So my diary entry on "The Way Conservatives Sound to Liberals" set off a firestorm on the internet, which brought me no small amount of joy. I love sticking it to the man whenever possible, so I thought I'd take some time to lay waste to a few more memes that sound insane to me and need someone to unravel them to lay them bare to the light of day. I had some people respond to the previous diary, saying that I was more liberal than previously thought. I'm highly skeptical of that. I still consider myself a pragmatist above all, Fareed Zakaria style I suppose. I don't have a knee jerk reaction to defend unions and think that military action in certain instances is perfectly fine despite the moral ramifications. That having been said, I hate illogical stuff and being around conservatives makes me need to vent every now and again :P
1. Liberals just want to let criminals go free. You don't want to show tough love when it needs to be shown.
This one makes me laugh. I love when conservatives bring out the death penalty and harsh prison sentences as a means of making liberals seem milquetoast. No one wants to let criminals go free; that's why we have jails. That's why we have police officers, a justice system, and laws. I think the law should apply to everyone equally. Fancy, expensive lawyers or social status shouldn't insulate someone from their proper punishment under the law, nor should religion, or really anything else for that matter. I'm highly sensitive to the fact that if we're going to have ideals, we should strive for them, and not back off of them when the going gets tough.
Here's my take on the death penalty. If all of the courts were infallible, and every judge was completely impartial, every jury educated and free of prejudice, and every police officer capable of executing their duties perfectly, then I would have no problem with the death penalty. See, if someone kills someone else in cold blood, walked up to a security camera and showed his photo I.D., told the police during his interrogation that he wanted to kill and he was glad he did it and would do it again, and there were a dozen witnesses that saw it in broad daylight, I have no problem with sending that person to the gas chamber. BUT, as is the case with any ideal, you cannot act like you are living the ideal without all of the prerequisites in place. We have innocent men being murdered in prison. That's a fact. There were 17 across the nation with 7 in Illinois.
Info here.
Clearly, the prerequisites for our ideal, i.e. being absolutely sure that if someone is convicted and sentenced to death that there is no doubt that the person is guilty of the crime, is sullied by our clear and present failure. There's probably dozens of our own citizens who have been wrongfully killed, and upon investigation of many of these cases, we find that being arrested and convicted for a crime can be arbitrary. You could be arrested for being near the scene of a crime, or having a criminal background (which in no way proof that you were responsible for the crime in question) and a host of other things that cast a pall over the proceedings. When I talk to conservatives about it, I often get "Well you'll just let the bad guy go free." It dawned on me, at that point, that maybe some conservatives think of it in the abstract, as in "It is wrong to not execute someone for a death penalty crime," instead of taking the extra step and making sure that their court system can deliver on such a lofty goal. You cannot realize any ideal without the prerequisites in place!
One innocent man killed by the state is one man too many.
2. Liberals just hate success, which is why you're always whining about big oil and natural gas polluting! You just don't want us to have industry or a higher standard of life. What happened to raising a family?!!11!?!1
Funny, I thought a high standard of living included being able to drink your tap water without getting cancer. I don't think that industrialists are evil people. No really, I don't. I don't think the head of Exxon Mobil is an evil man. When there was an oil spill in the Yellowstone river, the head of the company flew out to talk to people. I thought it was a nice gesture and I felt he was genuinely concerned as to how his company was negatively affecting the people near the spill. He's not evil. I don't think that companies pollute because they're evil, they pollute because they don't give a damn. There's a difference.
Think of it like this. If I owned a factor that made widgets, I would be quite pleased with myself. My widgets bring happiness to people's lives, and my workers make these widgets for a wage we both agree upon. However, if there is a rash of cancer outbreaks in the nearby area, and it is revealed that the toxic sludge I dump into a nearby river is hurting people, I have the moral responsibility to stop production and make sure that it's not my factory that is harming people. If my product in any way, shape, or form harms another human being, I should stop at nothing to be sure that nothing I do contributes to negative consequences on other human beings. If that means I spend money to ensure the industrial process is fully safe, so be it. Period. Most times when I see companies get criticized for dumping benzine into people's drinking water or making it so you can't take a bath without opening the windows to keep from fainting, their response is a slick campaign ad to assure everyone that their industrial process is "safe." They keep right on doing what they're doing, continuously making profit while people get sick, and then convince the locals that because the money flows in from them, that they should put up with it. After all, the evil government will come in.
Charles and David Koch are the embodiment of this phenomenon. They just hate government and that's their religion. They just don't like the idea of someone coming in and seeing what they're doing, which is how we get little children being blown up by gas leaks. Sure, there might not have been a way for the company to know that the pipe was faulty (or more likely, perhaps, that the didn't care because the money was flowing), but what happens when a new regulation is proposed that would prevent it in the future. They call the government terrorists. I mean that's it right there in a nutshell. What that shows me is that the loss of life and the lower standard of living for the victims of your lack of diligence as leaders of your company is nothing compared to your ideological bent and self induced dementia that the government wants to come through your window.
Koch Bros, if President Obama was actually akin to Saddam Hussein, you would be dead.
3. Liberals just want to give to people who don't work
First off you can forget that Puritan Calvinist garbage. I don't want religious fanatics and their self abusive morality to be the standard for society. Most people work in some way or another given their capacity. It's natural. Oh, what's that? You're worried about incentives? WORK IS A WAY TO MAKE MONEY. The money you get from it is the incentive; done. All of this flowery crap about "It's not about the money," or "I really do it for the adventure," is pontificating swill that people who don't know real suffering spout off. I have been homeless. I've slept in a car. I've been in a house with no heat. No one needed to explain to me the importance of work. I didn't do it for philosophical or ideological reasons, and I didn't do it because the Bible said so; I did it because I EARNED MONEY AND STOPPED BEING HOMELESS. Talk about a carrot and a stick!
For the people who think that welfare creates a culture of getting something for free, let me tell you something, if I knew they had heat credits or housing assistance when I was poor, I would've taken it. It would've taken the sting off. The church was no help, so don't even bother with that. The pastor was too busy feeling self important that he was getting a larger flock, and spent the tithe money on the roof or a new suit. The suffering was not a catalyst to work harder, it never is. "But you just said..." Hold on a sec. Even if I did have the heating credits and the help with my rent, I would still have gone to college because then I could work a job I wanted and gain enough money to do what I wanted to do that would require more money than welfare could ever provide. To conservatives, deprivation is holy...so long as it's other people who are being deprived. Only the most self abusive person could think that. Most people use those credits, work, save their money, and then move on. It gives them a basis from which they can move forward. Plus, it subsidizes your crappy jobs! You seem to think telling people to work at McDonald's is the answer to all of our problems! Let me tell you, I worked 12-18 hours as a waiter on the weekends when I was 16 years old. That's not enough money to live off of! Not even for housing/food/lights. I'm talking basics here. You have to get it out of your head that everyone wants the latest in gadgetry or ostentatious jewelry.
When I talk to conservatives about this they always bust out some faulty anecdotal evidence about some "people" they saw somewhere that were getting assistance (at least, so they assumed. Last time I checked you cannot tell that someone is on welfare by looking at them) and complaining that they had Escalades and Ipads. Hmm, no coded anything there. Guess what, I was one of those kids. And my parents didn't buy my cell phone. They couldn't! A relative did, and they paid for my cell phone bill because I needed it in case of an emergency. That was the case for most other people. Ever heard of a pawn shop? Ever heard of a resale shop? There are people who think the government would do everything for them, but guess what, they're going to get a rude awakening sooner or later. Some of these people are seriously damaged and will not be made whole again by throwing them on the street! Jerking the floor out from under them is not going to make them change their mind, nor could it in many cases. If you truly hate it, engage them personally without being condescending or hateful, and you might get somewhere!
Telling people to go to a church is not the answer. Instead of admonishing people, you should take a look at who you're giving your tithe money to. To all of the church leaders who spend their lives helping people, thank you! But, there's a whole world of people that need help, and you need to check people like Robertson and Huckabee. There are hundreds of people who are going to freeze in northern Michigan this winter, and I don't see one big megachurch pastor coming to the rescue.
4. But there is so much evidence and 75% of the people game the system...
9 out of 10 idiots agree that whenever you ask 10 people a question, 1 person always disagrees with the other nine. Your personal prejudice is not proof. You need proof, you need evidence. "People say that there's lots of voter fraud going on." Well, people say I should be declared potentate of the United States. Hmm...no? Okay. You need evidence to back up your claims. Stop whining when people don't believe you when you pull stuff out of our ass. We don't have the prerequisites for our ideals yet. That means we live in a world of pragmatism. That means, we need evidence to move forward, to make decisions. You're supposed to be the party of big business, right? Isn't that what good businesses do, gather facts, figures, and make plans based on what's real and what's available to work towards a big goal? You make dispassionate decisions based on the information you have available, not letting personal prejudice bar you from making the right decisions to make money?
I love unraveling these memes to no extent. They're just illogical and often shows me that some people don't put enough thought to their own preconceptions. Yes, there are negative cases in every aspect, but it becomes clear through talking with some hardcore conservatives that our values are entirely different and there may be no bridging the gap.