Never mind #9. You get the picture. Stupid things can be said by both sides. Generalizations are ignorant.
By the way, you don’t have to worry about Liberals trying to take away Christmas Day. Some may insist that it be kept separate from government sponsored and taxpayer sponsored programs. That’s different. We won’t make you worship Isis either.
Even if religious organizations could do a really good job, a lot of people want their tax money to be kept separate from religious organizations – as in separation of Church and State. There are lots of reasons. Some churches discriminate against certain races. Other discriminate against homosexuals. Muslims discriminate against women. (This isn’t likely to happen, but what if you found out that the charity that your tax money had gone to was a front for a terrorist group?)
Someone mentioned that Liberals are “envious” of Conservatives. In heavens name, why would we be envious? So often the Conservatives that I’ve known seem to be a lot angrier than I am. I know that’s not always true, but it does seem to have a little validity at SDMB. Maybe I’m wrong.
**Zoe], in the interests of meeting in the middle, you might want to try rephrasing some of those points.
Unless I am much mistaken, conservative refer to people unwilling to work as examples of bad behavior. I’m not aware of many who would claim that joblessness in and of itself is proof of malfeasence.
How long has the average welfare recipient been only 2 years? That number seems suspiciously close to the recent limiting of welfare. Not an objection, really, just a question.
I’m not entirely sure that #5 is not taken out of context. Are you saying that each sentence which mentions mothers recieving welfare must be followed by a disclaimer that somewhere a deadbeat dad exists?
I’m certain this is taken out of context. Anyone who proposes free market forces as the solution for some problem will almost of necessity oppose corporate welfare.
I am not proposing to argue each of these points here. I am only trying to suggest that one reason why these issues make conservatives seem less realistic about some issues is that you misunderstand the conservative position on them. I am certain that a similar list of statements or issues could be created which tend to make conservatives distrustful of liberals. I am equally certain, however, that in the vast majority of cases (politicians being the main exception), the distrust stems from a misunderstanding between the two.
I suppose there are a few people who completely articulate their position in each and every post or conversation they engage in. But this is quite rare. I think it is much more likely that “soundbite” statements are made, misinterpreted by the other side, and the misunderstanding ensues.
Excellent post, BTW, perhaps we could have a discussion on how liberals could understand conservative better, and vise versa.
Naughty, naughty. The first use of the word envious is in your own post. This post is the second and third.
Asterion:
Personally, I don’t have an absolute objection to giving grants to faith-based charities. However, I do have a number of lesser objections:
Now then, to shift gears a bit–and get back to the thrust of the OP–I am also not overwhelmingly opposed to school vouchers. But this is one of the more blatant examples of conservative selfishness: ‘I want a superior education for MY kids and I don’t care what happens to the kids left behind in public schools after we gut their budgets’. I would be OK with vouchers if they were paid for by rolling back the tax cuts for the rich and the public schools could keep the same amount of money in their budgets to serve the reduced numbers of students.
Have you reported this to a moderator and asked it to be moved to the Pit?
From my memory, december started a bunch of threads that stupidly bashed liberals, and only a fraction of them got moved to the Pit. Frankly, it wasn’t all that hilarious :).
Daniel
I’m not sure where I would fit in. I think people should take responsibility for themselves. They should be able/allowed to things for themselves without undue interference, be able to take credit for the good things, and take blame for the bad things. But on the other hand, I do not believe in just “throwing people to the wolves” in a sink or swim sort of way. There are people who need help on a continual basis, through no fault of their own. Someone who was just in a massive layoff, someone who has a debilitating medical or mental condition, a child, and probably other examples. If it is someone who is fully capable but is a “scrub”, just wants to lay about doing nothing while living on a government handout, then sink or swim sounds more appropriate. I remember the Reagan years, the time of supply side and trickle down economics. I remember the dumping of mental patients and the newly unemployed who had jobs which just “went away”. The only thing trickling down was the shit (rolling downhill). They were the ones living behind supermarkets, and asking for handouts to feed their families. These folks needed and deserved some sort of help. They did not care if it came from the government, a church, or anywhere else. So, yes, people should be responsible for themselves but that assumes they are not playing against a stacked deck, as these poor SOBs were.
Ah december…we miss you so. 
Actually, I don’t remember a december thread that was this blatantly bashing about liberals, but then I tended to avoid threads started by him.
And no…I haven’t reported it. Not my job mon…I’m sure they have dipped a toe in here by now. If they figure its in the right forum then hey…thats where its going to stay.
-XT
[QUOTE=sqweelsNow then, to shift gears a bit–and get back to the thrust of the OP–I am also not overwhelmingly opposed to school vouchers. But this is one of the more blatant examples of conservative selfishness: ‘I want a superior education for MY kids and I don’t care what happens to the kids left behind in public schools after we gut their budgets’. I would be OK with vouchers if they were paid for by rolling back the tax cuts for the rich and the public schools could keep the same amount of money in their budgets to serve the reduced numbers of students.[/QUOTE]
Except this is a fundemental misunderstanding of the position. Liberals have tried to paint the school voucher idea as taking money away from failed schools. Conservatives see it more as giving the money to successful schools. That is more efficiently using the resources we have.
On the other hand, your proposal to keep giving schools which are not performing as much money as they have always had (presumably with COLA increases?) would motivate them to do better how?
You might just have to trust me on this: he was inclined to start threads about how liberals were supporting terrorism and the like. Although there are currently folks like Razorsharp who hang around making foolish blanket condemnations of liberals, I don’t recall seeing a similar thread recently.
Of course, I don’t read every Great Debates thread. Thank God.
Daniel
If you spend enough time on this site, you will see that there are some pretty stupid Liberals as well.
Conservative economic theory is rooted in the theory that the free market is the most efficient way to exchange goods and services.
Liberals tend to have a greater sense of self-righteousness about what they think is the best way to do things. They tend to take a view that Big Government should take care of everything and everyone and that the little people are too stupid and ignorant to know whats best for themselves.
Most liberals tend to come from acadamia which is ironic since they have very little interaction with the people they proclaim to help. Often it comes from a perception of guilt over having grown up with relative affluence.
[QUOTE=CC]
And the judgement I’d make is that conservative viewpoints come from a more selfish and even greedy point of view, and liberal viewpoints come from a more altruistic point of view.
By definition conservatives tend to oppose radical change while liberals tend to be naive regarding actual human nature. I hear a lot of “if everyone just did THIS” from liberals (where THIS is something that goes against my best interest).
In order to demonstrate human nature as it relates to self-interest vs common good, let me ask you this:
What would cause you to say “I had a really crappy day today” - hearing that 10,000 Rwandans died in a civil war or cutting off your finger at work?
Well, the failure to mention the dads implies that the burden of responsibility is with the woman–and when it comes to the cutting or redefining of programs, it is these same women who are affected–the implication being a punitive one (“they’re irresponsible, so they shouldn’t expect our help”), when the deadbeat father doesn’t suffer these consequences (and often, the woman has shouldered disproportionate responsibility to make ends meet).
Well, theoretically this is true, but you’d never know it by their actions or words. I can’t begin to count the number of GOP candidate speeches I’ve heard that rail against the abuses of social programs, when it represents a drop in the bucket of financial waste that corporate welfare represents–yet I rarely ever hear them complain about that. It seems that they’re much more eager to jump on individual responsibility (one person’s mistakes) but rarely address collective corporate responsibility (mistake–or often much worse–by committee).
You’ll get no argument from me that the some Dems are slaves to corporate pursestrings as well, but I am much more likely to hear about issues surrounding corporate abuse and accountability in speeches or read about it in platforms coming from the Dem side than I am from the “free market”/“no regulation” Repub. side (and when that message does come from the occasional candidate, it’s usually buried or drowned out in the much more effective, emotional rhetoric of the irresponsible “them” aka “not us”).
Maybe one problem with this kind of “debate” is the almost unavoidable tendency to paint all liberals or conservatives with the same brush - (as I did in my OP). For the sake of the debate, it may serve a purpose, but in the case of the above statement, I want to say that my own stance - which is predominantly liberal on many issues - is that I object to vouchers and charter schools, and magnet schools because they still leave children behind. The ones who are left behind are often the ones who “caused” the low scores in the school in the first place. They are among the neediest. They are often left behind because their parents either don’t know that they can transfer, they don’t care, or (name your reason). Bottom line is that charter schools and vouchers work for those who take advantage of them, and leave the dregs behind, where poorer teachers are also often assigned. It’s a pretty good way to separate the wheat from the chaff, but it doesn’t solve the problem, and may exacerbate it.
Going with Democrats vs. Republicans, as I can’t find any data that does a liberal vs. conservative comparison. I can’t find any nationwide data that breaks it down thoroughly enough to verify the various factors across the board. From what various data I’ve been able to piece together, if you include “religious” affiliations, it’s fairly close over all, with a slight nod towards the Republicans. If you remove religious afiiliations from the list of recipients, Democrats come out well ahead in giving.
As Lissa so eloquently stated, neither do enough to allow the elimination of welfare.
Pervert:
How to “motivate” problem schools to do better is a separate–and very complex–issue. I do not believe in tying funding to performance. This “competition” thing is bullshit–there are losers in competitions, you know. Do you want your local public school to lose the (unfair) competition so there’s no more free education? I don’t have all the answers, but the last thing any school needs is less money. They need more money, period. Public schools are not businesses; they are not driven by the profit motive. Few school adminstrators will agree that they receive so much money it’s as though it’s being “thrown” at them. Robbing the schools only punishes the students–the very people who care the least–while the administrators get the same salary regardless. Or should we recruit teachers and principles to inner-city schools by telling them “if the kids turn out to be a buncha thugs because their parents are a buncha scumbags, you don’t get paid”?
(p.s., the idea the liberal opponents of school vouchers actually don’t want you to have a “choice” in where to send your kids to school is particularly outrageous bullshit. Send your kids whereever you want to, just don’t rob the public schools.)
Except, again, context is very important. If the discussion is about welfare handed out to single mothers, it is difficult to see why the fathers would enter into it unless the context is broadened. For instance, was it a liberal or conservative proposal which suggested that in order to recieve help for her children, an unwed mother had to name the father? Which side of that debate is really interested in broadening the context?
Well, unless you are claiming that social security is not a social program, then you are mistaken. The government regulates and penalizes businesses far more than they subsidize them. Just like, I should add, they regulate and penalize people more than they subsidize them. Recipients of social programs are not the majority, after all. My point is only that as a percentage of the federal budget, corporate welfare is fare smaller than the social programs.
Well, you’ll get no argument from me either that some Republicans are slaves to coporate interests. As well you’ll get no argument that some are slaves to certain social interests. I happen to think Democrats are too. the problem as I see it is that so much of politics is reduced to sound bites that the sublety of both sides is lost.
I’m going to say some things which can easily be taken the wrong way. Please note throughout that I am in fact in favor of increasing teacher salaries. I think teachers should be paid comparible amounts to doctors. Also, note that I am not blaming any particular group or subsection of the education industry for any of the problems. I tend to think of the problems as systematic.
But it is only by dropping this side of the issue that you can demonize the school voucher adherents. Take a look at the discussion about dead beat dads. There is a grain of truth to the complaint that conservatives talk about cutting funding for unwed mothers, but do not spend a similar amount of energy trying to find or penalize the dead beat dads. If you drop the issue of motivation, you miss one of the important parts of the problem.
Yes, there are. And there are winners. Do you think that everyone can have their results leveled?
Except that this will not happen. The voucher proposals simply want more freedom about where the state money goes. No one is proposing closing all the public schools. Just demanding that they improve.
I know this feels good, but it is wrong. There are, in fact, schools which are doing a terrible job of raising our kids. These schools need their funding cut. Until it is, the money they get (and waste) will never go to prductive uses.
This oversimplifies the situation to absurd extremes. You are essentially claiming that all the problems will go away if we give all of the schools more money. It is not that simple. Period. The fact is that the amount of money schools spend is not reflected well in the achievements of students. There are many examples of very expensive school systems producing under achievers.
No, but if they were, if they had to produce a product which was approved of by their customers, they might do a much better job. If the results they achieved were actually measured and compared against the expectations of those customers, they might work quite a bit harder to produce good results.
No, but should we tell them that regardless of the difference between the reading level at the begining and end of the school year your students are at, you get exactly the same salary?
Except you have to rob (tax) me to pay for those schools in the first place. What you are saying in effect is that rich people should have choice, but poor people should not.
I know that last bit was over simplified. Do you see how simple it is to misunderstand one another?
My bad. I certainly should have said som liberals. I was trying to distinguish a sterotypically liberal talking point from a sterotypically convertive one. I was honestly not trying to paing all liberals or all conservatives as anything. Upon re reading what you quoted, however, it certainly looks as if I did intend that. Thank you for catching it and please accept my appologies if I offended anyone.
First you have to define “conservative” and “liberal”; at best you are using the classical definitions and the modern incarnations interchangeably and as necessary to somehow maintain a rather dubious continuity between classical liberals of old and the modern authoritarian leftism.
What a nice thing to say! Thank you! 
The fact is that no one has ever increased the amount of money in a school district enough to make a significant difference. The amounts of money that would truly make a difference would be spent on two things: 1) Teachers’ individual salaries. To get the best and the brightest of college graduates to go into that line of work would require raising the minimum salaries of starting teachers from the average of $25,000-$30,000, which it is now, to levels commensurate with, say, law firms, that pay the top level grads way, way more. You simply need a better caliber of teacher - truly bright and well-educated people. That costs lots of money. 2) Lots more teachers. Class size is a significant variable in the effectiveness of the teacher. And the teacher is the most significant variable in the success of the student. The break number seems to be about 15 students per class. In other words, kids in classes that are larger than that tend to do less well in most measures of learning. You’d need to build about twice as many schools and hire about twice as many teachers in order to reduce class sizes to effective sizes. That costs a lot of money.
Until we actually draw on the brightest college grads to teach and until we reduce class sizes, we won’t see much relationship between money spent and educational progress. And that won’t happen within the scale of expenditures we see now.