I’ve decided to make a thread out of an observation from another.
It’s pretty clear that there’s a rather fundamental gap in the way that liberals and conservatives see the world.
Take the recent Supreme Court ruling on campaign finance reform. Liberals think of it as abundantly clear that they’ve just opened up a mechanism by which large corporations can buy national legislation favorable to them in a way that makes it impossible for the interests of the common man (which includes, of course, the majority of conservatives) to ever dislodge them. Conservatives don’t think of that “abundantly clear fact” as even worth considering. Why?
Similarly, on health care reform, conservatives say that a certain course of action (generally a unilateral/partisan push of certain reforms, like UHC) will cause a voter revolt that will sweep Republicans in en masse… the exact same course of action that liberals think will bring a Golden Age for Democrats. Why?
It’s inevitable that there’ll be conflict between the two groups. But such fundamental disagreements certainly stall effective and needed change, as we see with health care reform. And it boggles my mind a little that the same events - indeed, the same world - can be seen in such different ways. Where do these differences come from? Can they be bridged? And would it be a GOOD thing in the first place?
Because the rightwingers have a dog eat dog view of the world, combined with the sublime conviction that they will always be the eater, not the eaten. They have no problems with injustice and unfairness, because they expect it always to be in their favor.
Besides; wealth supports the Right, more often than not. What the Supreme Court did was in effect a massive handout to the Right, and they know it.
Some are simply deluded, and really don’t understand how the public feels. The more savvy ones know that Democrats tend to buy into that sort of argument, and are hoping to terrify them into NOT pushing through a real plan. So far successfully; betting on Democratic cowardice is generally a safe bet.
No. The conservatives as a whole are both delusional and malignant; they shouldn’t be compromised with. Especially since they have zero interest in meeting anyone halfway.
It ought to be bridged. But Democrats are, by amd ;arge. not willing to sacrifice too many of their principled stands for the sake of bipartisanism, and I suspect the same is true for rank-and-file Republicans.
As to what casues it, my three-word answer would be “narrowness of vision.” It is without anyu intent to insult that I say that people like curlcoat and Clothahymp are fairly convinced that the majority of right-thinking Americans agree with them, if not in specifics, at least in general principles, on the major issues of the day. After all, the majority of people they know and associate with and may talk politics with certaily do. The fact that the Doper membership is heavily leaning in the opposite direction, they attribute to its being a left-leaning outlier from “what real Americans want” – and to a certain, small extent, they have a point. The Dope averages slightly more left than themedian citizen. That they themselves are ensconsed quite far to the right does not dawn on them.
The same, of course, holds true for quite a few Dopers to the left. It’s so self-evident that barring gay marriage is a violation of eqal protection that it’s impossible for anyone to oppose it on rational grounds based on their understanding fo what marriage is supposed to be in a social and legal context. Unfortunately, there are a large group who do just that.
Other examples, from UHC to abortion to gun control, could be advanced, where one’s personal views and those of most of one’s associates color one’s perceptions of what “the people really want.”
This is where serious discussion at places like the SDMB becomes invaluable – it’s possible for someone like Bricker or John Mace to see people who hold an ideological view at right angles to his own can advance a logical reason for why his views are right – and conceivably be convinced to change or at least modify his own.
(Note that I’m not positioning this as a left-right or Republican-Democrat divide. I find myself agreeing with Airman Doors and ExTank far more often than ideology would suggest is reasonable.)
No, they don’t. That’s why whenever the subject come up they fail utterly to justify their opposition in any rational fashion. Opposition to SSM is about bigotry, and only bigotry.
And again, that is why is is wrong to compromise. Because so many of the Right’s positions are flat out evil; so many have no motive beyond malice.
The right wing is about selfishness and greed. They feel little for people who are disadvantaged. They will not reach for the middle whatsoever.
The Republican party has demonstrated clearly what the righty attitude is. No compromise. They will sabotage every program that the Dems want . That is not governance that is petulance .
Why? Well, probably because the preconceptions, assumptions and world view between liberals and conservatives is fundamentally different. Liberals look at the world from a top down, government control perspective, while conservatives look at the world from a bottom up distrust of government control one. Of course, this is painting with a VERY broad brush, but there is a basic, fundamental difference between how liberals and conservatives view the world…thus, how they view any given political action.
BTW, I’m not familiar with liberal vs conservative view points on this particular issue, so I’m speaking in broad terms. I haven’t actually followed this particular ruling, but your analysis of both liberal and conservative view points, from the broad perspective of the entire movement on both sides, seems simplistic. Remember that both movements actually have large blocks of factions within them, so trying to ever say that even a large percentage of either liberals OR conservatives think A or B is, at best, a vast simplification of the probable nuanced stance that large numbers in each movement ACTUALLY hold. I think that sometimes the boards liberals forget this…and certainly some of the few remaining board conservatives do as well, on occasion.
Again, the ‘why?’ boils down to the same thing…because liberals and conservatives have a fundamentally different world view, which translates into a different view on what they do or don’t think the government should or shouldn’t do. Take health care. Just the question of what is or isn’t ‘health care reform’ is a good illustration. A conservative may very well believe that there SHOULD be health care reform, as they may believe that the system isn’t working very well. However, that ‘reform’ may take the form of de-regulation and removing the current hybrid system we have between private health care and government control to a more private, free market solution. A liberal on the other hand understands ‘reform’ to mean that we need to get rid of the last vestiges of the private, free market system and move towards a single payer, government controlled system. There is a fundamental difference between how both groups look that the role of the government, so of course there is going to be a rather fundamental disconnect in how both groups view possible solutions to any given problem.
You will never eliminate the differences, nor do I even think that would be a good thing. I believe our system was set up the way it was in order to encourage a middle ground, middle of the road compromise type system. We will never be the left wing, socialist paradise that some wish…nor will we ever be the right wing, Christian nation state that others want. What we have is a system that stays mostly in the middle of the road, adopting the less extreme positions from liberals in some cases, conservatives in others. It’s not efficient, it’s not going to ever make those on the extremes happy, and it’s going to continue to limp along for the foreseeable future, making mistakes and generally not making anyone really happy…but, by the same token, not making any but those on the extremes really UNHAPPY either.
Can it not be that they think that there’s another way to serve the greater good? That there is another route that might help the masses more than your strategy? I think there is. But I assure you that you do not understand conservatives.
We all want, I think, for people to improve there lits in life and, for instance, do well enough to move out of ghettoes. Right? Well, we, I, look back and see waves of destitute immigrants living in the horrible conditions in tenement housing in Harlem (as Jacob Riis chronicled). And we see that they were there for one generation. So, we see something that worked. Then we look at the current plight of the poor in today’s ghettoes. We see generation after generation being born into—and stuck—in those miserable conditions. So, I want them to be able to get out of there, as I know you do. I look back and see an attitude that worked. What do you have to offer up? Go to Newark. Go to Compton. Baltimore. Gary. There are horrible realities out there. I see something that worked in the past, and want to adopt that. You, to my eyes, want to continue with the same thinking that has failed them so miserable for four decades now.
I assure you, it is not about selfishness and greed. It is about a different point of view. Period.
IMHO, there is no gap as the republican and democrat parties appear to be two “wings” of the same being. They appear to be “opposite” so those in power can attempt to manipulate the people, and appear to be expending effort while doing as little as possible for the populace. It’s easier to get someone to cooperate/do your will with a surreptitious “good cop, bad cop” routine than with browbeating or other direct techniques. We spend our time in pointless arguing, rather than working for the good of all. And no, I’m not blaming any group in particular, I have no idea nor am I willing to venture a guess. I probably really don’t want to know. I realize it’s unconventional, but I find my perspective to make a lot more sense than any other way of trying to understand the world.
If that were what the Republicans really thought, they would have made sure that a radical form of health care reform was passed (though at the same time making sure that the Democrats got the “credit” for it). They do not oppose it because they think it will sweep them into power!
Why would “bridging” them be a good thing? Conservative and liberal ideas cannot both be right, but at least they each have a degree of internal coherence, such that one or other side might conceivably be (broadly speaking) right. Some compromised mish-mash of conservative and liberal principles, on the other hand, is virtually guaranteed to be incoherent and wrong.
Of course you think that; you support and excuse the exact positions I am condemning. You are hardly going to admit just how disgusting the motivations of those positions are.
Nonsense. Conservatives are perfectly happy with government, as long as it is only used to hurt people and force their beliefs down other people’s throats. They want it to control what happens in peoples’ bedrooms, but keep its hands off of what the wealthy and the corporations do. They want it to force everyone to recite loyalty oaths and pray, but don’t want it to keep people from dying of disaster or starvation or disease. They want it to engage in wars, but to help no one but the wealthy.
They had their chance to shrink government like you say they wanted. Did they? Not at all. They are lying when they claim to want small government; their actions prove it.
Well, its failed. America is not remotely middle of the road. It is far to the right; both by world standards, and its own historical standards.
On the contrary; I consider America to be highly likely to degenerate into a Christian-corporate theocracy. It is well on the way.
Because gays who want to get married don’t really count, right? Because the people who suffer and die because there will be no meaningful health care reform don’t really count, right? They’re all “extremists”. And since when has the country adopted anything at all from liberals? It’s been on a steady march towards fascism and plutocracy.
Most people say that people are basically good. Instead of that though, let’s say that most people are basically bad. We’re principally self-interested and are egotistic enough to think that everyone around us either thinks the same way we do, or is lying about it just to be an asshole. I myself am of course a good person, as are all those who do think like me.
So now, if I’m poor and I’m a “good” person who deserves to get the rewards of being a good person, the fact that I’ve not received much reward means that all the people in a position to give it to me are assholes. They know that I’m deserving, since of course they think like me and thus think that my behavior is obviously “good”, but they’re going against that just for the sake of being an asshole.
But now let’s say that I’m rich–maybe I even inherited all my money. Everywhere I go, every movie I watch, I’ve got all these people calling me an asshole even though they know that I’m a perfectly “good” and normal person. They’re jealous.
Ultimately what this means is that for most people, we aren’t parties of people with different ideas. We’re the party of good people, and the party of bad people. The people on the other side of the fence are specifically being assholes just for their own selfish reasons, and doing so knowingly. You don’t need to understand and argue against their positions because they’re just strawmen set up to piss you off.
Not cleaning up the Middle-East is endangering us. People who think this think that everyone else thinks it to.
Lying, using torture and illegal wiretaps are an inherent danger to our general protection as citizens. Everyone knows this, as it’s obvious.
Both of these groups are, inherently, more worried about themselves than about logistical issues like whether it’s feasible to occupy two full nations full of disparate, angry groups. And each side knows that the other is pretending to not see this danger just to be piss-ants. They don’t have a real motive beyond trying to ruin us and get everything for themselves.
We don’t see eye-to-eye because we really don’t, and people are really bad at being able to really accept that in their heart of hearts, and end up bickering over perceived slights instead of what really matters.
Certainly there are people who can see both the danger of having well-funded and determined enemies stationed over the world’s energy reserves AND letting basic human rights decay. But you need a populace who is basically rational to prefer to elect rational people like that to represent them. As a full democracy though, we end up with a bunch of irrational people representing us and manning our news and entertainment.
While I think your analysis is pretty fair and on the mark, I think you miss the larger point of why these two world views are not easily reconcilable. It’s fine for conservatives to have those opinions, but believing government is bad and incompetent rarely leads to having a functional, rational, responsive government. If you are distrustful of government, you can work to change the world using other means rather than settling with subverting the establishment you claim to distrust (causing even more antipathy).
You can’t have roughly half of elected officials actively working against the very institution they have to work within, and expect to make meaningful changes. It’s fine to have skeptics or contrarians; but you can’t do anything if one side has a core belief that government cannot do anything right. I know not all conservatives believe that, but it’s become all too common, and it is particularly egregious because we live in an increasingly complex world that could use the input of people from both sides of the aisle.
Broadly speaking this may be true. But in today’s world, there is no real middle ground between, “how can we (gov’t officials) fix a problem”, and “do nothing cause we will only make it worse”. I’m all for having reasonable conservatives propose their ideas, and having them save liberals from their own bad ideas, but those people are few and far between nowadays. The result is a government that is basically powerless to fix any problem, provide any oversight, regulate any industry, or propose any law without backroom dealing, lobbyist interference, and/or bribery. Ever major problem these days has basically become a third-rail issue as a result. Nobody is willing to take a chance to do anything uncertain or complicated because the political costs of failure are too high. Sadly, most things these days are both. I’m not saying liberals hands are completely clean, but let’s not pretend that the two sides can compromise if one side won’t actually try to.
The conservative/liberal split goes back to a time long before there were Republicans and Democrats. It has nothing to do with religion - Obama is far more religious than I am. It has nothing to do with greed and selfishness - asking the government to take other people’s money and give it to you is, in my opinion, far more selfish than just asking to be left alone.
At the very core, the difference can be traced back to the philosophy of Rousseau as compared to the philosophy of Locke.
Rousseau believed that man was born into a community - we are born with responsibilities to others. We have no right to live completely free, because we have a responsibility to help the community. The community therefore has the right to direct the actions of the citizenry to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number.
Locke believed that man is born free, beholden to no one. Man enters a community voluntarily, and may sign a social contract as a member of that community, but the community has no right to control that man, other than to require him to hold up his end of a bargain voluntarily entered into. Furthermore, Locke believed that a key part of the social contract was the preservation of individual liberty and individual property rights. Each man was a free being with a right to keep what he earned and what he owns, and the state’s power over him is strictly limited to protecting his freedom and everyone else’s and to make sure that people treat each other fairly and without force or coercion.
In Locke’s world, the proper form of government was to create conditions that maximized the scope of individual freedom so that people could follow their own paths and seek their own goals. In Rousseau’s world, the proper form of government was to attempt to create the perfect human community.
The other aspect of Locke vs Rousseau is that Locke was a rationalist, and Rousseau was a romantic. Rousseau grew up being cared for and sheltered by others. He was an idealist whose vision of society was as one communal entiry with everyone caring for everyone else. He hated materialism and felt that property was a minor need and that all the people should contribute what they have to the greater good and strive to live as a large community of people socially and economically intertwined.
Locke was all about the individual, material progress, economic and technological advancement, and hard work. He championed the individual mind and lived by logic. Rousseau was all about idyllic communities and brotherhood and romance.
That’s the fundamental split, right there. It exists to this day. Of course, there’s much more to it than that, but I believe liberalism at its core is all about tweaking and prodding society in a communitarian spirit to make the world a better place, while conservatism and libertarianism are all about individual liberty and property rights.
America was born as a Lockean country. The preamble to the Declaration of Independence is as concise a statement of Locke’s views as you’re likely to find:
It’s all there. People are born free. They have a right to live for themselves. They have a right to keep their own property, and to pursue their own goals, and not the goals others would thrust upon them.
Now, since Locke’s time, there has been much work that shows that logic, reason, and the primacy of individual rights are not just the morally correct way to live, but they lead to the best communities and best overall outcomes as well. Adam Smith showed in “The Wealth of Nations” that individuals pursuing their own ends still wind up benefiting the greater community through the invisible hand. Later philosophers like Ludwig Von Mises and Friedrich Hayek made strong cases for minimalist government from the standpoint of maximum economic benefit and efficiency. So conservatism and libertarianism have built up their own moral and philosophical framework that is consistent with Lockean ideals and which have a strong track record for being correct.
But in the end, it all goes back to Locke vs Rousseau, and their very different perceptions of the correct role of the individual in society. Which side of that basic philosophical split you find yourself on will probably determine whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat, or a Conservative or a Liberal.
Most distributions have a roughly “Bell curvish” shape and political beliefs are no exception. “Middle-of-the-road” policies may not be too good, but mayn’t be too bad either! For many years, America’s two-party system, with well-meant compromises, led to an OK centrism.
Those days are in the past. If you phrase specific policy questions without any partisan tinge or innuendo, polls find that most Americans are still somewhere near the center of that Bell curve. If you examine the tone of political debate you get a completely opposite impression. This past year the 40 Republicans have filibustered (or attempted to, or threatened to) more times than all of prior Parliamentary histories of all countries taken together!(*)
The OP question might be rephrased as “Why this bizarre bimodalism, despite that most citizens are ‘centrist’?” It is an interesting and important question; I’ve read views about the answer but no definitive summary; some blame the advent of cable TV and Internet, which encourage “tunneled” vision.
And before my words are twisted: Compromise between Demos and the GOP, in its present form, would not be “centrist”. Demo politicians are already right-of-center. I’ll stipulate that many GOP frontmen are good-spirited, just as some Demos are bad-spirited, but to characterize the present GOP direction on a left-to-right scale is to miss the point. “Hypocricital, cynical, lunatic …” are instead the sort of words that come to mind; not “right-wing”. Sincere good-spirited right-wingers like Barry Goldwater would probably be denouncing the GOP in its present form.
(* I didn’t bother to Google to see exactly how to phrase this comment about “filibusters” for technical accuracy, assuming the present Senate rule could even be described as traditional “filibuster.”)