The Mindset Behind Conservatism and Liberalism
Politics, like sex and religion, can be confusing and enigmatic. Certainly when we have major elections in which only one third of citizens eligible to vote actually do, the term democracy loses any meaning. That means, in a close election, that around 17% of the citizens dictate the national agenda. For whatever the reasons, little today is as it seems. We start with a democracy that is not a democracy, as noted above. We have a ‘Christian’ country which behaves diametrically opposite to the teachings of Christ, we have freedoms which apply only to some, we have taxation which favors the wealthy, we have educational opportunities which are grossly unequal based on community affluence, we have adequate health care for some and not others, we have living wages for some, non living wages for others, and absurdly elevated wages for others; we exploit other nations on behalf of our own corporations, we pretend we care about the future of our kids via ‘family values’ and yet fight wars on borrowed money, fail to adequately protect the environment in which our kids will have to live, fail to address human overpopulation and all the consequences therein; and pretend our society can prosper with almost all our wealth concentrated in the hands of a few. The potential harm coming down on us from so many directions all at once has left us hopelessly blinded, like a deer frozen in the headlights. Do nothing or next to nothing has been our mantra for years now. The only thing in common is that everyone is mad—about different things for differing reasons, but they are angry, matched only by a common feeling of hopelessness.
It is with the above in mind that I ponder the two political terms we use to characterize voters. Okay, change that to citizens since most don’t vote. To a degree, we inherit our politics much like we inherit our religion. God only knows from whence our sexual proclivities arise. People rarely change their religious beliefs—if they change, change is mostly by ignoring aspects of scripture or Church directives. After all, every religion is sure to include forgiveness as part of the pathway to Heaven. Our politics has a little more leeway, there is no after-death Heaven involved. Everything which follows utilizes a lot of generalizations, but generalizations which are purported to be generally true with exceptions.
Liberals tend to be Rationalists and Conservatives tend to be Romanticists. Liberals tend to base their political positions on evidence, reason, logic, ethics, and facts. Conservatives tend to base their political positions on feelings, culture, religious scripture, and faith. Conservatives like to express their political opinions via “I believe….” and liberals tend to start conversations with observations, assorted related facts, and studies. Personal experience means more to conservatives than liberals. Conservatives tend to understand things through their own eyes, their own feelings, their own social status, through admired authority figures, their own personal experiences. Conservatives tend to be a lot more self-serving whereas Liberals, to varying degrees tend to be more expansive in their view of others. Whereas conservatives like to draw lines in the sand about issues, liberals tend to be less sure about where any lines should be drawn.
Conservatives tend to be more into organized religion and be far more rigid with their religious beliefs. Whatever their religious inherited dogma is, conservatives tend to accept it with strong faith—after all, if God through select humans, decrees something to be right or wrong, then the conservative feels it is their duty to ensure this right is practiced not only by themselves, but all others, if not by persuasion, then by law. Liberals tend to think the same issues are a personal choice and should never be enforced by laws. Because conservatives tend to believe things on faith, and liberals arrive at positions more by their own logical thought, conservatives are much more likely to end abruptly a conversation about an issue in question with “I don’t want to talk about it”. To the conservative, if God states something is wrong or right, then there is little discussion to be had. In their mind they are listening to God, not anybody else.
While I started out as a Barry Goldwater conservative, I, like Barry, moved to the left. In general more people move to the left than ever move to the right, at least among those people who think a lot about political matters. Supreme Court justices, for example, are much more likely to move to the left with time than move to the right. Moving to the right on the Supreme Court is highly unusual.
One thing is generally true. Conservatives spend little time thinking about the arguments of liberals, and liberals spend little time listening to conservatives. We all know people who were born Republicans and will be Republican no matter, period. It would be unthinkable for them to ever vote for a democrat, even if they hurt their own financial status by doing so. And we all know people who were born democrats and will vote democratic no matter what.
An occasional cursory look at comments which often follow internet news articles is really startling. The amount of genuine hatred existing between conservatives and liberals is unnerving. If, and when the ’shit hits the fan’, it is going to be a blood bath in our country. This country is becoming more and more well armed, and when conflict breaks out the seeds are there for blood shed that will never cease—just like in the Middle East. We are positioning ourselves to think and act toward each other just like they do in the Middle East, where they have done so for centuries. Barack Obama is one of the most tolerant and appreciative of diversity as any modern President, but strangely, it is just these two traits which have made so many so irate. Conservatives want things the way they have historically been, and liberals are always trying to bring more people under the tent of inclusiveness in just about every phase of our society. And what really grates many conservatives is the observation that many of those now being included are themselves anything but inclusive in their relations with others. Conservatives are much more likely to say, “If they don’t like it here let them leave” than liberals. Conservatives are probably right in that when those groups suffering injustice get inclusion, many of them are going to be seeking payback. What goes around, comes around.
Conservatives are much more likely to see life as some sort of contest between good and evil. There are consequences for this mentality. It explains why conservatives are far more likely to support any war. There has not probably been any war which American conservatives have not been for. The other side is evil and we are always fighting for the good. After all, we are a Christian country, and Christians, by their own definition, fight for good and the opposition fight for evil. Liberals are more likely to loathe war and believe that violence begets violence. And yet when it comes to actually fighting the war, conservatives are much more likely to support war through voluntary armies than through any national draft, and support borrowing the money to fight the war. Liberals are more likely to support a draft and to feel everyone, if war is necessary, should have to sacrifice in some way for the war effort. This is one of the biggest ironies of religion. Religions, in theory, are there to promote the well being of others and to bring peace on earth. But that theory never holds up, and in truth, the most vicious wars have been religious in nature, including the present.
Liberals are more often likely to be content to let all people be free to practice their own beliefs which don’t hurt anyone else. Conservatives are more likely not to be content unless they are allowed to be publicly out front with their beliefs, if they are in the majority. Prayers in schools or at other public gatherings is a good example. Prayer does not require a public setting. A person can pray anywhere, including in school. But conservatives see nothing wrong if they pray in public and force everyone to either pray with them or at the very least sit and listen to their prayer. Praying itself has little logic to it, and a whole lot of self-serving faith—faith that indeed, God will do the right thing at certain times only if the person praying asks Him to do it. What kind of God are they praying to? “I’ll save your little Jimmy or spouse because you prayed to me, but any other little Jimmy or spouse in the same situation with no one to pray for them must die.” Who is running the show here? God or those who simply claim thru inherited religion to have special contact with God? It is all a bit much. And not very rational either. If God listens to those with the right religious inheritance, then surely, on all matters pertaining to life and death, those in the right religion will percentage wise die less often on whatever the matter is that pertains to life and death. If Jews are the chosen people how the hell did the Holocaust ever happen? If Christians are the chosen people how the hell can Christians be mass murdered in Africa by Muslims? If Muslims are the chosen people how the hell can Muslims in Africa be mass murdered by Christians in Africa? If there were any chosen people these people would certainly stand out as such throughout history.
Founding fathers like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson stated clearly that ours is not a Christian government because there is separation between church and state. Religion, in the last analysis, boils down to the international ethical concept of the Golden Rule. There is no major religion that I can think of in which, IF you followed the Golden Rule, you would not be a candidate for whatever Heaven exists in that religion. What major prophet in any major religion ever encouraged everyone to carry a weapon around so that if any confrontation occurs someone can get murdered? Would Jesus really endorse the kind of torture used on prisoners by the CIA in our country? Of course not, but only 18% in a recent poll of Americans thought it was wrong. Would Jesus have encouraged this country to go into Vietnam and murder 2 million Vietnamese, a country which had not bothered any other country for hundreds of years or more? Would Jesus have ever encouraged this country to invade other countries and teach them that power through violence can bring peace and prosperity? We can conquer through power, but when we finally tire of it all, the country we leave is more violent than it ever was before we invaded. Conservatives are much more likely to eagerly make someone or some group do something to please their own conservative feelings, while liberals are more likely to use discussion and reason to convince others to behave differently.
It might be wise to pause here a bit to clear up what might be a misconception of the above. None of the above paints either political position as any good vs evil contest. The evolutionary process is amoral. That is, ethics plays no role in survival of the fittest in evolutionary history. Surprisingly, ethics doesn’t even exist until we get to the more complex species, and it is only a considerable force in the human species. After all, until the evolutionary process generated species which have highly developed reasoning—which means the ability to comprehend their own fate—ethics was of little import. Much of nature seems so cruel in terms of one species preying on another, but then we must always remember that much of the pain we feel is precisely because we understand the consequences of physical injury, disease, etc. Because we understand the consequences of pain we actually have two pathways of pain to the brain. One pathway is purely non emotional and informs us of the location and type of pain being experienced. The other pathway connects with our emotional centers in the brain and determines our emotional response to pain. The threshold for different kinds of pain in humans is pretty much the same for us all——the emotional response to the pain is what varies. Thus, the same strength of pain stimulus may cause one person to scream bloody murder and another person to be far more stoic about the sensation. Thus ethics is really all about trying to level the playing fields of life so that more and more people have a chance to achieve some contentment in their life. Contentment, of course is an emotional state, and has little to do with survival of the fittest. Ethics simply enables humans to minimize the trauma associated with the evolutionary process. Ethics is meaningless without rewards for ethical behavior. Everyone everywhere comprehends that the Golden Rule is an ethical principle. We arrive at this concept through our ability to reason, not via any inherited religion. The reward for ethical behavior is contentment. Contentment for the recipient of ethical behavior and contentment for the giver of ethical behavior. It is a win-win situation. Money is not involved, titles are not involved, power is not involved, popularity is not involved, ethnicity is not involved, physical skill or appearance is not involved, and so on. Ethics simply maximizes contentment amongst a population sharing the same environment.
Conservatives tend to ignore the plight of the less fortunate and to project the circumstances of the less fortunate as self inflicted. The less fortunate too often are not seen as victims but those who inflicted their situation on themselves. And having done that, the solution is to punish them for their misbehavior. Conservatives tend to create logical absurdities when they selectively hold on tenaciously to certain inherited religious dogmas. For example, there are few things which generate stronger reactions from conservatives than abortion. To conservatives abortion is simply put, murder. It is a clear cut attack on the sanctity of life. But there are several illogical consequences of their stance here. First of all, their is no sanctity of life since all of us are going to die. This is, without exception, a current consequence of God’s evolutionary process. The only variable is that death comes at different stages amongst us. Another misconception of conservatives on this issue is that life begins at conception. ALL human cells came from pre-existing living cells. All life does is change from one form of life to another. The old were once young, the young were once babies, the babies were once embryos. The embryos were once egg and sperm, the egg and sperm each came from pre-existing cells, and so it goes further and further back in the evolutionary process. When and how life began is way beyond our current comprehension. At the time of conception there were millions of sperm with the potential of fertilizing the egg, and each such combination had the potential for a new unique human being. But, of the millions such possible combinations, all but one such combination were murdered by the process. The potential human beings were just as dead as the aborted combination. Furthermore, the one combination that happened, only happened because two people decided to have unprotected sex. In essence, every time two human beings decline to engage in sex between each other during the fertility period that must then be committing murder. Human decisions are always involved, and with modern medical techniques, are more than ever involved in just when fertilization is going to occur and with whom. If God had the same understanding about the sanctity of life as conservatives have, human life on this earth would never end. Finally, if there is life after death in the absence of sin, then the aborted fetus goes directly to Heaven since a fetus has no sins. To push this to the extreme, an abortion then simply guaranteed the entrance of that genetic combination to Heaven. To the extent that is true, then we all should be so lucky as to have been aborted and escape the stresses and judgement of life.
Perhaps a more puzzling aspect of this stance against abortion is this: If bringing a fetus to term is so vitally important to the sanctity of life, shouldn’t this entire formative period of a child’s life be awarded the same protection? Why would we ever permit any child to be given an inferior educational environment, or given inadequate health care, or be given an unsafe neighborhood to grow up in, or not have proper parental care, or food, or shelter, and so on? And if we collectively fail to do this in our society, then why, when the child becomes an adult, should we punish the child for the circumstances of his formative years? Let’s take education for example. The percentage of children who attend poor schools and then end up in jail is much higher than children who attend good schools. Perhaps, instead of spending $30,000 a year to incarcerate vast numbers of these products of bad environments, the ethical approach should be to spend the money to ensure these kids have good schools and a good home. But conservatives are really adamant about this. No one is going to take their hard earned money and spend it to educate other children less fortunate. Using local tax monies to finance education effectively ensures that children in poor neighborhoods get the worst schools.
Does this mean conservatives hate the poor? They do not. They don’t go around saying if someone is poor “I hope they rot in hell”. What they do is wrap themselves in some sort of “family values” which pretty much limits their responsibility to their own offspring. They don’t hate other people’s kids, affluent or poor, but their commitment is entirely toward their own kids and, in their mind, that is exactly where it should be. Each worry about their own. They call it personal freedom. Conservatives often express their nonspecific empathy for the poor by serving meals in a homeless shelter on Thanksgiving or giving a nice gratuity to someone at Christmas making a non livable minimum wage. But suggest the minimum wage be tied to inflation like social security and conservatives, almost unanimously, will be against raising the minimum wage. Suggest these disadvantaged kids be given good health care and the conservatives, almost unanimously, will be defiant: “not with my money you will not”.
I recently watched a movie called “The Waiting Room” about a day in the emergency room at a Oakland California Hospital. Conservatives will say that the poor get free medical care and just have to go to an emergency room to get it. Anyone who watches this film will understand that for many poor, an emergency room is where you go to die when your condition is no longer curable. Otherwise, when it is curable, there is not sufficient staff to handle ongoing medical problems. Of course if you have medical insurance, once admitted to the emergency room your case moves quickly to the fast track since you have insurance. If you don’t and major medical intervention is needed, finding a doctor to take the case is difficult and you end up on a waiting list, and often die before the intervention is available. Only liberals would ever watch this film. Conservatives, often good people on a daily basis with those in their own life environment, never allow themselves to be face to face with the injustices heaped on the less fortunate. They are gated off on purpose for their own psychological well being. So are a lot of liberals, including myself, except liberals have little illusions about how many of the less fortunate are living. When conservatives see the less fortunate rioting in the streets they get angry—“what is the matter with these animals? We don’t behave this way in our neighborhood? Every one of them should be put in jail and the key thrown away.” Of course it is easy to understand why they feel that way, but their personal feelings are not only misdirected, but ill founded. Treat them the same way for years and they would be right up at the forefront of any riot with an incendiary device, all ready to go shopping.
What conservatives fail to understand is that if the least fortunate in our own country ever riot all at once, the affluent are going to lose everything. The same conservatives, who insist everyone should arm themselves in public for protection, are foolish enough to believe, when push comes to shove, the police will protect them. Well, both the police and individual property owners will be out mobbed. While the allfuent are home protecting their ‘things’, mobs will move around looting everything in sight. And the police, when it gets to that point, will be home trying to protect their own families, or trying to flee with them. That is how it always goes down in history. The Have-Nots will always win over the Haves. The Haves have much to protect, the Have-Nots have nothing to lose. With today’s wireless gadgets, those rioting are no longer isolated in their rioting, just like terrorists can organize and control confrontations via all their own communication gadgets. The disaffected today have guns, communication devices, and organizers who are just as prepared for battles as law enforcement. Of course, if our house is the one being attacked the government has the fire power to blow up the entire neighborhood, and be done with the invaders, and us too. No, we want them to just eliminate the invaders, which is another story altogether.
Neither conservatism or liberalism is a moral stance. However, considering the nature of human ethics, if either one fails to achieve the Golden Rule, then contentment cannot be reached. Look at the modern day conservatives compared to modern day liberals. A liberal like Obama radiates contentment with his outlook on life while conservatives like Sarah Palin, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Pat Roberson, Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, and so on, radiate an anger towards so many diverse groups of people that it approaches rabidity. I reckon once we accept the notion that God talks to us and depends on us to make other people practice religion as we do, well then it must really be annoying that so many others continue to do their own thing—to the point where we feel a real urge to make them follow our inherited religious dogmas. And if we fail to conquer the heathens, maybe God will retaliate and we won’t go to Heaven.
What determines whether any of us are conservative or liberal? That would be past my pay grade. I started out conservative enough, but my world was rather small back then and my ethics applied more to simply those with whom I came in daily contact. Did I participate in any way with the civil right movements in the 50’s? I did not. Was I a racist? This word is used so many ways by so many people that I’d rather avoid the term altogether. There were no blacks in my square mile neighborhood except one black somewhat younger than I. We didn’t spend time hating blacks and no one that I can remember ever did anything outwardly hostile to the one black kid. On the other hand I don’t remember him ever being involved in any of our pick up ball games of various sorts. I don’t recall any conversations in which any of my friends and I in our neighborhood ever plotted anything disrespectful or harmful to any blacks or any others period. Our attitude back then was more like when we saw protests on TV that “If they don’t like it here they can leave”. My town was probably 20% black and yet in terms of contact it may as well have been two separate towns. It wasn’t until I left home and lived in dorms and was on teams with various ethnic groups and then began teaching did I ever have to come to grips with ethnic diversity. If my career had gone in a different direction perhaps today I would still be conservative.
People don’t usually become more liberal in respect to others overnight. The first time Reagan ran for President I actually voted for him. The second time I did not, and have become more liberal since then. When I look back at my earlier years, including my childhood friends and early career associates etc. I don’t see good people vs bad people. And, as pointed out earlier here, God’s evolutionary process is not about good vs evil. It is simply amoral. To me, over time—evolutionary time, not human time, liberalism will win out over conservatism simply because humans, earth’s natural resources, and other species cannot survive with human conservative policies. Violence begets violence, overpopulation of any species is dealt with harshly by the evolutionary process, destruction of habitat is fatal to any species, and it is simply preposterous to ever claim humans have dominion over other species or the planet itself. The world is now too much with us, our human ‘noise’ has become deafening—to each other and to all other species—and our failure to adhere to the Golden Rule as the basis for ethics will be fatal——not to the distant future, but the immediate future in human years. We are not so much evil as we are trapped in our own inflated self-serving operational mode. “Family values”, patriotism, religious furor, overpopulation, climate change, species extinction, pollution, vast inequalities in the distribution of wealth—all of these among others will force a brutal correction by God’s laws which govern evolution. We are going to pay a terrible price for letting such emotional and illogical confrontations exist over abortion, prayers in school, who can marry who, everybody arming themselves, immigration rights, proper health care only for those who can afford it, wages not protected from inflation, and no taxation policies which prevent a few from amassing almost all the community wealth in their hands. In terms of human evolution we are still childlike and ignorant. Fortunately, human evolution will mature or be replaced and all will advance admirably as it always has for billions of years.
As we painfully weather all these storms coming straight at us, conservatives will get angrier and angrier, targeting for blame those outside their own cabal of twin-like reflections, while liberals, via their communication devices and the internet, will shed many tears——some tears of happiness when some of the least amongst us get a break, and other tears when so many of the less fortunate suffer so painfully and hopelessly as this evolutionary process wends it’s way forward per its usual amoral progressive nature.
