Will you be standing by all of Noam Chomsky’s positions as representative of liberalism, then? Michael Moore’s actions are fairly imputed to the cause?
I agree there’s no monolithic authority from which true liberalism flows – but neither is there such an authority on the right.
Which is exactly why one should not generalize about the positions of “conservatives,” as JThunder was doing above, without being more specific about what kind of conservatives are under discussion.
Again, I think this depends on which conservatives we’re talking about. Many conservatives in fact do not consider large amounts of economic inequity to be a bad thing, but rather the natural and unexceptionable result of a free society in action. This is reflected in the more social-Darwinist, “I worked hard and pulled myself out of poverty so they can too”-type attitudes in conservative thought. After all, despite what you (truly) say about many conservatives being involved with private charity organizations, there are also many conservatives who are not:
That’s at least 26% of all secular conservatives who neither volunteer nor donate money to charity (assuming that the secular conservatives who do fall into two totally distinct subsets, which is unlikely; if the subsets aren’t distinct, then the percentage of conservative non-donating non-volunteers is higher). And that’s according to the findings of the conservative Heritage Foundation. Clearly, it is not accurate to assert that conservatives in general, or all conservatives, believe in aiding the poor by private charity.
I think that jshore was referring to a strong conservative tendency (again, not among all conservatives) to treat the environment plus the economy as a zero-sum game.
In other words, many conservatives automatically (and simplistically) assume that environmental protections necessarily have a negative economic impact, and therefore must be traded off against economic performance. This assumption is contradicted by many instances where environmental regulations actually produce improved economic performance.
Once again, though, we have to identify which conservatives we’re talking about before we can apply such a statement accurately. There are quite a few pro-environment conservatives who don’t make the simplistic assumption that environmental protection and economic performance always work against each other.
Progressivism as equating to the early 20th century political movement does have a lot in common with conservative.
“You keep using that word . . . I don’t think it means what you think it does…”
That’s not correct, I know what the word means, the problem is the word has multiple correct definitions and multiple connotations. Even progressive philosophy has different meanings given the time period in which you are talking about and the context.
One defintion of progressive and one definition of conservative are certainly very similar.
Sometimes one must generalize or any debate you attempt to have will just break down into lengthy discourses on semantics and no actual debate will occur.
As much as you may like the idea of starting a new thread for every single point of contention, I’m not sure that’s feasible.
As Martin Hyde said, we should be able to generalize without emphasizing all the exceptions to these generalizations.
Besides, I didn’t see you complain when alaricthegoth described the right-wing paradigm as “essentially competitive, zero-sum, scarcity based, uses tokens of worldly success to ameliorate the essential tension that afflicts human beings” and so forth, and so on. (Remember, it was his post to which I was responding.)
Or when jshore said that conservatves only regard economics to be a non-zero-sum game “when they want to justify giving more tax breaks to the wealthy.” Or when he said that conservatives see no inherent advantage to curbing inequity.
I guess it’s only wrong to generalize about conservatives when speaking about them in non-derogatory terms, eh?
No, sir. I am very familiar with the early-20th-Century American Progressive movement (as embodied by Teddy Roosevelt, etc.). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Era:
Which has absolutely nothing whatsoever in common with any of the several “conservative” tendencies (neoconservative, paleoconservative, religious conservative, business-conservative, or libertarian) active in America in the early 21st Century.
I find it interesting that every example that you give of conservatives helping the poor are examples of trivial bandaid efforts not really designed to change anything or help anyone in any structural sense, but merely to alleviate the worst symptoms while leaving the basic illness in place.
Can you be more specific? What exactly is this “basic illness” of whch you speak?
I, for one, do not accept your claim. Many of these charities also provide education, housing and other resources that help people avoid lives of crime and poverty. That’s far more than just being a “trivial bandaid,” IMO.
Moreover, that was just a brief sampling of conservative humanitarian efforts. Conservatives also fund education and scholarships, for example, which is one of the best ways to help people rise up from the muck. In addition, a great many religious conservatives are involved in Third World relief efforts, providing medical and educational assistance to the people who need it most. Have these kind-hearted souls succeeded in overthrowing the centuries-old structures that perpetuate poverty within these nations? Certainly not, but no reasonable individual would lay that blame at their feet.
Besidesm, even if we grant your claim, the point remains… It is untrue that conservatives “don’t see any inherent advantage to controlling the explosion of inequality.” One might argue (misguidedly, IMO) about the methods that they take to combat inequity, but this does not mean that conservatives see no value in there efforts. Such depictions are mere caricatures, and are intellectually dishonest.
Conservatives don’t think that income inequality is good, they think it’s better than the remedy socialists propose. There’s a big difference. I can wish that there was no poverty in the world, I just recognize that trying to ‘fix’ poverty through income redistribution carries so many negative side-effects that it’s a dangerous thing to do.
Conservatives are always looking for ways to help the poor, just not the ways that liberals like. Free trade, allowing ‘sweatshops’ to create infrastructure investment, education vouchers to help poor kids break out of inner city areas, etc. But most importantly, conservatives tend to believe that many government anti-poverty programs have the perverse effect of institutionalizing poverty and creating ghettos. They believe that subsidizing poverty means you get more of it. It acts as a disincentive to do the hard things that lead to real wealth creation.
An example is Atlantic Canada. We have a glut of fishermen, and far too many people living in poverty because they have seasonal jobs that don’t pay very well. So we have an extensive series of inter-provincial financial transfers and welfare/unemployment programs to ‘help’ the people. The result is that these people stay in their dead-end careers, making just above poverty incomes, rather than doing the natural thing and adapting to the conditions of the market. We have institutionalized an entire culture that lives off the dole. They are unhappy, but trapped in their circumstances and unable to change.
On a grander scale, inter-provincial transfer payments from ‘have’ to ‘have-not’ provinces prevents the have-not provinces from making changes that would result in more productivity. If every dollar of GDP growth in Nova Scotia is matched by a dollar of transfer payment reductions, they have no incentive to change and stop doing the things that aren’t working. The same thing happens on an individual level with welfare.
This is not a good result for the poor or for Canada. It limits economic growth, creates tension between the provinces, prevents capital and labor flow from nonproductive regions to productive regions, and fractures our society.
Your post was in response to one about programs to help the poor.
My comment was in response to yours, in which you mentioned only trivial bandaids. Now you claim more.
But they are only prepared to countenance this in a bandaid way. A few scholarships here, a charitably run school there. Enough to cover, say, perhaps a percent or two of people who might benefit.
Of course, a society wide form of education funding and scholarship run by an institution big enough to do the job thoroughly (ie the government) is Liberal and Bad.
That is, conservatives like to throw the poor a bone every now and then, (it’s virtuous and allows one to pat oneself on the back and consider oneself a good fellow) but an organised program of bone throwing that might actually be more than window dressing is frowned upon.
“Of course, a society wide form of education funding and scholarship run by an institution big enough to do the job thoroughly (ie the government) is Liberal and Bad.”
What, you mean like the school voucher program that liberals are always trying to shut down?
You didn’t answer my question. What is this “basic illness” of which you speak? Poverty? Of course, no single program is going to eliminate poverty altogether.
You are merely repeating your assertion that these efforts are trivial bandaids. Repeating an argument does not make it valid.
Again, it seems to me that you are complaining because conservatives have not eliminated poverty on a wide scale. Do you honestly believe that the liberal camp has succeeded in doing so? Or that they have a systematic program for accomplishing this goal?
Besides, even if only a “a percent or two” of people might benefit, that does make these efforts trivial. Are you familiar with the fallacy of the excluded middle? There is a wide range of options between “trivial bandaid” and “universal utopia.”
So again, tell me… What has the liberal camp done to eradicate poverty from the planet?
Again, you have to identify which conservatives you’re talking about (or at least attach a qualifier such as “many conservatives” or “most conservatives”) in order for such a statement to be true.
I already posted a link to and cite from a Heritage Foundation survey that indicated that at least one-quarter of self-identified “secular conservatives” do not seek to help the poor by private charity. There are indeed many conservatives who feel that poverty is a salutary punishment for laziness or bad choices, and don’t consider themselves at all obligated to “look for ways to help” such people.
Pointing out that many other conservatives think differently about poverty doesn’t change that, and doesn’t entitle you to make sweeping generalizations about the compassion and antipoverty efforts of “conservatives” as an undifferentiated monolithic group.
Since we are talking about such large and diverse notions as conservatism and liberalism, the following is going to have all the flaws one would expect from such a broad, sweeping brush. But here goes:
Conservatives are more likely to embrace the existing capitalist model of western society wholeheartedly. Corporations are the engine that drives this economic model, and so conservatives are more likely to gravitate to corporate positions so that they can participate in what they believe is the best way for them to make a career that adheres to their principles.
Liberals, on the other hand, tend to be somewhat critical and distrustful of the existing model, and in particular are often very suspicious of corporations. As a result, they are less likely to look for a corporate job and more likely to seek alternatives like academia as the place where they can best adhere to their principles.
Of course, there are many exceptions, but I think it’s a decent hypothesis to explain why there is a general tendency toward one or the other.
(Incidentally, anyone who declares that everyone on “the other side” is stupid is only displaying their own ignorance. Anyone who has actually taken the time to listen to a wide variety of people knows that there are very smart people on all sides of any contentious issue.)
This might explain why college students are so liberal, but I don’t think that’s what the thread means (Nor do I think it’s true that college students are so liberal). The thread is driving at why the professoriate leans left.
Furthermore, there is little evidence that college turns conservatives students into liberal students. It might broaden their worldview, and give them valuable exposure to populations they haven’t previously understood or cared about, but political views and philosophies don’t seem to change radically.
I’d say that their levels of bigotry tend to change radically, as with the previous anecdote of a homophobe assigned to room with a way-out camp queen. Minds get opened and views get broadened (when the shock isn’t so great as to just close them down permanently instead).
But I’d say this applies equally to the types of bigotry stereotypically associated with conservatism (e.g., racism, sexism, homophobia) and to the types stereotypically associated with liberalism (e.g., elitism, snobbery, “urbanism”). A stereotypical homophobic conservative rooming with a gay person and a stereotypical intellectual-snob liberal rooming with a rural working-class gun enthusiast are both likely to get a bunch of new impressions.
And insofar as their “political views and philosophies” are based on their prejudices, they probably will change somewhat as a result—perhaps even radically. But since most people don’t base their politics solely on their prejudices, their convictions can survive exposure to a broader worldview.
As for why professional academics (at least in the humanities) tend to lean left, it’s probably related to why professional managers and executives tend to lean right. I don’t really understand why so many people seem to think that prevailing liberalism in academia and/or the entertainment industry is somehow unnatural and/or a cause for concern, while not batting an eyelash at prevailing conservatism in the business world. I hope it’s not because such people are biased enough to feel that only conservatives are entitled to be numerically dominant in any professional sphere.
I didn’t say charity. Conservatives believe that “A rising tide lifts all boats” (note that this is antithetical to the notion of an economy as a ‘zero sum game’). Conservatives believe that free markets and free flow of capital and labor is the best way to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to provide for themselves, and that it will lead to the most economic growth, which helps everyone in the long run. The poor in the wealthy capitalist countries are vastly better off than the poor in 3rd world countries, or for that matter the poor of 50 years ago even in the rich countries. Thus, they look askance at programs that choke off economic growth in order to redistribute wealth to the poor.
Then there are those conservatives, like me, who believe that freedom is more important than fiscal equality, and therefore do not recognize the right of government to take from one person at gunpoint in order to give to someone who a politician has determined is more ‘needy’.
Also, there are conservatives (like me) who simply believe that anti-poverty programs and government protections often just backfire, because government is largely incompetent. I believe that we should not let people in our society die of hunger, or that poor children should go uneducated, or that basic health care should be denied to people who cannot afford it. But modern anti-poverty programs go much farther - they turn into entitlements for the middle class, and are co-opted by industries through regulatory capture. They reduce incentives to make the hard choices required to break out of poverty, and create ghetttos. They hurt the poor.
None of this has anything to do with which groups are more charitable.
It’s quite obvious what I was talking about. I quoted the comment of yours to which I was responding. I’ve got more pressing things to do than bandy words with someone being disingenous.
“Soup kitchens” and “homeless shelters” are band aids. They don’t make poor people any less poor, they just stop them dying. Tacitly, you recognise this because when I pointed out that you were talking about bandaids, you dropped all talk of such things and (without missing a beat) segued into provision of education which, done properly, would not be a bandaid.
I made an accurate categorisation of your original examples of conservative charity. When you switched to education, I made an accurate observation about the limited extent to which conservatives support socially funded education. Don’t pretend that by throwing rocks elsewhere you’ve diminished my points.
Agreed. Although actually I think you probably accidentally left out the word “not”, right? In which case, well, “trivial”’ is a subjective term and it depends on the context, but pardon me if I remain of the opinion that one or two percent is generally well within the range of things that might be described as trivial, and usually a very long way from “substantial”.
I am. Clearly you are not. For me to have committed the fallacy, I would have had to say something like “Conservative efforts are band-aids because they are not perfect”. Which I did not, nor anything like it.
Are you familiar with the fallacy of the “straw man”?
I’m afraid I didn’t read the whole thread; I gave up once the tit-for-tat name-calling began, so forgive me if this has already been mentioned.
the centre of American politics lies somewhere to the right of the centre of international politics; Higher education/academia/[call it what you will] links to the international academic and scientific communities; it would not be all that surprising to find that this results in a more centrist position for American academics (which only looks like a leftward lean in contrast against the general rightward lean that is prevalent in America).