# Beliefs that liberals and conservatives have about each other, that would be agreed on as accurate **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [October 25, 2019, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beliefs-that-liberals-and-conservatives-have-about-each-other-that-would-be-agreed-on-as-accurate/842273 "2019-10-25T13:32:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Lance\_Turbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lance_turbo/32/6156_2.png) [@Lance\_Turbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lance_Turbo)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2019, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beliefs-that-liberals-and-conservatives-have-about-each-other-that-would-be-agreed-on-as-accurate/842273/21 "2019-10-26T15:19:42Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > Now she’s accusing [all sorts](https://www.thedailybeast.com/hillary-clinton-appears-to-claim-russians-grooming-tulsi-gabbard-to-run-as-third-party-candidate) [of people](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/green-party-hillary-clinton-jill-stein-russian-asset-901008/) of being Russian assets. That’s one sort of person. The Russian asset sort. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2019, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beliefs-that-liberals-and-conservatives-have-about-each-other-that-would-be-agreed-on-as-accurate/842273/22 "2019-10-26T17:34:52Z")
> [@Lance\_Turbo](#): > > That’s one sort of person. The Russian asset sort. I hope you can one day realize how crazy this sounds. Hillary Clinton is nuts. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2019, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beliefs-that-liberals-and-conservatives-have-about-each-other-that-would-be-agreed-on-as-accurate/842273/23 "2019-10-26T17:43:56Z")
> [@Flyer](#): > > There’s a right way and a wrong way to do things. > > If you say that you would like to eliminate recidivism, and I agree with your goal, and I propose the mechanism of doing to by executing every single person convicted of any type of crime– > Are you for or against that goal if you oppose that particular mechanism? > > You have to admit that that mechanism would be spectacularly effective. But would it be morally right? Is effectiveness the ONLY consideration when determining a course of action? Thats a valid counterpoint. However when looked at objectively, conservatives seem to more care about stopping abortion after pregnancy than they are about stopping the unwanted pregnancy in the first place. Also conservative efforts to stop abortion mostly target those low in socio-economic status. Middle class, educated people can always get abortions. THey take time off work and drive to another state with legal abortions. It is young people, poorly educated people, poor people, etc. who can’t go to nearby states to get abortions. So arguably in practice conservatives are opposed to abortion among low SES people more than against abortion itself because that is what their beliefs translate into real life. But then again, any stressor is going to be worse for low SES people and maybe abortion is no different. Also according to the book ‘everybody lies’ which is about large scale internet data, in states with more strict abortion laws there aren’t more births as you would expect. If abortion is harder to get and there are fewer abortions, you’d assume there would be more births. What there are more of are google searches for how to terminate a pregnancy at home. So strict abortion laws don’t lead to more births, they lead to more women terminating their pregnancy at home. > **[Google search data shows “a crisis of self-induced abortions”](https://kottke.org/17/06/google-search-data-shows-a-crisis-of-self-induced-abortions)** > > For his book Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are, Seth Stephens-Davidowi Overall its hard to look at the conservative stance on abortion as being about anything other than a proxy for something else (controlling women, especially disadvantaged women) since it has very little to do with abortion itself. The conservative stance on abortion eschews proven ways to prevent the need for abortions in the first place, it mostly penalizes poor and young women (while allowing wealthier, more educated women to still get abortions) and it just replaces medical abortions with at home abortions. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2019, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beliefs-that-liberals-and-conservatives-have-about-each-other-that-would-be-agreed-on-as-accurate/842273/24 "2019-10-26T17:48:44Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > I hope you can one day realize how crazy this sounds. Hillary Clinton is nuts. Not really, it is more political animosity, but there are items that do not come form the imagination of Hillary. [https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/23/tulsi-gabbard-hillary-clinton-dispute-054398](https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/23/tulsi-gabbard-hillary-clinton-dispute-054398) > [@](#): > > The interference by Russia’s Internet Research Agency and other actors was chronicled in both an indictment of Russian operatives and Senate Intelligence Committee reports that showed how the foreign government used social media platforms to spread disinformation and negative information about Clinton, sometimes by boosting Trump or her other opponents. > > Bill Browder, a financier and an activist who has run afoul of Putin, said he thought it is no coincidence that Gabbard recently hired an operative who had worked with a Kremlin-backed lawyer who smeared him because he helped secure the passage of the Magnitsky Act. That law imposed sanctions on Russia in reaction to the death of Sergei Magnitsky, Browder’s lawyer and friend, after whom the law is named. > > “Out of all the thousands of people she could have chosen, she happened to choose the one who had first-hand experience working with a Russian agent of Vladimir Putin’s,” Browder said of Gabbard. “I don’t believe in coincidences. It’s less likely to be a coincidence when you look at her policies, which are the same policy as Putin’s: pro-Assad, anti-gay and pro-Trump.” ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2019, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beliefs-that-liberals-and-conservatives-have-about-each-other-that-would-be-agreed-on-as-accurate/842273/25 "2019-10-26T19:08:07Z")
I’ll chip in another one: Many - if not nearly all - liberals define “equality” as something akin to _“achieving equal results”_ - not necessarily \*exactly \*equal, but moving towards that direction (as opposed to “equal treatment regardless of circumstances and background.”) This is why many liberals ascribe to a “punch-up vs. punch-down” mindset, which is that they consider jokes made at the expense of black people to be different than jokes made at the expense of white people, for instance (or jokes about men vs. jokes about women), because they consider one group to occupy a higher perch in society than the other (having more privilege,) and so if jokes are made at the expense of the less-privileged group, that exacerbates the inequality. (This does not necessarily mean that liberals like jokes being made at the expense of a privileged group, but they consider it much less offensive than if made at the expense of a disadvantaged group.) ---
**Author:** ![RioRico](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f04885/32.png) [@RioRico](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RioRico)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2019, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beliefs-that-liberals-and-conservatives-have-about-each-other-that-would-be-agreed-on-as-accurate/842273/26 "2019-10-26T22:18:12Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > I don’t see how you can say liberal views on Russia haven’t changed. In 2012 Obama mocked Romney for calling Russia our “number one geopolitical foe”, to a great deal of liberal applause. In 2009 [Hillary Clinton gave Russia her famous “reset button”](https://img.thedailybeast.com/image/upload/c_crop,d_placeholder_euli9k,h_1439,w_2560,x_0,y_0/dpr_1.5/c_limit,w_1044/fl_lossy,q_auto/v1492201512/articles/2014/03/04/as-ukraine-rages-gop-fires-on-hillary-for-failed-reset/140303-freedlander-reset-tease_evpx2t). Now she’s accusing [all sorts](https://www.thedailybeast.com/hillary-clinton-appears-to-claim-russians-grooming-tulsi-gabbard-to-run-as-third-party-candidate) [of people](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/green-party-hillary-clinton-jill-stein-russian-asset-901008/) of being Russian assets. Whataboutism won’t serve you well. I don’t see liberal politicians sucking-up to Putin, unlike most GOP politicos. Anyway, Obama and Hillary are both corporate whores. What did their soulless masters think would be beneficial at the time? “The opposite of liberal is not conservative, but enslaved.” ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2019, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beliefs-that-liberals-and-conservatives-have-about-each-other-that-would-be-agreed-on-as-accurate/842273/27 "2019-10-26T23:04:37Z")
> [@RioRico](#): > > “The opposite of liberal is not conservative, but enslaved.” I like this, but enslaved should be replaced with “a slaver” or “a plantation owner”, or something like that, IMO. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Bravo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_bravo/32/493_2.png) [@Johnny\_Bravo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Bravo)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2019, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beliefs-that-liberals-and-conservatives-have-about-each-other-that-would-be-agreed-on-as-accurate/842273/28 "2019-10-27T00:41:54Z")
How about this one: Conservatives believe that prosperity and poverty are, by and large, the results of personal choices and not outside forces. ---
**Author:** ![Lance\_Turbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lance_turbo/32/6156_2.png) [@Lance\_Turbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lance_Turbo)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2019, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beliefs-that-liberals-and-conservatives-have-about-each-other-that-would-be-agreed-on-as-accurate/842273/29 "2019-10-27T01:46:10Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > I hope you can one day realize how crazy this sounds. Hillary Clinton is nuts. Hillary Clinton may be nuts, but not about this. Both Stein and Gabbard are straighforwardly Russian assets by any reasonable definition. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2019, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beliefs-that-liberals-and-conservatives-have-about-each-other-that-would-be-agreed-on-as-accurate/842273/30 "2019-10-27T02:51:25Z")
> [@Johnny\_Bravo](#): > > How about this one: > > Conservatives believe that prosperity and poverty are, by and large, the results of personal choices and not outside forces. Yeah I think this describes upwards of 90%, maybe 95% of conservatives. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2019, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beliefs-that-liberals-and-conservatives-have-about-each-other-that-would-be-agreed-on-as-accurate/842273/31 "2019-10-27T03:31:17Z")
> [@Johnny\_Bravo](#): > > How about this one: > > Conservatives believe that prosperity and poverty are, by and large, the results of personal choices and not outside forces. I think thats probably fair, meanwhile liberals think prosperity and poverty are a mix of factors within the control of the individual as well as forces outside the control of the individual (cultural issues, racial issues, economic issues, etc). ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2019, 12:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beliefs-that-liberals-and-conservatives-have-about-each-other-that-would-be-agreed-on-as-accurate/842273/32 "2019-10-27T12:21:28Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > I hope you can one day realize how crazy this sounds. Hillary Clinton is nuts. Hey, I realize how crazy the above sounds already. What do I win? 😃 Anyone who has a good word to say about Donald Trump, yet says Hillary is nuts - what color is the sky, etc. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2019, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beliefs-that-liberals-and-conservatives-have-about-each-other-that-would-be-agreed-on-as-accurate/842273/33 "2019-10-27T13:15:52Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > I don’t see how you can say liberal views on Russia haven’t changed. In 2012 Obama mocked Romney for calling Russia our “number one geopolitical foe”, to a great deal of liberal applause. In 2009 [Hillary Clinton gave Russia her famous “reset button”](https://img.thedailybeast.com/image/upload/c_crop,d_placeholder_euli9k,h_1439,w_2560,x_0,y_0/dpr_1.5/c_limit,w_1044/fl_lossy,q_auto/v1492201512/articles/2014/03/04/as-ukraine-rages-gop-fires-on-hillary-for-failed-reset/140303-freedlander-reset-tease_evpx2t). Now she’s accusing [all sorts](https://www.thedailybeast.com/hillary-clinton-appears-to-claim-russians-grooming-tulsi-gabbard-to-run-as-third-party-candidate) [of people](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/green-party-hillary-clinton-jill-stein-russian-asset-901008/) of being Russian assets. The fact is, Russia wasn’t much of a threat in 2012, and still wouldn’t be, without a lot of Western help. We’re a long way from the days when our military was constantly on alert against the threat that Soviet tanks would roll across Western Europe. Today, a much-weakened Russian military would have its work cut out for it to reclaim the countries that used to be parts of the USSR, and the Warsaw Pact nations are beyond its reach. What little Russia can do is either in its own backyard, too far from areas controlled by NATO (e.g. Crimea, Ossettia) for us to do much about it, or by having Russian assets in control of Western militaries cause those militaries to abandon the field to the Russians in local/regional conflicts where other parties have invited the Russians in. (E.g. Syria.) Absent the handiwork of Russian assets - Trump and the GOP in the U.S. especially - the Russians wouldn’t be much of a geopolitical threat even now. But those assets are enabling the Russians to be a much greater threat than they would otherwise be. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2019, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beliefs-that-liberals-and-conservatives-have-about-each-other-that-would-be-agreed-on-as-accurate/842273/34 "2019-10-27T20:55:02Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > I think thats probably fair, meanwhile liberals think prosperity and poverty are a mix of factors within the control of the individual as well as forces outside the control of the individual (cultural issues, racial issues, economic issues, etc). And just plain luck. The November Scientific American has a fascinating article on the role of luck. They use an admittedly unrealistic model of society, so this is just a suggestion. On the other hand, I know from my own life that I had a couple of pieces of blind luck that got me started. One of them led me to going to college. ---
**Author:** ![sps49sd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@sps49sd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sps49sd)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2019, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beliefs-that-liberals-and-conservatives-have-about-each-other-that-would-be-agreed-on-as-accurate/842273/35 "2019-10-27T23:13:33Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > Some years ago, the Republican legislature passed a very strong voter ID law and some Republican politician remarked that this would guarantee Republican control of the state for the foreseeable future. The law was thrown out. In Canada we have voter ID laws, but everyone has the necessary ID (a health card) and I never had to show a birth certificate get it. What makes the ID laws inimical is that their purpose is to deny voting to eligible voters. Canadian voter ID doesn’t deny voting to eligible voters? Why do USA voter ID laws deny voting to eligible voters? > [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > I think we all agree that Dems would take away assault weapons. I cannot think think of a single acceptable civilian use for such weapons. What is an assault weapon? We need to have the terms understood for any debate. > [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > Democrats believe that health care is the government’s legitimate business. I think Republicans believe it isn’t. When ans why did it become the gov’t’s business? The push lately feels to me like ‘vote us into office and we’ll give you free stuff’. > [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > Republicans believe that life starts at conception. Dems that it starts with quickening. This is too complex for me to go into here. I acknowledge it is simpler for many. > [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > Dems believe that global warming is real, is human caused and we are running out of time to do something about it. Reps think it is a fiction and, in any case, not our responsibility to do anything about it. Whether one believes in climate change or not, I don’t think the world will significantly reduce it’s use of fossil fuels. And agreements giving carveouts to nations are not going to convine many- if it’s a problem, then why the carveouts? ---
**Author:** ![sps49sd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@sps49sd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sps49sd)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2019, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beliefs-that-liberals-and-conservatives-have-about-each-other-that-would-be-agreed-on-as-accurate/842273/36 "2019-10-27T23:17:50Z")
> [@RioRico](#): > > I don’t see liberal politicians sucking-up to (the USSR). They have before, and the ‘reset button’ was basically ‘we’ll give you a pass on everything you’ve done up until now’. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2019, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beliefs-that-liberals-and-conservatives-have-about-each-other-that-would-be-agreed-on-as-accurate/842273/37 "2019-10-28T00:51:43Z")
> [@sps49sd](#): > > Whether one believes in climate change or not I’d be all LMAO if this weren’t so serious. ---
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2019, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beliefs-that-liberals-and-conservatives-have-about-each-other-that-would-be-agreed-on-as-accurate/842273/38 "2019-10-28T03:23:39Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > I like this, but enslaved should be replaced with “a slaver” or “a plantation owner”, or something like that, IMO. You think the opposite of liberal is a slaver or plantation owner? Not really surprised but uhh, yeah okay. From my view, the responses in this thread are pretty much par for the course, with each side not understanding the other very well. Or maybe it’s me, but most of what has been offered seems like poor caricatures. The only saving grace is there are so many flavors of folks that a single label tends to not work very well. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2019, 10:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beliefs-that-liberals-and-conservatives-have-about-each-other-that-would-be-agreed-on-as-accurate/842273/39 "2019-10-28T10:15:07Z")
> [@Bone](#): > > You think the opposite of liberal is a slaver or plantation owner? Not really surprised but uhh, yeah okay. Sort of – at least I see my own views as pretty much the opposite of a slaver/plantation owner. I like it because it sounds good, even if it’s a bit of a juvenile summation that isn’t much more than a quip. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2019, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beliefs-that-liberals-and-conservatives-have-about-each-other-that-would-be-agreed-on-as-accurate/842273/40 "2019-10-28T14:57:59Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > Sort of – at least I see my own views as pretty much the opposite of a slaver/plantation owner. I like it because it sounds good, even if it’s a bit of a juvenile summation that isn’t much more than a quip. But is that how the opposite-of-a-liberal person would see themselves - would they agree that they are a slaver/plantation owner? That’s what this thread is about. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beliefs-that-liberals-and-conservatives-have-about-each-other-that-would-be-agreed-on-as-accurate/842273.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beliefs-that-liberals-and-conservatives-have-about-each-other-that-would-be-agreed-on-as-accurate/842273.md?page=3)