Quora: Conservative viewpoints that liberals agree with

[kevm14]

https://www.quora.com/As-a-liberal-what ... agree-with

This one interests me. And there are some good answers here.

Unlike you, I am largely a liberal, but like you — I am a somewhat untraditional one (at least compared to those in these quarters).

While I depart from the party line on a number of issues, this is the one that I believe to be at the root of my dissent.

Political Correctness

To be clear, conservatives are guilty of political correctness, too. If I’m shouted down as “anti-American” because I neglect to stand for the pledge, that’s classic political correction. But, liberals, in recent years, have done a damn good job at making this issue their own.

What exactly political correctness is, is hard to define; but for most, it’s obvious when it occurs. Here are a few examples:

1. Conflating a football team’s name — the Red Skins — with oppressive racism.

2. Calling people racist who say that a black person who commits a crime is a criminal — not a “victim” of “institutional racism”

3. Call a women attractive, I’m “objectifying her,” don’t call a women attractive, “I’m fat shaming her.”

4. The treatise every sexual assault victim has the right to be believed, has somehow morphed into every accusation made by a victim of a sexual assault is always true.

5. Refusing to recognize the highly illiberal nature of Islam, as it is often practiced. There is nothing liberal about a religion that actively (this is where it differs critically from American Christianity and Judaism, which have rejected fundamentalism in a way Islam hasn’t) seeks to oppress homosexuals, the sexual rights of women, and a slew of other fundamentally liberal notions.

Note: Islam is not a race, it’s a set of ideas. Criticizing it does not make me a bigot anymore than criticizing 50 Shades of Grey makes me a sexist.

6. Instructing comedians — not just lame amateurs, but masters of their craft — what they can, and cannot joke about. These instructions are often hypocritical, to boot. Poor, white, meth-addicted working class individuals in the south? Fair game. Poor, black, crack-addicted working class individuals in the inner city? Here’s the address of your local KKK chapter, you racist.

Well-known liberals such as Jerry Seinfeld now reportedly refuse to perform on campuses for this very reason. A damn shame.

7. Black Lives Matter, All Lives Matter, and Blue Lives are all mutually exclusive. It’s news to me that I have to pick between my best friend, who is black, myself, who follows under “all lives,” and my cousin, who is a cop for the NPYD. I proudly sport all three bumper stickers on my car, which apparently is controversial position.

8. The proper recourse for a speaker you don’t like now involves spray paint, fires, and intimidation.

To sum it up — Liberalism, to me, is advancing free speech to its fullest possible extent. Not “nice” speech. Not “good” speech. Just speech. I’d like to think that the strength of my convictions are strong enough to weather a short speech by Milo or Murray.

Conservatives are hardly better on this issue, and in my eyes, much worse on most others (which is why I’m still a proud liberal/democrat despite what I’ve written). But so long as they keep sounding the alarm on the excesses of liberal political correctness, I’ll keep agreeing.

This is one area that really does irritate me about many folks on the left (at least my perception is that it is "many"). Naturally, the media fans the flames and makes it even worse but many of the points in here have been key issues over the past 5 years.

[kevm14]

Another one.

I agree with certain impulses but not with the methods.

For instance, I’d love to minimize the number of abortions. To me, the way to do that is universal, free contraception… or even paying women who are willing to have some form of long-term birth control. This will absolutely decrease the number of unwanted pregnancies and reduce the strain on the welfare state.

But conservatives don’t want to do that. They want to close abortion clinics, teach abstinence-only sex education, and repeal the contraception mandate. These actions will without any doubt increase the number of abortions and the strain on the welfare state.

There are also instances where I think the left goes too far.

The Young Left, in particular is very intolerant of conservative ideas and routinely shuts people down when people try to explain their viewpoint on college campuses. I find that downright disgusting and I’m revolted every time I encounter it.

Personally, if someone is invited to speak at my university and I disagree with their views, my impulse would be to protest by:

- not attending
- attending and challenging their views
- peacefully protesting outside

What I would never in a million years countenance would be to prevent them from speaking. Start watching around 19:00 and you’ll see what I mean.

To me, this is unacceptable. This man believes that race is linked to intelligence. He wrote The Bell Curve.

I disagree with him, but what he believes is no different from what a lot of white people his age believe. His belief is not a crime. Writing that book wasn’t a crime. I don’t see why these students feel they have the right to shut him down when he was invited by their university to speak on an unrelated topic.

The last part is just like what I was saying on the previous post. This has become a real problem imo.

[kevm14]

I blame the media on this, too, by amplifying certain things and squealching other things.

For the most part, liberals and conservatives agree about the problems, just not the solutions. We agree that crime is too high, that poverty is bad, that land, air, and water should be unpolluted, and that roads with potholes suck.

How we solve these problems is where we disagree.

We all agree that unwanted pregnancies are bad. Liberals want to prevent this problem as much as possible through better access and awareness of contraception, then keep abortion legal as a last resort. Conservatives want to make it illegal, feeling that if it was illegal it wouldn’t happen at all (and if it does happen, punishment will be a warning to others).

If you really want to see the differences disappear, take away the theory and hyperbole by looking at a specific case. For example, if you look at small town governments, what people really care about is if potholes get fixed. All that theory goes out the window when someone’s car is damaged by a hole in the road. People want efficient, well-run government. Not politics.

[kevm14]

Here's another list that more or less falls inline with my personal beliefs.

1. Unions - particularly teachers unions. They are part of the problem with education, not the solution. Striking and holding children hostage is pretty shameful.

2. Medical malpractice - the idea that law suits are a good way to prevent medical errors is ridiculous. In my field, 50% of people are sued by the age of 50 (and we don’t start practicing till our early 30s).

3. Political correctness and “safe spaces” in universities - these are the most annoying liberals, we all can agree.

4. Free markets and open trade - although now everything is backwards, as neoliberals are more free market than many conservatives.

5. Foreign policy - In a general sense, what we do in the world should be first and foremost in our interest and to our benefit. More conservatives get this. That being said, most conservatives in office are embarrassingly clueless about the world.

6. Affirmative action - the ends don’t justify the means. Kids without opportunity, regardless of race, should get extra consideration.

7. Personal responsibility - as an idea, but not really in practice. For example, if you allow someone to decide whether they want a fire department and they make a bad choice, then you have to also have to allow their house to burn down. Same with healthcare or personal finance. Practically, we can’t let people make bad decisions when we are not prepared to allow the consequences - house burning down, bleeding out on the steps of the ED, growing old and indigent.

[kevm14]

This might be cheating since I lean right but call myself a liberal for social reasons, but here goes.

Lower taxes and regulations: both are economic inefficiencies and ultimately result in market distortions. In many instances these distortions are necessary, but I remain unconvinced that liberals are using these two things with a keen eye.

Individualism vs Identity Politics: I hate identify politics, it's a revulsion of everything we stand for as Americans. There is a belief amongst liberals that it's somehow a necessary form of thought to combat racism/sexism/homophobia etc, but it's not. Individualism and the belief that systemic injustices exist are not mutually exclusive.

Defense Spending: I say turn it up (R&D though, I want no wars). It spurs innovation, remains one of the "more" efficient areas of government, and the American navy keeps the waters free and clear for trade. The positive externalities of defense spending i believe far outweigh the negatives.

Global Warming: In effect global warming is a future expense that we will all pay, but the question of how large said expense will be remains elusive. Science is in consensus about the fact that it exists, but not on the ultimate effect. I tend to side with the Berkeley Earth opinion in that the Bill Nye school of thought (eff that guy, seriously) is a massive panic inducing Fox News esque example of fear mongering.

Pay Gap: A pay gap exists, it's nowhere near the 78 cents or 85 cents (when controlling for certain exogenous factors) that is often quoted. That doesn't mean it isn't important, but it's frankly pseudoscience to suggest that it's anywhere near what most liberals quote it as. Econometrics is my field of study, I even ran the test myself for a final project. The CBO uses very simple econometric methods that assume some very limiting assumptions, when you make the methods slightly more complex (and more representative as a result) the gap comes out to about 95 cents on the dollar. That though IS STILL a serious issue, but I can't stand the grandstanding from democrats on this.

[kevm14]

Here are the principles embraced by my liberal brethren that I just can’t get behind.

1. 15$ minimum wage. Its a great idea, but its not realistic. McDonalds, at least in my market, pays people $7.75 an hour. The company has invested MILLIONS in designing systems that can be run by people with minimal training. If minimum wage doubled, they would just reinvest in systems that can be run by smaller numbers of more skilled labor, and then lay off the bottom 45% of their workforce. Problem not solved.

2. Suppressing ideas that they find unpalatable. This is just embarrassing. If a liberal speaker at a conservative college was shouted down by Christian groups, liberals would lose their shit, but its okay to shout down a Republican pundit that speaks at UC Berkeley.

3. Advocating the curtailing of freedom of speech to avoid offending people. Humbug. All this does is give soundbites for guys like Glenn Beck to play and show what idiots libtards are. Safe spaces fall into this category as well.

4. I cannot, simply CANNOT, wrap my mind around the idea that gentrification is a bad thing. If a neighborhood is being raised from poverty, and property values go up, that is not a bad thing. If the old population is being displaced, there has to be another way to help without curtailing the improvement. Either a rent-control scheme that gives preference to long-standing residents, or social programs targeted at reducing poverty, both seem, to me, like better solutions than complaining about a dropping crime rate and rising property values.

That’s my two cents. And I am, in a lot of ways, as liberal as they come.

[kevm14]

I'm in many ways uber liberal but there are a couple of things that conservatives do I agree with.

1, I'm a naturalized citizen, it took me a long time and a lit of hard work but I did it. I don't get why some liberals think it's ok for people to come illegally and suffer no repercussions. Immigration reform is needed.

2. This BS of protesting conservative speakers at universities, freedom of speech is freedom of speech and unless they are shouting fire or inciting riot, leave it be. A lot of liberals would lose their minds if it was the other way round.

As I read through these I am seeing a lot of recurring themes. A lot of libertarianism. Much mention that they don't think gun control really works and misses the point (i.e. makes it hard to legally obtain a firearm and does nothing to prevent one from being obtained illegally). Lots of mention of the PC movement, free speech only if it is a certain kind of speech, safe spaces and all that. I have the same frustrations. It is interesting to read from self-identified liberals who feel the same way.

[kevm14]

If you believe that the political leanings of a person influences where they choose to get their news, then this graph is pretty relevant.

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And I don't think I am too surprised with the results. Perhaps the only comment I'd make is I expected viewers of MSNBC to fall far more to the left and viewers of Fox News to fall far more to the right. Again, this is not a direct graph of someone evaluating the news/editorials and assigning left-ness or right-ness to them, but the viewer political leanings of these sources. As I said, I think there is a direct relationship there. People typically don't seek out sources of viewpoints that oppose theirs. Which, of course, is causing a tremendous political divide via media and especially social media.

Another comment I'd make is that this graph supports a claim that there are more left-leaning sources than right-leaning. There are far more sources in this list that I think most people would consider "mainstream" on the left of center.

Oh, one IMPORTANT thing I forgot to mention. The center of this graph simply represents the political views of the average respondant to this survey. It would be important to know if that was left of center, right of center, or centrist. I do not know if I could even take a guess.

OK, I have more to say. This confirms some of my long held suspicions. For example, look at the Daily Show or Colbert Report. Comedy, yes. But also biased reporting tailored to a liberal audience. Clearly evident here. NPR, too. And even BBC.

You could also COMPLETELY twist this and say "the only reason those sources are associated with liberal viewers is because liberal viewers are the only ones who actually want to hear the truth" or some nonsense along those lines.

[kevm14]

So the media is designed to get clicks and views. Which means sensationalism drives content more than anything. However...

Thesis: Sensationalism will have a liberal bias precisely due to the nature of what liberalism is, which looks like activisim or progressivism, which is inherently loud. Conservatism is inherently the lack of being loud and active. Therefore, I wonder if the neo-conservative approach of reacting to everything in anger is in fact a natural evolution or result of the way sensational news cycles work.

[kevm14]

Oh how convenient. Someone wrote an article about this.

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainme ... rt/385480/

Great headline, too.