The moral roots of liberals and conservatives

Great Debates
41

You don’t understand what is meant by “ingroup loyalty.” It refers to the arbitray assignation of moral priority based on familial-cultural-national proximity rather than behavior or inherent moral qualities. It’s not really something with any intrinsic moral value. It’s just mindless genetic knee-jerking. It can be seen manifestd most strongly by conservatives with what they call “patritism.” A morally empty “value” based on nothing but kee jerk hostility towards the out group. t can also be seen in armband religion. Essentially, it’s tribalism. A primitive mindset which is both ethically and intellectually unevolved.

Such as what? Not that respect for authority is any kind of legitimate ethical metric either.

There is no such thing as “political correctness.” Conservatives made that up. It’s a phrase that doesn’t mean anything and isn’t practiced by anybody. Usually when conservatives use it, they use it as little more than code for “not a racist.”

Environmentalism doesn’t have anything to do with the “purity/sancity” metric. That refers to archaic, bullshit ritial purity standards like tthe belief that womena are tainted if they have sex before marriage, or that being gay makes people ritually unclean. It’s pure superstition. Not based on any kind of genuine ethical considerations.
Basically the last three things on the list represent completely bogus and backwards tribal standards of morality.

42

Sure liberals do.

If there is an anti-miscegenation law on the books who else but government to fix that?

If (say) blacks are blocked from polling places via poll taxes or “literacy” tests who else but government can fix it?

Notice in these cases it is the government that is being used to block the minority in the first place. So, naturally, it needs government to fix it.

Interesting how such blocks are fine in the conservative view but if people seek to change it then it is all of a sudden about the proper role of government and it should butt out.

If not outright laws blocking someone how do you fix (say) a woman getting paid half what a guy gets for the exact same job? Who else but government can fix that?

43

My views are (lt’s be honest here) seriously warped from years of working in the government. We suck. We really do. Why? We are in a state of constant change to everything. New rules, new procedures, new “paradigms”, new “magic bullets” all the time. As soon as we figure some way to force the last change to ummm almost work, here comes a new set of sweeping changes to everything. It’s a sort of forced incompetence. Why? Because some people (the ones who don’t actually have to DO the work) are constantly looking to “improve the process”. Of course, it’s never their fault when it all goes to shit. They come out smelling like a rose because they made changes, the rest of us end up smelling like shit because we couldn’t keep up with all the stupid, unworkable, retarded changes for the sake of changing everything.

44

Huh? Sure they do. Accepting that in some cases the government should be involved doesn’t mean they haven’t questioned that basic point. There are plenty of issues that I, as a liberal, would consider quite a good idea, but that I don’t believe the government should be involved with, or that they should be able to do whatever they want in those areas where I do think they should be involved.

That I may well think that the government has a larger role to play in many cases than you doesn’t mean I never question that idea - just as I would be wrong to say that you don’t question the idea that the government never has any role to play. It’s a vast exaggeration, and a considerable generalisation of an exaggeration when talking about liberals vs. conservatives.

45

Conservatives don’t identify problems. They deny that problems exist (see health care and global warming for just a couple of examples). They’re also more than happy to use the government to impose religious and sexual morality, as well as to pursue military and commercial agendas which benefit the rich. They just don’t want to use the government to help real human beings or implement any good in the world.

46

I was sent this just tonight by a conservative friend. Merely stupid, indeed.

47

This is completely backwards from the truth. Turn on talk radio any time durimg the day, or go to a teabagger rally and you’ll hear nothing but how evil liberals are, especially Obama.

Liberals, on the other hand, are frustrated and bemused by these morons, but still essentially think they’re just morons, not that they’re evil. Except for Cheney. He’s actually evil – like supernatural evil.

48

Which ties into what the speaker talked about in the video. On some level, conservatives have a stronger realization of how fragile social cohesion is and want to uphold society even at the expense of those at the bottom. Liberals are less concerned with social cohesion and more concerned with egalitarianism.

When France started undergoing egalitarian revolutions, neighboring countries started invading because they saw that France was weak. I guess on some level conservatives have that same fear. The civil war put the US at risk of French or British intervention. The civil rights movement possibly had infiltration by communists. But all these periods of domestic instability and invasion by foreigners were brought about by bringing on egalitarian reforms.

One thing I’ve noticed about many conservative pundits and politicians is they always seem to think our society is on the brink of collapse due to internal and external threats. Every third world dictator is the next Hitler. Every civil rights advance will collapse society. Every tax, regulation and labor reform will collapse the economy.

The author of the J curve found that open societies are actually more stable than closed societies, but there is a period of transition where there is more stability in authoritarianism than liberalism. So conservatives seem to fear the rise in instability that comes from reform and egalitarianism, but in the long run a society is more stable than it is when it is oppressive and dictatorial.

Point is, in the short run conservatives are right on social stability, but long term liberals are right.

49

That is some powerful stupid right there. I don’t even get what it’s trying to satirize about Obama. What part of reality is it trying to reference? Wht is it trying to say about Obama?

50

As near as I can tell, all that matters is he’s a Democrat, and therefore is an evil gay tyrant.

51

That’s pretty weird. Is it supposed to mean something?

52

You have said that before, and other people disagreed with you before. Liberals like myself do question the role of government. And we came to a different conclusion than you. There are some intrinsic rights/values that humans have in a wealthy democracy, and there are some problems that are too big, complex, long term or unprofitable to be left to the public sector. In those issues the government should step in.

53

Or even in a poor one. There are some areas that we (libruls) also would agree th government has no business being.

[ol]
[li]right to own our property without fear of it being taken away[/li][li]right to privacy in our homes[/li][li]right to read what we choose, when we choose[/li][li]right to equal protection under the law, without regard to personal power or social status[/li][li]right to public trial by a jury of our peers in a court of law[/li][li]presumption of innocence[/li][li]right to petition the government[/li][li]right to free speech and lawful assembly[/li][/ol]

These things are supported by liberals, and when you look close, these are basic things. Funny, during the last administration, it was the “conservatives” (in name only) who were most interested in changing, curtailing or removing these, in the name of safety and security.

54

Close but not quite…

It’s true that I (a liberal), don’t stress as much as you seem to over the proper role of government. Instead, I try to determine the best way to achieve an end. Sometimes (schools, roads, military etc) government is best and other times (credit cards, trading, food shopping etc) the market is best. I don’t have a preconceived notion of the proper role; I look at the evidence.

It’s reasonable to disagree on whether government or market can do a better job (I disagree with you on health care. I disagree with whack-a-mole on equalizing salaries) but I’d rather disagree based on solid argument and evidence than on preconceived notions of the proper role of government.

55

As a liberal here is my take on that. I don’t consider conservatives evil who don’t want the government involved. Ron Paul doesn’t want social security or medicare, and I don’t consider him evil. Goldwater didn’t either, and I don’t consider him evil.

Part of it is that some conservatives don’t seem interested in solving problems. With health reform for example, liberals/democrats realize there is a problem. Some conservatives don’t seem to know or care that our health system is inhumane and unsustainable. That is an issue. Its not that both parties realize there is a problem and have different solutions (liberals want government solutions, conservatives want private sector solutions). It is more that conservatives don’t know or care that there are problems with our health system in the first place (it harms our economic competitiveness, it hurts people, it is unreliable, etc). So that doesn’t help with the ‘conservatives as evil’ meme because they seem to lack empathy. If a conservative came out and said ‘I realize XYZ is a problem, but I don’t think it is government’s role to fix it’ that isn’t evil because they realize there is a problem that needs a solution, just not a government solution. However most conservatives don’t seem to realize/care that there is a problem in the first place. With health care as long as they have good coverage, they really don’t care about what is happening in other people’s lives.

Another reason when I as a liberal consider some conservatives evil it is usually because they show high levels of hypocrisy and self absorption. For example, many of the teabaggers and town hall attendees who criticize welfare and socialized medicine collect social security and medicare. They support government welfare, but only for themselves. The average Fox news and talk radio viewer is 65-67, aka at the cusp of collecting medicare and social security, the two biggest welfare programs in the US.

I started a thread in the Pit about friends of friends who had a major medical problem, but it was hijacked into a debate where the same thing happened. A conservative said welfare was evil, but this conservative collected SS disability payments. The irony was totally lost.

Many in the conservative movement do have a strong degree of entitlement. They (at least the teabaggers and fox news viewers over 65) think they should get welfare and socialized medicine, but nobody else. They should get civil rights, but nobody else.

Look at how conservatives rail and scream about liberty (their liberty), then turn around and try to deny civil rights to gays, blacks, immigrants, prisoners, and almost everyone else.

So a big part of the ‘conservatives are evil’ meme, IMO, comes from how hypocritical they can be. The teabaggers collect social security and medicare, then turn around and rail about how horrible it is that some people are on welfare or might have a public option.

They complain about how horrible it is that someone else is oppressing them by saying ‘happy holidays’ instead of ‘merry christmas’ before going to a rally and trying to take away the civil rights of gays and women.

The eye rolling irony of this (Conservatives on SS and medicare railing against welfare & socialized medicine; conservatives trying to take the rights away from gays, blacks, women, prisoners, etc. while complaining they themselves are horribly oppressed, usually due to something petty and minor) is not lost on people.

Why are we stupid? I ask that seriously. I’ve always felt the opposite.

Liberals may not look at the negatives of some of our ideas (regulation may cost jobs and have negative side effects as an example) but by and large it seems conservatives are generally the ones who can be dogmatic, hypocritical and jaw droppingly dense.

Recently Glenn Beck, in his rants against progressivism, told his audience that he got his education for free at the library. Libraries are a cornerstone of progressivism, and funded by taxes. Nobody at the CPAC convention caught onto this basic fact, which would’ve been obvious to anyone who can think critically.

Many conservatives in the modern US come across as extremely dogmatic, entitled and lacking in basic critical thinking skills.

I don’t include you in that list though (you are more moderate than the ones I’m describing), but I live in a small town in a red state.

56

Right, but the underlying reason for this is a different view of government, which I believe is based on the fact that liberals just aren’t intersted in thinking about the issue. All government action is based on force. Therefore, government action needs some justification besids “I think the government is the best tool for the job–no other entity could do it.”

If you want to use force on people, I think you need a better justification than you think it’s a good idea.

57

I want MY rights, but I don’t want you to have YOUR rights. It’s all about me. Screw you.

That’s what so much of it looks like.

58

Yeah, it really looked like conservatives were trying to think about the issue when they were bussing people in to scream and yell and disrupt those town hall meetings on health care. Those teabagger signs depicting Barack Obama with a bone through his nose really reflect a lot of deep thought as well. So does global warming denial.

59

A lot of government is “force”. Break the law and you go to jail. That’s a force. Attack us and our armies will beat you down. That’s definitely force. But, there should be a reason for it. There should be some benefit that outweighs any possible harm, and it should be a convincing argument.

Sometimes the government is the best, or only solution. Could you or I afford a private army, even if it were allowed? Can we afford to have a society where there is no form of police? Those are pretty straightforward.
Then there are social issues, where only government can institute, oversee and enforce. Abolition of slavery, women and the vote, child labor law, anti trust law, etc. There are some things so big, or so entrenched that there is no other way. No one else has the money or the power to “make it so”.

60

Government is not some external entity, it is designed to be the collective will of individuals who feel they are designed with a certain basement level of worth, dignity and value and who realize they can accomplish more collectively than they can under anarchism.

If an authoritarian regime tries to make me worship Kim Jong Il, that is force. If a wealthy democracy tries to get me to pay taxes to fund education, health care and the police that is something different. Because the latter is a reflection of my internal philosophy.

I’ve said several times, if you honestly believe what you say then run for politics on your platform and see how many votes you get. Make sure your voters truly truly understand what life under libertarianism is like (ie don’t say you’ll cut taxes but neglect to mention what programs they depend on that’ll be cut in the process), then see how many people vote for you anyway.

Self described conservatives don’t even want cuts

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2010/02/corrected-graph-on-conservative-cuts.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+matthewyglesias+(Matthew+Yglesias)

After you subtract misinformation (we spend almost nothing on foreign aid, maybe 1% of the budget. And social security, child care & aid to the poor are all welfare programs but do much worse than ‘welfare programs’) conservatives don’t want budget cuts. But they don’t want to pay for the programs either.