With Malice Toward Some

Download or read book With Malice Toward Some written by George E. Marcus and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1995-09-29 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With Malice toward Some: How People Make Civil Liberties Judgments addresses an issue integral to democratic societies: how people faced with a complex variety of considerations decide whether or not to tolerate extremist groups. Relying on several survey-experiments, Marcus, Sullivan, Theiss-Morse, and Wood identify and compare the impact on decision making of contemporary information, long-standing predispositions, and enduring values and beliefs. Citizens react most strongly to information about a group's violations of behavioral norms and information about the implications for democracy of the group's actions. The authors conclude that democratic citizens should have a strong baseline of tolerance yet be attentive to and thoughtful about current information.