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[Manmademan]

But it isn't necessarily as dogmatic as much of social conservatism, which is where, IMO, most of the problems arise from.

this brings up another good point, in that fiscal and social conservatives tend to have two completely different agendas, even though they may vote for the same candidates.

Intelligent conversations with fiscal conservatives isn't exactly a rare thing. There are many ways to approach the debt/deficit argument.

SOCIAL conservatives tend to get banned fairly quickly around here though, especially as this forum is a lot more gay friendly than average.

I did misinterpret what you meant by college graduation rates. I am speaking of education level achieved.

http://www.people-press.org/2011/05/...-news-sources/

Again, according to this, the percentage of "solid liberals" and "staunch conservatives" is about the same.

Ok, so we're cool there. But even here, looking at your data, it agrees with me.

According to that chart, 27% of Solid liberals hold a postgraduate degree, 23% hold bachelors degrees, 27% have "some college" and only 23% have "high school or less"

Looking at "staunch conservatives", 12% have post doctorates, 22% have bachelors, 28% have "some college", but 37% have only a high school education or less. That's significantly higher than solid liberals, any way you interpret the data, which agrees with what I've been saying that those with only high school educations are far more likely to identify as conservative and vote republican.

 

[Bornstellar]

But it isn't necessarily as dogmatic as much of social conservatism, which is where, IMO, most of the problems arise from.

I suppose when you say dogmatic, you refer to it being codified in some way or another?

 

[Bornstellar]

this brings up another good point, in that fiscal and social conservatives tend to have two completely different agendas, even though they may vote for the same candidates.

Intelligent conversations with fiscal conservatives isn't exactly a rare thing. There are many ways to approach the debt/deficit argument.

SOCIAL conservatives tend to get banned fairly quickly around here though, especially as this forum is a lot more gay friendly than average.

So here's the question: how much of what the majority feel is misbehavior should be prevented by law?

 

[Schattenjäger]

I must say this thread has been much more civil than I anticipated - bravo GAF

 

[The Technomancer]

I suppose when you say dogmatic, you refer to it being codified in some way or another?

Codified and unchanging, yeah. That's where "conservative" takes on more of the connotation of adhering to past tradition, as opposed to in the fiscal and governmental sense where it carries more connotations of conservation as an opposite to over-extension.
Adhering to past tradition can be a good thing mind you. But blind adherence is problematic, and that's what I see in much of modern social conservatism: an inability to recognize changing contexts.

 

[FStop7]

I think GAF tends to lean "American left"

In other words

Left except when it comes to war and corporatism. In those two cases GAF leans right.

 

[Bornstellar]

Codified and unchanging, yeah. That's where "conservative" takes on more of its connotations with adhering to past tradition, as opposed to in the fiscal and governmental sense where it carries more connotations of conservation as an opposite to over-extension.

So on social issues, should morality not be fixed? If it changes, does it still mean anything?

EDIT: Also, I've now spent two hours doing this.

This is why I shouldn't engage. So yeah, to answer the OP I'm going to say because I don't have the time.

 

[Nekofrog]

younger people are more liberal?

is 28 young now? because i am so hardcore liberal it's regoddamndiculous. and i am in the military. i must be a huge stereotype defying commie.

 

[The Technomancer]

So on social issues, should morality not be fixed? If it changes, does it still mean anything?

Of course it does, it means what we say it means because its a human construct. And this is where the problems come in: when we elevate morality to a universal principle without recognizing that it may have been developed in a different social context then we get clashes between how things are now and how things were reacted to "then". Its perfectly possible that moral standards from the past still apply in the present, but they do need something to support them other then "this is how things used to be".

 

[Manmademan]

So here's the question: how much of what the majority feel is misbehavior should be prevented by law?

tough question. You'd probably have to define "misbehavior." at one point selling cars on sundays was illegal in my state, due to christian morality police writing the laws.

A majority of the public feels that marijuana use should be either legalized or decriminalized, yet possession is a felony just about everywhere you go.

So clearly we have bad policy re: misbehavior the majority managed to write into law, and good policy the majority can't seem to get passed no matter what they do.

How the majority feels doesn't seem to be a good barometer for what's legal and what isn't.

 

[NullPointer]

This is why I shouldn't engage. So yeah, to answer the OP I'm going to say because I don't have the time.

Now this I can believe

Codified and unchanging, yeah. That's where "conservative" takes on more of the connotation of adhering to past tradition, as opposed to in the fiscal and governmental sense where it carries more connotations of conservation as an opposite to over-extension.
Adhering to past tradition can be a good thing mind you. But blind adherence is problematic, and that's what I see in much of modern social conservatism: an inability to recognize changing contexts.

Bolded the part that leads to trouble. Unchanging and unchangeable.

 

[blame space]

busy participating in capitalism and #winning.

 

[The Technomancer]

To further clarify what I mean about the difference between social conservatism and fiscal/governmental conservatism: I don't think I know a single fiscal conservative who thinks that, at any point in the past, there was ever a truly perfect economy that had absolutely no flaws.

 

[Manmademan]

To further clarify what I mean about the difference between social conservatism and fiscal/governmental conservatism: I don't think I know a single fiscal conservative who thinks that, at any point in the past, there was ever a truly perfect economy that had absolutely no flaws.

Yeah, but on the other hand there's no shortage of libertarians absolutely convinced that the only thing holding us back from a capitalist utopia is needless government regulations preventing business from making the absolute best decisions for society.

It's like there's a willful ignorance as to how people (and business, by extension) actually behaved in the absence of laws, historically.

 

[DUFFMCWALIN]

What does fiscally conservative mean? Have you read or heard anyone call themselves fiscally liberal? It's a meaningless label and it tells me nothing about you. You might as well add to that and say you believe in freedom and liberty.

It means they disagree with a lot of the spending habits that the government has had in the last. Not hard to understand.

 

[blame space]

and the tax code right

 

[NullPointer]

Am I fiscally liberal if I believe the government should be spending like a madman on infrastructure projects right now? Because I do.

I don't mind high taxes, provided that people wouldn't have to worry as much about healthcare, housing and education.

 

[Manmademan]

and the tax code right

hey, in theory there's nothing wrong with fiscal conservatism- spending less money. We spend a hellacious amount of money on the wrong stuff, year after year and there's a lot of debt.

The problem with many of the current crop of fiscal conservatives is that "cutting spending" doesn't mean actually cutting spending, it means just not spending money on things that democrats like.

Suggest we cut the horrendously bloated military? Oh, that doesn't count. We can't touch military spending, even when the military itself is telling us not to give it money.
Suggest we end tax cuts that clearly didn't work to stimulate the economy? All taxes are theft! drop those to zero(?!)
Cut subsidies for oil companies? Why do you hate american business?!

Everything is so tied up in nonsense political ideology it's nigh impossible to get anything done.

Am I fiscally liberal if I believe the government should be spending like a madman on infrastructure projects right now? Because I do.

I don't mind high taxes, provided that people wouldn't have to worry as much about healthcare, housing and education.

I'd agree with you here. there's a decent amount of evidence that government spending during a recession can actually be a good thing. I don't think that really makes you fiscally liberal to spend on things the country NEEDS like infrastructure or education though- "fiscally liberal" would be something like "let's get into two wars at once, and double military spending!"

 

[SlipperySlope]

Plus this is an international forum, and 'left' in America is pretty much 'right' in much of Europe.

And it seems virtually every outspoken conservative gets themselves banned sooner or later.

I can attest to this. Mods need to be a little more lenient towards right-leaning thoughts.

 

[Conor 419]

Because I can trace the bulk of good things in my life back to the NHS and to my teachers. Why wouldn't I be left wing? Why wouldn't anyone?

 

[Opiate]

So on social issues, should morality not be fixed? If it changes, does it still mean anything?

This is an interesting question, to which I feel confident the answer is no. To be specific, an unchanging ethical system would be incapable of adapting to new information, by definition. Take animal rights as a simple example. Not long ago, we viewed all other animals as fundamentally different than humans; as scientific knowledge continues to progress, however, it is becoming increasingly clear that we are much more similar to other animals than we previously believed. Many animals (particularly animals like chimps and dolphins) are capable of significantly more intellectual and emotional complexity than we had expected. As such, it is reasonable to adjust our treatment of animals to adapt to our new understanding of the objective reality around us (please note that "adjust our treatment" does not mean animals should be given extreme rights similar to those that PETA might recommend, just that we probably should not kill higher order animals indiscriminately anymore).

Another example would be gay rights; when we believed it was purely a choice, it was not unreasonable to be against it or even to classify it as a psychological disorder. As new information has arrived and it has become increasingly clear that there is a significant genetic component, those views become increasingly untennable. And indeed, homosexuality is no longer classified as a disorder by psychiatric institutions for precisely these reasons.

 

[dabig2]

Am I fiscally liberal if I believe the government should be spending like a madman on infrastructure projects right now? Because I do.

I don't mind high taxes, provided that people wouldn't have to worry as much about healthcare, housing and education.

In today's political climate, you're fiscally the reincarnation of Karl Marx. So yeah, you're fiscally liberal if you want to spend a lot of money on infrastructure and don't mind high taxes if it improves the general livelihood of your fellow countrymen.

 

[Cubsfan23]

better question, why should GAF lean to the right?

 

[Gotchaye]

Opiate - But of course one could construe that (and I think we should construe that) as something other than the truth about morality changing. If I see someone screaming for help and another person firing a gun at them, tackling the person with the gun is morally permissible. If I find out the gun is shooting blanks and they're filming a movie, tackling the person with the gun is not morally permissible. I wouldn't say that morality is different in the two cases; it's just that we make our judgments about what morality demands in a particular situation based on what we believe the situation to be. If we're mistaken about the situation, we can be mistaken about what morality demands without being mistaken about the principles governing morality.

We can also be wrong because we're mistaken about the principles governing morality. You can understand perfectly well that being gay is EDIT: NOT a choice, but you can believe that God doesn't like gay people regardless and is testing them and society in general with this sinful desire, etc, and that therefore we should try to discourage it or stamp it out or whatever, in much the way we would if pedophilia turns out to be meaningfully non-chosen. That's not wrong because of some error about physical reality; it's wrong because it's based on a bad theory of morality.

Ideally our moral system would be unchanging, if we had the right moral system. But an epistemically humble person should recognize that we probably don't perfectly grasp the principles governing morality or the situations in which we're trying to apply it, and we should therefore be open to arguments that we've been doing it wrong.

 

[Manmademan]

Opiate - But of course one could construe that (and I think we should construe that) as something other than the truth about morality changing. If I see someone screaming for help and another person firing a gun at them, tackling the person with the gun is morally permissible. If I find out the gun is shooting blanks and they're filming a movie, tackling the person with the gun is not morally permissible. I wouldn't say that morality is different in the two cases; it's just that we make our judgments about what morality demands in a particular situation based on what we believe the situation to be. If we're mistaken about the situation, we can be mistaken about what morality demands without being mistaken about the principles governing morality.

We can also be wrong because we're mistaken about the principles governing morality. You can understand perfectly well that being gay is EDIT: NOT a choice, but you can believe that God doesn't like gay people regardless and is testing them and society in general with this sinful desire, etc, and that therefore we should try to discourage it or stamp it out or whatever, in much the way we would if pedophilia turns out to be meaningfully non-chosen. That's not wrong because of some error about physical reality; it's wrong because it's based on a bad theory of morality.

Ideally our moral system would be unchanging, if we had the right moral system. But an epistemically humble person should recognize that we probably don't perfectly grasp the principles governing morality or the situations in which we're trying to apply it, and we should therefore be open to arguments that we've been doing it wrong.

Did you just equate homosexuality with pedophilia? because the two are not equivalent under any circumstances.

 

[Sneds]

Did you just equate homosexuality with pedophilia? because the two are not equivalent under any circumstances.

I don't believe so, no.

 

[blame space]

how come more people can't just separate what they think their god says to what their government protects or grants rights to?

 

[Manmademan]

I don't believe so, no.

really? because

...We can also be wrong because we're mistaken about the principles governing morality. You can understand perfectly well that being gay is EDIT: NOT a choice, but you can believe that God doesn't like gay people regardless and is testing them and society in general with this sinful desire, etc, and that therefore we should try to discourage it or stamp it out or whatever, in much the way we would if pedophilia turns out to be meaningfully non-chosen.

that very much sounds like it.

Let's be very clear here. Pedophilia is wrong regardless of whether or not it's a choice, because minors do not have the capacity to consent. It's abuse.

Homosexuality, choice or not, is between two consenting adults and is NOT abuse but instead a healthy and perfectly valid lifestyle choice. Is it for me? no, but that doesn't mean it's wrong per se.

 

[jerry1594]

how come more people can't just separate what they think their god says to what their government protects or grants rights to?

Yeah this

 

[Gotchaye]

Did you just equate homosexuality with pedophilia? because the two are not equivalent under any circumstances.

No, I said that if you have a faulty theory of morality, you might treat homosexuality the way the rest of us would treat pedophilia, even if pedophilia turns out to be meaningfully non-chosen. The purpose of bringing up pedophilia and homosexuality was to give an example of genuine moral disagreement that is not reducible to disagreement about the physical world. Edit: Well, I suppose I didn't give the alternative position, but you did. What I was doing was giving an example of an error of moral action that is not an error of physical fact.

how come more people can't just separate what they think their god says to what their government protects or grants rights to?

Because what the government protects or grants rights to isn't a given. Someone has to decide that. We're all consulting some theory of morality (or our intuitions about morality) when we have to participate in that sort of decision-making. If you think morality is what God says, and you think God said particular politically salient things, then those beliefs are very naturally going to motivate your political actions. Similarly if you're a utilitarian - you think morality is about maximizing utility, you think utility is in some sense measurable in a particular way, and those commitments are going to motivate your political actions.

 

[Sneds]

really? because



that very much sounds like it.

Not to me. It sounds as though he's saying that just as some people want to stamp out homosexuality because they believe it to be morally wrong, we would want to stamp out pedophillia because it's morally wrong. The fact that there could possibly be a genetic, physical predisposition to pedophillia is irrelevant.

He was saying that the response to homosexuality and pedophilia could be the same - not that the two things actually are the same. At least that's how I read it.

Let's be very clear here. Pedophilia is wrong regardless of whether or not it's a choice, because minors do not have the capacity to consent. It's abuse.

Homosexuality, choice or not, is between two consenting adults, is NOT abuse but instead a healthy and perfectly valid lifestyle choice. Is it for me? no, but that doesn't mean it's wrong per se.

Yep.

 

[blame space]

Because what the government protects or grants rights to isn't a given. Someone has to decide that. We're all consulting some theory of morality (or our intuitions about morality) when we have to participate in that sort of decision-making. If you think morality is what God says, and you think God said particular politically salient things, then those beliefs are very naturally going to motivate your political actions. Similarly if you're a utilitarian - you think morality is about maximizing utility, you think utility is in some sense measurable in a particular way, and those commitments are going to motivate your political actions.

someone summarize this

 

[NullPointer]

how come more people can't just separate what they think their god says to what their government protects or grants rights to?

Simple answer: Because man's rights come from the Creator, regardless of what government may wish to grant.

Man's rights aren't to be enumerated, only government powers.

 

[yogloo]

Because of Beyonce.

 

[Freezie KO]

Because what the government protects or grants rights to isn't a given. Someone has to decide that. We're all consulting some theory of morality (or our intuitions about morality) when we have to participate in that sort of decision-making. If you think morality is what God says, and you think God said particular politically salient things, then those beliefs are very naturally going to motivate your political actions. Similarly if you're a utilitarian - you think morality is about maximizing utility, you think utility is in some sense measurable in a particular way, and those commitments are going to motivate your political actions.

Pretty much this. If you believe a magic man with infinite authority and omniscient judgment says something is wrong, why wouldn't you legislate that way? After all, he has infinite authority and omniscient judgment.

Thus, irrational beliefs cannot simply be sequestered as Stephen Jay Gould once proposed. Religion is every bit as insidious as it is fallacious.

 

[Puddles]

Here are some elements of the U.S. right-wing platform:

- Repealing healthcare reform and "replacing" it with policies that would be largely ineffective, essentially returning to a system where the only medical option for millions of Americans would be the emergency room (and subsequent 4-5 figure bills that they won't pay and will serve only to ruin their credit or force a bankruptcy).

- Cutting taxes for people who have the most money while gutting social programs that millions of people benefit from in order to pay for said tax cuts.


These are just two of the less controversial elements of the platform. I left things like gay rights and gun control completely out of the discussion. But just looking at the two positions I listed, why would any rational person support either of them?

Most of OT-GAF is fairly rational on most issues. Thus they are repelled by a political movement that embraces irrationality.

 

[ErasureAcer]

Rick Santorum would cover Moira Johnston up, that's why.

 

[FLEABttn]

I disagree. I think the argument is that the public sector DOESN'T doesn't do must things better than the private sector.

It's a slightly different axiom, but it's still a major axiomatic line that you hear from the American right, that the public sector doesn't do things better than the private sector, and therefore shouldn't do things.

The government doesn't need to and shouldn't do everything. It realistically can't. But healthcare is a solved problem. But somehow what works in every other first world country either can't work here, because government, or shouldn't be allowed to be done here, because government.

Which is my point, really. The American right are too stuck in their axioms. The American left arguably just wants the results, with the means of that being less important. Which is part of why, in an international sense, they're a centrist party.

 

[BassForever]

The old saying generally holds true

When you're young liberal, when you're older conservative. Obviously this isn't always true but it generally holds up pretty well. It also doesn't help when the Republican party nominates idiots every year.

 

[ronito]

On the politics front I think that it's a matter of perspective.

For example, if you read my political rantings in America I come off as the next Chairman Mao. If you read them in Europe I'd be centrist or slightly right of center.

As for religion/morality, it's just our generation.
It's not surprising that the 9/11 generation that saw religion bring about something so terrible in their childhood should be distrusting of religion.

 

[Pimpwerx]

Educated middle-class. I believe they generally lean left. PEACE.

 

[squidyj]

The US Republican party is batshit insane, they fielded Rick Santorum and that Bachmann woman to run for the office of The President of the United States of America. How fucked up is that?

I've yet to meet a social conservative that didn't have his head up his ass six ways to sunday school either. They are, in my experience, 9 times out of 10 the least informed individual at the discussion with the most fiery use of rhetoric (this is the part where conservigaf points to this entire post like they've discovered evidence about the JFK assassination). They don't want to explore issues because in their mind they already know everything that needs to be known.

 

[Gotchaye]

The old saying generally holds true

When you're young liberal, when you're older conservative. Obviously this isn't always true but it generally holds up pretty well. It also doesn't help when the Republican party nominates idiots every year.

I don't think it does. I don't have references handy, but my understanding is that people's political views are more or less established by their late twenties, and stay pretty constant after that. Old people are more socially conservative on things like gay rights because society as a whole has become more liberal since then; it's not like the current Republican base was really pro-gay 50 years ago. This* is true for economics too. These are the same people who elected Reagan.

*That people's views don't change over time, not that society has gotten more economically liberal over time.

Edit: Reagan in 1980 won his highest margins among people 30-44, who would be 62-76 now. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1980#Voter_demographics

 

[jaxword]

I'm a right wing conservative.

 

[blame space]

I'm a right wing conservative.

life is good!

 

[Chumly]

1. People need to understand we're an international forum (majority USA but still a lot elsewhere). The right wingers from these countries are considered socialist commies by USA standards. So they are almost all
"left".
2. We don't put up with racist or homophobic crap. A lot of right wingers get banned over this.
3. Younger people tend to be more
Liberal. We're not an old geezer forum.

 

[Kai Dracon]

Another example would be gay rights; when we believed it was purely a choice, it was not unreasonable to be against it or even to classify it as a psychological disorder. As new information has arrived and it has become increasingly clear that there is a significant genetic component, those views become increasingly untennable. And indeed, homosexuality is no longer classified as a disorder by psychiatric institutions for precisely these reasons.

Forgive me if this is derailing somehow, I just find this a part of a greater, also interesting topic. Let us say, for instance, some new data comes to light that says "being gay is a choice after all". Moral and ethical evolution might still recognize the behavior between consenting adults harms no one, and therefore attempting to assign a value of fundamental wrongness to it is just as irrational as if being gay wasn't a choice anyway.

I think this is an important point to consider, and demonstrates how the ability for morality to evolve is so crucial. Many social conservatives that have psychological investment in a set of unchanging moral ideas, would be quick to seize upon "gay is a choice after all" as proof that their objection to gays is justified. Even though, now that we are succeeding in removing stigmatization of homosexuality, we are seeing exactly how little homosexual people harm anyone else or society merely by existing - basically not at all.

This is also probably very relevant and not hypothetical, in that I've seen quite a few social conservatives who can't get over being certain gays will destroy us all (even as we remain undestroyed year after year), who are itching and primed to leap at the slightest chink (as they see it) in the scientific model of homosexuality as natural and involuntary.

Meanwhile about "people get more conservative as they get older":

http://news.discovery.com/human/voter-conservative-aging-liberal-120119.html

That does back up an observation I have made, which is: old people are not all sour, bitter, and hostile towards youth and new ideas. I've met some incredibly open older people and seniors, who want to know as much as they can. And some who do indeed believe they were quite foolish when they were young, for believing in fixed morality, fixed views, and taking such things for granted.

One of the things that makes the difference seems to boil down generally to life experience and groupthink. People who are surrounded by a culture that promotes provincialism, xenophobia, can become very fearful of change and the strange when they get old. By the same token, people who have a greater range of life experiences as they age can have a formerly 'conservative', or merely unchanging, mental framework shattered.

 

[EulaCapra]

Thank Superman GAF is mostly socially liberal. I don't care what you label yourselves politically, but it's nice that GAF tends to think socially forward in issues regarding all aspects of human equality with only religion and cultures up for grabs (sometimes rightfully so).

Plus, if GAF leaned any righter, we might attract the wrong kind of posters that aren't as forward thinking in social aspects. Wouldn't wanna be part of Westboro Baptist Church-GAF.

 

[jaxword]

life is good!

I'm an average upper-middle-class white kid going to college, so yeah, I have no real right to complain about anything.

 

[Puddles]

One of my professors mentioned that if you were liberal or conservative before coming into college then college would just strengthen those beliefs.

I was 16 when George W. Bush won his first term in 2000, but had I been two years older, I would have voted for him.

I went to a very liberal university where everyone hated Bush and Iraq War protests happened almost daily, but I secretly still supported Bush in 2004. When I finished college in 2006, the Democrats took control of Congress, and I was actually kind of sad about that.

What happened? It may have started in 2007 when I took a trip to London. I hung out in a lot of pubs, and of course when people found out I was American, they wanted to vicariously take the piss out of George W. Bush by talking politics incessantly when all I wanted to do was drink pints and learn more about the Premier League.

By that point I was pretty anti-war. But another thing constantly came up: "So in America, you can't just visit a doctor for free?" And I would answer, "You can always go to the hospital, but if you don't have insurance you'll have to pay a large bill." I don't think a lot of younger Brits really understood the U.S. healthcare system, and they were completely dumbfounded by it. The conversation would always lead to, "Why wouldn't you just give everyone healthcare coverage?"

And I had no answer for that. It got me thinking independently about politics for maybe the first time. So the next year, when the Obama vs. McCain election came around, and Obama's platform was based around setting up a universal healthcare system, while right-wing commentary was vehemently opposed to the entire idea, citing the spectacular "failures" of such systems in Canada and the U.K., I began to lean hard left. Republicans were calling nationalized healthcare systems "failures" and "socialist systems." But I had been to the U.K., and not only were they most definitely not socialists, but their healthcare system wasn't a failure at all.

From there, I gradually became what's called a liberal in America as I realized that 21st century-era Republican arguments didn't stand up to the slightest bit of scrutiny.