Your question makes the rather odd assumption that we were all conservative to start with. As though being conservative is the default state.
If so, then I “turned liberal” when I taught myself morality. This was admittedly pretty late - my parents were religious conservatives, so they didn’t know how to teach morality. (‘Obey this dude/book’ isn’t morality.) It had happened by the time I turned twenty, though, and again it wasn’t so much a rejection of conservativism as me developing from a selfish unthinking child into a proper adult human.
Mathew 22 Verse 39 "And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."
As a child, it’s difficult to appreciate what our parents do for us. Every generation rejects the previous one. The great hubris of the young is the belief that they are wiser than the people that preceded them. Your morality is the result of thousands of years of development. I like to cite Lord of the Flies. It’s the story of a few dozen children of the elites, you know…Ivy League, Berkley, and SDMB super posters, who are stranded on an island and slowly devolve into savages when they don’t have the guidance of civilized adults.
I see this over and over and over. The Republican rhetoric is so consistently that Democrats, liberals, city-dwellers, and minorities aren’t ‘Real Americans.’ That small towns are “Real America” and California is… What? Not America at all? It all circles back to the fundamental idea that there are people who ‘count’ and people who don’t.
I guess I’m missing the subtext of your question. Why ***wouldn’t ***a white heterosexual male be liberal? There’s nothing incompatible with being a white straight male and being a liberal.
To address your questions:
I didn’t have conservative parents. Just white, upper middle class straight liberal parents.
I don’t recall ever feeling sexually repressed (although there were times during my second marriage I was sexually frustrated–I don’t blame conservatives)
My employers have been pretty decent, by and large. Now I’m an employer and get to turn the tables.
General labels are usually unhelpful, but in the U.S. currently, the “liberal” positions on must issues seem more thoughtful, just, workable, and in the best interest of our society and economy. It used to be that there were two sides to most controversies and we could learn from honest debates about policy. I’d be overjoyed if American conservatives would come back to the adult table and we could resume that grand tradition.
What do I think “developing from a selfish unthinking child into a proper adult human” means? I think it means that children are both cognitively undeveloped and centrally focused, with biological and mental difficulties with recognizing that there’s a world outside themselves that they are not the center of. Adults, as they age, become mentally capable of better assessing the situation and recognizing that they exist in a world of diverse individuals and that the lives and existence outside themselves both matter to those other people and also impact themself. People also are capable of learning empathy (even as children) which allows them not only to become adults aware of the world around them, but proper adults who recognize that other people’s feelings matter for the whole collective’s well-being, and thus become capable of acting to improve the well-being of the entire community.
And Lord of the Flies is shit. It may be the worst book I’ve ever read. The characterization is terrible and unrealistic. The dialogue is terrible and unrealistic. And this was intentional - William Golding wrote the book as a counterpoint/parody of R.M. Ballantyne’s 1858 novel ‘The Coral Island’ in which boys land on an island and things don’t go to shit. This bothered Golding so he wrote a book where the characters were all idiots and douches who go insane, even though them doing so made no sense in context. There is no part of this which is a representation of reality. (‘The Coral Island’ also isn’t a representation of reality, but at least it wasn’t written out of spite.)
But the point is that as a person grows up, their parents are no longer the only “civilized adults” that they can look to for guidance. Other relatives, teachers, friends, authors, etc., provide other models and insights that we use in the process of becoming “proper adult humans”.
And yes, without in any way dissing parents as a group or what their children gain from them, it sometimes happens that a child finds the guidance of those other adults more useful in learning morality than the guidance of their own parents.
Haven’t read the book, I take it. No child ever uses the vocabulary those kids do.
The fact that mutinies and murders have, infrequently, occurred is not proof that without the guiding hand of our conservative and possibly senile elders we will lose our ‘thousand year developed’ morality that they supposedly are handing down to us and, due to the lack of salty unelite farmer larnin’, devolve into savages.
Especially since conservatives tend not to teach morality at all - instead they focus on conformity and obedience and sometimes call it morality.
I never stated that being a straight white is incompatible with being a liberal.
The question is why would a straight white male be liberal when ostensibly according to Liberals, conservative ideology would provide so many advantages?
It sounds like you’ve lived a charmed life. All humans face adversity so you’ve probably had set backs. You are likely intelligent, hard working, possess social skills, and are considered good looking. However, it sounds like you have a bit of a sense of superiority when you write, “I’d be overjoyed if American conservatives would come back to the adult table…”
One reason straight white males stay liberal is they can be overly generous and reap the accolades of playing Santa Claus/ Great White Savior believing they will always be on top no matter what the situation. I heard a liberal commentator taunting conservatives, “What are you afraid of? Little brown women and children. You are really tough.” I interpret this as, “This little brown woman and her children are completely incapable of challenging your status unless you’re a total loser.” I guess that Joe Crowley the guy Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unseated probably thought the same thing. Or Joe Lieberman who was publicly insulted by AOC. She literally bit the hand that FREED her.
In other words, you can’t be the elite if you’re the majority. White nationalists are so stupid. They need people of color or else who will they have to subjugate?
I don’t know what advantages conservative ideology would bring me, except perhaps lower taxes.
Even that, when viewed as part of a bigger picture, would be worse for me as a certain level of taxation is necessary (according to liberal ideology) for a healthy economy and society.
Maybe an end to affirmative action? I’m sure being a white male was part of the reason I didn’t get into Yale, Harvard or Standford law schools On the other hand, having a diverse student body at the law school I did get into certainly contributed to a better education.
I would benefit personally from loser environmental regulations, which are making it difficult to build a pier at my nice waterfront home. On the other hand, those same regulations are part of the reason living on the water is so desirable.
Conservative judges don’t help me in any discernible way. Restricting access to abortion doesn’t help me. I don’t own a gun, but may buy one some day. I don’t think reasonable gun regulations would interfere with that.
I admit I’m not an expert on the conservative agenda, but I’m hard pressed to see any reason I’d want to be part of that movement. I’ll keep an open mind.
The advantages that come from conservativism tend to be short-sighted, illusory, or morally corrupt. Many of them come down to being allowed to not support your portion of the social contract, because the assumption is that any decent person will be able to support themselves via bootstraps and divine intervention and such, and thus everyone who can’t completely support themselves is not decent and thus should be torn apart by wombats or something. Such policies if enacted are destructive to the economy - as has been shown repeatedly. And a damaged economy is worse to live in for everybody (though the super-rich can ignore it longer).
Other conservative gains are simply lies, like the notion that by driving out all those darker-skinned people all the good-paying jobs from the fifties will magically reappear. (In reality the jobs won’t appear and the agriculture industry would collapse.) These lies are foisted on the conservatives by people who wish to manipulate them, and the conservatives buy it because they are desperate and desperation makes them angry and anger and desperation make them stupid. That or they’re just racist shitheads and will accept any stupid shit if it hurts darkies.
And on that subject, I’m of the position that it’s literally impossible to both be a moral person and support modern conservativism. (Er, no offense.) As a person with at least a smattering of morals, being an amoral conservative bastard might give me superficial monetary gains, but it would make me feel bad about being a sociopathic bastard, which would be a loss. With sufficient morals, the emotional losses outweigh the material gains.
I’m trying to picture what “Santa Claus/Great White Savior” accolades accrue to a liberal white guys, and I’m drawing a blank.
It reveals something about you that you hear that and immediately think of status and being a loser. That your mind even goes to such a place actually supports the notion that the fear of losing power (or the illusion of power, if you’re the modern day equivalent to a plantation overseer) underlies your ideology.
First, I am not an amoral, heartless, subhuman piece of filth. Just because a policy would appear to benefit me personally does not mean I am willing to pursue that policy if it comes at someone else’s expense.
Second, just because the stereotypical conservative might desire a policy that provides advantages to my ethnic group does not make it so. The conventional conservative wisdom is that we have to “build a wall” because those immigrants are “stealing our jobs.” Or that globalists are somehow betraying Americans by sending their jobs to China, so tariffs and trade wars can make things ‘fair’ again. Because the fundamental point is not just that these policies are often racist in conception, but the proposed remedies are utterly stupid.
Well, it’s hard not to feel superior when the opposing party is composed of lying, racist morons who have paralyzed our government through their abject incompetence. But whatever fleeting satisfaction that gives me is quickly overwhelmed by my sheer frustration and despair. If Conservatives suddenly decided to become reasonable and cooperative and offer sound, evidence-backed policies, that would make me very happy indeed. You just let me know when that happens.
I think many political decisions one makes as an adult are based alot of what you experienced in your youth. That can be everything from hating poverty and racism so you want to help on those issues as an adult to being mad at your high school experience so you might vote down a school bond issue.
I’ll admit I hated all my HS gym teachers and when I meet them now as adults I have to suppress my old feelings.
Ok, I have to ask. Many of you have gone to rallies and demonstrations about issues. Doesnt it seem to you that the people who are really radical and go all out with signs, costumes, screaming, etc… really dont have much else going on in their life? I mean they live for “seeing their friends at next weeks protest”.
I mean if you have a good career going and working lots of hours and have a family and a house to keep up, you probably dont have the time to take a saturday off and do a day long march or you might not see the value of going crazy at such things. Do you really want your picture on social media burning things? Does your work want you after you sat down on a busy street stopping traffic? Does getting arrested look good on your professional resume?
So I find for many people their activism, either they are college students or retirees with lots of time on their hands, or this really is their social outlet.
The impression I get is that conservative ideology and opinions tend to be learned as a child. Things like scorning poor people, mocking the handicapped and people of other cultures and colors - kids are pretty aware of both their parents’ opinions and also of things like social hierarchy. They’re aware of which stuff is theirs tand that other people don’t have a right to it. Additionally religion and religious credulity is often pounded into people while they are children.
Regarding liberal beliefs, it seems to me that they tend to be picked up a little later in life - late teens through twenties. College age, basically - when you can’t walk ten feet without tripping over a bong and falling headfirst into a pile of burning bras and burning to death. (Or so I hear - my college was in a conservative state and so things were a little more sedate.) Liberal ideas tend to expect a level of empathy that one can’t really expect from child, and they also benefit from being able to take a more society-level view of consequences of things, so that sort of stuff is picked up later once people are able to grok it.
Or at least that’s the impression I’ve gotten. There will obviously be many exceptions in both directions, but it would interesting to see real data on when persons of various political and philosophical stripes picked up their feelings on the matter.
There appears to be a strong component of heritability in what makes us end up liberal, moderate, or conservative. About half of where we end up is already determined at birth not learned.
Isnt there now some sort of genetic testing now for this?
No, I’m being serious. For example when a woman goes to a sperm bank they can request information about the donors politics. I guess you can even (odd as this sounds) have your kid tested for this.
All that means is that a lot of liberals live in cities and a lot of conservatives are rural. Liberals are very helpful if you want to get your appendix removed, cash out your IRA, or learn Greek.
Also? My husband is a staunch Democrat and he just fixed the sucked piston on my Honda Fit. All the people who helped us move were Democrats.
I know this is an older post but it irritates me nonetheless.
Is it your argument that if it were not for religion and the morality of our ancestors, we would descend into barbarism in some kind of Hobbes-style State of Nature? And that - more importantly - this fear should motivate us to cling to moral ideas from past generations? And that for a more recent generation to claim superior moral understanding is ‘hubris?’ I’m not being rhetorical, here. I really am trying to understand this argument.
Because if so, I cannot overstate the absurdity of this. You cite a Biblical prescription to ‘love thy neighbor,’ and yet the Bible also said that we should not wear mixed fibers, should not trim our sideburns, that we cannot eat rabbit, pork, or shellfish, that we should keep slaves, exterminate conquered populations, and that we should forbid the handicapped from worship. And yet - in the great hypocritical stupidity of Christianity - people laugh at the idea of animal sacrifice but insist the prohibition on gays is DEFINITELY still a BIG DEAL. I would say that our modern society bears virtually no resemblance to world of the ancient Hebrews, Greeks, or Romans, and many of our advancements in morality that even conservatives agree with are precisely because we rejected the morality of our parents.
If you think it is ‘hubris’ for me to reject my parent’s morality, I will give you a very simple example that I heard from my father. In his time - as you may know - it was commonly accepted to exclude black people from all jobs of any importance, from shopping places, libraries, and even bathrooms. (Crazy, I know.) It was also very common to refer to them with denigrating insults such as ‘nigger.’ I have heard my father refer to black children as ‘niglets,’ and he once told me that he used to call any short-yardage football play ‘nigger-ball.’
Now I’m pretty sure that even a modern Conservative would agree without question that these behaviors are unpleasant, demeaning, hateful, and even outright abhorrent and unacceptable in any context. Are you REALLY saying that it is hubris for me to say that my father was wrong for behaving in this way? Especially when even HE agrees that he regrets his behavior? Or maybe we should take it a few steps even farther back. I can trace my ancestry to specific individuals who fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War. Are you REALLY saying that it is hubris for me to reject the morality of my ancestors and insist that slavery is… just maybe… a bad thing?
Because it seems self-evident to me that (A) each generation should try to make a world that is better, fairer, and more moral than the last, that (B) romanticizing past generations as being more moral than the present is blatantly idiotic to anyone with the slightest knowledge of history, and (C) behaviors or social mores that served functional purposes in the past should be discarded when those purposes are no longer relevant.
