starvingartist wrote:
CapriciousAgent wrote:
In addition to the role of government, liberals are more supportive of the freedoms of the collective, and conservatives, the freedom of the individual. The problem is, these two views bump up against each other quite often. When an issue like gun control or environmental taxes put the whole against the individual, the latter is more likely to take it personally, whereas the former may see an unwillingness to progress with society at stubborn, stupid, or irresponsible. Sometimes the issue they are slower to adapt to can be gender or race related, which incites the left.
The public discourse is also a problem for conservatives. As a liberal, I'll admit that at least in America, there were good, intellectual conservatives like William F Buckley, or William Safire. Even Goldwater was decently intelligent if you ignore the UFO stuff. These days you have the Ted Nugents and Ann Coulters drowning out the intellectuals. ...which gets to the issue of intellectualism in general.
I suppose that for the individual oriented person, the only pressure is to be yourself, while with the socially oriented set, contribution and a drive to move society forward may place a higher priority on elitism and academics. The right sees themselves talked down to, while the nature of the discourse makes the left have to do everything in their power not to.
At the end of the day I think it is important to remember that regardless of the means of getting there, the vast majority of people want freedom, and that's a better quality than not. It isn't merely a symptom of my bleeding heart to say that we're all in this together, and we should try and get along.
it's the problem with communication that i find the most galling with conservatives--they don't talk TO people, they talk AT people with scripted talking points that they won't stray from (their politicians are the most blatant example of this). it's impossible to have reasonable discussion with people like that.
I think liberals can be faulted for talking at people, too, but I would say maybe the issue is more that they talk over people. Bill O'Reilly is notorious for this. Maybe liberals want more of a dialogue whereas conservatives are more interested in controlling the tone, and hammering their point through by sheer force if nothing else.
As an example I'll use AM radio and NPR (National Public Radio). On the conservative stronghold of AM radio, it is call and response fury, and if someone with an opposing viewpoint calls, they are usually torn to shreds by the host. On NPR, which gets labeled as liberal for some reason, the host will let the caller go on, regardless of their opinion, and even if everyone on the show disagrees, there will be more of a dialogue.
10 Mar 2014, 2:14 pm
