^^That’s the impression I get and thus why I don’t get involved in discussions.
To me a good conservative poster is defined the same as a good liberal poster.
Someone interested in having actual conversation about what they believe, supporting those beliefs with logic and facts, responding to what is actually said, interested in and listening to what is being said by others with a mind that is not completely closed off in return. They are not functioning from a tribal warfare POV. I’m sorry that we lost adaher because he did that, even in the face of a shitload of abuse.
In absolute numbers by that definition we have many more poor liberal posters than we have poor conservative posters. But relative numbers being what they are that still leaves the conservative posting pool with very few good participants, or at least with a very low wheat to chaff ratio in their posts. There are, in absolute terms, enough good liberal posters (and given that my views skew in that direction, and in the real world I have plenty of conversations with those very hard progressive, I have less need to understand what they think and why). There are not, in absolute terms, many good conservative posters.
I am not sure how much they even exist anywhere and why those who do exist would want to put up with being here.
That is probably correct. I am not particularly interested in a debate over whether or not I am (or other people are) subhuman, otherwise inherently inferior, or should be treated as such. The conservative position and thinking are clear on those issues; there’s no new ground to cover. These are also not areas where there’s a middle ground worth exploring - history has taught us that that has never worked well, so let’s not bother.
OTOH, tax policy? tariffs? there are new ideas and/or new ways of approaching those issues from both sides. There’s potentially something worthwhile for me to learn from an a conservative point of view and I can see altering my position or changing it entirely.
What’s to put up with, though ? I think it’s possible to hold conservative or right-wing views and discuss them without being a complete dink about them, and I think people who hold those views would benefit from discussing these views with liberals who aren’t complete dinks about their own ideas. And, sure, posters doing so will perforce still get a bunch of shrill idiots (like, possibly, myself) distorting, disregarding, misrepresenting, strawmaning, whatabouting their content. How is that different from the conservative dinks we *do *have here doing the same to cogent left-wing posters ? If I can tune out Starving Artist, they can tune out Der Trihs.
Or we could police out the dinks over their being dinks.
It’s difficult (or utterly hypocritical, depending) to talk about infrastructure, tax policy, immigration or even climate change without ever touching on or leading to a conversation on race issues though. Or feminist issues, or gay issues. That’s kind of the issue with systemic racism and patriarchy. You can’t really divorce anything much from the so-called culture wars (even if they are merely wedges and distractions from the One And Only war which is the Class War, anyway thanks for coming to my transnational dialectic materialism seminar).
Cafe Society, The Game Room, and GQ/IMHO (as they’re largely the same these days), are worth it.
I learn a lot.
Why is this in ATMB again?
No, that’s not it. You do get the categories of issues right, but you get the reason they are unacceptably wrong. It’s not because they are emotional or personal. Economic issues are personal, too. So is religion. But we discuss those things.
Your examples of bad positions are both about bigotry. The problem with that is that the conservative opinion is obstinately ignorant. It comes almost entirely from outsiders discussing among themselves what the minorities should be upset about. The idea of listening to a minority to see if your actions negatively affect them is wrong–what matters is if they imagine they would feel negatively if it happened to them.
Other issues are the “conservative” position that the feelings of others don’t matter. I put this in quotes because I was raised conservative, and yet I was taught to care about the feelings of others. I still remember the acronym JOY–Jesus first, Others second, Yourself last. That’s a core moral value, not a conservative/liberal value. It’s literally what defines being a jerk–not caring if your actions hurt others. And what is the number 1 rule under which all other rules follow here? “Don’t be a jerk.”
A good conservative is one who strives not to be bigoted and who cares about the feelings of others. I know a lot of such people (or, so I thought before they supported Trump). A good conservative is about individual rights, and doesn’t want to impede on the rights of others because they are different than them.
And, sure, that doesn’t mean they will be 100% in line with the liberal consensus. What it does mean is that their positions will be the real positions that minorities themselves grapple with. What it means is that their opinions will be informed by compassion for their fellow man, even if they aren’t like them.
The current conservatism that embraces Donald Trump does not have this. It is about liberal tears–about hurting your fellow man.
Nicely said BigT
Huh.
I OTOH find BigT’s (and amarinth’s) posts examples of “bad posting” behaviors, whether they come from a conservative or a liberal.
“Bad posting” includes stating what the other poster believes and why because YOU know what they think and why better than they do, because it is THE position and reasoning of the other side, of all members of that tribe, that -ism, no individual thinking variation possible. No need and possibility to to hear and listen, you know what a stinking member of one of them thinks.
I have pretty liberal perspectives on these “sensitive issues” but to state that the only reason a conservative would feel differently than I do is because they are “obstinately ignorant” and does not follow “the acronym JOY–Jesus first, Others second, Yourself last” misrepresents for many. Stating that you have no need to hear what a conservative thinks and why because you already know that think you (or others) are “subhuman, otherwise inherently inferior, or should be treated as such” is of the exact same sort as the “bad poster” behavior that liberal here complain about. It is stating talking points and then fingers in ears.
Whether or not I agree with the talking points, or at least the positions they support is immaterial, they are not the actual positions and reasons for the positions held by many actual individual conservatives who might post here, even if the statements do represent Trumpism.
It is where RTFirefly is also way off-base, while starting off correct. An individual poster who identifies as an “-ism” is not defined by some stated set of core beliefs of that -ism or what others who call themselves that -ism loudly state they believe. They are only themself and speak only for their own beliefs.
FWIW I’ve had plenty of conversations about these sensitive subjects over the years with conservatives who I disagree with strongly. I have not consistently found that their motivation for their wrong beliefs based on thinking someone else is sub-human nor on thinking about themselves over others, even if some of those left who post here poke with those sticks, and others do, and even as a few do. Sometimes ignorance yes, but less obstinate ignorance than simple ignorance that cannot be reduced as easily as being given a new revealed truth.
Kobal2 what’s to put up with? There (again in absolute number terms, not as a fraction) are more liberal dinks and shrill idiots here than conservative ones. They get no more of a pass than conservative ones do, but it is a lot of volume for a conservative who is actually interested in conversation to put up with. Hell on the liberal side we have a hard time with the handful that are conservative. Modding for being a dink or being shrill is maybe not a reasonable goal.
I agree with you though - my perspective like yours sees issues like institutional racism as part of many other subjects. Avoiding the subject makes full discussion of many issues and their impacts impossible and stating that only “correct” thought can be expressed about them makes such discussion worthless: “I think this.” “Me too.” “Well said!” “Great talk! Let’s do it again!”
Seems to me the solution to this issue would be conservatives showing up en masse.
But I mean, it’s not like this board popped out of the aether with a liberal slant. Part of it is intellectuals trend liberal/atheist in general, part of it is the increasingly fact-free ness of mainstream Republican positions (and talking heads), and part of it is vocal Republicans have become, in my experience, more likely to be dinks about it for reasons X, Y, Z.
However, and I’ll readily admit my memory isn’t what it used to be before the ravages of all the consensual neurotoxin ; plus in any event I joined late and well past the Fox News Singularity Event ; but I don’t seem to recall a time when conservatives didn’t whinge about their supposed martyrdom on the board (or US society at large, for that matter).
Depends what we deem to be “correct”.
I think it’s absolutely possible to have a right-wing opinion on how to best mitigate the effects of systemic racism, or how to reduce racism itself ; and even if I’m not likely to agree with something along the lines of e.g. “the market will fix it !” I won’t *carpe *any *jugulum *over such a post.
Things start getting hairier (and deserve a lot more scrutiny) if one were to deny or doubt the existence or effects of systemic racism because while it could simply be a matter of ignorance or having lived an entire life beneath a rather large rock, suspect motives might also come into play.
Knives come out with the notion that systemic racism is justified/justifiable.
It’s hard to answer this question because conservatives and liberals define their ideologies in different ways.
Liberalism is not based in policy positions. It is based on a set of shared liberal values, from which policy positions may be derived. I haven’t done a comprehensive study, but some of those values might be:
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Society and government should be ordered so as to facilitate and support individuals’ choices in how they express themselves, how they choose to relate to others, and how they choose to organize their households. This value results in policies such as: People should be free to defile national and religious symbols and to engage in indecent speech, people should be free to engage in same-sex relationships with the full legal and economic benefits of opposite-sex relationships, people should be free from structures that oppress or threaten them for making such choices (such as hate speech), people should be allowed freedom of reproductive choices, etc.
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Society and government should be ordered so as to maximize the potential of the maximum number of individuals. This value informs policies such as: The government should provide free education and health care, the government should support employee interests, the government should protect the environment, the government should tax the wealthy and limit their options to make choices that harm others, the government should create a level playing field that allows for the maximum potential for success for the maximum number of individuals.
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Society and government should be fair and just and individuals should not be allowed to profit from the suffering of others
… and so on. Policies are chosen based on their impact on these general values and how they play a part in creating a happy, healthy, society in which the maximum number of individuals can thrive. If one fiscal policy is ineffective in achieving maximum distributed prosperity, then liberalism easily shifts to a different fiscal policy, because it’s the outcome of the policy that matters.
What are conservative values based on? They seem from my point of view to start with statements of morality. It is immoral to violate the dictates of religion. It is immoral to take money from one person and give it to someone else. It is immoral to interfere with the individual success of one person in order to give better opportunities to another person. It is immoral to defy authority.
But ultimately these statements of morality are all applied in self-serving ways. I’m not the first person to say this, but it seems that ultimately the sole conservative value is the preservation of the status quo hierarchy.
Given that disparity between modern liberalism and conservatism, I don’t know how to make conservatism “better.” It’s fundamentally flawed.
Bone is a good example, as far as how he made arguments, IMO. He didn’t JAQ off, he didn’t argue disingenuously, he didn’t play what-about games, etc. He honestly stated his position and generally honestly answered questions. I got frustrated with him sometimes because he occasionally seemed to lose interest or abandon discussions, and because he didn’t seem that interested in discussions about morality and right vs wrong (AFAICT, anyway), but he never took part in any of the troll-ish argument styles above, that I recall.
I posted a link to this 538 article about fighting during Thanksgiving for other parts of it, but pertinent to this discussion more is this last bit:
And I think both sides think that they know and understand the values of the other side (even of other members on their own side) better than they do.
When you believe that any minority should be tortured, denied medical care, and denied human rights, I agree that you are not behaving civilly and you are a bad person, period. Stop being a bigot and supporting openly bigoted policies if you don’t want to be treated like you are a bigot who supports openly bigoted policies. Telling me that you think my friends should be tortured and left to die and that it should be legal to outright kill them is not at all civil, even if you manage to convey ‘calm’ when you post it.
That seems highly hyperbolic for discussions on this board.
Okay, see - this is kind of what I was talking about. When has any conservative here said that?
I’ve missed the plot, I think. Pantastic, what are you speaking of when you write: “…my friends should be tortured and left to die and that it should be legal to outright kill them…”
I’m just trying to figure out the context here.
Oh, and again, how is this an ATMB topic?
It’s ATMB because this isn’t a GD/Elections debate about conservatism in general, it is specific to conservatism *on the Straight Dope. *I am asking our liberal posters what they consider good conservatism to be, since many said they ***do ***want a conservative presence to continue here, they just aren’t happy with the current conservatism.
Any time they say they they support Trump, they are saying that. That’s why a number of other boards have banned a declaration of support for Trump, it’s a way of declaring support for bigotry and a general assault on anyone not a straight white right wing male without openly saying so. It’s a way of threatening other posters while pretending not to.
It’s part of how the Right weaponizes so-called civility.
Why? That’s exactly what the Trump administration is doing. Any support for Trump is support for cruelty, violence, and murder of innocent suffering people. .