Please just hang in until the end:
So, throughout human history, people tend to act with short term self-interest, right? Apparently they prefer it.
However, acting for the long term is always a better idea, and eventually morein everyone's self-interest, right?
But it's harder to prefer this. Just like it's harder to prefer a tabloid headline to a dense essay----Immediate short term gratification is hard to resist and easy to hold onto and get behind.
And, is not short term self-interest at the center of conservative philosophy?
And, is not long term community interest at the center of liberal philosophy
And, is not conservative radio, like tabloids, much more profitable and harder to resist than well...the basically non-existent liberal radio?
Basically what I'm saying is that conservatism appeals more to base urges of humans and takes less intelligence to latch onto. It thinks more like someone on a coke binge, ignoring the inevitable come down as long as possible.
Max, anybody, plz tell me I'm wrong. I feel like an ignorant ass making these assertions, but, I also feel very logical.
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Rupert Murdoch's father succeeded in the newspaper industry by printing tabloid headlines in "real" newspapers. People couldn't resist. Murdoch himself said, "If it made money, I'd have a liberal TV station tomorrow."
The thing to note is, people like what is easy. Some say, give people what they want, if they want tabloids why not give it to them? Well, if you're a parent and your kid is exposed to heroin and wants more, are you going to give him/her more? No.
People don't always want what is good for them, they want what is easiest and most readily appealing.
Conservatism is easiest and most readily appealing. This does not mean it's good.
Am I overlooking anything major here?
(oh yeah, and, this basically all also applies to the "free market," just because it sells doesn't mean it's good...McDonald's, KFC, etc.--diabetes and obesity didn't exist in China before these places came in.)
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kern, you're wrong here. both parties/philosophies appeal to a range of socioeconomic classes and intellectual levels. its a common fallacy of both sides to only notice the lowest level of the opposition's appeal. rush limbaugh continuously explains to his listenership why liberalism has a more basic, superficial appeal. i think both you and i are on a high enough intellectual level to find rush appealing to, in turn, a level beneath us. that's not to say his criticisms of certain liberal appeals are invalid. they are valid. he's just selecting the easiest, dumbest targets in the liberal camp.
ReplyDeleteif i take this too far it will sound like i dont think there's any difference between dems and republicans--and there are. the media structure is a case in point. however, we mustnt forget that both parties must necessarily appeal to the lowest common denominator (and the highest) to stay afloat, albeit through different but equally reprehensible means.
part of the confusion is caused by the fact that the parties act differently depending on whether they're in or out of power. the parties are generally more heinous when they're in power, as far as i can tell. they become more hypocritical and more aggressive as they become accustomed to power.
remember that at the ideologies' cores, they are grounded in different assumptions about sociology. republicans assume that beauracracy is more inefficient than free market. they assume laws proceed from morals. they assume laws inhibit what has been made illegal. they assume that enabling is the greater danger to not helping. they assume people will survive hardship and that cream rises to the top.
democrats assume that glitches of the free market are efficiently repaired by beauracratic intervention. they assume people will do things whether they're illegal or not. they assume people need help to survive hardship and to rise to the top. they assume that laws reflect realities.
all of those assumptions are flawed, but grounded in seeds of truth. frequently they are battling over the position of an optimization curve (ie the laffer curve) that is poorly defined. in the absence of solid statistics pointing out the obvious answer to a dilemma, liberals and conservatives resort to their assumptions, and this is from where most political disagreement originates--from the gray areas. if it was black and white, we'd be in agreement.
Hey, thanks for the response! unfortunately, it was brought to my attention that I made a big mistake choosing the words Liberal and Conservative, which everyone took to mean Democrat and Republican. I guess that's a pretty reasonable assumption on everyone's part and a pretty dumb oversite on mine.
ReplyDeleteAlthough, as I point out in the post above, even though I more meant capitalism vs. socialism, I still see socialist leaning ideas coming out of Democrats more often and free market leaning ideas coming out of Republicans more often.
The whole idea of healthcare for example. It seems very easy to understand why its bad. Not that hard. But takes a little more effort to consider why it might be good, no? I think in this sense, of party versus party, that's maybe all I mean. It's simply a little easier to understand ideas republicans present than those democrats present. It doesn't require as broad a range of thought, nor does it as often require you to take into account the interest of your environment, which is in fact in your interest, although this apparently is not that obvious.
However when thinking about this I realized that, if indeed conservative/free market ideals appeal more to baser human urges, then are they maybe then, more realistic? Liberal ideas kind of depend on people "rising above" their initial reactions/emotions and thinking more rationally. BUT ALSO, the progression of humanity seems to be a series of us separating ourselves from other animals, and maybe lying to ourselves, creating more elaborate justifications and such, as to why we do what we do.
Maybe.
But also maybe, we just think these baser human urges are innate and the natural way, and they're not, we just interpret it as such.
or something like that.
I should change my little blog picture. It was that for my comics, but its just ridiculous now.
The distinction between party and ideology doesnt blunt the pertinence of anything i said. You are grossly overlooking the longterm policies of conservatives/republicans (though i will insist on using contemporary american definitions because using worldwide ones is too confusing). I'll list them here and while all of them are arguable, they simply illustrate that conservatives also appeal to long-term considerations:
ReplyDelete-defense spending
-efficient, modest government programs (take a look at how social security panned out)
-allowing the poor to remain poor (because the poor are more likely to buy foreign consumer products than to reinvest surplus money)
-concern with cost-benefit considerations regarding environmental regulation (because "preserving nature" is too abstract and reducing economic growth has long-term implications)
-discouragement of "bad" behaviors by law (drugs, crime, abortions-as-birth-control, gay marriage)
-resistance to judicial activism. many rulings really do amount to "legislating from the bench" and this poses a real danger to our republic's internal balance of power.
-concern with "rule of law" regarding immigration and foreign policy. we need to do what we say we'll do otherwise we eventually wont be taken seriously. the idea of sealing the borders was an important one that the left wasnt very concerned with.
i wont be surprised if you disagree with all of these. i myself take issue with many of them. I am, after all, a liberal. the point, however, is that they are ALL grounded in long-term and/or abstract understandings of government policymaking.
i hope you see the dangerous simplicity in liberal tenets like "take from the rich and give to the poor", "no war ever" or "equality for all". i mean, by "all" liberals dont mean children, do they? oh wait, take that one step further, by "all" PETA means chipmunks.