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To: ek_hornbeck
people adopt their political beliefs for mostly irrational and emotional reasons

I don't accept that premise. In fact, if I did, it would make me more life a leftist than not. It's why the idea of the "narrative" is so central in modern politics. It is a cornerstone of postmodern "truth," that there is no discoverable truth, only "narratives," stories we tell, to ourselves and others, that reshapes the facts to fit our predispositions. The process of deconstruction is breaking down the narrative to find the irrational primitives that drive it.

But that presumes an essential equality of all narratives, an equality you yourself appear to accept. Yet conservatism inherently rejects that all narratives are created equal. They really are not. The narrative that fails to account for, say, gravity, will be less successful in describing reality than the narrative which accepts gravity as a fact. There may be ways to work around gravity, but it cannot simply be ignored.

This is why conservative, free market economic beliefs are more successful than their leftist counterparts; they are more closely aligned to rational realities. The same applies to conservative (aka rational) social policy.

By contrast, liberal political beliefs are predicated on a massive disconnect between present reality and future possibility. Someday, says the Maoist, if we can destroy enough uncooperative people, if we can totally reengineer human nature, we will have all happiness and unicorns, nirvana at the end of the barrel of a gun held solely by the state. In real world terms, this is magical thinking, it has no hope of ever working, and yet it is the hallmark of the leftist fantasies that drive the middle tier of any Marxist revolution, the useful idiots. The victims know better, and the cynics at the top of the leftist hierarchy know better, and are in it only for themselves, as Orwell points out.

So no, the primitives that drive the political beliefs of the left versus the right are not equivalent, either in moral or rational terms. We do have the better argument, and in the end it is impossible for rational beliefs to fail, though they may skip a generation or two, because sooner or later, the unicorn illusions will fade, and the gravity of real things will prevail.

10 posted on 02/17/2013 3:14:31 PM PST by Springfield Reformer (Winston Churchill: No Peace Till Victory!)
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To: Springfield Reformer

more LIKE a leftist than not


11 posted on 02/17/2013 3:17:09 PM PST by Springfield Reformer (Winston Churchill: No Peace Till Victory!)
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To: Springfield Reformer
People can certainly develop rational arguments when it comes to the best means of achieving desired aims. But what those desired aims are depends on a person's values and emotions.

Liberals value equality and "fairness" over liberty and meritocracy for emotional or aesthetic reasons just as conservatives value liberty over equality for emotional or aesthetic reasons. The fact that the latter results in a more prosperous society than the former is incidental.

When it comes to social issues, the emotional foundation for differences is even more obvious. Pro-aborts have an emotional response from the point of view of the mother, anti-aborts from the point of view of compassion for the unborn child. Neither response is based on cold, mathematical logic.

15 posted on 02/17/2013 3:29:01 PM PST by ek_hornbeck
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To: Springfield Reformer
There may be ways to work around gravity, but it cannot simply be ignored.

YES WE CAN! YES WE CAN!!! YES WE CAN!!!!!1! YES WE

18 posted on 02/17/2013 5:50:09 PM PST by Lonely Bull
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