In this Pit post, I asked **Starving Artist **to supply me with
and suggested that he might be surprised to find that most liberals have no problem acknowledging that they’ve
He declined my invitation. So I invite those on the left-of-center to demonstrate things they’ve learned from their conservative brethren, facts they’ve conceded were true, etc.
This isn’t the Pit, nor Great Debates, so please, no conservatives need apply. Self-identified lefties only, please. I’ll start:
I’ve come around to thinking, after reading numerous discussions in GD, that 2nd Amendment pro-gun defenses aren’t specious parsings of language contrary to the founders’ intent, as I once had thought, but a genuine straight-forward and legitimate position reflecting their desire for most homes to be protected by privately owned firearms.
“Fiscal conservatism” (don’t spend more than you have). This idea was a big feature of the conservative crusade in the nineties, as exemplified by the fulminations of the Toronto Sun newspaper. I now often point people to Dave Ramsey’s debt advice, and our Canadian experience has shown that it applies on a national scale as well.
I remain, however, both green and socially libertarian, and I believe that sometimes it is the place of government to attempt social change or try to level a playing field. Social democracy is not always a bad thing.
Leftie who has moved closer to the centre over time chiming in.
I think the thing that attracts me the most about (theoretical) conservative ideology is the notion of personal responsibility. I annoys me no end to hear someone with a bleeding heart argue to the effect of “it’s not his fault that he robbed a store at gun point for drugs money, it’s society’s fault”.
No, it isn’t. It’s his choice to do that so it’s HIS FAULT. Just because we have to make choices we don’t like, or have to make more effort to achieve something because the hand we got dealt wasn’t as good as it could have been, it’s not an excuse to break the law or harm others. “We are all a product of our environments” is a cop out and it fails to distinguish between those who had a crappy start but don’t have the ability to do much about it and those who do but chose not to.
No I’m not blaming people for their own problems, but there is a point where you have to say “do you want to choose to do something about this or not?” and hard core lefties will maintain that someone in a socially and/or economically disadvantaged position never really had that choice to make. I maintain they do and that they made the wrong choice. If that’s not the case why do so many people from privileged background fuck their own lives up royally and some people pull themselves up from nothing by their own boot straps?
It’ll do you no good, PRR - we tried it already in this thread to no avail.
But to sum up, the conservatives (especially Airman Doors) seem to be good at bringing liberals (myself included, I suppose) around to their viewpoint on gun ownership/control via reasoned and respectful discussion.
And George Bush has inadvertently done a good job of selling me on fiscal conservatism. :rolleyes:
First of all, I believe the political spectrum to be a fiction, and a rather harmful one at that. Ideas are either good or bad, we shouldn’t have to consult our party playbook for what to think in a given situation before we pronounce our viewpoint.[/rantoff]
That said, this slightly left of center poster came over to guns several years ago.
Another liberal here who has become cautiously pro-gun, or at least accepting of the fact that a single set of gun rules will never work for a large collection of disparate subcultures like the United States.
Well, this is a little more specifically focused, it’s not in the Pit, and conservatives are requested to refrain, so I have a little hope we may accomplish something here.
Just to be clear, I’m not talking, btw, about brain-farts you may have had over the years, but genuine changes of heart following a discussion with a conservative. For example, I was a Bill Buckley supporter for Mayor of NYC when I was 12, but that was just because I was young and stupid and I like the way Bill Buckley created sentences-- that was just a blip of bad judgment on my part. And I voted against HRC, but that’s just because I would have voted for anyone running against her, not because I liked her opponent’s political philosophy. I’m talking about real, sincere thought-out changes in your thinking (which did not, however, make a conservative out of you. If it did, you probably don’t belong here. Thanks for respecting this request, btw, conservatives. I know you’d like to get in here and dish, but I’ll thank you to open your own thread if you really want to argue with someone.)
Also, I’ve been persuaded that the Death Penalty is neither cruel nor unusual, and have almost no problem with everyone on death row meeting his maker by 4 PM today.
Don’t feel too bad - I registered Republican in 1988 to support Bob Dole’s candidacy. Thinking back, I found his platform more palatable that those of Bush Sr and Pat Robertson (especially Robertson). I also would have preferred Dole to Dukakis, whom I never liked. I’m currently registered Independent, for the record. I may be liberal but the Dems are no friends of mine either.
And I have no problem with the death penalty as long as the appeals process is robust and sensible.
I grew up with guns in the house and have no problem with most of them, nor with responsible non-trophy hunters. The notion of fiscal conservativism I agree with. The way the Republicans yammer on about it without actually practicing it, not so much.
I agree with this - and it does actually frustrate me as someone who works in the civil service that Political ideology can drive/block evidenced based policy making. A great example of this is the increasingly punitive approach to prostitution that is being taken by our current Government and in particular our Home Secretary Jacqui Smith.
From my liberal perspective I’m not opposed to prostitution and think there are better things we could be focusing on. But moreover from a policy wonk perspective if the outcomes you want are safer sex workers, less human trafficking, a weaker link between prostitution and drug usage etc etc further and harsher criminilisation of prostitution and people who use prostitutes doesn’t achieve that. All the evidence shows this internationally, yet the ideological position of New Labour and Smith is that prosititution is vice and no woman really chooses to be a prostitute she’s just forced into it via circumstance/desperation (even though there are about 80,000 prostitutes in this country and plenty of them will happily admit they went into it as a good source of money and no compulsion has ever occured). If you removed morality from this question and looked at it in a purely objective way criminilisation is not the answer you’d come up with.
Same with drugs, if the outcome you want is to reduce the black market in drugs, reduce people being dependent on them and turning to crime to finance their habits, limiting the effect it has on people’s lives, reducing the number of people who are killed with contaminated substances etc etc the solution to this isn’t prohibition because it clearly doesn’t work. Virtually the entire medical profession and lots of police officers agree, but again the two main parties will never think outside of the current approach to drugs because they want to be seen to be “tough on crime”, even though this doesn’t actually achieve what they want. Interestingly enough the third party, the Liberal Democrats, have said they’d be happy to go back to the drawing board on drugs including consideration of whole scale legalisation and regulation if that was what the evidence showed was the best approach. Unfortunatley it’s these kind of logical and sensible statements that ensure they’ll never get into power.
I am attracted to the kind of levelheaded conservative thinking that can serve as a rational (DIDJA HEAR ME I SAID LEVELHEADED AND RATIONAL) counter to the more excessive, PC-moonbat-theory-think that arises when my fellow libs get distracted from the concerns of society at large and get a little too individualistic for the common good.
Well, at this very moment I’m thankful for the republicans in Congress who are making a stink over the bailouts. I’m not necessarily opposed to using taxpayer money to stabilize the economy, if the alternative is risking a depression, but we damn well need to examine what we’re doing and put some major conditions on any money forked over.
I do like the idea of somewhat limited government and controlling spending. Too bad these conservative ideals have pretty much disappeared - the only difference now is the republicans spend on different things from the democrats.
I’m actually not too keen on having guns available to everyone. However, I do think it is a constitutional right, and no amount of rationalization can get around that. Obviously there has to be some allowance for controls and limitations (I don’t think anyone but the nuttiest dominionist would argue that there’s a right for each person to own a nuclear weapon), but yeah, Americans have the right to bear arms.
I’ve become much more “law and order” over the years. I hate the idea that there is a small group of repeat offenders that continually rob, rape, steal, drive drunk, etc. Let’s get rid of laws on victimless crimes to free up permanent space in jail for those who victimize others. And of course my infamous stand on transients who get called “homeless”.
But, I also think there should be a death penalty for white collar criminals who steal/embezzle over $100M.
I gradually changed my mind about gun ownership also, and I like the (theoretical) idea of being fiscally conservative but not when it goes hand in hand with social conservatism. I’ve never changed my position because of a heated debate but calm reasoning can work.
I think the conservative emphasis on personal responsibility is important. This is along the lines of what Illuminatiprumus has said about blaming society for the choices of others. I can appreciate that some of us have faced greater challenges then others, and that some experience prejudice and oppression, and that there is widespread injustice–but I still can’t excuse bad decision making. I think people ought to live with the consequences of their actions. I think they will become better people because of it.
That seems to me to be the greatest influence of conservative thinking on my own ideas. Being at a disadvantage is not an excuse for failure.
OK, specifics seem to be the order of the day, so…
-I have no particular problem with the death penalty, only with how it’s applied.
-I like the basic idea that art and culture ought to have some minimal moral decency, although I would never legislate to that end.
-I’m OK with responsible gun ownership. Just don’t make a friggn lifestyle out of it.
-I’m for school choice, because when I was a kid, we didn’t have it. I went to an open classroom. The board of ed leaned on us for 5 years till they could find a way to kill the program.
-I say Merry Christmas when seasonally appropriate. Yes, it is a religious holiday. It’s also a secular one.
-I think there’s a lot to be said for the broken window theory.