Why is a “liberal” liberal”; Why is a “conservative” conservative?

I was having a discussion with some liberal and conservative friends this evening and posed the question:  What in our backgrounds, do you suppose, caused you to become liberal and caused me to become conservative?  Of course we could have each told the other that they grew up as a clueless idiot.  But we were polite.

In fact, liberals and conservatives are pretty much polar opposites of one another in our world/life view of most things that matter.

Liberals are suspicious of business/free enterprise; conservatives believe business/free enterprise is our nations best hope and creates the motivation that made our nation great.

Liberals favor more government programs and government spending which require bigger/more government; conservative are suspicious of big government and want it smaller with less taxes.

Liberals believe people need to rely on government and are often incapable of solving problems on their own; conservative feel that problems are best solved by individuals without government intervention.

Liberals tend to be for open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens; conservatives favor secure borders and enforcement of immigration laws.

Liberals tend to be amoral, live and let live, less spiritual/religious; conservatives tend to be more concerned about morality and tend to be more spiritual/religious.

This list could go on for several more feet.  Needless to say – we are very different from one another.

Why?  What caused us to be so different?

Certainly it couldn’t all be because of the way we were raised, could it?  We are all capable of independent thinking after we leave home.  Are the childhood biases we acquired so firmly implanted that we can’t escape them?

How much does our later education, college or otherwise, influence our basic world-view mindset?  Does one side or the other have better critical thinking skills?  Does it depend on what our career is – the special interests that we feel compelled to defend or promote because our livelihood depends on a given world view? 

Is it some significant life experience that turned us on or off to one set of views or another?  Were we influenced by who we associated with and respected the most?

In all likelihood it is a combination of all these factors that resulted in certain character traits that cause us to tend toward conservative or liberal.

My set of conclusions, given my world/life view are that the character traits each group develops are different in the following ways:

• Conservatives are more engaged in learning the issues while liberals are superficially engaged and follow populist fads like global warming
• Conservatives have better analytical skills and rely on facts while liberals are more gullible and follow whatever is popular sans facts.
• Conservatives are more open minded and receptive to objective information; while liberals base their preferences on emotion.
• Conservatives have a more independent spirit, tend to be more self-sufficient problem solvers  while liberals tend to be whiners and dependent on others and expect others to be the same.

So, do you think my analysis is spot on?

Other than that, we’re all the same.

LiveJournal Tags: liberals,conservatives

Groundswell of pessimism toward the human spirit…

Obama's election and continuing popularity isn’t about a a radical American president.  It isn’t about Chicago-styled politics.  It’s not about socialist or Marxists in the White House promoting their liberal agenda.  And it has nothing to do with his campaign “tricking” people into voting for him.  He was honest in what he proposed to do.

The significance of Obama’s election runs much deeper than that.  The support that he still receives has demonstrated to me that there is a groundswell of pessimism toward the human spirit.  This has been building for several decades and has erupted in the current spate of politicians and Presidential advisers who trust more in government than in the capacity of the individual to resolve human problems.

Individual initiative, hard work, personal responsibility, and perseverance are no longer considered adequate to solve problems and improve our lot.

This is the primary distinction between liberals and conservatives.  Liberals don’t trust the individual to solve problems.  To the liberal, individuals are either a victim, are too ignorant, or are too greedy to act appropriately.  Government must take over the responsibilities once held by individual Americans, whether it is their health care or their buying habits.  Government must keep us safe and healthy.  Government must control what we eat and what we drive.  Don’t trust the individual.  A “free market” is comprised of individuals unrestrained by government.  Therefore a free market is not to be trusted, either.

Conservatives trust the individual more than they trust government.  Conservatives believe the productivity, ingenuity, and success of our culture is the result of unrestrained individual initiative motivated by prospects for success and profit.  Conservatives believe in the individual; therefore they believe in the free market. 

The figurative “iron rod of morality”, essential for a healthy free market, helped restrain greed and dishonestly among individuals.  This influence has greatly diminished over the past decades.  And with it, the trustworthiness of the free market has also been reduced.

There is a groundswell of pessimism toward the capacity or desire of the individual to solve our own problems.  It is no longer popular or uplifting to hear motivational speeches about what the individual can accomplish.  That is out of vogue.  It is more popular to listen to motivational speeches about what the government should do for us.

Liberals now believe it is too difficult for individuals to problem solve – to pull themselves up and make a go of their lives.  They believe things are too hopeless for that to occur.  So they redirect their politics, their speeches, their candidates, their government programs, their whole philosophy of life to ignoring the capacity of the individual, and building the capacity of government.  They believe it is ok for individual initiative to be stunted, even neutralized, in favor of building a big and benevolent government system to do things that they believe individuals will not do for themselves or their fellow man.

Liberals are selling out the human spirit in favor of an elusive collective that reduces the individual to “useless eaters.”

The Great Right Wing Divide on Afghanistan

Fascinating.  During the Vietnam war, the right wanted more troops, aggressive US action, and clear victory.  The left were anti-war, draft evaders, and wanted our troops to come home.

After 9-11, Afghanistan and Iraq started the same way.  The right was gung-ho to take care of business in both places.  The left was more reticent.  The broader middle generally supported our revenge.

Today we see a different picture – a reversal from the last 50 years.  There are significant numbers of my conservative friends who believe we should not be in Afghanistan any more.  Even conservative George Will has expressed this sentiment.  Not that we want to abrogate victory.  It is because our Commander and Chief believes in fuzzing up the concept of victory.  Our presence no longer has a clear purpose under our appeaser in chief.

Ironically, it seems that the liberals are taking up the banner to exert our influence in Afghanistan by buddying up with the Taliban to fight al Qaeda.  Yup, that’ll work.  What a waste of lives.

Sure, there are those on the right who continue to support the fight.  But increasing numbers of my cohorts are seeing the handwriting on the wall and see the futility - at least during the next three years.

We will not have a clear mission in the “war on Islamic supremacy” until our leaders understand the enemy.  As long as we don’t understand what we are defending against, we will continue to flounder, wasting lives, resources and time.

Aid to Enemies; Betrayal of Allies

Obama continues his insane Husseinness.  It is becoming even more painfully obvious that his prior sucking up to Islamist, socialist, and communist nations were not isolated events.  That is his continuing practice – with a vengeance!  It is not enough to become buddies with Chavez and his friends, Hamas and other Islamists in the middle east and in the USA.  It is not enough to turn our backs on Israel.

So now we have the dismantling of our defense shield in Europe.  We have our long time allies saying Obama betrayed them.  We have millions of Americans saying “what the hell are you doing?” (I don’t have a link to that sentiment yet, but I see it coming real soon.)

Most of us agree that American is stretched too thin and cannot continue to be the worlds’ cop. But, if we want to note another clear divide between liberals and conservatives in this nation, it is all about how we sprinkle our resources around the world.

Liberals tend to treat enemies like friends and friends like enemies.  Aid is cut off to those most likely to be our friend and aid is increased to those who have declared us their enemy.

Conservatives tend to treat enemies like enemies and friends like friends.  We think helping our friends and cutting off assistance to those who declare us “infidels” and wish our destruction are good ideas.

Obama wants to buy the love of our enemies.  He naively believes if only we are nice enough to them, they will embrace us – their fundamental reasons for their “former” disdain will melt away.  But that is not enough for him.  We also have to demonstrate to our enemies that we are backing down from aiding our friends.

This practice might pluck the heart-strings of the half-thinkers for a few months while they hear the heaps of praise from the fascist nations who are the beneficiaries Obama’s misspent gifts.  Talk about waste of taxpayer dollars.  Shooting ourselves in the foot would be more cost-effective.