quote:

Originally posted by goose5:
I think it boils down to the convenience of a low resolution ideology. Most people don't have the time between raising kids. Managing a career, and marriage to spend much time figuring out what they think about politics and policy. That's why most people who identify as Democrats believe the whole ball of wax at once. Same for the other side. Allegiants to the ideology is quick, easy, and provides access to a group. And, most important in a low resolution form it provides wiggle room around inconvenient inconsistencies and problems with said ideology. That's why you never get anywhere with them when you provide a good, solid, logical argument. They use their low resolution ideology to just shut down and wiggle around it.

Well, I can agree that when I was a democrat it’s because I never thought about why or cared what the issues really meant.

I'd recommend reading The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. I learned a lot. Warning the author Dr. Jonathan Haidt is a Democrat and says so in this book. He also reveals that the Democrats are not listening to him. Still I found it interesting and I think he's on to something.

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:
One of my best friends, who I regard as quite smart, opted for the Wu Flu jabs. He made his decision based upon the due diligence he performed. Based upon my due diligence I feel his decision to have been unwise, but I do not regard it as having been stupid or as his having acted stupidly.

My brother, a very bright civil engineer, did just that. He did some basic research and listened to the experts in the media who he assumed were giving him the facts, and opted to get vaccinated as a hedge to protecting our elderly mother. I've continued to shuttle him info and data, and over time he's become quite angry that he's been deceived by the people he'd looked to for information. Sometimes it takes a sense of distrust in virtually everything and a need to fully flesh out everything before you can truly make an educated decision. To me that's the purest version of intelligence.

I've been thinking about how to answer this for a while.

At the fundamental basis, it is moral relativism vs. moral absolutism.

Conservatives generally believe in moral absolutism - or that there is right and wrong and the distinction is not situational. There are rules and we are supposed to follow the rules. Constitution, separation of powers, due process, etc. We follow process, the results are what they are, and we accept them if process is followed.

Modern leftists believe in moral relativism. Put simply, the ends justify the means. Getting the result they want is more important than following process. And if following process doesn't get the desired result, the process is bad and needs to be changed.

So we see leftists defending process and tradition when it suits their objective, but demonizing the same thing when it doesn't.

There is also a difference in view - conservatives think more long term (killing the filibuster when we are in power means it will be used against us when we are not in power), while leftists think more short term. But why is this? Because the relativist view of leftists means they think they can change the rules whenever they need to, so changing them now doesn't mean they can't change them back, or to something else, in the future.

Take a look at the riots - leftists don't have to follow rules (BLM, Antifa) but conservatives have to (prosecution of the Jan 6th rioters).

Conservatives call this hypocrisy, and now leftists call pointing out their hypocrisy as "whataboutism".

quote:

Originally posted by Lefty Sig:
I've been thinking about how to answer this for a while.

At the fundamental basis, it is moral relativism vs. moral absolutism.

I could also add that conservatism considers humans, even though they are inherently evil, an asset. Leftism consider humans, even though they’re inherently good, a liability.

Now for the other half:

Conservatives tend to be people who know how to DO things. We live in reality, we have jobs that require specific results - either it works or it doesn't work and there is no hiding when it doesn't work. We use facts and logic to make sound decisions such that things work. If we use conjecture and bad information, things will fail.

Despite the relativist view of leftists about education and "getting the right answer" in math, we HAVE to get the right answer or things will go very badly. Buildings and bridges will collapse, planes will crash, spacecraft will miss orbit and fly off into space if we don't "get it right". And to "get it right" means the design of the system, and every step in putting the system into reality, and then operating it has to be done "right".

Leftists tend to avoid things that do not have hard "right and wrong" answers and insist that the correct answer is always relative to the people doing the answering. Look at the jobs leftists do - they gravitate to jobs where opinion is primary, or where effects are divorced enough from causes to prevent bad ideas from being exposed.

In some senses conservatives care about results, and leftists care about intentions.

There is also the issue of belief systems:

Beliefs are taught to use when we are young, and once set they don't change much. I've run into many baby boomers from the Vietnam era that view EVERYTHING through that lens. Democrats good (JFK but they forget about Johnson), Republicans bad (Nixon), socialism good (we just have to do it right, next time). When some of them had to say more than a year ago that COVID deaths had reached the level of "Vietnam" deaths, most of which were boomer teachers, I excoriated them to stop comparing everything to Vietnam. It was 50 years ago, and even VIETNAMESE people in VIETNAM do not obsess about the war despite orders of magnitudes more death on their side. BUT that is their belief system and nothing you can say can convince them that the modern Democrat party is not what it was before, and that Republicans are not evil.

My ancestors were immigrants that came to the US in the mid 1800's and early 1900's. Yet I was raised to believe in and respect the American founding, Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and above all DUE PROCESS in everything. A lot of this was due to the school system I was raised in - my parents didn't teach me civics directly. The rest came from observation, having been raised by NYC JFK democrats in the Chicago suburbs, but then living and working in Detroit and Indiana in manufacturing. Getting a degree in Mechanical Engineering, and then an MBA with a fair amount of economics had a big influence on things to. When you understand how energy conversion systems and economic systems work, the leftist silliness becomes very obvious. However, had I not educated myself in HOW THINGS REALLY WORK, I don't know if I would see this. People with piles of degrees and PhD's in social sciences and humanities probably cannot see it at all. Hard science degrees maybe, but if theory is separated too much from application, they can delude themselves too.

Religion is the same, once people are brought up in a religion they don't change easily. I'm not sure when belief systems are ingrained but I think it happens by the mid-20's. That's why the leftists want control of education.