A recent local California survey of public opinion found that
Californians are in favor of capital punishment. They have been
since the first poll on the subject in 1956. The support has always
been in the 70 to 80% range.
What does this mean?
It means that on social issues where most people assume that there is a long run tide to social liberalism, most people are wrong.
We are not becoming more like Europe. Californians are sticking to the anti-European position on capital punishment for over a half century.
If you think that gay marriage is a certainty over time, look again.
The public has moved against the social liberalism on abortion over a forty year period. About the same percentage of people maintain that abortion should be a legal right but we have gone from 30% who wouldn't consider it for themselves in 1975 to over 60% who wouldn't consider it today.
Swedes and Danes who were the stars of porn movies in the 1970s are not to be found at all on the modern Internet porn videos.
Labor unions are, of course, disappearing at a high rate.
Social liberalism is not a one way street.