more regulated in order to control over population. 

I learned a lot about myself through this survey, there were many parts of the result that confirmed my left leaning political socialization. Although I plan to continue pursuing a more moderate stance when it comes to politics.