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Understanding the Liberal Mindset

steenkh said:
You generalise too much. It is possible to think differently about some Muslims/poor/whatever who are not exploiting you, and those Muslims/poor/whatever who try to exploit you. You don't have to be a sucker in order to show compassion and empathy.
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But...but...empathy is for suckers...
 
Trausti said:
Concepts and implications of altruism bias and pathological altruism
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Interesting, article. people can make decisions with bad consequences despite good intentions. Sometimes because of incomplete knowledge, in particular knowledge they 'deny', because of pre-conceived prejudices. A number of examples given come from what in the US would be regarded as the right, e.g.

Teenagers in the United States become pregnant, contract sexually transmitted diseases, and have abortions at much higher rates than teenagers in most other industrialized countries. However, the most effective, scientifically proven approaches to reducing teen pregnancy are often ignored. As psychologist Timothy Wilson noted in summarizing the many problematic efforts in this area: “The fact that policy makers learned so little from past research—at huge human and financial cost—is made even more mind-boggling by being such a familiar story. Too often, policy makers follow common sense instead of scientific data when deciding how to solve social and behavioral problems”
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This is where prejudice e.g. HPV vaccine protects against an STD so might encourage sex before marriage so must be a bad thing comes up against 'facts' that HPV does not increase sexual activity in adolescents, but does prevent cervical cancer that might be caused by having sex with your husband. Sex ed does not encourage teen sex.
 
acbytesla said:
There is nothing suicidal about empathy. The understanding that we are all in this together. That everything isn't a zero sum game. That kindness and civility is important. In 50 years of being involved in politics I have only seen a few occasions where Republicans actually promoted any policies that were empathetic to anyone other than the wealthy.

If after WW2, rebuilding Europe and Japan to the degree that the US did wasn't based on empathy I don't know what is. If creating the GI Bill and sending soldiers to college wasn't empathetic I don't know what is. America treated POWs far better than any other country during WW2. If that wasn't based on empathy, I don't know what is.

And NONE of these acts were suicidal. Neither is helping the poor, the infirm, the immigrant, or minorities. My experience in life is that selfishness offers only short term gains. But selflessness pays dividends for life.
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Objectively this isn't true. Lowest mortality of PoW were if they're held by the British. Several studies suggest the British (and Canadians) treated PoW better than the US.
 
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Susheel said:
Maybe conservatives being racist, sexist, homophobic isn't rally a stereotype and a fact.
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I don't even know what a conservative is anymore. Today's Republicans do not resemble in the slightest old school conservative philosophy.of Republicans of the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s. Conservatives were pro choice at that time. They didn't care about one's sexuality. Ever hear of Log Cabin Republicans? They wouldn't be for reckless tax cuts. That began to change in 1980 when Ronald Reagan created a coalition with the batcrap crazy religious nuts. Reagan combined fiscal recklessness with his deal with GConservatives. The Republicans have been ona dishonest downward slide ever since.

Trump's conservatives are not conservatives. MAGA isn't conservative. It's fascist.
 
Planigale said:
Objectively this isn't true. Lowest mortality of PoW were if they're held by the British. Several studies suggest the British (and Canadians) treated PoW better than the US.
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Simply not true. Canada's WW2 POW camps were likely equal to American ones. But not Britain.
 
My mother was teenage girl during wwii. Lived within walking distance of a POW camp, southern Arkansas. She traded fresh veggies with the inmates in exchange for hand-crafted items the Italian inmates had made. She could go right up to the fence* and dealt with them. Guards leaned on the tower rails and checked out the cute girl. Very low stress.

*One course of wire, no "kill zone".
 
smartcooky said:
Liberal Progressives (Lib-Progs) consider themselves as the bastions of Social Justice. They claim to believe in each individual's right to an autonomous, self-directed life, free from restrictions. They claim to believe in freedom of speech, arguing that is it an important part of challenging existing ideas and finding truth. Lib-Progs have an absoluteness about their mindset. They are utterly convinced they are always the good guys, that they are the final arbiter of right and wrong, and that anyone who doesn't think the way they do are the bad guys. They are also utterly convinced that they, and only they, know what's best for society. They operate on the basis of the "victim v oppressor framework" which views social dynamics via a sort of "binary" consisting of the powerful groups (the oppressors) versus the marginalized groups (the victims). In the Lib-Prog world, everyone but them is either one or the other - everyone is either a victim or an oppressor, and the Lib-Progs are here equalize everyone and make everything alright. They are fantasists, the ultimate expression of idealism. These are indeed lofty ideals, but sadly, the reality of the Liberal Progressive mindset is somewhat different from their stated ideals.

Their claim to believe in each individual's rights falls flat when it comes to any right that doesn't comport their mindset.
Their claim to believe in free speech only applies to speech they like. Speech they don't like must be restricted, and its speaker punished.

There is nothing that demonstrates how the Lib-Prog mindset works (and exposes its deep flaws) better than their relationship with Israel and the Palestinian Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank. British Commentator Melanie Phillips currently writes on social issues for The Times and The Jerusalem Post from a socially conservative perspective.

(Lib-Progs will dutifully obey their echo-chambers and dismiss her as a far-right racist without ever reading anything she has written or hearing anything she has to say)

There is a transcript below the link for those who are allergic to YouTube videos.


TRANSCRIPT​
The Western liberal mind conceives of itself as being good because it's Liberal. The Western liberal tells him or herself "I'm a good person because I'm Liberal - I'm Liberal because I'm a good person" which means that I believe in things like the Brotherhood of Man,
Edited by jimbob: 
snipped for rule 4
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Unfortunately, the problem you have on the right is a paucity of intellectual thinkers. The only one I can think of in recent years that might qualify is Alan Sked. I went to see him at an event in Central London some years ago and unlike most knee-jerk right wingers, he was able to articulate and express himself clearly and logically. Sked, as most will know was one of early founder of UKIP, based on 'anti-federalism', referring to the EU.

Following the 2014 European elections, he further criticised UKIP as "Frankenstein's monster" and said that he intended to stand against the Labour leader Ed Miliband in the 2015 general election. He also described his former UKIP colleague Nigel Farage as a "dim-witted racist".<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Sked#cite_note-stuart-10"><span>[</span>10<span>]</span></a>

In an article dated 21 October 2015 for The National Interest, Sked wrote the following regarding Nigel Farage and the state of UKIP under his leadership,

After I stepped down to return to academic life, however, the party came under control of a preposterous mountebank named Nigel Farage, who reoriented it to the far right. The clause about a lack of prejudices was abolished and all sorts of nasty statements were made against blacks, Muslims and gays. Former members of the National Front were allowed to work for the party or become candidates. The party itself has deliquesced into a cult around Farage, whose electoral failure in 2015 has made him an object of scorn in the media and prompted his financial backers to desert him. Farage has become a convenient figure with which to frighten moderate voters about the consequences of fulfilling my party’s original mission—withdrawal from the European Union.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Sked#cite_note-11"><span>[</span>11<span>]</span></a> WIKI
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Whilst Sked at this event seemed to know and understand his stuff and could argue his case, sadly the bulk of the audience, UKIP supporters, were of the rough and ready boot-boy types with short-legged jeans and mutton chop sideboards - I wondered whether I was at a Noddy Holder convention at one point - and seemed more interested in being one of the lads. Given I stood up to ask Sked a couple of challenging questions about why he was anti-EU, after the event, my then boyfriend having taken one look at the intimidating mob, one of whom approached us outside*, grabbed my hand and said, 'We'd better...RUN!'**

* Having said that, he seemed friendly enough.

** The only other time he said that was after a Millwall game.

The point here, albeit based on n = a small number, most people on the right seem to have a problem with reasoning. One of my relatives used to smugly state, 'Trump is right' or 'Putin is a great man', yet when asked for reasons, looked astonished that anyone expected reasoning. It just was.

So yeah, there's your problem. It's not quid pro quo. Right-wingers lack intellect and I say that not unkindly as Sked is a rare exception that shows it can be possible.
 
Planigale said:
Objectively this isn't true. Lowest mortality of PoW were if they're held by the British. Several studies suggest the British (and Canadians) treated PoW better than the US.
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... and also, because the Japanese treated its own POW's notoriously - and unspeakably - badly, it is almost impossible to point out how badly the US treated the Japanese who lived in the US at the time, who were rounded up into internment camps.
 
Vixen said:
... and also, because the Japanese treated its own POW's notoriously - and unspeakably - badly, it is almost impossible to point out how badly the US treated the Japanese who lived in the US at the time, who were rounded up into internment camps.
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Or by handing German prisoners over to the Russians after the fall of Germany. Not my problem anymore is not good treatment.
 
Vixen said:
... and also, because the Japanese treated its own POW's notoriously - and unspeakably - badly, it is almost impossible to point out how badly the US treated the Japanese who lived in the US at the time, who were rounded up into internment camps.
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The mortality rate for the interned Issei was lower than that of the general US public. I guess you could count Montana as cruel and usual. However, the barrage of threats against Issei and Nisei living in California were not to be disregarded.
 
427 Cobra said:
I find it fascinating that the people that routinely label all conservatives as racist, sexist, homophobic, etc., get upset when someone applies labels and stereotypes on them.
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Maybe conservatives should put some effort into not validating those stereotypes. I'm not the one who made Elon do a Nazi salute on stage, nor am I the one who appointed him in charge of carving up the federal government after he did it. I'm not the one who praised Hitler in a racist group chat, nor am I the one who made the vice president defend such behavior.
 
acbytesla said:
I don't even know what a conservative is anymore. Today's Republicans do not resemble in the slightest old school conservative philosophy.of Republicans of the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s. Conservatives were pro choice at that time. They didn't care about one's sexuality. Ever hear of Log Cabin Republicans? They wouldn't be for reckless tax cuts. That began to change in 1980 when Ronald Reagan created a coalition with the batcrap crazy religious nuts. Reagan combined fiscal recklessness with his deal with GConservatives. The Republicans have been ona dishonest downward slide ever since.

Trump's conservatives are not conservatives. MAGA isn't conservative. It's fascist.
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i think it’s fair to say that maga pandered to the racists and evangelicals and the fascists. outside of the anti vax left i’m not sure that a significant portion of them came from liberals though, a lot of conservatives that turned alt right and extremists imo

and that was of course a strategy engineered by steve bannon and the tech wannabe oligarchs like thiel and musk. still the same people, just brain rotted by social media. and i think plenty of conservatives were bottled up fascists waiting for permission to let it out too

in any case, if we say maga aren’t conservatives, then where did conservatives go? seem to have been maga adjacent for a number of years and now almost disappeared off the face of the earth. watched their ideology be snatched from them by christian nazis without a peep. or cheered because a lib was being owned and that was more important than doing the right thing or believing in what you say. and still do
 
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smartcooky said:
They are utterly convinced they are always the good guys, that they are the final arbiter of right and wrong, and that anyone who doesn't think the way they do are the bad guys. They are also utterly convinced that they, and only they, know what's best for society
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I'm sure this seemed profound when you first typed it up, but it's utterly banal. Everyone considers themselves the good guys, and those opposed to them the bad guys. Nobody goes around thinking, "Yup, I'm evil, and I sure hope the good people opposed to me succeed in stopping my dastardly plans."
 
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