You know, in both your apologies you still manage to be insulting to me. Now, I understand you are not apologizing to me. But one would think that there’d be little need to expand on your apoplectic OP when you are in the very process of apologizing for posting it. That said, walking away from someone after ten years has to be crushing, so maybe this isn’t the real you.
So, I’ll just say good luck. And that I hope your situation works out in a way better then you can now envision.
I used to be opposed to gay ‘marriage’ and in favor of civil unions, because I bought into the argument that marriage was an evolved social construct that was very beneficial to society, and it was dangerous to screw with it. I believe this is the most common non-religious argument against gay marriage - that it’s potentially social destabilizing.
But then I realized that this is exactly the kind of logic that has been evoked time and again in the past to justify a lot of shitty behavior, and decided that I’d rather live in an unstable society trying to find a better social compact than a stable one with a lot of recognized injustice. So marriage it should be. Along with every other legal right and with increased social tolerance for gay people in general. Just do the right thing.
You know, Sam, we’re never going to agree politically, but lately (here, the Africa thread), I’ve been liking what you’ve been posting a lot. Just saying, is all…
A-freaking-men.
Sam join me to the chorus of folks appreciating your words. I don’t know if I’ve told you this, but I’m glad you hang around; you’re one of the board’s honest and incisive conservatives, and that’s a great thing to be.
Daniel
Well, thanks guys.
I’ve said many times that what unthinking, knee-jerk social conservatives (of which we have none on the boards, of course) are really afraid of is being eaten by bears. The original point of civilization, of organized society, is to guard against the countless threats from the wilderness; it’s a proven model, going back thousands of years, and has demonstrated itself successful in protecting humanity at large from most external dangers; and any alteration may destabilize the structure and make it less effective in its basic defensive mission. Or, in short, if we change things too much, I could be eaten by a bear.
Yes, it’s a glib over-simplification, but I really do honestly believe that this kind of unreasoning terror is a core motivator for the fiercest of the anti-progressive activists: don’t push it too much, or it’ll fall down, and then we’re all dead.
(Incidentally, for the record, I formulated this notion before Colbert started harping on the bear threat.)
It’s not just a glib over-simplification, it’s really just a cheap shot.
Conservatives aren’t always right, but they aren’t always wrong, either. Just like everyone else. And it’s a far cry from believing that some major social change will have negative unintended consequences which may outweigh the good, and ‘unreasoning terror’.
There’s a valid viewpoint in saying that a society is a complex, evolved structure, and that forcing radical change is playing with fire. It’s a reasonable concern that deserves reasonable debate.
For example, people lament the huge personal debt of Americans and the low savings rate. A conservative might say this was a perfectly predictable result of social policies which have simply reduced the need to save, and lowered the consequences of debt. Social safety nets make sure that going completely bankrupt isn’t *that horrible. Social Security and Medicare and other senior care reduces the need to save for retirement. Government student loan programs reduce the need to save for your child’s education. Government health care reduces the need to put away money in case of medical emergencies. Government-insured, low principal housing loans reduce the need to save for the down payment on a home.
Likewise, back when liberals were all about building ‘projects’ in the inner cities, conservatives argued that the cause of poverty wasn’t lack of housing but lack of values, and that simply building houses for poor people and congregating them together would result in destroyed housing, a culture of dependency, and a general bad outcome. And that’s exactly what happened. Social planners thought they could fix a complex problem with a few laws and subsidies, and they only succeeded in making the problem worse.
Conservatives also argue that the family is an extremely important aspect of our civil society - family acts as a social safety net. Family values put pressure on young people to make good decisions. Families help each other and build communities that help each other.
Conservatives see many liberal programs as being destructive to the family because they reduce the need for family. Old people without Social Security would often move back in with their children - therefore it was in their interest to have lots of children and to maintain close relationships with their children. That created large, extended families that in turn gave new children in the family a well developed social structure to grow up in and taught them how to be part of a community and the importance of looking after each other.
Government programs have increasingly displaced the family as a social safety net, as a retirement safety net, and the result is smaller, more disconnected families and children being increasingly raised in single parent homes or at least in smaller families where there are no or distant connections to grandparents and cousins. Conservatives would argue that this is destructive to society as a whole, or at least it’s a negative consequence which must be considered when evaluating government programs.
Are arguments like that even remotely close to your caricature? Does your caricature bring any value to a debate of such ideas, or does it just obfuscate the issues? Is desiring a family-centric society any more based on fear than is a liberal’s desire to live in a society where the government will help them if they fall on hard times?
No, actually, lack of values is kinda down the list, number one cause of poverty is money, specificly, the lack of it. Pretty much defines the condition, actually. “Values”, my ass! You really think that people of higher income brackets are there because of superior values? Or are superior values a happy by product of credit rating?
And who was going to build housing for these people? What “values” do you think being homeless brings to enoble the character? Not much money to be made dealing with poor folks, Sam. You know why, right? We covered that, yes? Just about the only way to make money off of poor people is to exploit them for what little they have. You’ve heard the expression “slumlord”, Sam? Think they’re a liberal myth, made up by lefties?
So they have a place to live, but perhaps their “values” suffer. Like the value of having a place for thier kids to sleep or the much more urgent need for self-reliance and and entreprenuerial spirit?
Put bluntly: where were they gonna live, Sam? Free market going to take care of them, because of thier values?
I agree with much of the rest of your post, but I find this claim odd. Reduction in family sizes corresponds pretty closely to a reduction in childhood deaths–regardless of economic philosophy–and a move away from an agricultural economy. This trend is global. I am not sure why you would perceive smaller families as the result of more government “safety net” programs as opposed to the result of losing fewer children to disease. Japan has the lowest birthrate in the industrial world while having fewer government “safety nets” than any of its economic rivals.
Yes, I do believe that the difference between a lot of poor people and richer people IS ‘values’. Specifically, value placed on work, on saving, on school, on sticking to things, on deferring pleasure if you can’t afford it.
No, I think that by and large ‘slumlords’ are a product of government housing projects - people who know how to work the system to get big government handouts, then walk away.
Some ‘slumlords’ are people who try to maintain decent housing, but are thwarted by tenants who have no incentive to maintain their housing. Look into the problems with Title 8 housing, and how tenants intentionally destroy property to put the burden on the landlord and kick in a clause that prevents them from being evicted for non-payment of rent.
But of course there are some ‘slumlords’ who simply take advantage of poor people. But they are a symptom, not a cause. Aside from those who are poor people they have low IQs, or physical disabilities, or other problems which keep them from working, most people who are poor are in that situation because they consistently make poorer choices than those who started poor and no longer are.
Have you ever noticed how many low income people don’t take care of their things very well? Their cars are always filthy, they don’t do routine maintenance. I know a guy who is still paying off a huge loan on a truck he bought new in 1999, and which he managed to trash completely in the space of 3 or 4 years by never cleaning it, never taking care of it or maintaining it. Another one who is still living in a trailer despite having huge incomes for most of his life as a tradesman - the big paychecks brought in stereos and credit cards and new trucks and down payments on houses - then he’d get mad and walk off the job, or lose his job for some other reason, and lose his things and trash his credit and start from scratch. He’s probably made as much or more money in his life as I have.
This is not rare. I saw this kind of behavior over, and over again. You see it in the inner city - desperately poor kids wearing $200 sneakers and poor people who eat out at McDonalds and load up their credit cards buying junk they don’t need. When I played poker, the casinos were full of poor people blowing their welfare cheques on slot machines. Have you seen how much money the government collects in lottery tickets from poor people?
Here in Canada, a pack of cigarettes costs about $10. Poor people tend to smoke a lot more than rich people do. A pack-a-day habit is $300/mo. Do you know how much money you’d have in five years if you took $300/mo and banked it at 5% interest? You’d have $20,000. After twenty years, you’d have $122,000. At 10% interest, you’d have $217,000. Anyone can do it.
I’m curious - have you ever been really poor? Did you ever live in a really poor neighborhood? Do you have personal experience with this?
I do. I’ve been around poor people my whole life. I’ve seen some become wealthy, and some stay poor. Almost without exception, the ones who stayed poor made bad choices. The friend with the bakery job screwed himself right from the start - he actually was making good money - over twice what I made working in a grocery store. But he didn’t save it. He put himself in debt to buy a muscle car, and the debt load prevented him from going back to school. His mother didn’t care. He had no father. He had no one to tell him to make better choices. So he screwed himself over right out of the gate.
No, their values lead them to make decisions that allows them to take care of themselves. There are very, very few people in North America who cannot take the steps needed to lift themselves out of poverty. Unemployment is low, wages are pretty good, and it can be done. It’s hard, but it can be done. When I went to college, I worked part time and in summer, and lived in a crappy basement suite with another guy and survived that way for four years, on about $8,000 per year.
Now, there is no question that some people are truly unlucky. They lost the genetic lottery and don’t have the skills to do productive work, or they are unwell and unable to work, or disabled. They need to be helped. But government help needs to always be kept at a minimum, because it carries a huge moral hazard - it tends to perpetuate poverty, because it subsidizes poverty.
Frankly, it’s people like you who are part of the problem. Well-meaning liberals who convince the poor that they are helpless by using the same rhetoric you’re using in this thread. The rich and powerful control everything, it’s impossible to get ahead without connections, they need government help because there is absolutely no possibility that they can help themselves.
The best aspect of Obama’s candidacy, btw, and the one thing that makes me sympathetic to him, is that he says the same kinds of things I’m saying. Maybe it’s because he came from a poor background himself and clawed his way out, and understands how critical it is to make good choices and to create the right set of values for your children so they don’t make life-destroying mistakes.
And with any luck, he’s learned a lesson from this.
I’m embarrassed for us both to see you stoop to this.
I actually wasn’t asking in a disparaging way - I was going to ask you about your experiences and if you had seen something other than what I saw. For example, I am certain that being poor in Canada in 1970 is not much like being poor in Alabama in 1960. I certainly have knowledge that racism played and plays a role in perpetuating poverty among blacks in many areas, and this needs to be addressed. And there are certainly areas where people have strong family or cultural ties and do not want to leave, but are desperately poor and do not have access to the kinds of things they need to lift themselves up. This also needs to be addressed.
But in almost every case of poverty among the people I knew, it was self-inflicted through a series of bad choices or the failure to capitalize on opportunities.
That’s an interesting statistic regarding the Japanese. I’ll have to think about that a bit - although it’s also possible that the Japanese birth rate reduction has more to do with other cultural issues unique to Japan.
I also think the relationship between number of children and social programs is the weakest part of the theory. But the argument is also about the weakening of the family as a social construct, regardless of its size. Grandparents not staying as close, less incentive to stay married (or to get married in the first place), etc. They just aren’t as necessary as they used to be.
At least, that’s the theory. I also recognize that there are other reasons for families to split apart - a big one is globalization and specialization, which is causing more worker migration. Also the decline in the number of people who work in agriculture, which has historically been more family oriented than urban living.
I’m not even saying there aren’t good counter-arguments. My main point was that these arguments are serious and thoughtful enough to warrant debate, and not a snarky dismissal as some form of ‘unreasoning terror’.
Didn’t like it, not one little bit, but I’ll take your word for it. Be that as it may, personal (and self-congratulatory) anecdote is not evidence.
Perhaps there’s something wrong with your monitor. It appears to have eliminated several words from my post. Here, let’s see if it happens again.
Now, if you’re done flying off the handle at another opportunity to leap headlong into “take offense!” mode, perhaps you can see that a conservative who has
is not who I was talking about.
And for the record, I have an equally dim view of the unthinking knee-jerk left-wing type. The major difference is, I see their basic motivating impulse, rather than being rooted in abject, unreasoning terror, as coming from the same foot-stomping fist-waving “it’s not fair” tantrum of the average seven-year-old. But, again, “serious and thoughtful” progressives are not covered by that characterization.
Anyway. Is your computer still under warranty? You might want to have it looked at.
So the extreme right is guided by fear. And you don’t think the left is? You don’t think the extreme left is afraid that the government will engage in war after war, strip them of their civil liberties, spy on them, let the poor starve to death, leave children uneducated, and turn America into a theocracy?
I think what characterizes the nutbar extremes of any ideology is that they have transitioned from saying, “that’s a good policy” or “that’s a bad policy” into fear that their opponents will destroy the country and turn it into some kind of hellhole. That’s why they’re so extreme. It takes fear to strip someone of reason and make them a gibbering partisan idiot.
But since this is true of all political persuations, I don’t think it’s a very useful thing to talk about, and smearing one side with that accusation doesn’t elevate the debate - it obscures it.