This is wrong as well as misleading. Rush, Coulter, O’Reilly, Hannity, etc… have changed this dialogue. Liberals aren’t just wrong, they are ‘evil’ and ‘mentally unfit’ and ‘treasonous’ and a ‘cancer’ to many Conservatives as well as repressive and anti-Christian. Saying that Conservatives are the group with morals who respect the views of others whilst politely disagreeing is false. They are a group with their morals; anyone who doesn’t share those values is both morally suspect and personally repugnant.
Perhaps they wrap their language in slightly more polite terms in some circumstances, but to say that Conservatives as a majority inhabit some sort of moral higher ground from Liberals is just silly.
Very few of those who oppose abortion who I have talked to actually oppose it in cases of rape or incest. I don’t believe those who would allow those exceptions are opposed to abortion because it is murder. They make think it is a killing, but then the killing is legal in certain circumstances. They just want to make the decision of when such killing is allowed themselves, defining all but those narrow exceptions as murder, and I want it in the hands of the pregnant woman.
I think the reasons they want such narrow allowed circumstances vary. Most of the reasons make some sense, but many times seem hypocritical to me. It seems like those I talk to who oppose abortion for reasons of personal responsibility have often been personally irresponsible themselves and not owned up to the consequence.
Who I don’t understand are those who oppose public schools. Those who oppose any form of universally available health insurance. Those who oppose funding public transportation, especially trains, and who do not oppose spending on roads and infrastructure surrounding air travel. Those who oppose regulation of industry.
But number one on my list is the group who oppose gay marriage. All the arguments against it make no sense at all to me, or apply equally to marriage of infertile people, or marriage of ugly people.
Sam Harris makes an interesting argument in ‘The End of Faith’ that all beliefs are not equal, and the idea that all must be respected equally is PC claptrap that often prevents us from abandoning ideas that are demonstrably untrue and qualitatively inferior to other available options. For example, if people choose to believe that there are invisible men in the sky that watch over them and guide their lives, I am not, in absence of any empirical evidence of this belief, required to respect it alongside, say, the belief that wearing a seatbelt will make me more likely to survive an automobile accident. In fact, Harris argues, respecting these sorts of unsubstantiated beliefs contributes to their ability to survive in what should be a more Darwinian marketplace of ideas.
This is true, and although I would dearly love to come up with some definition to exclude Coulter et al from the definition, I realize that would be True Scotsmaning.
Perhaps Grey area has the right idea in speculating that here, on the SDMB, we see the phenomenon because liberals are so much in the majority. Since this is the only message board I read, my own views of how “conservatives” and “liberals” behave is skewed; I may be seeing conservatives on their best behavior and liberals … not so much.
This is my father’s view of the world, it is liberals and normal people. He once told me he has no friends who are Democrats/Liberals. When I pressed him why that was, he said that if they have such a warped view of the world around them then they clearly are not someone he could befriend.
I was never so disappointed in him than after that conversation.
Then you haven’t talked to many conservatives. Most who hold any opinion on the issue might be willing to compromise, for the moment, on that basis, but would never dream of accepting it as a permanent state of affairs. It would be, to us, akin to allowing the murder of, say, Jews, but not anyone else. Better than allowing any murder, but not morally righteous.
Yes, Personal Responsibility, but the responsibility here is being responsible to the new life you brought into the world.
I’ve never met anyone who was fundamentally opposed to schooling, only the idea that it was the sole responsibility of government. They’d rather have private groups and communities do the work. Public schooling may have made sense in the past when it was more difficult to get started and funded, but perhaps these days the matter is different. (I disagree with this view, but I understand it.)
I oppose universal health insurance for a lot of reasons. I think that a heterogenious, complex, and large society like America, where demand is high for all treatments and no one is ever satisfied by second-best, it cannot work without unconsciounable rationing. healthcare costs aren’t just magically increasing. People always and everywhere want more, more, more. More drugs, better drugs, more surgeries, better surgeries, more checkups, better and more complete checkups. We’ve tried this kind of things on the state level, and it is something of a disaster.
Some societies can maybe get away with this, but there is always a cost. The great advantage of the American system is that it heavily incentivises development of new medicines and so forth, which is why we are the absolute #1choice for really sick people. Yes, it is expensive - today. But our children tommorow won’t have to pay for the development of all this because we already did it. Likewise, those other countries are piggybacking on our system with aggressive negotiations and threats to nationalize local patents.
COnservatives generally aren’t too impressed with trains because the system is inherently limited and inflexible. It’s relatively slow, economically inefficient for scattered populations, and uncompetitive without constant huge subsidies. In denser areas they make sense, and I don’t fault Europe of Japan for building them. At the same time, I am very unconvinced that it can be made anything more than a fifth wheel.
The great advantage of roads and airports is that they form a flexible network. You dont’ have to know who is going to be using your roads to get to a given destination. They can either drive themselves - when they need, how they want it - or fly on airlines who shift routes planes to accomodate shifting demands. That is much harder to do on a train system. I like trains; but looking at the total costs likely in subsidies and tickets, and the inconvenience compared to the convenience of easy riding, I don’t want to pay and don’t think it’s a reasonable choice.
Regulation of industry and trade is a tricky topic, which is why we generally want to stear clear. Government regulations are a mess, because they are almost never taken off the books and revised intermittently if at all, and have huge unknown effects. I don’t know any conservatives who are totally and completely against any regulations of industry, but it’s always going to cost a lot in the logn run. I can point out seemingly fair, sensible, and reasonable restrictions and taxes which are absolutely devastating in practice, and annihilated whole industries. Plus, the side effects tend to actually be increased corporate power and decreased competition, because regulations often fall very harshly on new firms or new entrants into the market.
For me, it’s a matter of definition. Marriage IS between a man and woman. Anything else cannot be marriage. I might (might) support Civil Unions, but only if there was a clear, bright separation from Marriage. Marriage is recognized in the first place because it is a special bond that signifies that a man and womand are joined together to make a new family - to become one flesh.
Marriage is about children, the embodiment of that union. It’s not just about two people Doing the Nasty or who even feel like living together, or who even have True Marriage isn’t about emotion, or passion, or even neccessarily romantic love - it needs none of those things to succeed. It does need respect, compassion, and mutual understanding to succeed, but those are found outside marriage, too. Marriage is about fundamentally sacrificng momentary opportunity to love and raise a family, and hope to give them a good start in life.
…
These are all short arguments, mind you; there’s a huge array of thought and opinion on the topic. This is just a taste. But the major point of conservative thought is that everything in life is a trade-off. Nothing is ever, ever free. Never. Not once. This is why we often understand the leftist point of view: we can see implicitly the trade-off s you believe in. You cannot see ours because you don’t understand our way of thinking.
The standard left/right argument goes like this:
Leftist: This is a good thing to do!
Right-winger: It will cost too much.
Leftist: But it’s good.
Right-winger: We can do better without it or with some alternative.
Leftist: But that’s not right. People are suffering!
Right-winger: Sorry, life sucks. Sometimes the best options still suck.
Unless they are internet babies or whatnot, in which is goes
Left and right togethert: You &&% ^&) ^%^56 idiot!!!
You are discussing incidents as opposed to concept. The difference is the repubs believe they are better people and should run the government because of it. They think the rich and powerful are on top because they are better qualified and therefore should run the show. That is the religious appeal too. They are closer to god and should tell you how to live your life. They just know whats right.
The dems feel that the people should impact how the government is run. They feel the best of the masses should determine the direction the country goes.
That is why the repubs are for trickle down economics. Load up the wealthy with money and power and they will magnanimously take every one along. The fact that that does not happen never impacts the believers.
The dems think if a lot of people have money they will spend and lift all boats. The fact that it works never impacts the repubs.
The rich always get theirs. Just when the repubs are in it comes more and faster.
I was strongly pro-life at a point in my life, so I understand that point of view. I felt it was irresponsible and evil for women to end potential lives caused by their sexual promiscuity. I couldn’t understand at all why a woman who didn’t want to be a mother wouldn’t just carry the child to term and put it up to adoption.
Then I started actually listening to the other side of the debate, and realized that allowing abortion is the lesser of two evils when compared to legally forcing women to continue pregnancies they do not want. I’ve been pro-choice since I was about 13. I continued to think of myself as pro-life and pro-choice until my late twenties when I started re-thinking my ideas on what constitutes life and sentience, and I’ve got to the point where I don’t really see abortion as immoral at all.
I think a part of the reason why social liberals don’t respect conservative viewpoints is that they probably held similar views at some point in their life and feel like they’ve outgrown them. I see my anti-abortion views in my childhood years as being naive and spiteful towards women, and can’t help projecting that on those that still hold them, even though I know there are other reasons to be against abortion.
Yup, you have yours, we have Michael Moore and his ilk as well as the occasional raving loony on message boards calling for the heads of anyone different.
Possible, but I think you’re missing something if you think the Conservatives on this boards are models of restraint as a whole. It’s certainly demonstrably true that Liberals on the board haven’t done a great job of polite disagreement with Conservatives, but the opposite is certainly true as well - some Conservatives here are the snarly mcnasty sort. I would think being in the minority makes some Conservatives all the more likely to lash out in impolite ways.
Please note - I was very careful with my language. I am not condeming all Conservatives or all Liberals, here or anywhere- there are still those on both sides who savour an actual exchange of ideas rather than a screaming match. And in spite of your recent contretemps, I do consider you a more rational one of the Conservative breed.
For anyone to say in some blanket sense that all Conservatives are more considered and understanding in their reactions to Liberal ideas is demonstrably not true and that is shown as much here as anywhere else.
I think I can generally understand the reasoning behind different political viewpoints. What I can’t really understand is how people can live with the moral consequences of these viewpoints - especially the ‘Christian Right’. I would have thought from what I gather of New Testament morality that Lefty policies - those that tend toward looking after one’s fellow man (trade unions, welfare state etc) were more fitting than the more individualistic policies of the Right.
My grandfather as well - he felt much the same way. And an uncle. I was speaking from personal experience. Small town, salt-of-the-earth people in all other respects, who value hard work and personal responsibility, but just couldn’t stomach liberals.
And I still think this, and I am very pro-choice. It is irresponsible to end lives because someone was stupid and didn’t take basic precautions. I do believe personal responsibility should be higher.
But that’s just it - it’s personal responsibility. You can’t dictate it, you can’t legislate it. And not giving anyone the choice of what to do is simply wrong and leads to much deeper consequences both to individuals and to society. I’ll take my personal responsibility and wear a condom; I’ll also take the consequences of my actions if the condom breaks. But I won’t demand that everyone else, including any prospective lovers of mine, do the same. They are signing up for a lifetime contract with the child, and even if I know I am ready for it and can provide for any child I have, I can’t make that decision for them and am not so arrogant as to believe that my way is the only way for everyone out there, or to believe that I have any guarantees that it’s better for the child in question.
This is because we all (left or right) tend to hold the mistaken notion that we (1) see evidence and then (2) choose what to believe about reality as a result.
Sadly, I think we’re all much more likely to get stuck in patterns of thought for a million reasons besides impartial, scientific evidence. (Such as, what did our parents believe, and whether we feel it’s important for us to be more like them or less like them.) And when faced with dissonant facts, we instead rationalize a new explanation of why our belief is STILL correct DESPITE that evidence, rather than change our beliefs.
Just like how Fiscal Conservatives still believe in trickle-down economics, or communists believe(d) that a proletariat revolution was Just Around the Corner, despite all evidence about real-world economic growth results and human nature to the contrary.
How many conservatives would support a constitutional amendment to ban divorce?
Should only fertile people or those who plan to adopt be allowed to marry? Should they sign a pledge that they will have children? Should a childless couple’s marriage be annulled after a set number of years?
Sorry, these look to me like intellectualized rationalizations for opposing something that offends many people on a visceral level.
Thanks for this post. I’ve always believed the Roe v. Wade definition of “viability” was reasonable, although a hard limit of “first trimester” might have resulted in less debate. At some point, science will develop an artificial womb and any zygote will be able to be brought to term. Most of the anti-abortion material I’ve seen really seems to come down to the belief that the instant sperm fertilizes egg, a human being comes into existence. (Never mind that millions of fertilized eggs wind up on tampons or sanitary napkins every year.) I would prefer a test based on brain development. But in every argument, both sides seem to get pushed to extremes. Abortion rights advocates have to defend 3rd trimester abortion and abortion foes have to defend refusing abortion even in the first weeks.
There is much in this post that I do not understand. I simply fail to see how conservatives can overlook the flaws in these arguments, and I have never seen an answer that satifies me. I have picked two of the issues to express my lack of understanding on.
TRAINS - I have three issues with what has been stated here. First, the idea that trains do not work for widely scattered populations is demonstrably false. Europe has train systems that link many remote villages, including those that are in physically hard to access areas. In particular, I am thinking of a distant relative who takes the train from his tiny Swiss village to work in a larger city five days a week. Trains would not work to link St. Louis with New York, but would work very well to link smaller towns with St. Louis. Plus, larger regional cities could be linked together. Given the time and hassle of flying, I will almost never fly to Chicago for a personal visit but I could take a train in about the same time with less hassle.
Next, how can train schedules not be shifted in the same way airlines do? In the more congested areas, landing slots are rationed and offer very little flexibility. Likewise, how do raods form a more flexible option? Major roads are very expensive, planned decades in advance, and once built often become a chokepoint for growth; look at the problems with interstates and downtown areas of many cities. While trains may have many of the same problems, it is no more burdensome than what roads impose.
Finally, the high cost of railroads and subsidies is raised as being a disadvantage. Yet, conservatives rarely acknowledge that roads, highways, the auto industry, and the airline industry all receive subsidies. I do not have exact figures in front of me, but I wonder how much we as a nation spend on highway infrastrucure alone as compared to trains and other forms of mass transit?
Mostly what I see in this particular area is the American notion of the automobile and independence. Having a car means never having to submit to another’s schedule, it gives status and retains value for the individual alone. I say this as someone making payments on two cars, but if mass transit were even a possibilty I would take it.
I meant to address the comments on marriage, but time is running short (stupid job). However, I would like to raise this one point. Is marriage legal when a couple has no intention to ever have children? How would you contrast that to a gay couple who intends to adopt a child? One marriage specifcally ignores your reason for marriage, while the other expressly conforms to it?
Ultimately, I believe the conservative view of same-sex marriage is one driven by a particular religious viewpoint. Which is, I think, an invalid arguing position in the United States. Marriage is a government recognized institution, and you can not force your religious views on others by using the government. Remember, many of the Christian faith have no problem with either homesexuality or same-sex marriage.
I happen to agree with this completely. Marriage is a sacrament between a man and a woman.
Which is why I believe that the Government should not allocate rights, tax priviledges, or allow employers or insurance companies to discriminate based on whether or not a sacrament has been performed. The secular contract and the attendant rights and responsibilities currently represented by the sacrament of marriage should be open to any two adults who wish to fill out the paperwork and pay to have it recorded.
Marriage is a civil union with a blessing. A birth certificate is not a bris.
I agree with this. But I’m not asking the OP to respect the belief itself, but rather to respect the right to hold that belief. That’s an important distinction.
I agree with the idea of the OP. I am confused, embarrassed, and ashamed to live in a society where the majority of people:
have an imaginary friend (running +90% worldwide so not just American by any stretch)
believe torturing other people to be productive (ditto locking people up with no rights, explanation, representation, appeal etc)
would legislate their morality, even without victims (the wars on sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll)
believe in separate-but-equal civil rights
feel that somebody should make a profit off of the inevitable need for health care (or for that matter many other things that cross the line into “must buy” rather than “choose to buy”)
a political party should use all its power to advance the party before the country (justice dept etc)
if the president does something, then it is not illegal
And then they look at the rest of us like WE are the freaks for not riding along with these ideas. Most of those are far enough out there that I really don’t think I want to understand. Too many issues where I just can’t put myself in the shoes on the other side of the argument.
