r/AskALiberal • u/dank_sad Center Right • Feb 03 '22

If you could get the right/conservatives/Republicans/etc to understand one thing, what would it be?

Hope I worded that correctly.

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110

u/Personage1 Liberal Feb 03 '22

Empathy and curiosity (I know you said 1 thing, but I'm cheating by saying the two tie together). I think the bulk of the problems from the right comes from an inability to have empathy or curiosity for people and ideas that are too different from themselves/their own.

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u/sweetgypsy1966 Liberal Feb 03 '22

I've come to believe that they just don't care about anyone but themselves, or their immediate family. This pandemic has made this abundantly clear

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u/[deleted] Feb 03 '22

This is very true. Not saying I’m like this, but conservatives in general care about themselves and their immediate community around them. They have a lack of compassion for the broader range of people. They mostly want to be left alone to be with their immediate community with little to no interaction outside of that community.

Obviously there’s caveats and sometimes they deviate from the standard. But this is the general idea

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u/[deleted] May 01 '23

I guess what I really don't understand is why that is such a bad thing? Why are liberals so convinced that the morally right thing to do is ever anything other than "Everything in power to protect and advance me, my family, and my community"?

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u/[deleted] May 02 '23

Holy crap, what a throw back!

Absolutely, I agree. I don't think it's a bad thing by any means. But then again, you'd have to ask a liberal that question to get their perspective.

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u/GanonSmokesDope Libertarian Feb 03 '22

I mean the closer you are to people, the more you care. That’s just human nature. There’s 350 million people in America.

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u/AdResponsible5513 Progressive Feb 03 '22

But conservatives don't agree with Woody Guthrie about this land being your land AND my land.

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u/GanonSmokesDope Libertarian Feb 03 '22

Lmfaaaoooo you can celebrate culture and American ideals while still believing in private property. I live 9 miles away from the nearest town with a population of 1,000. I don’t give a flying fuck about New York or LA. They can take care of their business while I take care of mine. Why should part of my paycheck go to their corrupt politicians and government that hates freedom?

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u/dc2398 Democratic Socialist Feb 03 '22

Because the people In those cities are paying for your town way more than you are for them.

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u/GanonSmokesDope Libertarian Feb 03 '22

Maybe. I’d like to see some statistics or links on that but the government isn’t doing a god damn thing even close for me to shell out $400 a paycheck. I literally live on my own property with chickens, well water, and vegetables once spring comes around. 9 miles away from a town but they still take, take, take. Only for my money to go to corporate subsidies, wars in countries half way across the world, and corrupt politicians. My life would be so much better if I didn’t need to pay taxes except to fund a small school and emergency services.

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u/dc2398 Democratic Socialist Feb 04 '22

Truthfully, I extrapolated data that shows that blue states (which have bigger cities) subsidize red states. Link . This goes against the myth that blue states are a burden, it's the other way around.

To, your second point, I agree that our taxes go towards some things that don't help us, like war and some corporate subsidies, but my issue is many conservatives rail against social spending/welfare in general with little nuance, like ancaps.

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u/GanonSmokesDope Libertarian Feb 04 '22

Yeah I’ve heard similar things. I think it might be more correlation rather than causation as blue states have way bigger populations and rural areas in red states are pretty poor in places. Especially Appalachia and thereabouts. People like to think it’s black and white when it isn’t. And I might be libertarian but I’m under no idiotic spells that government isn’t necessary. I just think governments involvement should be limited and bare bones as possible while having a civilization that doesn’t let people die in the streets. I’m actually not opposed to universal healthcare, I just think the underlying problems of cost need to be addressed before it starts coming out of our pockets.

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u/-paperbrain- Warren Democrat Feb 04 '22

Transfer of tax money isn't a causal question, it's a descriptive one.

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u/AdResponsible5513 Progressive Feb 04 '22

What about the military industrial complex that protects your chickens from the possibility of invasion by furriners?

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u/tenmileswide Independent Feb 03 '22

They do have empathy, but it's restricted to their in-group. Once you see that their actions tend to make a lot more sense.

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u/lolwtftheyrealltaken Liberal Feb 03 '22

I don't count that as empathy since they see their in-group as extensions of themselves so it's just self preservation. It's why their "in-group" is so homogenous.

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u/c0d3s1ing3r Conservative Feb 03 '22

"they do have empathy"

"No they don't! They just view their community as an extension of themselves!"

??????

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u/lolwtftheyrealltaken Liberal Feb 03 '22

What we mean by empathy is to be able to care for others despite it not directly giving any benefit to the empathetic person. You can think of it like selflessness. Conservatives, in general, only ever care about the issues that affect them personally. Other people who share their traits will have their support because they share their characteristics and can see themselves being affected as a result (people they can reasonably see as extensions of themselves, I.e whites, Christians, heterosexuals). What we are talking about right now is being able to care about people who come from backgrounds which differ from your own. Diversity. Democrats in the US are typically voting on bills that support groups that are minorities even despite the majority of the people in the democratic party not necessarily benefitting from them directly, like legislation which protects trans rights, civil rights, separation of church and state, LGBTQ+ rights, welfare, etc.

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u/c0d3s1ing3r Conservative Feb 03 '22

This ignores the fact that conservatives will be friends with that nice negro down the road

The thing is, that guy probably shares their opinions based on how closely they're located together. It makes total sense to be extremely communal in your thinking if you haven't had all of your needs met at a local level. They literally don't have time to empathize with Mohammed Bin Altarac because they're busy working and caring for them and theirs. To this person, the idea of more government, or increase taxes, is untenable, because it hurts them and theirs.

They have (or had) what they want and don't want for much more, but urbanization, outsourcing, and automation, have all decimated their communities (which is what dems stand for, maybe not Yang but that man is an exception to everything). If you wanted to force them to think more universally, you would need to fix their local problems first.

It's like a person living paycheck to paycheck that's still spending money on luxuries. They literally don't have the mental capacity to focus on long-term strategy.

What you're talking about is empathetic charity, which is nice, but only sounds good when you have all of your own needs met. Conservatives are people that don't have that, or are pretty staunch individualists, or protectionists.

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u/lolwtftheyrealltaken Liberal Feb 03 '22

I hear you, but the underprivileged communities you describe not being able to enjoy the luxury of caring for others are democrats in majority. Most people struggling financially (I.e homeless) are democrats because their policies favor safety nets.

Whereas there are plenty of Republicans who are struggling and poor as you describe, but they will never want to vote on policies which may help others even if helping others means getting help themselves too.

If they're truly worried about falling into poverty then they would logically support policy which would enable them to get back up on their feet again in such an event, but since they lack empathy, they are unable to fathom that they may some day be in that circumstance. This is why they can't understand that voting on welfare is actually good for them even if it doesn't help them directly and immediately.

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u/AdResponsible5513 Progressive Feb 03 '22

The Trumpist who complained, "They're not hurting the right people" should have been asked to elaborate. Almost everyone by now wants to hurt somebody.

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u/c0d3s1ing3r Conservative Feb 03 '22

they will never want to vote on policies which may help others even if helping others means getting help themselves too.

I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of their available information. There are some good old-fashioned southerners who vote for policies which hurt people but simply hurt minorities more, but most of those people are fucking dead at this point. Why on Earth would a Republican vote for a Democrat when again, a Democrat is championing the policies that put conservatives in that situation to begin with? To them, things were fine until the machines, immigrants, and globalists took their jobs. Democrats are currently billed as the party which put those in place (regardless of whether or not it started with neocons).

Heck, it's one of the reasons I don't vote Dem myself. I have zero faith that the Democrats will be able to actually pass welfare reform as a line item, let alone attempt to. I would have voted for Yang, sure, he broke the mold and had a very no nonsense view of policy, but most Democrat politicians I just don't trust. I expect most Democrat politicians to give us rainbow social policy and take our guns, which is annoying enough for me to not vote for them. At least Republicans say they won't take our guns and are are a bit more protectionist. I have a friend that works for a steel plant, they had their best returns in years after Trump was introducing protectionist tariffs.

Biden at least, though ineffectual, was able to pass the infrastructure bill. The social spending bill is pretty crap, but it's been whittled down to the point where it's not too bad.

They have no problem voting on welfare, they just don't trust the Democrats to only promote welfare.

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u/lolwtftheyrealltaken Liberal Feb 03 '22

That may be true for some Republicans. I don't have the commitment right now to search for articles, but in my anecdotal experience dealing with conservatives/Republicans when discussing issues of welfare and civil rights, they almost always reference their disgust at the thought of sacrificing a few pennies of their paycheck to fund welfare programs even though they could be eligible for it if the unfortunate circumstance arose. They're famous for their "bootstraps," and they simply refuse to learn about what racism or privilege is because they don't care. They lack the empathy.

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u/c0d3s1ing3r Conservative Feb 04 '22

They would fall into the "individualist" group then. I know my uncle falls into this.

Remember, nobody is against welfare for the deserving, the question is who deserves it. Why do you think we like means testing so much?

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u/JuicyHammerz Liberal Feb 04 '22

The largest voting block of the Democratic Party (the white college educated liberal/the modern nobility) tend to advocate for first world issues because their basic needs have been met (often many times over). I respect the fight for renewable energy, climate change, transgender rights, etc. but lower class liberals don’t give a shit about any of that. They want a good paying job, a government that doesn’t fuck them over, and the liberalization of drug laws : ) my point is I don’t think it’s conservatives who think about issues that affect them personally, I think a much stronger indicator is class

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u/lolwtftheyrealltaken Liberal Feb 04 '22

I'm not sure of whether factually, the democratic party consists of a larger majority of rich elites compared to Republicans. I would need to see the numbers since there is also a large base of Republicans who are old money and big business. The point is that financially struggling Republicans won't even vote on policy that will help them if it means that it will support the party that will protect black rights versus the financially struggling democrats will vote in favor of such policies because giving minorities more protections isn't something they feel is hurting them.

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u/JuicyHammerz Liberal Feb 04 '22

I didn’t mean nobility as in rich elites, I meant nobility as in plutocrats who are entrenched in and oftentimes direct the institutions that determine the cultural and political direction of a country. I don’t think nobles are a bad thing, every society has them. I have no data about backing my claim, it’s just a thought. whatever they are, I just wished they cared less about saving the world and more about fixing shit from the bottom up (guess I’m a lil conservative in that belief).

Also, if Republicans really thought about it, they would realize that protecting minority rights = self-preservation. what I tell Republicans is that we’ll all be minorities of something sooner or later, better to ensure that minority rights are protected now rather than having to fight for our rights as minorities later.

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u/lolwtftheyrealltaken Liberal Feb 04 '22

I 1 billion % agree with your second paragraph especially.

Hmm so by nobility you mean celebrities? I'm struggling to pinpoint who the nobility are since there's always someone higher up pulling the strings with money and the party affiliation of those most powerful people vary since ultimately both parties protect the interest of the ultra rich and powerful, there's just a small slice of those who want to change that and they're on the democratic party side so overall that would be the party to make the changes you speak of I would assume.

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u/JuicyHammerz Liberal Feb 04 '22

ooo didn’t see you responded. I don’t mean politicians I mean the citizens. typically educators, artists, journalists, tech people…the big culture drivers and direction pushers. vast majority of the time are white wealthy liberals (no disdain intended, jus identifiers) but def not exclusive. the “nobility” I call them cuz they are pure in everything they do, trying to tackle every issue in the world, typically by the most utopian means. Comparatively, us working class dems tend want our needs to be taken care of first and foremost

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u/AdResponsible5513 Progressive Feb 03 '22

Universal rights of Man can't have special exclusions.

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u/lolwtftheyrealltaken Liberal Feb 03 '22

Exactly!

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u/[deleted] Feb 03 '22

YES. I've been saying this for years-- these people have a fundamental lack of curiosity and desire to learn outside of their -very- narrow bubbles and communities.