# Do Conservatives Understand That Liberals Don't Really Like Government Spending? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 8, 2013, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-conservatives-understand-that-liberals-dont-really-like-government-spending/652428 "2013-03-08T21:09:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 111
**Author:** ![IClaudius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c37758/32.png) [@IClaudius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IClaudius)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2013, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-conservatives-understand-that-liberals-dont-really-like-government-spending/652428/111 "2013-03-12T03:47:37Z")
The idea in the OP is a nonsense contention of course which defies the charitable principle that we must take ideas seriously and characterise them in their most robust and defensible form. Only the weak-minded attack ideas in their inferior genus, whether that means a real poor-man version of something or a confected strawman. The only reason a serious minded person might propose such a silly idea is if they are genuinely confused about liberalism. For liberalism is a big tent, which admits of many mutually incompatible visions of a good life and human flourishing. This naturally means it contains voices calling for mutually incompatible programs which might necessitate trade-offs in spending. That has nothing to do with spending for spending sake - it simply means liberalism defers to democratic process to resolve these prioritisation issues and doesn’t assign priorities from first principles. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-conservatives-understand-that-liberals-dont-really-like-government-spending/652428)._