Of course divisions on the 'cycling issue' will never cut cleanly across party politics, but there are some very good reasons why the political right has traditionally been hostile to cycling, and in turn cycling has often been associated with leftist politics. For one, the mindset of the right is defined by a determination to maintain the status quo and hierarchical power structures (the 'car is king' hierarchy of the road being just one) and to protect the power of the privileged, especially against 'threats' from minorities and those considered to be members of social out-groups.

It is just the same in the UK, with the most vocal opponents of cycling and most strident defenders of the supposed 'right' of motorists to drive where and as they please being reactionary right-wingers, such as Jeremy 'shoot strikers in the face' Clarkson.

I know I hate Republicans!

what are republicans ?

I think that P.J. O'Rourke represents what a lot of Republicans actually think about cycling. Use Google to find an extract from his book "Republican Party Reptile" to find his anti-cycling rant entitled "A cool and logical analysis of the bicycle menace and an Examination of the Actions Necessary to License, Regulate, or Abolish Entirely This Dreadful Peril on our Roads".

All done 'in jest of course. ...Just like 'comedians' such as Bernard Manning were only joking when telling 'jokes' targeting black and Asian people and women.

It is no coincidence that the most cycling unfriendly countries tend to be inequitable, hierarchical and status-obsessed countries like the USA and UK, whilst the most cycling friendly countries tend to be those with a long history of holding egalitarian values in high regards, such as Denmark and Holland.

P.s. A small correction. Jeremy Clarkson of course 'only' wanted to see strikers shot in front of their families, rather than specifically in the face. Nonetheless, this is still in line with his earlier rants about running cyclists down 'for fun'; decapitating motorcyclists with cheese wire; jails "where inmates are only allowed to eat what they can catch on the windowsill" and homophobic nonsense about an imagined world where the age of consent for homosexuals was reduced to four years old and special 'Gay lanes' were introduced on motorways.

All in all, Clarkson is a stereotypical right-winger who hates and fears anything that is seen as posing a challenge to the dominant social norm.

Being american is already bad enough,being american and republican at the same time is a complete disgrace.

want some vinegar with that chip BikingBernie ?

It follows that something as useful, healthy, rational, efficient, intelligent, socially responsible and egalitarian as the bicycle should be opposed by American Republicans, as they clearly represent the opposites of all of these attributes.

Correlation does not imply causation. Just because a significant (or highly vocal) proportion of the Republicans in the US hate bicycles, that does not mean there is anything innately bicycle-hating about Republican ideology, or that the Republican Party can be blamed for hatred of bicycles. Of course, what they can be blamed for is pissing trillions of dollars away on oil wars, to keep the motorists whose votes they want happy, and then (something which is typically Republican) moaning about the cost of a few bike lanes.

ubercurmudgen wrote:

"Just because a significant (or highly vocal) proportion of the Republicans in the US hate bicycles, that does not mean there is anything innately bicycle-hating about Republican ideology"

It is not such much the bicycle per say, but the way promoting the interests of cyclists, rather than those of motorists, would come into conflict with Republican ideology. Much of this IS intrinsic to the psychology of the right wing mindset, which is focussed on preserving the status quo, a belief in hierarchical power structures, an opposition to egalitarianism etc.

In reality, those on the right very often make it clear that they feel their viewpoint is incompatible with the promotion of cycling, as in the way they so often associate cycling with 'loony left muesli munchers' and 'enviro-mentalists', never mind the way the see the promotion of motor traffic as being 'good for business' and so forth.

Conversely, very many have see that there is a close link between the promotion of cycling and the promotion of socialism / egalitarianism, as with the Clarion movement in the UK. Similarly, President Allende of Chile is credited with once arguing that 'Socialism can only come riding on a bicycle'.

P.s. Sorry if I scared any American readers with my use of the word 'socialism'. I do realised that you are conditioned from birth to associate the word with 'pure evil', or even better, not to think about what the word actually means at all. ;-)

@pastey_boy what are republicans ?

There the ones who tell children that Oscar the Grouch "lives in a trash can because he is lazy and doesn't want to contribute to society." or say

"Clean air? Looks clean to me."

This is the biggest pile of b.s. of all time. Mother Jones leans so far to left it can't even stand upright. It's all about basic economics and tradeoffs. The reason the right has opposed cycling-related issues that they are usually proffered without regard to costs versus benefits. Just like the insane amount of money spent on light rail systems that make people "feel" good and righteous but will never, ever be economical.

I have been riding and racing bikes for 22 straight years. I came out of my mother's womb born a conservative, recognizing that moral absolutes, hard work, personal responsibility, respect for the rule of law and my elders, and limited government were the key ingredients of a prosperous civil society. I am a staunch environmentalist, but not at the expense massive unintended consequences. You fall prey to MSM who tries to portray the right as lovers of dirty air and water. I can't believe how easy the libs are duped.

Reading the countless vitriolic, libtard responses to this piece simply tells me that readers weren't spanked enough by their over-coddling parents when they were kids and that we are done as a nation. You lack the ability to think but function on pure emotion.

Sounds like somebody needs a hug!

fuelfool wrote:

"Mother Jones leans so far to left it can't even stand upright."

A comment which, if nothing else, show just how right-wing the USA is in outlook. However, this is hardly news. For example, the Pew Research Centre has consistently found over many years that around three and half times as many Americans declare themselves to be conservative in outlook as declare themselves to be liberal, with only 7% of Americans claiming to be ‘very liberal’ in their values. (Pew Research Centre, 2010). Naturally, the conception of ‘liberalism’ being used here relates to the American experience. Consequently, it cannot be assumed that even a supporter of American-style ‘liberalism’ would give equal support to European-style socialist policies.

No wonder trhe USA is among the most inequitable contries in the developed world where, despite its wealth, over 20% of people oficially live in poverty.

'Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%' indeed.

http://www.vanityfair.com/society/features/2011/05/top-one-percent-201105

fuelfool wrote:

"I came out of my mother's womb born a conservative, recognizing that moral absolutes, hard work, personal responsibility, respect for the rule of law and my elders, and limited government were the key ingredients of a prosperous civil society

...I am a staunch environmentalist..."

Sorry, but 'limited government' will never be able to deal with an issue as big a climate change. Of course, this is exactly why so many on the right are in denial when it comes to the issue, as the centralised effort that is needed runs counter to their faith in the so-called 'free market' and 'libertarian' ideologies.

"It's all about basic economics and tradeoffs. The reason the right has opposed cycling-related issues that they are usually proffered without regard to costs versus benefits. Just like the insane amount of money spent on light rail systems that make people "feel" good and righteous but will never, ever be economical."

I guess we better quickly stop funding subsidized bus services for the elderly. Or subsidies for U.S. farmers that stop other countries - many from developing countries - from competing effectively. I also imagine that the US government under Bush was able to - with the help of no doubt wizardly accountants - compute the costs and benefits of, for example, the Iraq War - without doubt including under the benefits those of a 'democracy' (and, no doubt, the billions of Iraqi Oil refined by various companies.)

"I have been riding and racing bikes for 22 straight years. I came out of my mother's womb born a conservative, recognizing that moral absolutes, hard work, personal responsibility, respect for the rule of law and my elders, and limited government were the key ingredients of a prosperous civil society. I am a staunch environmentalist, but not at the expense massive unintended consequences. You fall prey to MSM who tries to portray the right as lovers of dirty air and water. I can't believe how easy the libs are duped."

I wonder what you would think of, for example, the Netherlands - a decidedly socialist, pluralist, society...At least we are both agreed on one point, but the wails of my supplications thus echo as part of my desire to know what these 'massive unintended consequences' might be in the case of the furtherment of more cycling. Has Fox News also succeeding in duping us, I wonder? Though your love of dirty air and water is not a first-order one in my book: it merely seems to be a corollary of your love of money and jobs.

"Reading the countless vitriolic, libtard responses to this piece simply tells me that readers weren't spanked enough by their over-coddling parents when they were kids and that we are done as a nation. You lack the ability to think but function on pure emotion."

LOL :) u shud come to the UK, youll find what irony means ;) But let me just tell you that while I agree that this left-right thing is mostly a matter of preferences and bedrock beliefs that one doesn't want to abandon, our world is one in which we are at least partially shielded from the harsh and numbing indifference of the natural world of power and survival, while in yours the survivors do very well. I just happen to prefer a world in which the worst off are given more rather than being left to fend for themselves. Just it seems strange that people who espouse traditional family values and show so much sympathy to their family members are decidedly more reluctant to do so to others on the grounds that they 'haven't deserved it', when your their family members were no more 'deserving' of being born as such. (Think of the Queen.) While lefties are not perfect, at least we've started the discussion.

Fuelfool's real problem is that he /she doesn't understand that their 'recognition' of the need for 'limited government' is in reality a faith, and like all true faiths it is essentially irrational, requiring them to ignore all the evidence showing they are actually wrong.

Fact is that the 'free market' is anything but, being rigged to the advantage of vested interests. Fuelfool's reference to rail systems provides a good example of this, as the reason many rail systems are 'uneconomic' is that they are competing in a rigged market. Over long distances they must compete with air-travel, and due to the power of the air industry aviation fuel is not taxed. Over short distances rail must compete with car travel, and due to the power of the motor lobby car users, especially in the USA, have never paid the full costs their choice of transport imposes on society. This rigged market has also worked against the interests of cyclists and politicians of the right have always been unwilling to charge motorists the full external costs of motoring, even promoting doing so as being an example of undesirable 'big government' interference in the so-called 'free market'.

Another problem is that the 'free market' is by its very nature short-termist and values only that which can have a price ticket put on it. Again, how does one value the improvement in the quality of life resulting from replacing car gridlock with an effective public transport system? The banking crisis and subsequent economic crisis also show just what happens when the rapacious 'free market' is allowed to operate without sufficient 'big government' control.

It is also the case that today those countries that have the lowest levels of poverty, the healthiest populations, the most social cohesion, the happiest populations and the highest levels of individual freedom all tend to be those who have 'big governments'.

For example, Sachs (2006) in his paper 'Revisiting the Nordic Model: Evidence on Recent Macroeconomic Performance' compared the 'Nordic' economies of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden (which are characterised by a high level of taxation and central government control) with other major European countries and a number of 'English speaking' countries, including Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States (all of which have lower levels of taxation and have moved towards ‘minimal government’ policies). Sachs found that, rather than high levels of state intervention and taxation leading to low levels of economic growth, reduced standards of living, a disincentive to work and reduced political freedom, the reverse was true, with the 'free market', English speaking countries comparing badly with the Nordic countries on such measures.

Governments may be imperfect but they are at least democratic in that they are accountable to the people. When 'minimal government' policies are enacted all that usually happens is that power is transferred to unaccountable corporate interests, and as such help to create the ultimate 'closed' society where the individual has no power or freedom at all.

Looks like I've stumbled on to politicsradar.com by accident :(

I'm Republican and ride several thousand miles a year. What a ridiculous, inflammatory, headline.

bfasula wrote:

"I'm Republican and ride several thousand miles a year. What a ridiculous, inflammatory, headline."

And you actually believe that it is rational to generalise from your own case to that of every Republican in the USA? I guess George Carlin was right when he argued that Americans and critical thinking are strangers to one another. ;-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q

"It's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it".

:-)

@bikingbernie,

Did you read the headline before you made your stupid comment. The headline makes a generalized statement and I provided the exception. You need to study Logic because you don't have any.

Yes, it made a generalised statement, meaning more specifically 'Do Republicans in general hate cyclists?'

I don't see why this should be seen as 'inflammatory', given that it was asking a question, not making a claim. There are also many good reasons why the political right has traditionally been keen to promote motorised travel and has often appeared to be hostile to cyclists, so it is hardly a 'ridiculous' question either.

With regards your reference of logic, that an odd exception might exist does not undermine the truth-value of the suggestion that the political outlook of the right is less amenable to the promotion of needs of cyclists than the left. To suggest that this is not the case is to fall victim to one of the shortcomings of binary logic. For example, even if we observe 10,000 ravens all of which have been black, even though this tells us something about the nature of ravens, the existence of even one white, perhaps albino, raven means that a statement such as 'Ravens are black' whilst empirically true is, strictly speaking, logically false. Again, to say the 'earth is round' is not logically true, as the earth is an oblate spheroid, but it does approximate the truth much more than to claim that the earth is flat. Again this merely reflects the shortcomings of binary logic.

There is more to sound reasoning that a blind adherence to the laws logic! (Read up on the problem of counterfactual conditionals, the excluded middle and so forth to see why this is the case.)

P.s. The point I made about the earth not being round is, of course, that from the standpoint of binary logic, to say 'the earth is round' is no truer than to say it is flat, all false statements being logically equivalent.

It might also be noteworthy that one of the most robust characteristics of the right-wing mindset is an intolerance of ambiguity and a preference for seeing things in simplistic 'black and white', 'true or false' terms. 'You are either with us or against us' and so forth. ;-)

"It might also be noteworthy that one of the most robust characteristics of the right-wing mindset is an intolerance of ambiguity and a preference for seeing things in simplistic 'black and white', 'true or false' terms. 'You are either with us or against us' and so forth. ;-)"

Who knows...perhaps Republicans are closet logicians.

;-)

Being against certain forms funding for bike lanes does not equate to hating cyclists, so the headline is certainly sensational. I guess that's what editors like, though. Seems to me the it's the lefties in the US that are on a mission to declare everything "wilderness" and lock mountain bikers out. Maybe they're the ones who have a hate on for cyclists (or perhaps all humans).

saintdracula wrote:

"Who knows...perhaps Republicans are closet logicians."

Probably not, given that having a 'rigidity of thought' and a tendency to see things only in 'black and white' terms is rather different to being good at logic.

Take bfasula, they seemed to want to argue that 'Do Republicans really hate cyclists?' actually means not 'Do Republicans IN GENERAL really hate cyclists? but rather 'Do ALL Republicans really hate cyclists?'. Given that they knew of one exception to this second interpretation (themselves) they seemed to be trying to suggest that this somehow shows that the primary interpretation (that is 'Do Republicans in general really hate cyclists?') was also untrue. Hardly logical! ;-)

This seemed to me to be effectively an attempt at equivocation, much like those who argue things like 'Lance Armstrong is innocent of doping' try to imply that this means 'Lance Armstrong has never doped' rather than merely 'He has never been convicted of doping'.

Chris2fur wrote:

"Seems to me the it's the lefties in the US that are on a mission to declare everything "wilderness" and lock mountain bikers out. Maybe they're the ones who have a hate on for cyclists (or perhaps all humans)."

Mmmm. Seems to me that organisations such as the Sierra Club are about as conservative as it is possible to be...

Also, just because both 'lefties' and those seeking to limit mountain biking often make reference to the need to protect the environment does not mean that they are politically equivalent. Similarly, both Adam Smith and Karl Marx argued that wealth is ultimately generated by the efforts of workers, but this does not mean that Adam Smith was somehow a communist! Again, a logical error is probably been made here. (Affirmation of the Consequent’).

As an aside, it is also the case that most human social structures are hierarchical in nature, with individuals who are naturally obsessive, hierarchical and Authoritarian also being those who are the most likely to rise into positions of power. Hence the situation where even nominally egalitarian regimes may be dominated by Authoritarian individuals whose personal actions often subvert the very values of the ideology that they are supposed to be upholding.

The classic example of this is, of course, that of the Soviet Union under Stalin, with Stalin's essentially right-wing, Authoritarian personality completely subverting the goals laid out by Marx and Engels who saw the 'State capitalism' of the post-revolutionary era as being no more than a transitional stage on the path to true communism where there would be no need for state power at all. Stalin, and others, effectively set out to ensure that the vision set out by Marx would never become a reality, instead preserving the traditional, hierarchical model of society, only with different masters.

Bottom line is, whatever the ideals, it is usually the hierarchists who get to the top of the hierarchy and direct how an organisation operates, so the way even nominally egalitarian organisations act is very often more a reflection of the influence of the right-wing mindset than is generally acknowledged.

Here is the answer:

No, Republicans do not "hate" cyclists.

Republicans dislike the haughty attitude of riding to save the world. However, they respect the attitude of riding to save money, or riding to get fit. Saving the environment is indeed a benefit of riding to and from work, and believe it or not, most of the Republicans I work with support that, as well.

As long as we aren't snooty about it, we don't brag about saving the environment, and we (real big key here) obey the traffic laws while we ride, Republicans will support our efforts.

"Berg thinks part of the problem is that there's a "partisan fringe" on both sides that politicizes biking. "Some ‘progressives’ see biking as an attack on the ‘consumption’ lifestyle; some conservatives see ‘bike culture’, as manifested by groups like Critical Mass, to be vapid counterculture pretenders," he says."

What a lazy (and unresponsive) way to answer the question. Of course, it sounds perfectly reasonable to suggest that controversy over bicycling (or anything else) is a result of the extremist fringe on "both sides." But as is the case with so many issues, the attitudes and actions of one side are not equivalent to those of the others, yet many a budding journalist seems to think that underscoring such false equivalence represents balance and objectivity, rather than just being a lie.

The question is not who "politicizes biking." Many issues relevant to biking (setting aside and opening up of park lands to bikes, building and funding bike infrastructure, reform of subsidies that encourage driving over biking, etc.) are public policy issues. How we spend the public till is a political issue, and so even "middle of the road" politicians may have strong feeling about how that money gets spent. As for what side Republicans or Democrats generally come down the issues surrounding bicycling, it's not universally true to say Republicans "hate" cyclists as it is to say Dems "love" bikes. Idiotic and lazy columnists (like the aforementioned PJ O'Rourke, who hasn't been funny or insightful in 20 years) like to write stuff like that, and it might fit a certain stereotype, but it isn't fair to the infrequent exceptions, like Petri.

But by and large, it *is* true that most Republicans in the US Congress oppose policies favorable to cycling and cyclists, and Democratic support for those programs is vastly stronger. Ask any American who says they truly hate cyclists what their party is, and you're likely to find a Republican. This won't come as news to most cyclists, or Republicans. It's a "dog bites man" story, as they say.