That is, this thread, but without the hateful vitriol.
It’s an interesting thought. Personally, I’m inclined to believe it, since that’s what conservative means.
Define conservative.
Someone in the Republican Party.
That’s a huge variety of people, the only thing in common with all of them is their membership to that party.
I think ‘less willing’ isn’t the correct phrase. I think ‘more cautious’ is apt.
It’s not that conservatives are against a lot of things in principal, it’s just that they tend to see drawbacks and side effects and are more concerned with them than liberals tend to be.
Any number of issues, like health care, social programs, etc. It’s not that conservatives don’t want to help people, its that its very easy to set something up that isn’t sustainable, and everybody will lose out.
That sets up the classic argument of liberals crying “Won’t you think of the ‘x’!” and conservatives answering “How we gonna pay for all that?” or “Yeah, but what happens when ‘y’ starts happening to all of the ‘x’ because of this?”
Not every new idea is a good idea, and history has confirmed that over and over.
Are Conservatives less willing to rethink their ideas?
No. All the new ideas of the last few years - school vouchers, free trade, tax cuts to stimulate revenue, privatization for Social Security, cap-and-trade for emissions, etc. - are all conservative ideas.
Liberals are the ones who are stuck in the past.
As long as we are throwing around gross over-generalizations…
Regards,
Shodan
Conservatives and liberals are exactly the same, just with different pet beliefs. So no, they’re no less willing to rethink than a liberal is. And a liberal is completely unwilling to rethink.
There’s a reason I don’t like either.
Most people are unwilling to rethink their ideas. Most people also think they are more willing to rethink their ideas than other people - much as most people think they are above average drivers. It follows that it will appear to liberals that conservatives are less willing to rethink their ideas, and vice versa.
Now just try to convince me otherwise!!
In an episode of This American Life* there was a mention of a study about conservatives vs liberals and their reaction to refutation of beliefs. Both sides are equally likely to have beliefs unsupported by the facts BUT when presented with evidence to refute the false beliefs, conservatives were far more likely to assert the original belief more strongly despite the evidence to the contrary. I’d love to see the details behind the study - it was only mentioned in passing on the show, in the context of people trying to convince voters to choose their candidate during the election - but it certainly matches up with my (anecdotal) experience.
My Completely Unscientific and Overgeneralised Theory: the issue may lie not with intelligence or political preference but with ways of thinking. Conservatives are more likely to be absolutist in their views - “there is one right way of thinking, and it is the way that I and mine think.” But liberals fall (very broadly) into two camps: an absolutist group, who think in the same way that the conservatives do but with different values and priorities, and a relativist group who think “there are many different viewpoints and lifestyles and different ones may be better than others in different contexts”. The former are as likely as the conservatives to stick to false but fervently-held worldviews. The latter are more fluid; they may be wishy-washy and dithering but are more likely and able to adjust their worldview in the face of new evidence.
The “liberal media” are more likely to fall into the latter category: an episode of NPR’s Weekend Edition for example may discuss a lot of different cultures and political views. The absolutist liberals are much less likely to get much traction in the news media as neither the other group of liberals nor the conservatives would want to watch/listen, although they are probably over-represented in Hollywood. And then there’s the party-line approach of FoxNews, which boils down to: our viewpoint is the correct one, and all opposing views are misguided and/or evil.
None of which says anything about whether any of those groups, or any specific member of those groups, can automatically be assumed to be (un)intelligent or (in)correct in any particular argument. My anecdotal experience has also found that the distribution of boneheaded idiots is pretty even across all political, racial, cultural and religious spectra.
- note inherent liberal bias
I do not see it like that at all. Broadly speaking I find conservatives to be much more dogmatic than liberals. Indeed I saw this as part of the problem of why liberals were having such a hard time opposing conservative initiatives. Conservatives were much better at presenting a united front, standing shoulder to shoulder to push an agenda. Liberals tend to see more nuance and gray areas and thus have a harder time all getting on the same page and working together.
So while conservatives may spout “Unions are bad” or “Tax cuts are good” or what have you liberals tend to be more “It depends”.
Conservatives tend to hold the position that things were ok before we started doing X, lets stop doing ‘X’ and everything will be ok. Whether the topic is welfare, abortion, affirmative action, gay marriage, gun registration or religion the Conservative solution is to attack the proposed solution and not the problem those solutions were implemented to correct. That view does not promote forward thinking.
Conservatives look back on a Donna Reed past that never was.
See, the interesting part of this discussion, to me, is that I’m actually willing to think about Shodan’s thesis here, and entertain the notion that school vouchers represent a “new idea” and so on, before I dismiss it out of hand. (“The government should pay people to send their kids to a church-affiliated school” is a new idea? Okay, I’ll consider that. Hmmm…“how about a new technique for dealing with a centuries-old position of incorporating religion itnto public education”?) I find it interesting (even though I end up feeling my time has been wasted usually) considering such ideas because I like ideas, and I like having them, and thinking about other people’s ideas, and refining my own. Conservatives OTOH act like they were born with their ideas chiseled into their foreheads, and the less thinking they do about subtle concepts, the happier they feel.
For a good idea ofwhat many conservatives are thinking, and what many American conservatives are saying take a cursory look at the Hannity Boards. It’s not really scary in that there are some good folks there, but I went there right after the election to see if there was a thermal nuclear meltdown or anything, and it was very sad reading some of the comments.
Many of the conservative ideals of small government, let the people alone, pick yourself up by the bootstraps and don’t bail us out are augmented by a seeming hatred for any form of change. Calling Obama a marxist pig doesn’t help their plight either…but then I try and stay away from groups who express such vitriol.
Don’t forget Ronald Reagan is God to many of these people as well.
I think that’s because conservatives think things through more thoroughly, and when they present an idea, it’s got a lot of solid footing already based on sound reasoning. It’s easy to get on board with an idea when it’s well thought out, and conservatives seem to be better at accommodating different schools of thought within the ideology in order to build a consensus.
On the other hand, many liberal ideas are spur of the moment. “Let’s fix healthcare!” “How?”, “Government will pay for it!”. Lack of fore thought and handwaving away problems makes it hard to build support for ideas accross the different ideologies within liberalism. The result is that fragmented support, unless you resort to the lowest common denominator.
Of course there are no drawbacks and side-effects when it comes to an issue like gay marriage. And although there are drawbacks and side-effects to embracing a value system that condones premarital sex, their opposition to the remedies makes it clear that their objection goes deeper than that. They see “traditional values” as underpinning a “fabric of society” that is deeply mysterious and involves supernatural forces on some level. So the conservative position on these sorts of issues can only be described as superstition.
Free trade was invented by a Conservative in the last few years? Are you sure he didn’t just read a book by Adam Smith or something. And Conservatives also invented tax cuts?
I’ll grant you Conservatives did in fact invent the idea of privatization for Social Security, but you only get credit for good ideas.
What different schools or thought are you talking about? If they were really different schools of thought it’d be a moderate agenda.
Ahhh, you added the ‘ideology’ part, and therin lies the rub. If all members march to the same beat they appear uniform, then become uniform.
Huh?
Do you honestly think that? That apparently liberals are actually all stupid and incapable of thinking through an idea? That they wake up one morning, run to Congress and propose a one sentence bill that says, “Free healthcare for everyone!” and just expect it to work somehow?
Your assertion is so absurd I hardly know where to begin. I guarantee you there are smart people on both sides of the aisle and I see nothing to suggest one side or the other lacks forethought.
Further, and I’ll have to look it up (did it in another thread around here a few months ago) the US economy has prospered more under liberal presidents than conservative ones. Add to that the last conservative revolution we just came out of saw an expansion of government far in excess of anything that has come before (maybe the New Deal was bigger). So who is it that is thinking things through again?
Whatever you do, don’t go onto the conservative message boards, your blood pressure will skyrocket. Sinaijon’s assertion is tame compared to what I’ve seen on some conservative boards [see my link up thread]. I’d like to see those cites you mention in your last paragraph - they would undoubtedly make good talking points when I am around my conservative in-laws. Uhg.
Yeah, good luck with that.