# Liberal Mind vs. Conservative Mind **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 11, 2013, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/liberal-mind-vs-conservative-mind/670974 "2013-10-11T13:34:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 82
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2013, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/liberal-mind-vs-conservative-mind/670974/82 "2013-10-15T01:50:58Z")
Der Trihs (God, I can never spell that properly)- Again, I support your right to strongly held beliefs. However, it is your willingness to throw rhetorical bombs as a form of facile, non-thoughtful debate that I am moderating. When you say something like > [@](#): > > Nor is condemning people for holding different beliefs either unusual or unethical; every time someone condemns someone for supporting racism, sexism, homophobia, or any number of other evils, that’s exactly what they are doing. The only question is if conservatism deserves to be added to that list, and I think it does. What you say is that a person who holds that belief is unethical. Note that you’re condemning a person. When instead you say: > [@](#): > > No; conservatives throughout history have done wrong things because they are evil people. I see no reason to care that they think that they are doing the right thing; that’s no consolation to the people being oppressed, exploited or slaughtered. Did it do any good for the blacks who were lynched during Jim Crow that their murderers thought they were in the right? You are assigning your own prejudice - against conservatives - to all people who may hold all sorts of beliefs. Again, it is facile and too widely thrown to be of any real use in argument. It may - indeed, it likely is - your true beliefs. However, it is as bad as anyone ever saying “All X are Y”. I have known conservatives who are good men and women just as I have known progressives who aren’t. To say that ALL conservatives are evil people is evil in and of itself and you should think hard about painting people that way. At a minimum, you do little to promote your own position and instead push people away when you share such opinions in a way that makes you look like an extremist. You should learn that the equation “extremsim or loudness =/= persuasion” is valid. In short, respect other people whose beliefs - both personal and political - differ from yours. There are certainly ways of getting your point across without being disrespectful. I encourage you to explore them. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/liberal-mind-vs-conservative-mind/670974)._