What is accepted as axiomatic with regards to morality combined with the intellect and education to apply logic to those axioms is all the difference. And that’s just the differences due to base principles and reason. Humans are also irrational.
Ok, I can’t disagree because I don’t know what you are saying, except for the last part which is the crux of it. People aren’t tied to the principles they espouse, they’re situational whether or not they admit it. For the case of individual responsibility vs. government assistance it comes down to who receives the benefit and how. Motives are associated with those positions, not simply principles.
I appreciate the long response, but I don’t believe your assertions about the assumptions of Democrats or liberals are accurate. At least, they’re generally not accurate for me. I don’t believe that “if the poor only had a bit more they’d be able to crawl out from the bottom…” – I believe, just like you, that with more resources, some poor folks would succeed and others would not – we just probably disagree on, roughly, the proportion of one group to the other. Further, I don’t believe in such a generality as “empowering the government to do as it wishes to solves problems will solve problems” – I believe that the government is sometimes the best or least bad choice to address certain problems, and sometimes it is not. Again, we probably just disagree on some of the particulars of this (while agreeing on many as well) – I might believe that the government would or could provide better health care than the private sector (and you might believe the opposite), while we both believe that the government provides the best service in terms of fighting fires, enforcing laws, and providing national defense, and we both believe that the private sector provides the best service in terms of great sushi, consumer electronics, haircuts and styling, and much more.
My main driver for opening this thread is that I believe that so many discussions result in talking past each other, because many liberals don’t understand what conservatives believe, and many conservatives don’t understand what liberals believe, and I wanted a non-confrontational thread to try and help correct this. Hopefully this will help you and others (including myself) have a better idea of what people who disagree with you actually believe, since misconceptions are so common.
You said “I believe that most conservatives believe that… poor people… would prefer bare-sustainment (poverty level) government support than working for lower-middle-class pay”
I then asked if you believed that people would stay home and not work if you paid them enough money, and you said yes. Isn’t that a conservative postion?
More like:
Conservative: It’s everyone’s right and obligation to thrive or perish by whatever means they have. That’s the law of the jungle and always has been.
*Liberal: * We don’t live in jungles any more.
Closely related to that:
Conservative: There’s no such thing as “unfairness”. Life has its ups and downs but ultimately everyone is the architect of their own destiny.
Liberal: No, there’s all kinds of bad luck and sometimes it starts at birth. A civilized society understands that it’s in everyone’s interest to ensure opportunity for achievers, a dignified and productive life for the less capable, and empathy for the disadvantaged.
Interesting topic. I’ve wondered the same thing. In my opinion liberals and conservatives have differing structures of thought process. The Republican party has always seemed to me a strong, United and powerful party. Its members ignoring some of their own ideals for the greater good and accepting that somewhere down the line their own calls may be addressed. Conservatives typically think in terms of one size fits all and if it doesn’t than there is some sort of advantage/ disadvantage dynamic, which is unacceptable. A natural hierarchy is formed and adhered to because those who’ve made it to the top deserved it and equally those who occupy the bottom deserve it. Of course they pander to societal movements just as the left, only theirs tend to be established social orders, religions, etc… Conservatives do not typically want change unless it is change to a real or imaginary idyllic past. Big government is the enemy because it has the means to not only create but destroy and could become too powerful. The focus is usually economic advantage.
The democratic party on the other hand doesn’t seem united. They seem more a patchwork of smaller subgroups who will support and incorporate each other’s mission. They may not get their calls answered right away but they will support the party trusting that someday they will have their calls met too. Liberals do not think in terms of tradition, and the idyllic past was never lost because it never existed. Questions are confronted on a more complex level and one size fits all is rarely true. Solutions are less cut and dry as conservatives, who’s one size fits all plan doesn’t account for societies’ own effects. Big business is the enemy because it can become too powerful and the public can lose the means to control it. The focus is social harmony.
I’m independent because I feel at different times that both sides are needed.
The only two overarching philosophical differences I have read that I believe help explain liberal vs conservative views are city vs country and hunter vs farmer. They are somewhat similar but city vs country is richer.
The hunter vs farmer way of seeing society is easiest to explain. In Hunter society everyone in the group goes out hunting for game. Because hunting is hard and game animals are unpredictable on most days most people kill nothing. It is not their fault that the game animals just chose not to walk in front of them that day. On certain days the game will walk in front of them and provide them with more meat than they can eat. Skill and hard work plays some part in success but it is mostly luck. The optimal strategy is then for all the hunters to pool their kills after the hunt. That way an extended period of bad luck does not mean starvation. A societal problem with this is that some hunters may come to get their share when they are unlucky but refuse to share when they make a kill. Thus people who don’t share are hurting everyone else and being selfish and should be villified.
In Farmer society everyone has a plot of land and works it for the best crop. The harder a farmer works then the better the harvest is. A farmer that plants more acres works harder but then harvest more crops. If a farmer does not have enough to eat then they didn’t plant enough acres. Some luck is involved with weather and soil fertility but for the most part if you work hard you eat good. The societal problem is theft, people being too lazy to work and then breaking into other people’s barns and stealing the stored crops because farming is too hard work to do if someone else is going to be taking the crops and if theft is a problem people will plant less crops and instead work on securing their barns.
Liberals think that modern society is like a hunter society, An example of this is acting which is a famously liberal profession where the actors are either out of work for long periods of time or making a great living starring in movies and most of the reason is not acting ability but the vagaries of the casting process.
Conservatives think that modern society is like a farmer society. An example of this is small business owners where most people don’t get rich but if you work hard enough you can make a good living.
I don’t believe that the terms liberal, Democrat, Republican, and conservative are honestly all that useful in discussions of fundamentals due to the fact that the labels in terms of political spectrum are overly simplified mono-axis and poorly defined and the party labels represent huge coalitions. So when a critique is made of one of these labels millions that self identify with that particular label can quite honestly say that that critique does not apply to them. Discussion is difficult due to the large amount of qualifiers necessary in order to be accurate.
I know a lot of self identifying liberals and most liberals I know are good people. And their point of views on many subjects are all over the place but they think of themselves as liberal and tend to vote Democratic maybe because of one or two key issues. Or they grew up in a place where the majority were a particular party just out of tradition or for local political reasons. I don’t even know if they have a core set of axiomatic values or even have thought about that concept.
On the flip side with regards to what conservatives, Democrats, Republicans, or liberals believe we can only speak anecdotally as well. I can’t speak for conservatives or Republicans even though that’s how I self-identify because I’m aware that not only do I break from many of the preconceptions of those labels many that I know that self-identify the same way do so as well but in different manner.
TLDR version, these labels encompass so much diversity and some of it is mere tribal affiliation and branding that’s it’s hard to accurately list the fundamentals.
So speaking purely for me my assumption is that might makes right. In order to live in a world where might makes right it helps to form associations with others. In order to avoid being predated upon it is of vast utility to promote the idea that individual rights are axiomatic in order to establish a framework that a system of laws can be enacted that results in a society in which we don’t have to worry about the extreme consequences of Darwinism. Following that and fearing concentration of power that can be exploited, promoting the concept that individual rights for the most part trump collective outcomes is important to me.
Now one consequence of the belief that it’s important to advocate individual rights is the idea that sovereignty derives from the aggregate of the people who cede parts of that sovereignty. Thus the legitimacy of the US Constitution. And it’s a pretty legitimate document considering the historical times it was drafted in. In the present my point of view on a subject is quite often shaped by how legitimate is the process in which that subject can be implemented combined with the outcome. For example gay marriage, I don’t have a problem with the idea of gay people marrying. I don’t have a problem with polygamists marrying. I don’t care. I do have a problem with judges creatively interpreting words to facilitate a political outcome. Therefore, if the majority of the people forbid gay marriage I can accept that. If the majority approve gay marriage I can accept that. If a judge creatively interprets something and unilaterally creates new law I have a problem even if I agree with the outcome. Now as I’ve said in a different thread I don’t feel people are entitled to know exactly why I think what I think. I think points of view don’t need a tremendous discourse on a forum to be accepted for more that what is stated. I do run into a lot of “dat’s racist!” “dat’s homophobic” and other slanders because I am loathe to put forth a disclaimer prior to a statement about a topic that is controversial.
TLDR of my fundamentals! Might makes right. Promote a concept that individuals are important and have some form of intrinsic rights. Support a government founded strongly in part on those concepts. Support the process that derives from the founding document of said government even if a desired outcome is slow in actualizing.
I disagree that these mistakes are “extremely common”.
That’s a very outdated view of today’s conservatives, at least as presently represented by the GOP. There is nothing about traditional conservatism there except the occasional hypocritical bleat about “family values”, and it would be unrecognizable and alien to the conservatives of that idyllic past. What we have today is Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, the outgrowth of a couple of decades of rampaging lunatics that want to shut down half the government and start global wars. These are not your father’s gray-suited station wagon driving conservative suburbanites.
Uh-oh! It has begun!
Let me rephrase, to keep more in the spirit of the OP’s intent. 
When discussing the general nature of conservatism vs. liberalism, it’s worth pointing out in response to a comment like the one I responded to that today’s Republicans no longer seem to be traditional conservatives, which may or may not be relevant to the discussion. I find it striking that today’s Republicans have in fact become quite radical and, far from being resistant to change in the classic conservative fashion, are in many cases advocating sweeping changes. So one wonders from a pragmatic standpoint what party today is the classical conservative standard bearer. In traditional terms, maybe the Democrats under Hillary, while the Bernie side are the liberals.
I don’t believe the bare sustainment level that I mentioned is enough for the vast majority of people.
It seems like lots of folks assume what other folks assume.
I don’t think the Right expects the government to do the opposite of good things, i.e. bad things, but rather to do as little as absolutely necessary.
And you know what happens when you assume? 
Yep. That’s what I’m hoping to clear up, at least a little bit, in this thread.
You make an ass out of Uma Thurman?
That’s a political philosophy? I would think that everyone – right, left, or center – would expect any taxpayer funded organization to do what is necessary and no more. Are you under the impression that liberals expect governments to do way more than “necessary” just for fun?
Not for “fun”, but more than necessary? Of that I am 100% certain.