The left prefers state ownership of slaves rather than private ownership of slaves. Of course, they expect to control the state.
I don’t see this.
[quote=“Dinsdale, post:6, topic:913227, full:true”]Also, in terms of “tactics”, this liberal’s impression (which I’m sure many conservatives will disagree with) is that conservatives are more aggressive in pushing the envelope of what is acceptable behavior. Both in campaigning and in governing. Just one example, is it defensive or offensive to REFUSE to even consider a sitting president’s SCt nominations?
[/quote]
With tactics, Republicans may be more willing to play hardball than Democrats, but I still think it’s the overall role that defines it. To return to the football analogy, when Republicans block Obama’s nominees, that’s like a cornerback committing pass interference against a receiver. It may violate the rules, but it doesn’t change the fact that, fundamentally, the cornerback is a defender while the receiver is an offensive player.
Edit: Man, why can I not get quotes to work right?
I’ve always felt it was the opposite in America. Conservatives are constantly declaring war on liberal accomplishments like a welfare state, progressive taxes, human rights, civil rights, political rights, environmental laws, labor laws, etc and liberals are always playing defense, trying to stop conservatives from rolling back their achievements.
Liberals care about these achievements, conservatives do not. So liberals are always playing defense, trying to stop the rollback of all of the above listed things.
I think in the long run, society tends liberal because healthy, educated, wealthy, middle class societies tend to lean liberal, and that seems to be the trajectory of society. Even if there are setbacks, things still move that way. Germany now is way more liberal than Germany in 1920 and they had a huuuuuge setback in the middle. So in that regard I agree with OP that conservatism tends to lose long term. But what OP didn’t mention is that conservatives are constantly declaring war on every leftist achievement they can for perpetuity and they succeed quite a few times too.
Look at the US in the last decade. Gerrymandering is worse, voter suppression is worse, attempts to overturn the ACA, tax cuts on the rich, rolling back environmental and labor laws, etc.
I disagree on both points.
Society is a battleground and in some arenas it is literally zero sum. For integrationists to win, segregationists have to lose. For people who want public funding of elections to win, plutocrats have to lose. For people who support egalitarianism to win, people who support social hierarchies have to lose.
The moral worldview of the left and the right are at odds in many ways, and you can’t have one winning without the other losing. Its just the way it is.
Also I disagree that the root difference is who wants change vs the status quo. The real root difference IMO is that the left wants egalitarianism while the right wants a more hierarchical society where certain individuals and groups have more power, status and legitimacy than other groups and individuals.
Conservatives want a society where whites have domain and legitimacy over non-whites, men over women, native born over immigrants, christians over other faiths, the rich over the poor, etc. Liberals want a more egalitarian and representative society that includes the out-groups equally in political, social and economic representation.
And again, its zero sum. For feminists to win, patriarchs have to lose. For supporters of the welfare state to win, libertarians have to lose. For proponents of racial justice to win, white supremacists have to lose.
Granted there are other areas of politics where ideally you can find common ground. But I feel nowadays this divide between egaltarians and proponents of the welfare state vs people who believe in social hierarchies and libertarianism is a huge zero sum divide.
Then you have to take into account things like Jonathan Haidts views that conservatives have a stronger threat response and value purity and tradition more than liberals. As a result, political winning for liberals is perceived by conservatives as putting their safety at risk by letting crime, terrorism and economic collapse run rampant, polluting their society with out-groups and destroying their heritage. Winning for conservatives is seen as expanding injustice and rolling back hard fought accomplishments by liberals.
I think this is a major reason the left is at such a disadvantage. The right understands much of politics is zero sum, the left does not. The right treats politics like the battleground it is while the left views it as an opportunity for consensus. But consensus isn’t possible much of the time, since one side winning means the other side loses.
I hadn’t thought of the party differences in the manner of liberals wanting to change things, but your examples were changed in the 1960s, so Conservatives are defending how these things used to be.
Are you aware the quote tags need to be on a separate line on this site?
So, for example:
(QUOTE)
This will produce a quote box.
(/QUOTE)
But:
(QUOTE)This will not.(/QUOTE)
[quote=“carnivorousplant, post:27, topic:913227, full:true”]but your examples were changed in the 1960s, so Conservatives are defending how these things used to be.
[/quote]
So Abolish The Police is a conservative position, since police were only invented in the 1800s? And Abolish ICE is extremely conservative, since ICE was only created after 9/11?
Maybe we could remove power from the state if people had enough common sense to follow basic recommendations for public health during a pandemic. If people don’t want a nanny state then they need to stop acting like children and endangering others.
Please, do go on. Explain this further for us.
Reminds me of the conservative lady I saw at a protest against wearing masks, who was holding a sign that read “my body - my choice” 
Or like trans rights: For the entire history of bathrooms, people chose for themselves which one to use, until liberals went on the offensive and passed laws regulating who could use which one.
Oh, wait, that wasn’t liberals. Never mind, then.
Chumba_Wumba, remind me again which party thinks that the leader of the government should be allowed to do whatever he wants, and that it’s unAmerican to restrict or limit him in any way?
OK, thanks.
This isn’t an accurate portrayal of the situation. For the entire history of bathrooms, there were few if any laws about who could use whom because just about nobody was suggesting that a man should use a woman’s or vice versa. The absence of laws was due to lack of it being an issue.
It wasn’t until the trans movement got to a point where there was serious talk of an MtF or FtM using a restroom perceived by anti-trans people as “not the restroom they’re supposed to use” that anyone passed laws.
Yes, exactly. Nobody suggested that a man should use the women’s room until conservatives passed laws mandating it.
It’s pretty clear that trying to define the conservative position in the American political sense in terms of the plain meaning of the word ‘conservative’ (as in preferring things to remain the same). The conservative bloc advocates for certain institutions (large businesses, police, military, churches) and opposes others (public education, unions, social programs) and would hold the same positions regardless of how traditional or nontraditional those institutions are.
Another realm where liberals are generally on the offensive and conservatives on the defensive is in the realm of speech or what is acceptable/unacceptable. This isn’t to say that conservatives don’t get outraged over certain speech (flag burning, for instance,) but generally when a celebrity, politician or someone is being forced to apologize for having said something “wrong”, it is for something liberals consider wrong, not something conservatives consider wrong.
But that’s about culture and society, not policy. Of course conservatives are, culturally speaking, on the defensive, and progressives on the offensive, wrt culture. That’s practically tautological.
This is bullshit. A)No one is trying to get laws passed to make any sort of speech illegal.
2)All you’re talking about is people calling out assholes for being assholes. Which clearly a defense to assholes having been offensive for so long.
I didn’t say illegal. I just said that liberals are generally expanding the realm of unacceptable speech (unacceptable in their view, that is) while conservatives are generally not the ones going around demanding apologies for this or that. This doesn’t need legislation; the cultural, employment, societal penalties are significant enough that people can feel compelled to say or not say certain things.