Sincere Questions for Conservatives

[Bassoe]

Is there a "Hillbilly Elegy" for the right?

Closest I can think of would be Jason Pargin's How Half Of America Lost Its F**king Mind.

4. Often in leftist circles you get a frustrated "why can't we convince conservatives of X; don't they see it would be in their own self-interest". So what's the reverse? What are the issues that conservatives see where you think leftists are absolutely screwing themselves, where it would be way more in their personal self-interest to follow the conservative policies because it would help them live happier, healthier, safer lives? Not cultural stuff, but areas where you legitimately think that if only leftists would understand what conservatives want to do, they'd see how it would make them more secure and better off.[1]

Freedom of speech absolutism. If there’s any chance of your political allies potentially losing power, for example, if you’re in a democracy and they might get voted out of office, never give them any power which you wouldn't trust your political enemies with.

 

[The Original Sixth]

So I heard about The Sietch as being a message board where some of the more conservative posters from Spacebattles (and SV?) had migrated when they felt they were no longer welcome at SB. And that's about all I know; I've never paid much attention to the politics of Spacebattles. Sorry. But it seemed like this could be a place to go to ask some of those questions.

Well, that's not entirely accurate. It's more that the Sietch is a collection of conservatives, libertarians, some moderates, and maybe one or two liberals.

1. Often in the very leftist/liberal spaces I hang out in, there is an accusation thrown around that leftists are supposed to try to understand and empathize with the point of view of the right wing, but there is no reciprocity. That is, no right wing media articles trying to patiently explain, "This is what leftists think and why, and here's how you can reach out to leftists in your life to try and find common ground. They're good people, just like you, they only have a different view of some things. Etc." Do you feel like that's incorrect and that there's a lot of work done by the right to reach out and try to talk to the left? Have you personally ever had a leftist person in your life that you asked to explain their views to you and that sort of thing? Do you have a favorite article written for a right wing audience that's like "liberals explained so you can understand them" that seems sincere? Is there a "Hillbilly Elegy" for the right? Again (taps rule #3) please let's not make the conversation about whether leftists are actually trying to understand conservatives or not.

It's not that neither side tries, it's that both sides exist in a different moral matrix. Bear touched upon this. There are six pillars to morality; liberty, compassion, loyalty, authority, karma, and purity. Liberals are primarily focused on compassion, followed by liberty. Conservatives are split between all six of those moral principals. The difficulty that conservatives have, is why liberals claim to be moral, when they ignore authority (such as laws, like border control), loyalty (such as to other American citizens hurt by immigration), karma (seem to want to subsidize people who don't do the right thing, such as sneaking through the border or cheating welfare programs), and purity (the defacing of public property, defiling the body, and the destruction of religious institutions).

Liberals, for their own part, will dismiss anything that does not fall within their liberal viewpoint, because they do not matter. You can see this with literature. Look at Harry Potter. The primary focus is on personal liberty (ie magic, how people are different, ect), but the prime importance is compassion (ie, love). Harry's strength in most of the series came from his mother's love (which defeated Voldemort's spell) and protected him long after she died (Books 1-4). Harry's own ability to love drove Voldemort out in Book 5 and kept him from trying in the next two books. Meanwhile, Voldemort (the bad guy), is the leader of a group of racists who do not like those of lower blood (meaning that most Slytherins work from the function of purity). Voldemort himself is evil because he physically lacks the ability to love or hold compassion for anyone else. That drives his hatred and anger towards his father, which in turn drives it towards Muggles.

An interesting note for the series is that Voldemort has to be someone who LACKS compassion entirely. It's not that Voldemort HAS compassion and a focus on purity, but that he lacks it altogether. And this mirrors how liberals treat conservatives on the issue of immigration. They assume that they lack compassion. In reality, conservatives arrive to different conclusions not because they lack empathy--but because they believe that the immigrants have violated various morals that they hold dear and liberals can't really be bothered with.

2. This one is American politics centered. On a federal level especially (though answer for other government levels if you like), what is the legislative agenda of the Republican party from your point of view as a common voter? What laws, specifically laws, would you like to see passed? What are the big priorities that can be addressed by laws. You notice how I keep saying "laws"? That's because, from my point of view, it often seems like Republican members of Congress spend a lot of time talking about issues that aren't really in the domain of government, or if they are seem only tangential. Like I don't think "cancel culture" is something that the United States Congress can really do much about. (Or maybe I'm wrong and you do think that.) But what laws would you like to see a Republican president and Congress pass if they could just pass any law they wanted? What would your highest legislative priorities be?

1. Rule that internet services are utilities. Which would make it illegal to ban conservative platforms. Some have argued for services like twitter to be made into utilities, but I don't think that would solve the problem.
2. Leave the Middle East, Europe, and Africa. We have no strategic interests there. We are not the world's charity bucket, offering protection to ships and borders simply because the locals refuse to do it themselves.
3. Stricter voting laws. I don't mean laws that drives voters away, but ensures that only citizens vote and that those citizens can trust that their votes were properly counted. Regardless of what happened in 2020, we cannot have people rioting because they think their votes were stolen.
4. Disable internet connections to China and Russia. They are by far the worst cybersecurity offenders on the planet. We'd save billions by severing our cables with those two.
5. Decentralize government power back to the states. The US is composed of 11 different major national identities--not even including black ones. Trying to focus all our power into the Federal government is not a great idea.

3. I see conservative arguments about immigration often get framed as an economic issue. Low skill immigrants driving down wages for low wage American workers. Immigrants taking too much money from the social safety net. But is it really just about the money? If you saw a convincing economic study that immigrants made the local community wealthier on net after, say, ten years of investment would you change your mind? Or maybe you don't need to change your mind. Do you have a sense for how much immigration you want to see? What about people coming into America to work and then leaving? How hard do you think that should be? Are there cultural concerns as well?

Conservatives are primarily concerned with illegal immigration.

Why should someone be able to move here, simply because they managed to sneak through our borders? Why should that someone be able to get a place to rent, thereby driving up costs for citizens? Why should that someone get government assistance, which is thus taken from a US citizen? Why should they be allowed the opportunity to commit crimes against our people? Especially those who've been deported for crimes before?

Do liberals not feel a duty to protect their own people from outside economic competition--or are they happy to feed companies cheap labor? Do they not feel as though laws should be obeyed? A liberal expects that black people can eat at any establishment without fear of being thrown out for the color of their skin, don't they? Why don't they thus feel that our border laws should be respected? Do liberals not feel that those who do wrong, should be punished? If your friend borrows your car and totals it, shouldn't he pay for it? Even if he didn't mean to? Even if it hurt him economically to do so? And do you not think that the culture that has created so much social and economic advances should be allowed to hold its head up high? To see its flag as something sacred, its statues as something worth protecting, and its history as something that must be remembered?

I guess I should say that I watched "An American Tail" growing up, you know. I heard about Ellis Island and immigrants coming in, being registered with a name, and getting citizenship like it was nothing... and framed in a positive way. Hey, I understand this is a really big question, but I guess I'd like to hear about what you as a conservative think about immigration in terms of general philosophy rather than as a specific question about border security or what to do with people here illegally or any of that.

But that's the issue. Conservatives wouldn't be so upset about immigration if the southern border hadn't been exploited for decades and causing a shift in demographics that favor both an alien culture AND their political opponents.

4. Often in leftist circles you get a frustrated "why can't we convince conservatives of X; don't they see it would be in their own self-interest". So what's the reverse? What are the issues that conservatives see where you think leftists are absolutely screwing themselves, where it would be way more in their personal self-interest to follow the conservative policies because it would help them live happier, healthier, safer lives? Not cultural stuff, but areas where you legitimately think that if only leftists would understand what conservatives want to do, they'd see how it would make them more secure and better off.[1]

Well, I'll just go into one. And that is on putting careers over families. Women are now expected to put their careers before their families. They're expected to have their careers worked out before they start a family. That can work out and in many cases it has, but in many others it hasn't. Worse than that, by the time women figure out that they need a family, they've already put themselves in a bad strategic position to obtain desirable husbands. Keep in mind that the following is the general rules, not the rules for everybody.

1. Women who earn significantly more than most of their male counterparts don't want to settle for men who can't provide for their standard of living while they're pregnant. Keep in mind that this can happen 2-3 times for a woman who wants an average size family. This narrows the amount of men they're willing to date.
2. Those same women are going to have personal tastes for the type of man they want, outside of economic. That can range from physical, to personality, to hobbies, ect. That narrows the amount of men they're willing to consider outside of economic issues.
3. The men who do make enough and are to the women's taste aren't just fewer in number, but have a larger amount of competitors. Because whereas many (not all, but many) women are comfortable dating up in age, very few men are willing to do the same. In fact, they prefer to date down and do so when possible. So a man whose 28 and has a nice job is not really going to consider marrying a 34 year old, when he can date 28 year old--or younger. Nor will a man whose also 34, preferring to date someone whose 28. This drastically narrows the amount of available men for those women.
4. Because of America's health crises (ie, obesity), women are even more gravely affected. It is easier for women to gain fat and harder for them to lose it. And as the mechanism that forced most people to try and remain fit is removed (ie, public shaming), they have grown large. And the older they are, the harder it is for them to keep the weight off and lose it later. So the women who are 34 now have had 16 years to over-eat, under-exercise, and are now trying to compete against younger and more physically fit women. For a sex that is wired to like fit and young companions. That DRASTICALLY narrows the available men for those women.

The result is that these women are finding themselves victims of "pump and dump" schemes. A man will date a 34 year old woman, sleep with her for a while, get bored, and move on. The women don't have much recourse unless they're willing to settle for men they don't really want because no one else will take them. That's a self-feeding cycle of abuse and neglect that I already see happening. Go on any dating app and try and search in that 30s range. You'll find a lot of overweight women with bios that read "serious relationships only" or "not interested in games". And about half of them will already have kids from a previous relationship.

And what is this all for? They've gained nothing they otherwise wouldn't have, had they not put their careers first. Most of them are still struggling financially (kids or no), they're lonely, they live mostly sexless (and loveless) lives, and the only people who've won are the multinational companies who doubled their workforce (thereby halving what they have to pay people) and get hard working, relatively docile drones (when compared to men).

 

[FebruaryStation]

WELCOME TO THE GROUP!!!!

Thanks for the reply.

A great majority of people, left or right, are generally pretty cool. Different points of view aren't the problem. The problem is that MANY of the voices from the left have stopped listening. If you disagree with them, you're racist, not woke or some other term that justifies their superior belief system. This is probably the one thing that scares me most about the left. I study history as well, and this trend leads to road filled with a LOT of abuse and blood. I do not want to see it come to that point, and it's one reason I'm happy to have you hear.

I seem to be getting this response a lot.

Do you think there are any areas of common culture remaining where both sides can agree on what the problem even is, so they're arguing about how to fix it rather than identity of the problem?

Term limits for all federally elected personnel.
Do some serious trust busting in this country. Too many corporations have WAY too much power.

"Corporations have too much power" seems like something that both left and right agree on as a general statement, but don't seem to agree on the solutions. Are there place where you think we could have an anti-corporate compromise agenda that both left and right could agree on?

Actually, it really can. The internet has become the public square. Need to remove protections from any and all gathering places. (ie. facebook, twitter, etc...) These are the main culprits of the cancel culture.

I have heard the argument that we should treat those services like phone lines. If I call someone over the phone, the phone company isn't responsible for what I say but neither are they supposed to censor what I say. They shouldn't be recording what I say (without a warrant from the state) either.

But there's a lot of problems in that unlike the phone company, facebook and twitter etc. are more like a publisher with all content being either user-generated or advertiser-generated. Their business models are built around advertising and collecting information, and if they were forbidden from controlling their content like a phone company is, I don't know if they could do either of those things. More, if you treat them like a publisher then forcing them to publish content they don't want to publish is also a violation of free speech.

Sorry I know this is kind of breaking my rule and "arguing with you" but it's because I think this is actually one of the rare topics that hasn't become deeply polarized. I know conservatives are really pissed at the social media networks for censoring some content, but I promise you that even if they're temporarily benefitting, leftists don't like these guys either. We don't trust them, and we've seen then play some shitty games with our posts too. I feel like this might be a ground where we could figure out some mutually agreeable regulation if both sides could come into it in good faith.

Nobody on the conservative side except for the very extreme is against immigration. We are heavily against Illegal Immigration. This country had no problem closing its borders in the past in order to allow those who already arrived time to assimilate to the idea of freedom. Many immigrants come here to gain freedom, but don't know what it means to be free or the obligations of freedom. This is something this country really needs to have happen once we get settled a bit.

Is there a conservative proposal to increase legal immigration that leftists could sign onto in good faith?

I think there's potential there for leftists to agree to a law that would vastly expand legal immigration in return for specific targets that conservatives want to hit in security and assimilation... but they'd have to be some achievable and measurable metric.

That was a lot, and took me a while since I'm at work. Your post deserved a response though.

Feel free to ask more if you like.

Thank you again.

 

[Cherico]

Thanks for the reply!



1. This response has been very consistent. I'm not sure what if anything is to be done about it.



2. Are there proposed bills in Congress to reduce the power of the state and specific federal agencies that you support and advocate for?



3. I completely agree that there are values higher than monetary, and I think "I'm voting for this because this is the right thing to do even if it makes us poorer" would be a legitimate position.



4. Is there some specific action you would like to take in order to put this bullshit in the grave?

In a free political system people are going to keep arguing for things you think you are bad, so I'm not sure there's anything to be done about it.



5. But what's the proposed solution? Plenty of conservatives live even in major democrat cities. Do they have ideas that resonate with you on how to fix things? Is there an agreed on conservative policy proposal, even in broad outlines?

Thanks again for your response!

Addressing point by point.


1. Solutions make big tech choose between being a publisher or a platform, right now they have the rights of both and the responsibility of neither and have gotten dangerously corrupt. If they choose publisher we can sue them into oblivion for a host of things. If they choose platfrom then by us law they can go around censuring people as they please.

Once that's done public discourse will start to repair itself organically.

2. Absolutely nothing, on that front but then again I want to get rid of the ATF, the FBI and scrap the department of education entirely. A lot of federal agencies are either stuff that should be done at the state or local level or have become so corrupt that I think their beyond reform.

3. Everything has a price and oportunity cost, like I said life is a series of trade offs.

4. Stop funding Marxist education and programs and start teaching kids what the communists did at an early age, this is an idology that murdered over a 100 million people the left needs to be taught exactly what it did so they can move on and try something else.

If your going to make mistakes try to make new ones instead of the old ones over and over again.

5. Grand coalition so every one has their own opinion. My ideal compromise is to take power away from the federal government and place more of it into the hands of local and state governments perferably local governments and then provide lots of autonomy.

The needs of NYC are different then upstate new york so let NYC run its own affairs and give upstate that ability as well. Ulimiently dispite being badly burned I don't want to destory the left and murder every one I just want to live my life as I please and let them have their lives as they please.

 

[Battlegrinder]

There are enormous competing concerns of two diametrically opposed models of "free speech"*, respect for private ownership, and potential very real physical harm some yahoo trying to use Facebook to organize a genocide by telling his countrymen to go out and kill, kill, kill.

*Free speech is being able to say what you want in the public square without someone shutting you down. Free speech is the government can't force you to use your printing press to publish anything you don't want to publish. Facebook is both the public square and the printing press.

I would actually disagree the the problem is two contradicting visions of what freedom of speech means, it's deeper than that. The problem, as I see it, is that increasing parts of the left are starting to say that certain opinions should not be aired period and want to suppress them. The frequent, Op-Eds longingly describing Britain's hate speech laws and wishing we could get something of the like in place over here, the constant references to Schenck vs United States, etc, do not sound like the words of people thst are really concerned about Facebook's ability to moderate on its own terms being infringed upon. They sound like people who really, really want to infringe on Facebook's ability to moderate.

Like, my list might include something about climate change, reducing poverty, getting health care to people, reducing political corruption and tax evasion, sorting out how we want to do immigration, eliminating gerrymandering... blah, blah, blah I'm sure nothing on there would surprise you if you tried to put together the "liberal list". And it's not that you had different ideas for those things and wanted to push a conservative solution instead of a liberal solution. It's that they didn't even make your list as thing to be addressed. And truthfully school reform, while important, might not make mine.

I think you might want a wider sample than just me, everyone has their own priorities and goals. That said, I would also note that you asked for what legislation I would want to see from congress. Poverty, Healthcare, and gerrymandering are problems, but they're not federal problems (the last one is explictly and absolutely not a federal problem. Control of elections and districting is delegated to the states, not to the federal government).

Immigration is an important issue, I just have no idea how to go about fixing it, and wanted to confine my comments to more specific policies. Ditto climate issues. I have enough time, energy, and interest to study like 4 or 5 major issues and develop my own informed opinion on the matter, I don't have it in me to become a capable advocate on everything (frankly, I doubt anyone could).

The only two I would argue are not problems are tax evasion and corruption, at least not in the traditional sense. Biden has proposed increasing the IRS budget to try and go after people for tax evasion and increase federal revenue, but CBO projections indicate that there's not enough of a problem for increased enforcement to raise all that much more money.

I haven't seen much evidence that political corruption is any kind of endemic issue, in my view the core problem is with voters (and is a bipartisan issue). For example, during Barret's confirmation hearings, the democrats on the committee (including now VP Harris) all alleged she was being put on the bench as part of some evil plot destroy Obamacare in an upcoming court case, and they spent most of the hearing in faux hysterics over it, to the point of not even showing up for the vote, instead leaving cardboard cutouts of people in thier place, as "reminders of the sick Americans her vote would hurt" or some crap like that.

The case they were "worried" about got shot down 7-2 by the court, as everyone, including conservative legal scholars, had long predicted it would, with barret in the majority. In a sane system, a representative that pulled a atunt like they did would be sweating bullets, given that their behavior can only be explained by utterly deranged partisanship or monumentally poor judgement, either of which would end thier political careers. They have expressed no such concerns, because they know they will never be held accountable for that.

That's a far bigger problem than all the lobbying and dubious campaign contributions in the world.

Is there a widespread perception among conservatives that Democrat politicians are trying to federalize police policy as a whole?

If there is a problem, republican tend to automatically assume democrats want to try and federalize, as you yourself demonstrated by wanting to try and tackle an explictly state level issue via congress.

Republicans have a proposal to change things they don't like about how police operate? Are conservatives unhappy with anything about how police operate, or is this more of the "we don't see a problem that needs to be solved"? (Again, that's a sincere question.)

All of the above. Police misconduct is an issue, sometimes, in some departments and I don't think anyone will deny it. But it's a matter for that local area and a one size fits all solution will not work, because the same problem can have different causes in different places.

The scale at which there is a problem is also vastly overstated. We're talking about maybe 50 deaths a year being totally unjustified. That is a problem, but it's not anywhere near the scale that the media and democrats make it out to be.

 

[FebruaryStation]

Thanks for the reply.

1. Rule that internet services are utilities. Which would make it illegal to ban conservative platforms. Some have argued for services like twitter to be made into utilities, but I don't think that would solve the problem.
2. Leave the Middle East, Europe, and Africa. We have no strategic interests there. We are not the world's charity bucket, offering protection to ships and borders simply because the locals refuse to do it themselves.
3. Stricter voting laws. I don't mean laws that drives voters away, but ensures that only citizens vote and that those citizens can trust that their votes were properly counted. Regardless of what happened in 2020, we cannot have people rioting because they think their votes were stolen.
4. Disable internet connections to China and Russia. They are by far the worst cybersecurity offenders on the planet. We'd save billions by severing our cables with those two.
5. Decentralize government power back to the states. The US is composed of 11 different major national identities--not even including black ones. Trying to focus all our power into the Federal government is not a great idea.

Thank you for the list. As with the other response I've got, it's very different from my view of what major priorities are, regardless of the merit of the proposals. I'll respond on a few:

2. I think it's more the so-called "Washington consensus" (AKA "the Blob") that the problem on this one than a left-right divide, which in some ways is great. Though to be fair, I don't think those bastards view bases as being charity but rather "Hey isn't it great to have military bases all over the world allowing us to intervene anywhere we want."

4. Is this technically practical as a cybersecurity measure? I don't really see how it would work without cutting all connections to everywhere, since you'd figure China/Russia would just route through some other country.

Conservatives are primarily concerned with illegal immigration.

Why should someone be able to move here, simply because they managed to sneak through our borders? Why should that someone be able to get a place to rent, thereby driving up costs for citizens? Why should that someone get government assistance, which is thus taken from a US citizen? Why should they be allowed the opportunity to commit crimes against our people? Especially those who've been deported for crimes before?

I think mainly I don't get why so many conservatives seem to get so seemingly emotionally invested in illegal immigration. Like, I don't feel personally insulted by illegal immigration or anything, and I think the likelihood that illegal immigration is going to make my life worse in any measurable way to be very small.

I'd be happy to have a cold-blooded rationalist, "what's the most effective use of our resources and when does the cost of enforcement exceed the benefit of enforcement" debate, but the idea it's some kind of a point of principle is very alien to me.

Do liberals not feel a duty to protect their own people from outside economic competition--or are they happy to feed companies cheap labor? Do they not feel as though laws should be obeyed? A liberal expects that black people can eat at any establishment without fear of being thrown out for the color of their skin, don't they? Why don't they thus feel that our border laws should be respected? Do liberals not feel that those who do wrong, should be punished? If your friend borrows your car and totals it, shouldn't he pay for it? Even if he didn't mean to? Even if it hurt him economically to do so? And do you not think that the culture that has created so much social and economic advances should be allowed to hold its head up high? To see its flag as something sacred, its statues as something worth protecting, and its history as something that must be remembered?

Answering since you seemed to phrase that as questions. I guess? I just honestly doesn't seem like a big deal. Plenty of motherfuckers among my fellow countrymen that cause me issues; it doesn't make much difference to me whether they came to my state from Ohio or Mexico.

Well, I'll just go into one. And that is on putting careers over families. Women are now expected to put their careers before their families. They're expected to have their careers worked out before they start a family. That can work out and in many cases it has, but in many others it hasn't. Worse than that, by the time women figure out that they need a family, they've already put themselves in a bad strategic position to obtain desirable husbands. Keep in mind that the following is the general rules, not the rules for everybody.

(reading all your points) I have some good news.

It is actually within the realm of leftist policy discussion that we are not doing enough to support women who want to stay home and take care of kids rather than go back to work. Like, this is a criticism and debate that leftists are having among themselves. There is a real concern that families are being trapped into not being able to survive without two incomes and that many women would find it more fulfilling to be able to raise their kids than do a job they're only doing to pay the bills. A lot of this centers around the proposed childcare allowance, which encourages women to work but gives them nothing if they stay home. Naturally the leftists debating this wouldn't put it quite the same way you would, and there is of course the handwave of "mother or father" and it being "a parent" who stays home, but still... I think there's real room for engagement here.

The bad news is that of course leftists want to handle it the way we hand everything... spend government money to allow a household with children to survive on one income.

 

[Sobek]

OK let me throw my 2 cents here

1) These are arguments that I am sorry to say come from them lying to you. Most of us understand pretty well what leftists and liberals want already, as explained by other users already. Most of the time the people who argue are either not interested on hearing counter arguments or looking for a response they have a counterargument for ready to fire back. Oh the question of the articles I do have some good articles going around explaining the mentality of far-left people and how they think the things they do, but I don't think they are exactly what you think and I don't have them here.

2) I am not american but I have taken to watching the USA politics as a hobby and barometer for the rest of the world and international order and I think I can answer some. The simple answer is a lot of Republicans don't want any laws. A lot of them are of the opinion that less government is best, and adding to the bureaucratic weight with laws is against that. They want things like repealing bureaucratic quagmires and streamlining tax legislation and so on. The laws I do see them want to pass are stuff like banning CRT and abortions, which have been explained here.

3) Most people are against immigration because of other reasons. What you mention is the old, left argument against immigration back when Neocons in charge liked to use cheap labor. Now the shoe is on the other foot and it is suddenly a conservative view point.

My issue with immigration, and I am sure loads of people here will agree, is the fact that the Democrats have simply eliminated the "naturalization" part of it. Used to be when people immigrated to live and become Americans they would actually become Americans. They would speak English, stand up to the anthem, cheer for the american teams, integrate. At most they would be x-american for a few generations with a small love for the mother country but america first. This is gone now. The progressive push is to let people come in without control, not have them learn to speak English because that is "racist", curriculum on schools that focus more on making people feel welcome than making them Americans who like america for the same reason, and in essence create a permanent outsider class that consider the USA to be little more than a economic bubble where they stay while still being completely detached from the nation culturally and socially. They are creating a entire class of people who see the USA as being just "free gringo money jajajaja" and have no interest in the american project. Europe is in a similar boat.

It would be if in An American Tail the Mousekewitzes came to the USA and refused to learn English, refused to work outside the Jewish ghetto, had a entire community where there were only other immigrants not because of money or prejudice but because they didn't want to integrate in NYC and still kept their loyalties with the Czar in Russia.

4) This, again, is another argument from people talking to you in bad faith. "It's against your own interests" has been used for decades and is a weak argument. Sure people do that sometimes, but leftists constantly play it. People have PLENTY of reasons to reject these "for your own good" shit. Economic concerns, freedom concerns, moral concerns and more.

You can't force workers to unionize for example, and it drives leftists insane when they read about it happening. They will complain about "voting against their own interests" when in reality they are voting for their interests of not having professional union members to leech off their paychecks and push shit they don't want. "Why would you vote against free public heathcare? It's on your own interests!" Because there is no such thing as "free" you retarded commie fucker, the USA already has insanely inflated healthcare prices thanks to insurance quackery and government subsides from Obama care and other "care" shit going back decades, if you make it "free" it will only get much worse just like it was with college tuition.

 

[FebruaryStation]

The only two I would argue are not problems are tax evasion and corruption, at least not in the traditional sense. Biden has proposed increasing the IRS budget to try and go after people for tax evasion and increase federal revenue, but CBO projections indicate that there's not enough of a problem for increased enforcement to raise all that much more money.

I feel like increasing funding to the IRS should be an "easy give" for the right, because it's something that leftists want that is clearly within the remit of the federal government, and even if it doesn't raise much more money (and it might) would at least have the salutary effect of making the wealthy and powerful a little more accountable to the existing laws.

Is there a particular reason for conservatives to push back?

If there is a problem, republican tend to automatically assume democrats want to try and federalize, as you yourself demonstrated by wanting to try and tackle an explictly state level issue via congress.

Gerrymandering is really tough in that it's an issue that's probably constitutionally a state issue, but is nearly insoluble at the state level for coordination reasons. All the states (capable of doing gerrymandering) would have to agree to disarm all at once, or someone is the sucker. And the chance to do it only shows up once every ten years. And the individual state governments would be sacrificing the political power of their own party's state representation in return for a nebulous principle. And gerrymandering has only gotten worse due to technological improvements.

I understand the reason why you rebuke me if the limit of federal power is of high priority to you and I take no offense, but I hope you understand my perspective that allowing people to have representation in accordance with their votes is really, really important, and eventually something has to break.

All of the above. Police misconduct is an issue, sometimes, in some departments and I don't think anyone will deny it. But it's a matter for that local area and a one size fits all solution will not work, because the same problem can have different causes in different places.

The scale at which there is a problem is also vastly overstated. We're talking about maybe 50 deaths a year being totally unjustified. That is a problem, but it's not anywhere near the scale that the media and democrats make it out to be.

If I showed you my twitter feed full of stories of police abuses day in and day out, monstrous behavior that leaves me wanting to spit nails, theft by police and beatings and cops lying in court, you'd... well, you'd probably tell me to get off twitter because it's bad for me and you'd be right, LOL.

But I can tell you that I keep going through a cycle of, "Hmmm, there's probably room for some moderate police reform. They ought to hire more detectives and focus on solving crimes, weighting that over the more preventative uniformed work that has less lasting effect," when I read the more moderate political authors I follow, and then I mainline twitter outrage of cops being monsters for a day and I'm like, "They're right, there's no such thing as a good cop, they should all be fired, no such thing as a good cop!" Arglebargle.

The worst thing about the world today is that news algorithms can feed you stories that are completely true individually, but as a whole confirm a completely negative and highly partisan view of the world. Unless of course it's opening your eyes to the truth, man I just don't know anymore.

 

[Bacle]

@FebruaryStation I think one very important thing for you to wrap your head around is that the Left does not get to determine what our 'best interests' are and thus are rather presumptuous when they make the argument of 'why are they voting against their own best interests'.

That is a conceit and brainbug of the he Left, in that they think people on the Right cannot even know what our best interests' are.

The Left assuming it knows what 'best' for the Right is part of why there is so little compromise anymore; it's pure arrogance, ego, and contempt for the intelligence and critical thinking skills of the Right.

You are making a noble attempt here. However, you need to understand that this is not an situation where common ground will happen through legisilation, and asking for legislative proposals only misses the bigger picture of the culture war that is driving the divide.

No legislative idea or proposal can fix the issues underlying your desire for common ground, only a change in culture across the board.

 

[Bear Ribs]

I feel like increasing funding to the IRS should be an "easy give" for the right, because it's something that leftists want that is clearly within the remit of the federal government, and even if it doesn't raise much more money (and it might) would at least have the salutary effect of making the wealthy and powerful a little more accountable to the existing laws.

Is there a particular reason for conservatives to push back?

Why give them money if s majority agree it will cost more for no tangible benefit? Who on earth would think that's a reasonable idea? Why think it would make the wealthy and powerful more accountable? The wealthy and powerful avoid taxes via being able to afford skilled attorneys who know exactly how to take advantage of every loophole, meanwhile small businesses and the middle class are left in the lurch because they can't afford those resources. Money for the IRS they agree they don't need won't do anything about those problems.

A conservative angle to fix the problem would be, instead, to simplify the tax code such that there aren't as many loopholes, and small businesses/middle class don't have to expend excessive resources on trying to prepare their taxes anymore. This has been proposed several times by conservatives.

A New Republican Plan Would Cut Through the Tax Code | NFIB

House Republicans hope to come to small business’ rescue. Representatives last week unveiled a 35-page blueprint for a simplified tax code, which would slash the corporate tax rate, reduce the top individual income tax rate, and consolidate the tax code from…

www.nfib.com

Republican Views on Taxes | Republican Views

Republican views on taxes include the belief that tax reduction is important. And Republicans reject the use of taxation to redistribute income.

www.republicanviews.org

Republicans say you can file your taxes with a postcard if new bill passes; H&R Block shares drop

The new tax bill unveiled by Republicans Thursday is so simple that taxpayers will be able to file using a postcard, according to GOP lawmakers.

www.cnbc.com

The more complex the tax code, the more the wealthy benefit

OPINION | The U.S. tax system is being taken advantage of, and Washington is to blame.

thehill.com

I mean, to me that would be the easy give, it has no additional cost, helps the poor and middle class especially, and simplifies an extremely complex bureaucracy. As a bonus, it would also give the IRS more budget to enforce taxes without spending more taxpayer dollars, because with a simpler, easier-to-understand tax code they wouldn't have to spend as much time reading individual returns themselves.

 

[FebruaryStation]

You are making a noble attempt here. However, you need to understand that this is not an situation where common ground will happen through legisilation, and asking for legislative proposals only misses the bigger picture of the culture war that is driving the divide.

No legislative idea or proposal can fix the issues underlying your desire for common ground, only a change in culture across the board.

What I have bolded is a fascinating statement and maybe the answer to the question I think I have at the core of all of this.

"Why aren't conservatives more angry at their politicians for not passing laws to do the stuff they want to do and make the world like they want it to be made and make life better?"

If there's a widespread belief that legislation truly can't get you what you want, I can see not caring very much when conservative politicians don't seem to have a lot of legislative ideas, as long as they're making sure leftists can't do the stuff they want to do.

I mean, just as an example, that recent Texas abortion law? As a leftist, I'm horrified. But you know, genuine props to the Texas State Legislature for actually getting a law passed that will have a measurable effect on their state and that the voters can judge on its merits. That's how democracy is supposed to work. The side in power gets to do something, and then the voters decide if what they did was right or too far. If I lived in Texas, I'd sure like to see them follow up with something to make sure the failures in the power grid earlier this year don't repeat themselves. Give everyone the conservative solution to that one.

I'd love to see leftists and rightists debating that way, by alternately passing laws and judging their effects and seeing who can actually solve shit. I really hate this idea that we can't do it that way and only changes in culture will solve things, because there's no one person or organization that actually has the power to make a change in culture. We can get a law passed. Nobody can change culture.

 

[Battlegrinder]

Is there a particular reason for conservatives to push back?

For me, because I'm still a bit cross over that IRS targeting scandal a few years ago that never quite got sorted out and that, in the light of what we now know about Obama using the FBI to spy on the Trump campaign, now looks far, far more suspicious than it did at the time. I don't think giving the IRS even more money is a good idea with Obama's VP in office and Harris sitting in the wing.

I understand the reason why you rebuke me if the limit of federal power is of high priority to you and I take no offense, but I hope you understand my perspective that allowing people to have representation in accordance with their votes is really, really important, and eventually something has to break.

I understand that perspective, however I think you might have not quite thought the implications of your argument here. States don't gerrymander to increase their own power vs other states, they do it to increase the voting power of their party at the expense of the other party. That same dynamic applies at the federal level and in fact more so. Do you think that, if given the chance, one party or the other wouldn't try and tilt the entire playing field in their favor? Even the ACLU said the democrat's "For the People" act was an unconstitutional assault on civil liberties and political freedoms (at least, they said the first time, before they completely hollowed and became another arm of the democratic political machine).

It's much harder to rig 50 sets of laws in your favor than one law, which is why our government was set up to so heavily restrict the power of the federal government.

But I can tell you that I keep going through a cycle of, "Hmmm, there's probably room for some moderate police reform. They ought to hire more detectives and focus on solving crimes, weighting that over the more preventative uniformed work that has less lasting effect," when I read the more moderate political authors I follow, and then I mainline twitter outrage of cops being monsters for a day and I'm like, "They're right, there's no such thing as a good cop, they should all be fired, no such thing as a good cop!" Arglebargle.

Like I've said, police are a local issue. Get involved in local politics wherever you live. Learn about what's happening in your city, and if there's an issue, organize and work with local people to fix it.

as long as they're making sure leftists can't do the stuff they want to do.

"A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it." As William F. Buckley once put it.

That's how democracy is supposed to work. The side in power gets to do something, and then the voters decide if what they did was right or too far.

That's not quite accurate. There's a reason most systems, including ours, don't operate on pure democracy, and in fact have explicitly anti-democratic systems set up to check democracy, to put some questions outside the reach of mere majorities. Those mechanisms of course have thier own fail states (that Texas law is the result of 50 years of fighting after one utterly lawless SC decision undemocratically imposed judicially invented rules across the entire country), but overall the intention was to create a system where major changes take sustained effort and engagement.

 

[Sobek]

I'd love to see leftists and rightists debating that way, by alternately passing laws and judging their effects and seeing who can actually solve shit. I really hate this idea that we can't do it that way and only changes in culture will solve things, because there's no one person or organization that actually has the power to make a change in culture. We can get a law passed. Nobody can change culture.

YOU are trying to understand, reach a compromise and work it out with us. Understand you ware the tiny minority. Your mistake is thinking people want to do that back and forth. I have noticed that is not longer the case, and the vast majority of progressives have taken the path of zealotry that it shall be their way or the highway.

Texas was able to pass this legislation because they are a hardcore R state, and on their way to become a supermajority R state by 2022 thanks to the failures of the Ds in the view of the state pop. And even then the sheer backlash they got for getting things done the way they want has been insane. The sheer fucking slat over it, people acting as if it is LICHERALLY the American Taliban, retarded gotcha's on twitter, people championing the Satanic Church for wanting to have abortion back on religious grounds! The sentence "Liberals are cheering on the satanists to overthrow the state law and abort pregnancies" should be coming out of a evangelical pastor on a fiery sermon in the 1980, NOT BE THE DESCRIPTION OF CURRENT POLITICAL ISSUES IN THE UNITED STATES!

People who feel strongly about abortion have seen in the Texas law a good compromise of legal abortions up to a well defined point and like it. The left wants full term abortions and that is it. They are never gonna get common ground like that. They are not interested in ANY barriers to abortion, as far as they are concerned you could be 30 minutes away from giving birth but if you decide you want to abort you have to be able to. I really don't need to explain why that is probably not gonna fly with most concervatives.

And the point is this is part of a wider issue. I am sure you have come across this argument with gun control: That every gun control legislation only infringes on gun rights. The fact is for nearly 100 years there have been only cuts on people's ability to bear arms with very little being done to return rights taken. So gun owners and advocates have started taking absolutist approach of no more laws at all. Because no matter what gun control laws are passed they just lose what they want.

This is the issue. The current state in the USA is that the left takes, takes, takes and never gives. You will never see a proposal for "common sense gun control" that gives the gun owners and advocates a bone in return, like say better gun registration in return for allowing easier importing of foreign made guns or something, because as far as they are concerned they are right and we are just in the way. There is no interest in agreeing on a abortion policy because the old compromise people had in the 1990's of "safe, legal and rare" has been completely forgotten and ignored.

D states start making sanctuary cities where you can't deport illegals? Sure. R states start making 2nd Ammendment Sanctuaries? Suddenly outrage. There is no such thing as a fair take or agreement to a equal standard. It's one rule for thee one for me. The same people advocating for vaccine mandates and wanting to push that suddenly are all about body autonomy on abortion. Do you see the issue? The same people that swore up and down BLM was "peaceful protests" and Antifa was a myth went insane when a bunch of boomers walked into the Capitol after breaking a few windows and demanded a fucking congressional committee over it.

 

[Bacle]

What I have bolded is a fascinating statement and maybe the answer to the question I think I have at the core of all of this.

"Why aren't conservatives more angry at their politicians for not passing laws to do the stuff they want to do and make the world like they want it to be made and make life better?"

If there's a widespread belief that legislation truly can't get you what you want, I can see not caring very much when conservative politicians don't seem to have a lot of legislative ideas, as long as they're making sure leftists can't do the stuff they want to do.

I mean, just as an example, that recent Texas abortion law? As a leftist, I'm horrified. But you know, genuine props to the Texas State Legislature for actually getting a law passed that will have a measurable effect on their state and that the voters can judge on its merits. That's how democracy is supposed to work. The side in power gets to do something, and then the voters decide if what they did was right or too far. If I lived in Texas, I'd sure like to see them follow up with something to make sure the failures in the power grid earlier this year don't repeat themselves. Give everyone the conservative solution to that one.

I'd love to see leftists and rightists debating that way, by alternately passing laws and judging their effects and seeing who can actually solve shit. I really hate this idea that we can't do it that way and only changes in culture will solve things, because there's no one person or organization that actually has the power to make a change in culture. We can get a law passed. Nobody can change culture.

To quote Nick Fury 'We deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be'.

You must first have a realist assessment of why it is at the level it is now, if you wish for discourse to get to the level you desire at some point later. It seems like you are in that stage now.

No one can realistically push for legislative common ground if the culture(s) they trying to legislate can barely find national/cultural common ground anymore.

As well, many of us think the 2020 election was stolen, so even the ballot box may not be trusted anymore, so that means the legislative angle is even more dubious now, because more and more people no longer trust they actually have a voice in government.

You are doing a noble thing trying to ask these questions, understand how the Right actually thinks, and find common ground in nuts and bolts policies to try to bridge the gap.

Unfortunately the way you want to mend fences is not how things operate in American politics and culture at the moment, because the good will and trust required to do so is gone from many on both sides due to the underlying culture war.

 

[The Whispering Monk]

Do you think there are any areas of common culture remaining where both sides can agree on what the problem even is, so they're arguing about how to fix it rather than identity of the problem?

Part of the problem of finding the common culture is that the Left has been trying to destroy the foundation of our common culture. The nuclear family (Mom & Dad plus kids) has been in the targets of the Left for over a century. It's developed from some...interesting places I can go into if you like. Essentially, the Left wants to replace the family with the Government.

Are there place where you think we could have an anti-corporate compromise agenda that both left and right could agree on?

It's not that we're anti-corporate as Conservatives. Others have said that we love to see varied competition in order to develop better ways to meet needs. The problem is that some companies are SO large and in SUCH CONTROL (monopoly) that they are using their influence and money to get laws passed that place inordinate expenses in the way of small business that are trying to compete with these larger companies.

Their business models are built around advertising and collecting information, and if they were forbidden from controlling their content like a phone company is, I don't know if they could do either of those things.

F-book would still be able to collect info on their users. They just wouldn't be able to get it from so many difference sources...Instagram and whatever other business they're buying at around 1 per week. They need to have 230 protection removed (not allowed to restrict user content), get diced up (separate the companies) just like AT&T and other companies.

Is there a conservative proposal to increase legal immigration that leftists could sign onto in good faith?

So, really, why does legal immigration need to be increased?

I feel like increasing funding to the IRS should be an "easy give" for the right, because it's something that leftists want that is clearly within the remit of the federal government, and even if it doesn't raise much more money (and it might) would at least have the salutary effect of making the wealthy and powerful a little more accountable to the existing laws.

Is there a particular reason for conservatives to push back?

What does the IRS need more money for? The only thing I've seen the IRS do with more money is do 'enforce' regulations unfairly on conservative and religious organizations. Frankly, we can save so much money by scrapping the tax system we currently have it's rediculous. And there are a number of ways to keep the money flowing and make sure everyone pays in.

I hope you understand my perspective that allowing people to have representation in accordance with their votes is really, really important, and eventually something has to break.

I absolutely agree that representation should be equal. That's why most people support Voter ID laws and ensuring that 1 person, 1 vote actually happens. As for the jerry-mandering...it's necessary to redraw districts with our system of government and population changes (growth, migration & decreases in local population). Unfortunately, people (politicians) are in charge of that, and are gonna make changes for their own benefit. I haven't heard of a way to keep that from happening yet.

 

[The Whispering Monk]

"Why aren't conservatives more angry at their politicians for not passing laws to do the stuff they want to do and make the world like they want it to be made and make life better?"

Oh, we're pissed. Sadly, for us, we've come to expect that no matter who we send to DC, they're eventually going to get captured by the Swamp and become just another party tool. Democrat or Republican, they're largely in it now to just play the game, get wealthy and concentrate power so they can play with it.

Go ahead and look it up...try and find a single representative that's got less money or even the same amount of assets as they did when they started. Then try not to be astonished when you see how much money they start 'collecting'.

 

[ShieldWife]

I‘m not a Republican or the kind of conservative most people think of, I would call myself a nationalist, traditionalist, and anti-egalitarian. I generally identify as being on the right so I’ll give this a shot.

1. Often in the very leftist/liberal spaces I hang out in, there is an accusation thrown around that leftists are supposed to try to understand and empathize with the point of view of the right wing, but there is no reciprocity. That is, no right wing media articles trying to patiently explain, "This is what leftists think and why, and here's how you can reach out to leftists in your life to try and find common ground. They're good people, just like you, they only have a different view of some things. Etc." Do you feel like that's incorrect and that there's a lot of work done by the right to reach out and try to talk to the left? Have you personally ever had a leftist person in your life that you asked to explain their views to you and that sort of thing? Do you have a favorite article written for a right wing audience that's like "liberals explained so you can understand them" that seems sincere? Is there a "Hillbilly Elegy" for the right? Again (taps rule #3) please let's not make the conversation about whether leftists are actually trying to understand conservatives or not.

Others have answered this one better than I could have. I hate to ignore you request and answer with “what about the left” but the right generally does understand the right and the left takes great pains to avoid understanding us.

2. This one is American politics centered. On a federal level especially (though answer for other government levels if you like), what is the legislative agenda of the Republican party from your point of view as a common voter? What laws, specifically laws, would you like to see passed? What are the big priorities that can be addressed by laws. You notice how I keep saying "laws"? That's because, from my point of view, it often seems like Republican members of Congress spend a lot of time talking about issues that aren't really in the domain of government, or if they are seem only tangential. Like I don't think "cancel culture" is something that the United States Congress can really do much about. (Or maybe I'm wrong and you do think that.) But what laws would you like to see a Republican president and Congress pass if they could just pass any law they wanted? What would your highest legislative priorities be?

Wow, I barely know where to start. Our government is so big and bad and so deeply in collusion with big corporations that I’d need magical powers to even scratch the surface of my agenda.

I would abolish a bunch of the Deep State agencies. The FBI, CIA, ATF, IRS, NSA, Department of Education, Federal Reserve, probably a bunch of others I can’t think of at the moment. I’d abolsh these groups and put a bunch of their high up personal in prison.

In abolishing the Department of Education, I would replace it with a National voucher system that could be used for private or home schooling.

I would withdraw our troops from foreign nations and end our Unconstitutional wars. War of any kind would require a formal declaration of Congress. I’d dramatically reduce military spending too.

There are a lot of big corporations, banks, and especially tech companies I’d like to see broken up, also with some of the high-ups in those companies going to jail. Social media and internet information Cha notes would be seized and nationalized, considered to be public utilities so that these giant corporations couldn’t use them to manipulate the people censor dissent.

I’d close the borders and essentially outlaw immigration as well as send back any illegal immigrants currently in the nation. I would actually allow for some immigration in the future, but I think for now we need a total moratorium until we can get the current crisis under control.

Here’s a left leaning one: I would create a national health care system.

This just scratches the surface, but I’ll probably stop here. These aren’t GOP policies.

3. I see conservative arguments about immigration often get framed as an economic issue. Low skill immigrants driving down wages for low wage American workers. Immigrants taking too much money from the social safety net. But is it really just about the money? If you saw a convincing economic study that immigrants made the local community wealthier on net after, say, ten years of investment would you change your mind? Or maybe you don't need to change your mind. Do you have a sense for how much immigration you want to see? What about people coming into America to work and then leaving? How hard do you think that should be? Are there cultural concerns as well?

I guess I should say that I watched "An American Tail" growing up, you know. I heard about Ellis Island and immigrants coming in, being registered with a name, and getting citizenship like it was nothing... and framed in a positive way. Hey, I understand this is a really big question, but I guess I'd like to hear about what you as a conservative think about immigration in terms of general philosophy rather than as a specific question about border security or what to do with people here illegally or any of that.

I also saw An American Tail. I saw lots of let wing movies as a child that influenced me, as every member of the forum has. I’ve grown up since then though.

I would essentially ban all immigration and work very hard to send back the illegals here now. Of cours,e that won’t happen, it’s it’s what I would like to see happen.

Immigration isn’t beneficial to most Americans, but even if there was proof that it was a net financial benefit, I would still oppose it. I would rather Americans be poorer with no immigration than richer with it.

A nation isn’t a line on the ground and it’s not a sheet of paper. A nation is a people with a shared culture, history, origin, sense of identity, and so on. If someone walks across the border isn’t make him or her one of my people. Giving them a sheet of paper that says “American“ on it doesn’t make them my people either, so I don’t put the same importance in legal vs illegal immigration. Immigration without assimilation is an invasion and that is what we have had in most of the Western world for decades and it will be the death of our nations and our civilization.

4. Often in leftist circles you get a frustrated "why can't we convince conservatives of X; don't they see it would be in their own self-interest". So what's the reverse? What are the issues that conservatives see where you think leftists are absolutely screwing themselves, where it would be way more in their personal self-interest to follow the conservative policies because it would help them live happier, healthier, safer lives? Not cultural stuff, but areas where you legitimately think that if only leftists would understand what conservatives want to do, they'd see how it would make them more secure and better off.[1]

I think that everybody feels this way. Most people seldom change their minds about things and it creates a sense of frustration: why can’t I change these peoples minds.

In terms of people not seeing how things oppose their own interests, there are a few I see on the left. One is how the left claims to be against the rich and big corporations, but in practice they support more power for big corporations and billionaires in every way. More ability of big banks and Wallstreet to regulate themselves, more stimulus spending that goes to the very rich, wanting media corporations to have the power to silence who ever they want or even destroy peoples lives and reputations who dissent, regulations that favor big companies and hurt small or medium ones, and so on. It really irritates me when I see someone claiming to be a socialist and oppose the rich say that some big tech or media corporations should be able to not only censor poor people but to destroy their ability to get even a menial job for stating opinions that big company opposes.

 

[FebruaryStation]

I'm trying to be true to my purpose and not have too many fights about specific political incidents (though naturally I'm falling into it a bit anyway anyway) so let's just say if I don't respond about a point you made about very specific incident that's not meant to be ceding the field and saying I agree that's what happened. Fair enough?

"A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it." As William F. Buckley once put it.

Yes, I've seen that quote. I don't think an effective government can do nothing but yell "Stop" and still be doing its duty to its citizens, though. The truth is that there's always new problems, new crises, and old problems that have gotten bigger. The world is always changing. I hope and believe that there's genuinely room to solve these problems with competing conservative and leftist solutions. Every year there's a government where not much gets done, though, it's like not doing any maintenance on your house. You can get away with it for a while, even a long while, but then when finally there does have to be a maintenance project it ends up being a big one... and you might have done permanent damage.

That's not quite accurate. There's a reason most systems, including ours, don't operate on pure democracy, and in fact have explicitly anti-democratic systems set up to check democracy, to put some questions outside the reach of mere majorities. Those mechanisms of course have thier own fail states (that Texas law is the result of 50 years of fighting after one utterly lawless SC decision undemocratically imposed judicially invented rules across the entire country), but overall the intention was to create a system where major changes take sustained effort and engagement.

Yeah, but our system has a lot of veto points compared to most other governmental systems. I think Boris Johnson over in Britain is not a politician I agree with, but you know what, he has his Parliamentary majority and he can do pretty much whatever he wants and there's no hiding behind a filibuster or courts or not having won both an executive and a legistlative election. The American system can work, but it's sort of built around the idea that a lot of more compromise happens than happens in nearly any other nation's political system. And right now... that's a problem.

That's why I keep asking what conservatives want to do. And to be fair, I've gotten some responses in this thread. Most substantially in the form of links to tax proposals. (And of course, that is a very common liberal joke, that the conservatives think the solution to every problem is a tax cut. Sorry, and to be fair we were discussing tax stuff in context.) But like, there is so much anger and the conversation keeps running back around to what leftists have done or need to do or want to do. But I feel like there's a lot of liberals who could come on board if conservative ideas were presented to them as 1950's style guys with pens in pocket protectors, "Here's the specific problem and here's how this thing we want to do will solve it."

The liberal criticism is that conservatives have lost faith in the ability of government to solve problems, and I'm not sure I've gotten a lot of pushback in this thread to say it ain't so.

YOU are trying to understand, reach a compromise and work it out with us. Understand you ware the tiny minority. Your mistake is thinking people want to do that back and forth. I have noticed that is not longer the case, and the vast majority of progressives have taken the path of zealotry that it shall be their way or the highway.

(snip a lot of stuff)

Sobek... thank you for taking the time to write all of that. All I can say is that from the other side, it doesn't seem like that at all. For every leftist extreme position or hypocrisy you talk about, I could get an essay written about how that's not how I understand my side's position. But I don't know man, what's going on in the world where our two points of view are so far apart? I'm sure I'm getting some echo chamber effect. I'm sure there's some stuff where the more extreme positions on my side are getting less play. But at the same time, I don't recognize the leftist movement you describe. I don't think I could be deceived to that extent.

There is an idea that a writer I follow floated, which is that we are being lied to by being told the truth. I'm coming around to it. Basically, the idea is in a country of hundreds of millions of people you can always find an extreme position or an outlier position that is the worst and most extreme example of the other side. Then you publish that position and it gets shared a 1000 times and it becomes the other side in everyone's mind. And mind you, this extreme example is absolutely true. But you're still hearing about the other side's worst.

That's why I try to concentrate on laws and regulations and shit. Because any fool, even a politician, can write a crazy op-ed. But passing actual legislation is skin in the game. And mind you, I understand that some of what you were complaining about is actual laws or at least proposals. Sure, sanctuary cities are the government doing something. But at least with that it's possible to go to the source and look at what it's actually doing and deciding how extreme it really is for yourself and what measurable effect it actually had on the world.

Part of the problem of finding the common culture is that the Left has been trying to destroy the foundation of our common culture. The nuclear family (Mom & Dad plus kids) has been in the targets of the Left for over a century. It's developed from some...interesting places I can go into if you like. Essentially, the Left wants to replace the family with the Government.

I see the "Left wants to destroy family" message so often, actually I think there's some truth it, but do conservatives understand why? It's not because leftist people are just bad or depraved or something.

I think there is at least a portion of the Left that wants to replace dependency on the family with the ability to depend on Government. And honestly, I can at least understand their point of view. I could got to a lefty forum and find you a hundred stories about people who grew up in a really shitty family or had a really shitty marriage or relationship, but didn't have a way to survive on their own. That is where, in my opinion, the project comes from. The idea is that people shouldn't be trapped with a family that makes them miserable, that if you're treated like shit you should be able to walk out and not worry you're going to end up homeless on the street.

You can still think they're terribly mistaken in specific policy decisions and maybe you should, but I hope that at least helps you understand the sympathetic version of the project. It's not that leftists don't want to get married and have children and stuff. Most of them do!

It's not that we're anti-corporate as Conservatives. Others have said that we love to see varied competition in order to develop better ways to meet needs. The problem is that some companies are SO large and in SUCH CONTROL (monopoly) that they are using their influence and money to get laws passed that place inordinate expenses in the way of small business that are trying to compete with these larger companies.

If I'm understanding the point of dispute here, you think leftists (and possibly conservatives too!) are being used as patsies to put laws in place that are easy for large corporations to comply with but difficult for smaller businesses to comply with, and that that is being influenced by the larger companies that see it as a way to destroy competition?

My reaction... this again seems like the "extra step" approach to solving problems that often fail to appeal to me. If companies are too big, break 'em up or tax and regulate them into submission. I don't get what's appealing about doing bank shots where we don't do anything directly, but instead just try to unshackle small companies and hope one of them will successfully compete instead of selling out to the big company once they can.

F-book would still be able to collect info on their users. They just wouldn't be able to get it from so many difference sources...Instagram and whatever other business they're buying at around 1 per week. They need to have 230 protection removed (not allowed to restrict user content), get diced up (separate the companies) just like AT&T and other companies.

Yeah, like that. I said this earlier, but I really do think there's common ground here. Leftists do not trust Facebook either, let me promise you. I know we seem to be temporarily benefiting, but we don't trust those fuckers and their algorithms further than we can throw them. I do take the position that we need specific social media legislation written, but I don't think you're opposed to that in concept, right?

So, really, why does legal immigration need to be increased?

Great for the people immigrating, great for us to have them as they produce a lot of innovations and start a lot of new businesses and contribute to social security and all that. Shouldn't the goal to be trying to figure out the maximum legal immigration capacity the US can absorb and hit that?

I know I might get a response that "we're already at that" but that's where public policy and trying to find some objective metrics we can measure fit in. Maybe try a number and the increase it every year, measuring employment and school attendance rates and ability to find housing, then level off the number when things start to dip downwards. That's just off the top of my head. Pocket projector with pens in it, all the way. It's got to be superior to "Congress randomly picks a number out of the air and then the President decides how much of that cap he wants to hit" right?

Go ahead and look it up...try and find a single representative that's got less money or even the same amount of assets as they did when they started. Then try not to be astonished when you see how much money they start 'collecting'.

Maybe we could make it illegal for congress people and their spouses to trade individual stocks?

Others have answered this one better than I could have. I hate to ignore you request and answer with “what about the left” but the right generally does understand the right and the left takes great pains to avoid understanding us.

Thanks for the reply! I wonder if the disconnect is that it's not so much what's actually being done as what we feel our leaders are directing us to do.

Leftists often feel we're told by our more moderate leaders how important it is to understand and empathize with conservatives. For every "clinging to guns" remark it seems like there are all these articles directing us to be patient and understanding and feel your pain and look for compromises and we're all Americans together. Maybe nobody actually does it in your experience, but it feels like we've been told to do it. Meanwhile, we don't see any conservative leaders talking about how important it is to understand that people in big cities are real Americans too and we're all brothers. I dunno, maybe it comes out in the more religious ones?

Wow, I barely know where to start. Our government is so big and bad and so deeply in collusion with big corporations that I’d need magical powers to even scratch the surface of my agenda.

(snip)

These are some very radical and scary changes being proposed. Even compared to things that leftists want to do, they're pretty extreme.

If you could really do these things, would you really be so confident to upend so much of the US? I think I'd chicken out myself. I'd be too afraid of all the unintended effects.

In abolishing the Department of Education, I would replace it with a National voucher system that could be used for private or home schooling.

I have to say, I have been astonished at the level of hatred for the Department of Education. I've had multiple responses telling me people want to get rid of it. What's the deal?

I get the idea that it's viewed as unconstitutional, but is just a matter of principle or do you actually not think it is or could be a tool to do anything useful.

I would essentially ban all immigration and work very hard to send back the illegals here now. Of cours,e that won’t happen, it’s it’s what I would like to see happen.

Immigration isn’t beneficial to most Americans, but even if there was proof that it was a net financial benefit, I would still oppose it. I would rather Americans be poorer with no immigration than richer with it.

A nation isn’t a line on the ground and it’s not a sheet of paper. A nation is a people with a shared culture, history, origin, sense of identity, and so on. If someone walks across the border isn’t make him or her one of my people. Giving them a sheet of paper that says “American“ on it doesn’t make them my people either, so I don’t put the same importance in legal vs illegal immigration. Immigration without assimilation is an invasion and that is what we have had in most of the Western world for decades and it will be the death of our nations and our civilization.

Respect for stating this position clearly. I don't agree at all, but respect for making it clear.

 

[Battlegrinder]

Yes, I've seen that quote. I don't think an effective government can do nothing but yell "Stop" and still be doing its duty to its citizens, though. The truth is that there's always new problems, new crises, and old problems that have gotten bigger. The world is always changing. I hope and believe that there's genuinely room to solve these problems with competing conservative and leftist solutions. Every year there's a government where not much gets done, though, it's like not doing any maintenance on your house. You can get away with it for a while, even a long while, but then when finally there does have to be a maintenance project it ends up being a big one... and you might have done permanent damage.

I'd take a second look at that quote, particularly the latter half. "at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it". The point is that conservative position isn't "never do anything", it's to act as a brake when someone else wants to do something rashly or without sufficient consideration.

I agree with you in that many of the problems we face can be solved or at least addressed to a degree by some sort of compromise solution. The issue is that that requires both sides be willing to compromise, and as you say....

The American system can work, but it's sort of built around the idea that a lot of more compromise happens than happens in nearly any other nation's political system. And right now... that's a problem.

But like, there is so much anger and the conversation keeps running back around to what leftists have done or need to do or want to do.

That is at least partially a forum culture thing, if a forum was founded by a bunch of people that think they specifically were mistreated by leftists, you're not going to get the most resentment free vision of the future from them.

But I feel like there's a lot of liberals who could come on board if conservative ideas were presented to them as 1950's style guys with pens in pocket protectors, "Here's the specific problem and here's how this thing we want to do will solve it."

For some people, yes, but in my experience that's a very small scale, person to person or local sort of thing, or a very, very slow process of talking people around. Right now, things have gotten pretty bad and there are fairly major camps on every side that do not want to talk to or address the other side, they've been burned too often in the past and just want to crush them and do things their way for once. You are not going to talk someone out of that mindset no matter how reasonable you sound, because they think anyone one your side either hates them and is out to get them, or a dupe of people that hate them and are out to get them and are using you to get them to lower their guard, and it's hard to talk them out of that when people on your side keep loudly saying "hey, I hate those guys and want to get them, let's dupe these other guys in to tricking them so they lower their guard".

The liberal criticism is that conservatives have lost faith in the ability of government to solve problems, and I'm not sure I've gotten a lot of pushback in this thread to say it ain't so.

Conservatives are generally skeptical of the government when it shows up to "fix" something, but that was more because they thought the government was inept and would do the job badly, or at least not as well as a non-government entity could have. That's not to say they have no trust, but it's not something they want to rely on as their first resort. The complicating factor is that the conservatives also tend to think the leftist want to use the government as a weapon against them and don't want to give the government the ability to do that.

 

[Free-Stater 101]

Okay, now that I am home time to get to work!

I don't want to come into someone's home and shit on the floor. My rules for this are:
1. I'm going to try to avoid arguing back. I may sometimes ask for more clarification, or I may leave it as "Thank you for the response," but I don't want to get into an argument in someone else's home.
2. I am going to try to avoid talking about specific politicians. I'm more interested in general political philosophy or what you see yourselves as trying to accomplish.
3. I would like to avoid the "but what about the left" responses, though of course I can't control how you respond. Yeah, I don't know, probably there's plenty of shit talk and hypocrisy on the left, but I'd more like to hear about your personal experiences than the bad stuff people on the other side have done.

I will try and abide by them as they are fair.

1. Do you feel like that's incorrect and that there's a lot of work done by the right to reach out and try to talk to the left? Have you personally ever had a leftist person in

I think on an individual level plenty of attempts are made concerning trying to bridge that gap by the right but it's not an easy process, many liberals I have spoken too for example asking to come here and bring differing view points take one look around and then refuse to associate with 'out type

Have I asked people before to explain their views? 'Yes'. Did it ultimately change my mind in spite of me believing and understanding their position? 'No'.

2. This one is American politics centered. On a federal level especially (though answer for other government levels if you like), what is the legislative agenda of the Republican party from your point of view as a common voter?

As in de-facto or de-jure because what a party is and what it professes to be are two very different things.

What laws, specifically laws, would you like to see passed?

Laws that restrict political greed and corruption really, term limits, restrictions on politicians being paid for speeches outside autobiographic purposes, a hard ban on lobbying groups, a restriction to being paid the middle class median outside travel expenses of the state they are representing and massive cutbacks and oversight laws made to be enforced on the NSA.

Outside that laws which more clearly protect the rights of workers privacy and what a company can and cannot fire an employee for would be nice especially what they do in their private lives.

I would also like to see a balanced budget amendment but beyond a debt crisis leading to a huge economic spiral that just isn't happening.

What are the big priorities that can be addressed by laws. You notice how I keep saying "laws"? That's because, from my point of view, it often seems like Republican members of Congress spend a lot of time talking about issues that aren't really in the domain of government, or if they are seem only tangential. Like I don't think "cancel culture" is something that the United States Congress can really do much about. (Or maybe I'm wrong and you do think that.) But what laws would you like to see a Republican president and Congress pass if they could just pass any law they wanted? What would your highest legislative priorities be?

Keep in mind rambling against an impossible to legislate issue isn't only a Republican thing and as some have stated in this thread there are ways to curtail the overt influence on society through perfectly legal means.

In any case back to your question, some of what I hope a republican administration would do is above and there are many other things I would add, the problem is realpolitik no politician is going to fix these problems if presented with the chance because they stand to benefit long term by not doing so.

Ideally helping curb the fiscal debt crisis that seems imminent according to the CBO or Social Security would be first priority, but that's too much of a cash cow to mix when the hot potato ends and someone stands to benefit from the political capital.

3. I see conservative arguments about immigration often get framed as an economic issue. Low skill immigrants driving down wages for low wage American workers. Immigrants taking too much money from the social safety net. But is it really just about the money?

Like @Bear Ribs and others have stated the talking point's of the 'economic reasons' for immigration are grossly overblown and out of date, but they do have some basis in fact.

NAFTA and floods of illegal immigrant workers did compound the issue of globalization in the early 2000's especially in my area where the local textile mills started hiring them under the table got found out by the fed and promptly were shut down leading to countless people out of work when the town lost half it's mills overnight which had already been struggling due to new competition from China.

By now though damage is done, so nothing we don't think it worth mentioning or even talking about anymore, it's old news from twenty years ago now.

Now a days the primary concerns of illegal immigration from Latin America are Criminal, Political and somewhat Cultural. Voter ID laws could ease this issue but the Dems then will raise hell about how we are messing with the election laws for racial reasons.

If you saw a convincing economic study that immigrants made the local community wealthier on net after, say, ten years of investment would you change your mind?

Only if I was seeing the results with my own two eyes in a fairly noticeable manner as I don't trust polls or graphs made by obvious influences anymore unless I feel there is a reason to based off my own perceptions.

Or maybe you don't need to change your mind. Do you have a sense for how much immigration you want to see?

To be honest I would be fine with triple the amount of Legal Immigrant gaining entry as long as not another illegal crosses the border.

What about people coming into America to work and then leaving? How hard do you think that should be?

I have more reservations on non-resident workers illegal or otherwise mainly because it comes across as both exploitive of their labor and furthermore only benefits the economy marginally while the money they earn doesn't get injected back into the economy.

But on this subject I will keep my mouth shut as I don't have any strong opinion either way.

Are there cultural concerns as well?

Yes, there is a growing concern amongst the right that the Democrats are using immigration as a tool to cause demographic shifts to marginalize people, specifically by encouraging the U.S. to be a 'Cultural Mosaic' nation over the 'Melting pot' one of the past to ensure long term division.

I guess I should say that I watched "An American Tail" growing up, you know. I heard about Ellis Island and immigrants coming in, being registered with a name, and getting citizenship like it was nothing... and framed in a positive way. Hey, I understand this is a really big question, but I guess I'd like to hear about what you as a conservative think about immigration in terms of general philosophy rather than as a specific question about border security or what to do with people here illegally or any of that.

The era of great immigration to the U.S. in the late 1800's/early 1900's was romanticized for a good reason it marked the rise of America as a world power and without immigrants it would never have gotten done, I will aways be thankful for what they have done in the name of this country.

I think Immigration at it's core is a good thing for the immigrant and the country which stands to gain that fine mind or hard working muscle, but I am also a realist. The number one man to a country's government should be it's citizens overall, even at the expense of prospective immigrants.

4. Often in leftist circles you get a frustrated "why can't we convince conservatives of X; don't they see it would be in their own self-interest". So what's the reverse? What are the issues that conservatives see where you think leftists are absolutely screwing themselves, where it would be way more in their personal self-interest to follow the conservative policies because it would help them live happier, healthier, safer lives? Not cultural stuff, but areas where you legitimately think that if only leftists would understand what conservatives want to do, they'd see how it would make them more secure and better off.[1]

That would be presumptuous of me for even thinking...

...Well, one thing I can say isn't in there self interest despite their countless argument's otherwise is their unwavering support for the Teachers Unions at the very least the entire system needs to be overviewed and that bites into the education system as is long term.

Another thing that obviously needs to be stopped is the whole notion of 'Defund the Police' Urban African Americans live in some of the poorest crime ridden neighborhoods in the nation and the entire concept of defunding the police force is bound to cause more trouble than what its worth.

Oh and let's not forget the concept of election reform and more regulation on big tech to protect freedom of speech overall.

Balancing the budget is again a great idea when we have a looming debt and social security crisis.

Okay, I think that was a pretty good starter. If this thread is in any way successful, I might come back and ask more questions as they occur to me. Thanks in advance for anyone participating.

Your welcome!