I’ve read articles that suggest that there are deep-seated differences between conservatives and liberals that result in these different views. Conservatives are riveted to the idea of safety and security and protecting and providing for my own people, which they narrowly define as their own family, community, tribe, ethno-nationality or other strictly defined group. Liberals define their “community” much more broadly and are less likely to perceive threats from “outsiders” as intensely as conservatives do, and are less likely to dismiss suffering on the part of outsiders as being less important than the needs of their insiders.
There you have it. The reason why conservatives are better than liberals. Conservatives drive pick-up trucks and liberals don’t.
Come on guys! You can do better than “I’m liberal because I’m an awesome big brain guy.”
There’s no way that your political leanings don’t have some sort psychological underpinnings. People don’t have the rage you exhibit daily because of opposition to something that would have been almost universally agreed upon 20 years ago like opposition to gay marriage.
Do some introspection and tell us how a heterosexual white male really became a liberal.
We really can take the op out of the political realm and divorce it from partisanship.
Wesley Clark in essence seems to be puzzled by the concepts of altruism and empathy. He seems to be confused that someone who is not of a disadvantaged (“rejected”) group, or feeling that they are such, can have empathy for those who are and feel that they should work for justice even if such justice does not provide immediate and obvious benefits to them.
Yes, some is informed self interest, coming to a rational conclusion that a more just society is a better place to live for yourself and for your own kinship … that being concerned about having the biggest piece of the pie is less effective at getting more pie than working on making a bigger pie …but many of these behaviors are not driven by rational decision making.
So where does empathy and willingness to act out of empathy come from?
Does identification as a particular culture or subculture lead to more or less of it? To the sorts of self-sacrifice individuals will make out of concern for the greater good? Why?
Does perceived economic trajectory and security facilitate or discourage it?
Is there a genetic predisposition to greater or lesser degrees of empathy?
Sure. You’ll have to forgive me if my memory is a bit shaky, but here goes. I grew up in a divided home. My mother was a socially conservative FDR union Democrat (She has since become a Trumpian) My father was a pastor, a social moderate, but he had an economics grad degree, so as was not uncommon at the time was a free-market economist, so Republican. I guess you’d call him a Northeastern Republican. Growing up, both parents generally were apolitical. My father especially never took a public political stance on anything due to his being a pastor. My mother was more outspoken, but I think that as a general rule, they both believed that politicians were self-serving and any interest they had toward the people they represented was incidental. I came of age in the mid-90s, back when Rush Limbaugh was writing the book on conservative media. Following the Gulf War his rhetoric appealed to me and since he was knocking the person in power in the mid-90s, my high school brain held some fascination with him. This was compounded by the Bosnia-Herzegovina conflict. My great grandfather was a Serb, so I felt a racial and religious affinity towards the Serbs without really understanding the conflict, regardless though, it pushed me strongly against the Clinton administration. I registered Republican when I turned 18 in 1996 and voted for Bob Dole (although by that election, I was already turning away from the Republican Party.)
Following that election, I was enrolled in college. I would define what happened next as largely a period of disillusionment with institutions. I spent a couple of years pretty lost in terms of who I was. I identified largely as an atheist, anarchist throughout much of the late 90s. It was not quite an abrupt shift, but my initial conservative leanings were largely the rebellion of youth rather than thought out political statements. I know that I didn’t like Serbs getting bombed and that Clinton even at that early date seemed sleazy, so it was a jab at authority. After the election, I became quickly even more disillusioned or perhaps apathetic. The 90s were a period of stability, so I think that allowed us to view politics in less hateful ways. By early 97, the PRWOA was in the news, so in my need for rebellion against institutions, I took up the mantle of government against the poor. It was largely a bi-partisan screwing of the poor, so that pushed me against both parties. Through most of college I was largely just anti-government period. I spent much time dabbling in anarcho-communism. In 2000, I registered Green Party and voted for Nader.
In the early 2000s, I spent a great deal of time diving into philosophy. During my atheist phase, I largely identified as an Existentialist, so spent a lot of time reading those chaps. Of course, as any good young atheist would, I fell in love with Nietzsche, but as part of the quest to affirm my beliefs, I naturally had to read his competitor-Kierkegaard. Reading Kierkegaard was like a revelation. Kierkegaard really seemed to get it. Like nailed humanity spot-on. I started diving into Kierkegaard and then due to the fact that he was a ‘Neo-Socratic’ stumbled upon Gabriel Marcel and that led me largely to reject atheist formations of the world. This rejection then opened up Christianity to me. Marcel was very big on the idea of experiencing the subjectivity of others. That we tend to view people as our own objective idea of those people. So we must work to view them as their subjective selves. I think that when you combine that with Imago Dei theology-that these subjective beings we inhabit the earth with are literally the Image of God, I think that forces us to confront that how we treat these images of God is how we treat God Himself, which is the only objective thing in existence and I might go so far as to claim the only thing that actually has value.
I still was identifying as anarcho-communist at this time (and did so well into my 30s-I’m 40 now) feeling that anarcho-communism allowed the greatest measure of free will. I also became a pacifist in my late 20s since I felt that harming God’s creation is the same as harming God. As I got older, I began to more and more believe that humans when left to their own devices are fallen creatures. We prioritize the self over the other inherently. This prioritizing of the self leads to things like the Tragedy of the Commons and the Iron Law of Oligarchy. I began to move away from anarchist models because I felt that ultimately the selfishness of humanity combined with the nature of social relationships dooms them to failure. Once you move away from that anarcho- prefix though, then what is left? I think I still hold true with ‘ideal communist’ ideas of sharing resources and abolishing private property in favor of property of all, but I’m not sure that there is ever a way to get there in a real world. So, I largely settle for socialist dogma of at least doing our best to redistribute wealth and level society. I vote almost completely Democrat (but my conceit is that I’ll vote for at least one Republican in local elections just so I can at least pretend that I’m balanced. It’s foolish, but it’s my own foolishness to commit.)
Socially, I am generally left on things largely because of how I think that God wants us to treat others. Anti-death penalty (you don’t kill God’s creation), pro-gay marriage (God is love and celebrates love), anti-racism, sexism and fascism (for obvious reasons), pro-legalized drugs (my position is complicated and elucidated in other threads), pro-prostitution(less complicated, prostitution is impossible to eradicate, so the goal is to minimize suffering), pro-open borders (although that might be economic instead of social policy. God doesn’t recognize imaginary constructs like race or nation, neither should we.), anti-war (Destroying God’s creation is an affront to Him), etc. My divergence from leftist social policy is on abortion. I’m pro-life due to the fact that I think that the voiceless need a voice and a system in which you don’t have a voice does not have a right to end your life. I recognize that it’s a complicated subject and that unwanted pregnancies bring their own kind of suffering and ultimately the goal should be that every pregnancy is wanted, but I think killing people is a fundamental breach of social responsibility toward others (Anyway, that horse has been beaten to death, so not worth arguing about.)
So, anyway, that’s as introspective as I can get without an even longer and more rambling post that no one will bother to read.
I read it. Thank you.
For me – a hetero, white, native-born-USian, able-bodied, economically advantaged male – maybe it comes from a curiosity about this big planet we live on, and all the diverse people and cultures that inhabit it (near and far). That curiosity is mostly a product of upbringing – family values, as it were (were that phrase not contaminated by Republican associations). I think being CURIOUS about the world leads to a little-bit-more-than-average KNOWLEDGE of the world (and, ideally, more humility about what one does NOT know). Most of the governmental and personal actions and policies that we associate with “liberal” happen to be ones that a person is more likely to favor, the more CURIOUS they are about the rest of humanity besides oneself.
Just my opinion and observation. One supporting anecdote is to compare the current president (for whom a lack of curiosity is an overarching distinguishing trait – even his supporters would agree, I think) vs. the previous one (for whom an abundance of curiosity was an overarching distinguishing trait – even his detractors would agree, I think).
I’ll note that being curious about the world is FUN. It’s not some hard dose of empathetic medicine, as sociopaths/Republicans imagine it must be. I think I would be bored, if I weren’t curious about people and cultures other than myself/my own! In other words, ironically, there is some self-interest in caring about others – not just in the Kantian rising-tide sense, nor in the someday-I’ll-need-help-myself sense. Just pure, direct fun!
So you’re saying that sociopathy makes straight white men liberal? Nice.
To go a bit further with what I was saying upthread, I think that a lot of the right-wing talking points and propaganda are prima facie reasonable and even sound good, IF you’re kind of sheltered and are mostly living in a white middle class bubble. Some of it even sounds reasonable outside of that, when taken in its own vacuum.
I mean, who really wants a larger government or more government intrusion into their lives and business? That seems reasonable. Or that people should be allowed to rise as far as their talent and work ethic allows. Or that we shouldn’t prioritize one group over another for political reasons, etc…
But once that bubble pops, or you intellectually venture outside of it, you realize that a lot of the “interference” or intrusion is really not intended to get up in your business and tell you how to do stuff, it’s to do things like protect the environment from dumb-asses like you who want to drive a Ford Expedition, even though you don’t have a big family or even shuttle your kids around. You just want a big imposing vehicle for some reason.
Put simply, when people get the least bit introspective about the WHY on a lot of these policies, then they become a lot more evident, and the contradictions and selfishness of a lot of them becomes very apparent.
But to get there, you kind of have to be able to get above your more immediate needs of making ends meet and that sort of thing. Otherwise, you’re going to tend to vote for the party that promises the best scheme to help you and yours get where you want to be.
Not incidentally, this is why(IMO) minorities vote Democrat. It’s not at all that they’re somehow more enlightened than white people. Far from it- all Americans are pretty much equal dumb-asses as far as that sort of thing is concerned. No, it’s because the Democratic party has a track record in recent years of putting equality and progress first, which they perceive as directly being beneficial to them and theirs.
But, speaking as a white guy who’s become considerably more liberal over time in conjunction with my improving financial and employment status, along with a lot of my friends and acquaintances, it’s pretty obvious that now that I’m not worrying about trying to make ends meet, I’m able to consider others a lot more than before.
The only time I, as a white heterosexual male liberal, feel rejected from society is when conservatives tell me that I’m somehow not a real American because I’m an evil liberal.
I am not a Liberal. I am still as conservative as I was back when I went to Reagan campaign rallies. As a conservative I cannot support what the current Republican party is doing
This.
… or trash Joshua Tree National Park and recklessly destroy endangered species there …
I’m too confused by OP’s arithmetic to give his thesis much thought. But whites who have post-graduate education tend to be liberal — does he think postgrads “feel rejected”?
No. That means the % of teabaggers who are white men is at least 48% and at most 59%. To get a more precise estimate you need survey results shown by answer pairs, not just single answers.
No. The % of solid liberals who are white men could be anything from zero to 41% based on the figures you show! You ignore the possibility of dependence (or correlation) among attributes.
There* are* webpages that do provide the sort of numbers you are trying to deduce. Unfortunately I have no handy bookmarks to share.
But some people aren’t voting in their own interests. The modern Republican party seems to be a lot of guys who drive pick-ups voting for the interests of a handful of people who are driven around in limousines.
Why? Because the limousine people tell the pick-up people that they should vote against the interests of the sedan people and the public transportation people.
I thought the whites that felt rejected by society- their jobs been given to someone in China, their kid got rejected form college because of racist affirmative action programs, the liberals seem keen on vacuuming out their wallets and giving it to people that would rather be lazy and sit around watching TV than working an hones living, politicians have traditionally not even bothered campaigning to them as opposed to minorities and illegal aliens and coastal elites, are what got Trump elected and the rise of the paleoconservaive / populist / Trumpist wing of the conservatives.
One problem with your thesis is that it’s very white-centric, but you don’t seem to be aware of it. How are non-whites rejected from society when they are a part of society?
Instead of “society” I think what you really mean is “power”. Non-whites and non-heterosexuals certainly have less power, whether it be in the form of political clout, wealth, or social status. One’s access to power–and their attitudes towards power–probably has a major affect on their political leanings.
Conservatives and liberals fundamentally differ in their beliefs about government and its role in our lives. I believe economic power is at the crux of this divide. Conservatives believe a small, hands-off government is ideal. Why? Because it ensures power resides in the hands of those who “deserve” it: the job makers, the tycoons, the CEOs, the white and wealthy. In other words, those who have always had power in this country. Heavily taxing the rich is deemed unfair by conservatives because “getting what you deserve” is so central to their ideology, and the default assumption is that the rich is entitled to be as rich as they can be. Regulating companies so they are forced to color within certain lines is considered unfair by conservatives because they believe the rich guy at the tops *deserves *to make as much money as possible. On the flip side, expanding government services to provide free healthcare, food stamps, housing assistance, etc. is objectionable to conservatives because they believe poor people fundamentally don’t deserve these things. Only people with money should expect to receive medical attention in this country.
Conservatives, in short, are more likely to side with those in power and that means siding with money. Even if they lack power themselves, they identify with the rich white male establishment and are invested in its protection; it feels safe and familiar to them. The government puts checks on this power, and thus, conservatives vilify it and fantasize about it becoming smaller.
Liberals, on the other hand, do not have this adversarial attitude towards the government. Nor do they typically side and/or identify with those who are in economic power. History has shown that government–while far from perfect–has a role to play in protecting the powerless from the powerful. Slavery and the Civil War is the starkest example. A small, hands-off federal government would have allowed slavery to spread all over the damn place untethered. While the liberal POV would see this as bad because they are more apt to see the issue from the side of the powerless, conservatives less so. They might shrug and tell themselves no biggie because market forces would’ve kill slavery eventually, but their indifference to whether this “eventually” would have come sooner than 100 extra years or more of black bondage undermines any pretense of genuine concern. Another example of the government providing necessary rescue to the powerless is the New Deal. As quiet as its kept, if we had had true conservative governance during the Great Depression, this country would’ve promptly turned into a hellscape of death and starvation.
So to the OP’s question. To me, it seems like you want us to dissect why white male liberals believe the way they do, as if *they *are the oddities here. To be a liberal, all you have do is believe the government’s role is shift the balance of power such that those who otherwise would be completely exploited or destitute have some protections in place, so that things aren’t so unequal between the haves and have-nots that social stability is threatened. In contrast, to be a conservative, you have to believe in a model of governance that disregards such protections as being too burdensome on the power brokers and thus, wrong wrong wrong. Since most of the populace is not in the power broker camp, its much more of a mystery to me as to why anyone (except rich white people) would be conservative.
You’re being myopic and only looking at it from your point of view.
They would claim that they are shifting the balance of power toward the middle class which is the ‘real’ exploited group in society. Conservative politicians certainly favor the wealthy, but their rhetoric does not. If you look at conservative memes, they also paint the wealthy as the problem. Conservative voters feel that the wealthy are themselves liberal, but they can afford to give up some of their wealth to the poor, but they disregard the middle class as worthy of help and in fact wish to confiscate the goods of the middle class in order to distribute that money to the poor and minorities. They then leverage this largesse into voting power that they exploit in order to advance their social agenda which is largely predicated on the destruction of their traditional way of life. They’re not completely wrong by the way, nor are they completely right.
My take which echos much of what is said here, comes down to two basic axioms.
- Peoples political interests vary along a continuum of self/tribe interested <-> Altruistic
2)Conservatism in general is in favor of the continuation of the current power dynamic and so will tend to favor the dominant classes (white, male, cis, etc.) over the minority classes, but since it favors the powerful over the weak it is hard to support on altruistic grounds*.
As a result you get,
Majority voters (White male cis etc.) guided by self interest will tend to associate with the Republicans
minorities guided by self interest will tend to associate with the Democrats
Minority voters guided by altruism will tend to associate with the Democrats
Minorities guided by altruism will tend to associate with the Democrats.
This explains the near monopoly that the Democrats have among minorities, while there is a split among the white male cis group. Since the wealthy are also among dominant classes, there are some exceptions based on economic lines, so that some poor whites might be Democrats out of self interest, and well off blacks might be Republican for reasons of self interest.
I also think that bump’s point is key.
FollowingMaslow’s hierarchy of needs, it is much easier to be altruistic if your basic needs are met. As a result white liberals tend to be relatively well educated and well off, which leads to the partially accurate stereotype of the “Liberal Elite”.
Conservatives will of course complain that this is a biased assessment. But if you really compare the rhetoric of Republican and Democrat politicians, while Democrats tend to include a mixture of “this policy is good for you” with “this is helps these suffering people”, Republican rhetoric is entirely based around “this policy is good for you.”
I meant the exact opposite - you seemed to be opining that people the people who support Trump do so because they feel marginalized and they think he’ll help them punch up, and that people who are already on top don’t need that and thus will be liberal. I don’t disagree with that, but I thought that left out the rather significant set of Trump supporters who support him simply because they’re assholes and he’ll let them punch someone.
These people are still voting their interests - they’re interested in hurting others. It’s all about priorities. It also doesn’t help that they’re being lied to about how the world works - if you dive into a pool of acid because you think it’s cool water, you were still acting on your interests.
You’ve been told how an individual graduated to liberalism, but I feel that there’s still the question of why this didn’t happen as much 20 or 100 years ago. Clearly back then there were still people going through personal journeys of learning and maturation, and they they still ended up on the ‘looks awfully conservative today’ side of things.
In a move that probably won’t shock people who know me, I blame religion.
More accurately, I blame cultural inertia - and religion is really really good at perpetuating cultural inertia. The mores of people centuries ago are literally encoded into rules that are applied unaltered and unquestioned as time goes on.
So even as the economy improved and the world globalized and there was less reason to see others as outsiders and competition to be hated and suppressed, societal still tended to cling to the perception of outsiders as the enemy thanks to essentially cultural habit.
And then the sixties and seventies happened, and confidence in authority flagged, and being openly rebellious and even atheist became less culturally anathema. Fast forward twenty years and you get kids who were raised by parents who didn’t fully internalize the notion that authorities were reliable. Fast forward another twenty and you have a generation of adults that are willing to completely dismiss everything their parents unthinkingly accept. Presuming they weren’t successfully instilled with a religious belief that tells them otherwise, anyway.
In any case, that’s my take on the seemingly abrupt departure from centuries of cultural conservatism.