I double checked and you did use the word “force”, not “it was a condition of employment”. Is it a conservative principle that employer must not place conditions on employment or is it only applicable to “woke” employers.
I think this is mostly correct, at least in the sense of how Republicans see themselves. But how this system of beliefs manifests itself is anti-Democracy and rejection of basic facts.
What you deem to be “america-first nationalism” is just anti-Democratic authoritarianism. It now seems that the majority of Republicans believe the election was stolen, because so few of their leaders have stood up to Trump’s lies. And their pro-policy and pro-law&order stance that they’ve loudly yapped about during the BLM protests went out the door when it came time to hold Trump and his stooges accountable for 1/6. These great believers in “patriotism” threw all of that out the door when they were unwilling to confront the Authoritarian Trump and 1/6.
As for the rejection of “left wing liberalism”, it’s mostly about a rejection of basic facts. Republicans are much more likely to reject the covid vaccine, as well as any number of medical or health approaches that could have more controlled the pandemic during 2020. They are also much less likely to believe in human-driven climate change. So, this rejection of what you deem to be “left-wing liberalism” is really muuuuuuch more expansive than “left-wing liberalism”. It encompasses anything that forces them to contemplate that government has a place in solving a problem to begin with.
On low taxes, I will say that the fake panic about debt and deficits that we saw on the right-wing during the Obama era seems to have finally ended. It always was just about low-taxes and nothing else, even when they have to lie about why they’re lowering taxes or the economic impacts of lower taxes.
It’s not a zero sum game. It’s that the conservatives are being disingenuous, by claiming to support the scenario you describe while actually supporting something different. Let’s take the bolded statement, and break this down to what Democrats and Republicans actually support, vs. what they say they support.
From the Democratic perspective, if someone is in fact a better rat catcher, then they deserve to keep more (but not all) of what they catch. Democrats realize that if someone sucks at catching rats, they are more likely to come and steal from those who do have better skills, and so it is better to share (some) with them, rather than have them go without and end up in a dire situation. In addition, when it comes to those who have a lot of rats, some among that group got there not by having personal talent or skill at catching rats, but by forcing the rat catchers to give them a portion, sometimes a substantial portion, because they are the ones who manufacture the rat traps, even though they rarely, if ever personally do any rat catching. Democrats say that those people (the ones who manufacture rat traps but don’t do any of the rat catching themselves) have a greater obligation to share than do those who have a lot of rats due to their personal skill and talent at catching rats.
Republicans try to scare the talented rat catchers by claiming Democrats want to take away their hard earned catch. What the Republicans really want is to protect those who manufacture the rat traps and their abundance of rats that they have by demanding tribute for their traps but who personally do little to no work in actually catching rats themselves. They use a bunch of false rhetoric to scare the talented rat catchers into believing those who suck at rat catching are a bigger threat to them than those who manufacture the rat traps.
I do wonder if these state laws that allow gop legislators to decide elections will stand up to legal scrutiny in the current court system.
If the gop can just say ‘there was fraud’ with no evidence anytime they lose an election and hand the election to the republican candidate, then yeah that’s an even bigger assault on democracy than gerrymandering.
If a person is threatened with the loss of their job if they decline to display a symbol with a socio-political message, they are most certainly being forced to wear that symbol. If a person is told to work unpaid overtime or lose their job that’s coercion. It’s also coercion if a person is told to wear a symbol they don’t agree with or lose their job. And yes, coercion is a form of force. You can argue that it’s not illegal to make employees wear socio-political symbols they disagree with. So what? It’s still wrong. If an employer required its workers, as a condition of employment, to wear a precious feet pin, this board would be filled with outrage.
Getting back to my point, it’s one thing to ask employees to treat their fellow employees with respect. If I have a fellow employee who chooses to wear a cross necklace, or a hijab, I should respect their right to do so. However, I shouldn’t be forced to wear a religious symbol I don’t agree with. Neither should I be forced to wear a pride badge if I disagree with the political objectives of the LGBTQ movement. Democrats should recognise that they can succeed in attracting moderate conservatives, at least what remains of us, if they focus on respect and tolerance, and in turn respect that not everyone is liberal, nor do they wish to embrace and display liberal symbolism. But the liberal left-wing can’t help themselves. They make decisions to try and force their agenda onto others, and every time there’s public backlash, it drives anti-liberal moderates right back to the Republican Party. That’s “What the heck is going on here” and a reason why the Republican Party is winning, or at least not down and out.
This. The sports analogy I’ve used before is that it’s the difference between a pitcher using a spitball or a batter with a corked bat vs. a team that has bribed the scorekeeper to mark down the result as a victory regardless of what actually happened on the field.
I got the feeling that the conservatives were winning back in the '80s. There were even articles about the death of the Democratic party. But then Clinton came along. I got the feeling that the conservatives were winning about the turn of the century, but then Obama came along. These things run in cycles.
I need to hear more about the LBGTQ political objectives.
Hey, you know what, I agree with you. Employers shouldn’t force their employees to make political stands that the employees don’t agree with. If there was a Democratic politician who publicly endorsed such a position (to my knowledge none have, but I welcome cites to the contrary) I would take that into consideration when it came time to enter the voting booth.
But that would be weighed against a party whose leaders see invading the capitol to overturn an election as no big deal. A party whose leaders discourages life saving precautions just because the Democrats support them. A party whose primary election strategy is to prevent minorities from voting.
According to my calculus the former is a small thing compared to the latter. But it seems some 74,000,0000 Americans would rather have hundreds of thousands of American die and democracy abandoned than risk that their employer might require them to wear a pride pin.
Thanks for this response. It’s fun to stay within the analogy and discuss actual political principals. I agree with your most of your characterisation of the Democrats, and to a degree, with your characterisation of the Republicans.
I think this sentence is key to your characterisation of the Republicans and shows the difference between conservative and liberal midsets.
The Republican/conservative mindset is that the guy who built the better mousetrap has done work. Work isn’t the same as effort. The equivalent to work is output. If 10 guys with pointed sticks are catching 10 rats a day, while 5 guys with traps are catching 20 rats a day, the trapmaker should get credit for catching those extra 10 rats a day. It doesn’t mean he should keep all 10 rats. But there’s now a hierarchy. At the top of the hierarchy is the trapmaker. He’s the guy who created the innovation that’s catching more rats. He should be receiving more rats than any single ratcatcher. At the second level of the hierarchy are the ratcatchers with traps. They’re more productive than the ratcatchers with the pointy sticks. Therefore they deserve to keep more of the rats they catch than the guys with pointy sticks. At the bottom of the hierarchy are the ratcatchers with the pointy sticks. They’re no worse off than they were before; they’re still catching on average a rat a day. Still, it kind of sucks to be at the bottom of the hierarchy and the ratcatching society should work to get them traps so they can get rid of the pointy sticks and catch more rats.
And that’s the difference between conservative and liberal viewpoints. Conservatives view the hierarchy as a natural occurrence and accept it. They want to be the trapmakers, or at least the ratcatchers with traps. Their solution to lifting up the guys with pointy sticks is to build more traps. Liberals wail against the unfairness of the hierarchy. They blame the bottom tier on the guy at the top, and demand that everyone share and share alike, regardless of how many rats they’re catching. You say that it’s scaremongering and false rhetoric that liberals want to tear down the hierarchy and redistribute the wealth, rather than improve the productivity of the people at the bottom. I say that message is what I’m hearing from the liberal left, and I believe them when they say that’s what they want.
So you’re saying that you want politicians judged on their platform, their character, their record, and their accomplishments in office? And here I was thinking I was the only old-fashioned conservative on this message board. Glad to find out I’m not alone.
It’s scaremongering because there is a subtle distinction that you’ve missed. The person who designed the better trap isn’t the one who is benefiting. The one who benefits is the person who coordinates those who design the better traps with the rat catchers, and who are busily trying to figure out just how much tribute they can get from the rat catchers and how little they can get away with paying the people who actually design and who physically make the traps. Those are the people Democrats want to tax the most, and to carry the analogy further, feel are least deserving of the rats they have.
There’s a secondary issue here, which is what kind of society makes people materially better off vs what kind makes them happier. AIUI, we judge our situation by comparing to our neighbours, and therefore a person catching one rat a day who lives in a society where most people catch 1 - 5 rats per day will be happier than a person catching 2 rats a day who lives in a society where most people catch 10 - 20, even though the second is materially better off.
Given that Pride refuses to allow gay Republicans and in Canada gay Conservatives or gay police organizations to march with them, I assume they are indistinguishable from any other left-wing group these days.
Pride has made it clear that people on the right are not welcome. I was a Pride supporter. Had Pride flags and the whole bit. They lost me.
This is an example of the left hijacking a movement and making it exclusive to the left. Shooting themselves in the foot again. Making support for gay people a left-wing thing is incredibly stupid of them.
I agree, I don’t think any employee should be required to wear a pride pin. But while it apparently has happened a few times, it isn’t the norm by any means. I think more conservatives are scared of another scenario.
Your employer wants his business to celebrate Pride, and asks you to wear the pin. You refuse and your employer says OK, fine……I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to do.
So you don’t wear the pin and 90% of the other employees start giving you the side eye and backing away from you socially. Customers notice your lack of a Pride pin and treat you brusquely. You feel like you’re forced to wear the pin even though no ones forcing you to wear the pin.
Or (and this is a real one from a few years back.
In response to a new religious freedom law, small businesses in your state start putting rainbow stickers in the window to indicate that they are pleased to serve everyone. But you’re not pleased to serve everyone, so you don’t put a rainbow sticker in your window. Customers notice and your business falls off a cliff.
Sorry about that. This is what happens when you lose a culture war. This is what I was talking about in my post yesterday.
For years, conservatives, especially religious conservatives, would not get behind anti-bullying initiatives. They felt that negative peer pressure was a way to keep young people in line and push them into conformity with their values. So I know conservatives have no philosophical objection to the concept on societal pressure. They just don’t like being on the wrong side of it.
There’s no going back on this, no matter how many elections conservatives rig. The battle for the hearts and minds of mainstream society has been won, at least on racial equity and gay rights.
The Republican party is openly anti gay. Of course they’re not welcome at a Pride event! They’re as explicitly anti gay as George Wallace and Southern Democrats were anti Black in the 1960s. George Wallace wouldn’t have been welcomed at a Civil Rights event, and modern Republicans are rightfully not welcomed at Pride events today.
I have another point to make on this issue. I consider myself both a liberal and an elitist. I believe those with the most talent, skills, and who work the hardest should reap the most rewards.
On the other hand, I also believe that everyone should have the opportunity to develop those talents and skills. Having more opportunity to develop ones talents / skills shouldn’t be a reward that can be purchased. It should be earned based on the talent, skill, and hard work one displays while in school.
I also believe that having connections or being born to someone with talent and skills while lacking those skills oneself is not something that should be rewarded.
I agree. I think that’s what a lot of the inequality debate is about, and why one side is more disturbed about inequality than the other. I’m interested in the bottom tier improving. It’s oversimplifying to state that there are no effects from the differential between the top tier and the bottom tier. But instead of seeking to solve the problems created by that differential, the liberal left uses it as a boogeyman to demonise the people in the top tier. I agree that society should attempt to solve the social problems created by wealth and income inequality. I disagree that wealth inequality or income inequality is evil by it’s very nature. I also believe that the productivity increases resulting from the top tier lift the bottom tier up much more than the inequality differences hold them down. But some people are happier if they have one rat while their neighbour has five than they are if they have two rats while their neighbour has twenty. Go figure.
The philosophical discussion about conservatism/liberalism and the Democrats and Republicans aren’t really relevant to the OP.
The OP was not about how the right is winning the argument over what type of country the US should be, it’s about how the GOP is setting up a system to win politically without having a fair argument.
This is something I’ve been trying to put in words but you did it well. There’s a big difference between “opposition to X., and not supporting X.” And a lot of people on the left and right these days can’t grasp that difference.
If someone says “I oppose LGBT,” then they’re anti-gay. But if someone says, “I don’t object to LGBT but I don’t want to be required to wear a rainbow shirt (or sticker, or whatever,)” then that’s not opposition, that’s merely neutrality.
But to some people, neutrality is the same as being an enemy.