Just wanted to add that Abortion is one issue where I CAN see the other side. It is a tough call on where the line between ‘lump of flesh’ and ‘baby’ lies. Difficult issue, but at least with a reasonable opposition.
But torture? Separate but Equal? C’mon people!
I proceed on the following assumption:
For every belief that is held by large numbers of people (especially if a not-insignificant number of them are intelligent and well-intentioned), there is a reason (or reasons) why they hold that belief. The reason might be rational and logical; it might be emotional or psychological; it might be a combination thereof. It might be something I would agree with if I had had the same experiences as they, or if I valued the same things that they value. It might be based on faulty reasoning, or on correct reasoning from faulty premises. It might be simply accepting what they’ve always been told, or what they’ve absorbed from the people around them (which raises the question of why those people came to believe it.) But there are reasons that I could, at least theoretically, come to understand given enough research. So for me to throw up my hands and say “I don’t see how anyone could believe that!” constitutes a failure on my part.
Priceguy: do you want to understand why people can believe things like those you mentioned? If not, then I doubt that you ever will.
Well, I imagine that most Conservatives believe that the American way of life consisting of a traditional family, belief in God, mom and apple pie is pretty swell. I would also imagine that they believe that anything outside of that norm is “weird” and “strange”. Tolerable in small doses but not something you want to have around you all the time or have to deal with on the same level.
Some economic or policy issues they may have a different understanding than the liberals. Take minimum wage for example. One side might believe that minimum wage is intuitively good thing because it increases people’s wages. The other side believes that it isn’t a good thing because any benefit is offset by inflation and unemployement from the artificially higher wages.
Or take universal health care. Sure it sounds nice for everyone to have the same level of care. But is it worth higher taxes and will the level of care still stay the same
Neither side is ‘evil’ and both have the same objective of improving workers standard of living. They just have different ideas on what will actually do the job.
I do think that Conservatives tend to view the world as a tough place and that the only way to get ahead is hard work and by taking an active roll in your community. They tend to be very “us vs them” which prevents them from accepting objective criticism.
I also think Liberals are well-intentioned but also tend to be quick to find fault and have a certain “I told you so” smugness about themselves.
This is irrelevant. In the Protestant tradition this is not considered wrong. I disagree bring Catholic, but even so I’m not generally in favor of social-ordering via Constitution.
I don’t make that judgement, since I think marriage (real marriage) is for life, period, barring some unsual cases where annulment is granted. But the fundamental purpose of marriage is procreation, and allowing the possibility of children, even if it does not happen in fact. Even probably-infertile couples may be lucky, or blessed. But they must allow the possibility of children. Likewise, a toal lack of sex is actually grounds for annulment.
That’s fine. I happen to think many leftist views are mindless borrowings for people who can’t think straight. So lets agree to keep the mud out of the thread.
Yes, this is also a common viewpoint. I do not say it is wrong or right.
I see. So, anyone else is alloewd to propose laws based on any half-wit philosophy they find in the 10 cent trash book bin, but I can’t. Yeah…
The government got into the marriage game way back when. Maybe it should be changed and maybe it shouldn’t be. But I have as much right to define the institution as you or anyone else. If two gays go out and have their own private ceremony, there’s not much I can do about, is there? I’m not saying they can’t screw, but I don’t believe the government ought or has any interest in recognizing it (which is not the case for marriage). In any case, your viewpoint would also suggest that our legal system entirely ought to be scrapped and rebuilt, taken to its logical conclusion.
Now, as for your other arguments, this is really getting out of hand and I am not going to hash out all of these issues right here. Suffice it to say that your incapacity to recognize a valid arguement you disagree with (as opposed to one which is fundamentally flawed) is your problem. Frankly, I don’t think you are even trying to understand the argument, but rather to simply knock holes in it any way you can.
Take the train example. You ignore (continually) the issues of opportunity cost, efficiency, and established user base. You say you want mass transit. Yay for you. Now go out an try and convince people, rather than whining that you can’t understand their counter-arguments and obviously they’re all nonsense and blah blah.
Let me put it another way: you are claiming that you’re so brilliant compared to me that it’s perfectly obvious that the argument is flawed, yet you cannot seem to offer anything beyond vague non-numerical emotional arguments.
As an example: you say that obviously (to you) it’s stupid to think that railroads aren’t flexible because they’re stations just like airports. Yeah… has it occurred to you that the limiting factor isn’t the station but the track? Railroads can only go in one direction on one track at a time. Modern computer scheduling helps make things safer and more efficient, but you are fundamentally limited in destination to where you have laid expensive, pre-set systems. Airports have limits, too, but they can switch flights easily. There’s no magic path in the sky which means that Delta can’t decide it wants to have more Knoxville-Orlando hops if the demand is there. Airports have extremely high demand-oriented flexibility. Airports are limited in the supply they can have available at one time, but it’s a trade-off.
True, roads have the same flaw as rail in that area, but it has the advantage of extreme supply flexibility. It can handle a large and very flexible number of users at essentially zero marginal cost and move them to any destination not blocked by the sea. The supply capacity of roads allows it to be used by anyone who needs it, any time day or night. You don’t have to know ahead of time you need it.
Rail systems have a moderate marginal user cost, but tight supply and demand-oriented flexibility.
Did it occur to you that while commercial rail is alive and well, passenger rail virtually died because no one wanted to use it? That maybe it’s simply not as popular as you think, and it might not even be worth it to augment, slightly, our pre-existing system? If people want to pay for it, the ability to use it exists. You want to take my money for a system you happen to like. All well and good, but why do I want it? What good does it do me?
leftists tend to be oriented to “Conservatives whine about subsidies!” on this issue, but this is only half the argument. We (peope against trains) just don’t think the cost incurred is worth the marginal benefits gained.
If you can’t understand that, then I’m not sure how else I could ever explain it to you. It’s like saying that you thik everyone ought to be taxed and provided with free or low-cost bubble-gum, then asking why people are complaining about free bubblegum. It’s not the bubblegum part which we question: it’s the free part. Everything costs; we don’t think this is worth it.
I realized I need to add something.
This is really not the time or place to completely hash out the arguments. Start other threads for that. My point was to show what my thought process was on the issue of trains. Emotionally, I love trains and mass transit. I enjoyed using them in Europe. In practice… there are difficulties in the U. S. of A.
No matter what your views there are people smarter than you and better informed that hold the opposite view. If you can not understand the other side’s position than you do not understand the issue. Try to seek out the serious people writing for the other side and not just the straw men people on your side pretend they are fighting. After hearing the other side you may not agree with them, but it will help you understand the issue better than you ever have before.
The attitude that I am right and anyone who disagrees with me is stupid or evil is for narcissists and teenagers.
You know I wrote most of a post to respond to your arguments specifcally, but I have deleted it. You are right, this is not the proper place to argue the specifics of these issues. But, I will say this, I was hoping for a helpful response. What I got was an attack and a twisting of what I said. For instance, I said a religious basis for the defintion of marriage is not valid. If the government defines what marriage is based solely on religous principles, of any faith, that is establishing a religion. You twisted my statement to be an attack on christianity, stating that your values meant nothing while I gave value to any “half-wit philosphy” I challenge you to tell me where I said that. I give no value to any relgion to tell me how I live my life.
Your post is great example of what I do not understand about conservatives. You are so sure of yourself, so arrogant. Your post drips with the belief that I did not consider everything you mention, that I could not possibly understand. It is this attitude I see in so many conservatives. Its not that I am wrong and you are right, its that you really trully beleive that you alone can understand the full complexity of the situation. Combined with the belief that conservatives, and christians, are some sort of under seige minority in this country.
ETA - The second paragraph is not meant as a personal attack to you, Smiling Bandit. It is an explanation of what I do not understand about conservatives.
To me the word “conservative” represents homophobia, racism, mysoginism, pro religion and anti science, rule through fear. It goes much further than not understanding them, i find them evil to the core. Theres a lot of things you can disagree on and have reasonable debate, like the economy which happens to be something that finds me on the republican side of things more often than not. But other things just fall so far beyond the “simple policy disagreement” line that its impossible to see someone who disagrees with you as anything other than evil. Being on the side that wants to deny basic human rights to people makes you a bad person, trying to not only push your religious views on other people but to replace science with fantasy makes you an enemy of the entire human race. I disagree with “liberals” on a lot of things, but when one side is so obviously wrong about such simple moral issues then i simply must call them what they are, evil.
Abstinence only education has nothing to do with preventing pregnancys or STDs, abstinence is about preventing SEX. Pregnancy and disease are gods punishment for the jezebelles that spread their legs and the fact that more women are getting pregnant and catching STDs only reinforces their view that the whores shouldn’t be having sex.
I actually think a major problem in our political system as it now stands is that we always attack the character of our opponents. We make no effort to truly understand the opposing view.
For instance conservatives often claim the liberals are stupid and evil and liberals often say that conservatives are evil and stupid. When in reality the issues on an individual basis boil down to a difference in base political philosophy. Now there are both stupid and evil people on both sides, but that does not mean that every person who ever held that particular view is evil or stupid.
I think that as a country we would be better off attempting to understand the philosophy of those who we disagree with. I disagree with both conservatives and liberals on many issues, and I strive to understand there views. (I do not always succeed, it is an on going process) I can see why people would disagree with me on any issue.
That would be a good observation were it not for outside encounters. I find this board statistically mimics my experiences with people I meet in public.
If I had to sum up social conservativism in one sentence (at the risk of vastly oversimplifying), it would probably be: A conservative is someone who wants things to go back to the way they were in the good old days. Given how naturally love of tradition and fear of change come to us human beings, it’s not hard for me to see the appeal in that.
It feels like we have reached a point where it isn’t just differences in base philosophy about issues. That would be the economics or even abortion debates. Lately, things that were once ‘held to be self-evident’ are now ‘political issues to be debated’, complete with ‘equally valid opposing viewpoints’. IMO, there is no equally valid argument for torturing people. I understand the argument they try to make about preventing terror. It is just so wrong-headed and miserable that I can’t believe they say it with a straight face. I can’t believe questions like that rise to the level of needing to be pondered. This is how abolitionists must have felt when they were forced to “debate” if slavery was really a bad thing or not.
But of course The Good Old Days did not really exist. Many point to the 1950’s as a golder era in the United States. But in hindsight it was a time of witch hunts and oppresion of the civil rights movement. I have to ask is that the society conservatives wish to return to? Life was good if you were male, straight, white, protestant, and middle class or higher; but the picture outside of that is not as rosy colored.
It’s illegal to torture people in the United States so you are moving the bar of interrogation techniques to fit your opinion. IMO some of the techniques may be pushing the line but I also feel that way about the techniques used by Japanese police. When all is said and done the POW’s at Gitmo will leave in good physical condition having been properly taken care of.
And if by separate but equal you are referring to homosexual unions then again you are moving the definition of marriage to fit your opinion. Marriage is an institution between one man and one woman. We discriminate against polygamy and same sex unions because we as a society find these relationships abnormal. Nobody is preventing the social/sexual interaction of said groups, it just isn’t codified. Most of the institution of marriage can be contractually bound with the exception of insurance coverage.
I believe that that most* people believe most** of the things they believe because somebody or something else told them it and they believed that somebody or something. I further beleive that the selection method for determining which things they believe varies by topic - I think the major competing reasons are 1) that agrees with what I already think, which makes me feel smart, 2) that makes me feel good, and 3) that seems true and it’s better to only believe what’s true and what makes sense based on all available information. I think that similar reasons apply to the decision to abandon or trade out beliefs, realizing that reason 1 then becomes something to be overcome, which some people find very difficult: admitting they were wrong.
Now, enter the bias. It’s my observation that religious training and upbringing strives to explicitly strengthen people’s tendency towards reasons 1 and 2, and to make reason 3 completely secondary to the first reasons. They do this because religious belief relies entirely on 1 and 2 and in many cases the search for truth and reason based on all evidence is anathema to it. This training has two relevent effects which I have observed quite explicitly in action - the first being that belief in the religion becomes rigid and anything that’s directly informed by that like the abortion and marriage debated is likely to be approached with a rigid opinion pre-formed by their religion, and the second being that they might apply similar self-reinforcement-based thinking to other topics, such as politics.
This is not to say that everyone who believes in God is automatically rigid and undebatable; many people believe in god without ever reaching the point where belief trumps contrary evidence. (Since such evidence is somewhat thin on the ground in the god debate, especially for deistic gods, the level of conflict there is low.) And lots of other people believe in their god quite strongly but compartmentalize that sort of belief so that they never, ever approach a non-religious subject dogmatically. And, of course, there are also staunch atheists who engage in dogmatic belief on non-religious subjects themselves. Though it’s been my observation that there is a positive correlation between increasingly strong god-belief and increasing tendencies to be dogmatic in all areas.
Enter further bias. It’s my belief that the social conservative agenda associated with the american republican party is strongly correllated with the beliefs of the major religious sects in america. And I believe that this has attracted a much higher percentage of the people who have a stronger tendency to dogmatically believe whatever their trusted leaders (religious and political) tell them to believe. So, when I hear a conservative stance that sounds divorced from reality (like defining the social aspect out of ‘marriage’), I assume it’s crap fed to them by somebody with an agenda (or who was fed the crap by somebody else with an agenda further up the chain), at least until I hear some substantive evidence for it.
Does this mean that liberals are the bastions of correctness and truth? Hardly. Religion has something of an edge in dogmatic belief but it definitely doesn’t have an exclusive lock on it. Everything both sides say should be vetted and filtered against all available evidence and known reality, if possible. But that doesn’t change the fact that for a lot of people and a lot of positions (particularly conservative positions, though some liberal positions also), the reason they believe it is simply “because somebody told them so”.
This doesn’t mean that I won’t listen to the arguements the conservatives make - sometimes they’re even not stupid! But I recognize that a fair amount of the time, the arguments didn’t make them hold their position; their position made them believe the arguments. Which means if you want the complete picture you can’t possibly get it from one person. (Of any political persuasion.)
I rest my case.
And I rest my case.
This shit really annoys me. I try to be as honest as I can, and I get this back. Yes, for the love of Og, of course I want to. If nothing else, it would make me less pissed off.
I apologize, Priceguy. After posting this I realized it came across as way more belligerent than I wanted to be.
But I wasn’t sure whether you had intended the thread as a request for explanations (a la “please help me understand why people hold these positions”), or as a defiant assertion (a la “I’ll never understand why people hold these positions, so don’t even try explaining it to me!”). The OP left both interpretations open.
And that led me to muse on how, it seems to me, people (not necessarily you personally) don’t want to understand the “other side,” because it’s easier or more fun or more self-justifying to call them evil or stupid and say that their position defies comprehesion.