This kind of reminds me about the role of school administrators when I was a child. Another kid could pound my face into hamburger, but if I raised a hand in my own defense then I was equally culpable for breaking the rules and would face disciplinary actions. After all, it takes two to fight. This was a system that was advantageous to bullies and those unconcerned about following the rules never mind the consequences that came with breaking them. As an adult I can see it for what it was. It was a shortcut for administrators to avoid having to think while giving the appearance of acting in a fair and equitable manner. Rather than being the adults in the room, “both sides” allowed them to abrogate their responsibilities in the name of expediency and convenience.
I don’t know why this is particularly naive though. Look at the transformations that have already happened in society. Many people alive today can remember when it was near impossible for women or minorities to apply for many professional jobs. And much of the developed world is very equitable, with low Gini coefficients.
The US is a laggard in this, but is it naive to imagine the US catching up in terms of social welfare? Sure, it’s difficult, mostly politically, but the fact it has been done in so many countries around the world makes it a stretch to call it naive IMHO.
Every law restricts freedom in some way, so yeah, if we’re going to call that “evil” then everyone is trivially evil including centrists.
However I don’t think you’ve represented “both sides” proportionately here.
While the majority of Conservatives would agree about custodial sentences or personal responsibility, I’ve never met any liberal that cared about what soda you drink, or how much money you are allowed to make (they may believe in progressive taxation however).
It’s not like this is some recent development.
Liberals believe in government that tries to maximize group social benefits.
You wear a mask because that helps everybody. You social distance because that helps everybody. You get a vaccine because that helps everybody.
Also, you urge recycling because that helps everybody and put a deposit on cans and bottles to nudge people that way. You put a tax on giant bottles of empty calories because lowering obesity rates helps everybody. You raise minimum wages and tax wealth because lowering inequality helps everybody. You pay to fix bridges, roads, dams, because that helps everybody. You regulate businesses, mandate food inspections, and eliminate monopolies because that helps everybody. You pass gun safety bills because that helps everybody. You allow limited amounts of abortion because harming women’s mental and physical health and that of unwanted babies who are forced to be born hurts everybody.
That’s the unspoken underlying wonder of liberal ideology: helping everybody. Conservatives are indeed quietly for many of their broad social benefits. But they don’t believe in the Tragedy of the Commons. They’d rather 700,000 people die than give up some individual autonomy. They’d rather floods, fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, and droughts worsen horrifically every year than give up some individual autonomy. They’d rather have a daily school shooting than give up some individual autonomy. They somehow rationalize away the consequences that they themselves face because of their governmental failings than change their beliefs. Remember Better Dead Than Red? Now it’s Better Dead Than Liberal. That’s literal insanity, but it’s what we’re stuck with.
ISTM its a case of the smart+evil RW elite let their stupid+evil pawns grow too numerous and strong to rein back. They rode the tiger and now can’t get off.
To which the Right Wing’s ostensible “reasonable” response is: “guarantee me that is ALL the individual autonomy you will ever ask me to give up in exchange for the things that benefit us all, and you will never ask me to give up any more, and then we can sit down and negotiate IF I will”. With the underlying understanding that anything will be seen as a slippery slope so it’s a recursive loop of things not happening.
Meanwhile from the POV of the common “base” follower of conservatism, we liberals are portrayed as that somehow we never seem to ever stop coming up with yet something else more about the way that member of the common base sees the world and lives, that must be given up and changed.
As I’ve put it in some of these discussions, the switch of some states or demographic groups from left to right could be explained partly as them saying “oh, I was progressive until we progressed to where I wanted to get, and now I want to stay there”. But the particularly pernicious trend on the Right, however, is of seeking to undo even that.
That doesn’t accurately describe liberals or conservatives. Liberals exploit the masses utilizing superficially virtuous and compassionate language in order to gain political power. Just look at the actions of the powerful left and you can see that their rhetoric is just that. Free market conservatives feel that people and institutions act according to incentives.
Even if this were a fair depiction, so what? It only starts to be a problem if any of those virtuous messages are lies, or once in power democrats do terrible things instead.
If you believe either of those things are the case, then you probably should have led with that, as that would have been more relevant to the OP.
That’s why I said superficially.
But what do you mean by that? Are you saying that they say one thing and do another?
I can’t think of any good examples of that, mostly the normal political compromise that is always necessary (and particularly against an obstructionist GOP).
Do you have an example in mind of Dems misleading supporters?
Yeah. Regarding the OP, I think the main issue is that Republicans as a party have abandoned even the pretense of having a governing agenda. I don’t know whether that should be read as more “stupid” or “evil”, but ISTM that the chief problem with it is that it’s basically just giving up on being a political party.
Very good post. There’s a straight line from the posh musings of William Buckley to the angry rantings of Rush Limbaugh. Both shared the same fundamental points of view about conservatism.
I can never get past Buckley opposing the Civil Rights Act, writing that superior (white) culture must prevail if outnumbered at the voting booths.
I don’t think conservatives have ever rejected that idea in their minds.
[snip]
Yeah, what msmith537 said. Each camp has its rational premises as well as its less rational blind spots, and while I’m partisan, I think it’s important to look at the thought processes shared and embedded in the other camp’s perspectives and then use those to critique the echo chamber patter we’re surrounded by in our own world.
Yes, that’s why I insist on dating the turn toward evil to the 1950s, and not to more recent events.
Buckley and Goldwater and their ilk worked feverishly to drive the liberal Republicans out of the party. They made being a Rockefeller Republican a point of dishonor. That destroyed a mitigating force in the party. As the center of the party moved rightward, it allowed later actors to chip away at the moderates and anyone who was not voting along moral lines.
The center of the party today is what used to be called far right, and the loudest voices are from the unhinged right. (We need new political terms to describe broad party behavior that used to limited to a few fringe demagogues.)
Nothing comparable on taken place on the left. The Democrats are spread across the center, left, and progressive wings and each seems to have a veto over the other two, allowing for no action. People frequently talk about wanting more parties or a parliamentary system. But we now have essentially the equivalent, and the result is, as in so many other countries, an inability to get anything done. It’s hard to counter what is closing in on a single-minded Republican theocracy that way.
Good points but we have a corporate right wing in the party, too!
Who would you describe as the “powerful left”?
If you mean people like Biden, he is a centrist. There is no powerful left in this country. There hasn’t been for decades.
Rejected that idea?
I don’t think that it has ever stopped being their primary motivation.
Apparently, policies like universal health care and more representative election systems are superficially virtuous and only mask the Great Power Grab by the socialist left.
I knew it.
If only that was the extent of the reality of the consequences of the ideology of the left. In addition to what you listed which lack any details we also have coming from the left asinine and counterproductive policy such as eliminating standardized testing, the promotion of mass protests during a pandemic, decriminalizing theft, eliminating standards for graduation, promotion of segregation, and the systematic redefinition of words and concepts. All in the name of so-called group equity which is in itself motivated by bigotry.
And if you don’t think that the left’s pushing of this lunacy is having a counterproductive effect that the public is finally waking up to you are in for a surprise in 2022.
Ach, we lefties are a nefarious lot.