THIS IS THE EIGHTH INSTALLMENT OF MY REPLY TO Chris, which begins here .
I ended yesterday's post, Chris, by suggesting that when it comes to basic values:
- Neither conservatives or liberals want anyone to suffer,
- Both conservatives and liberals want people to get the sense of independence and satisfaction that comes from standing on your own two feet and working hard,
- We both want the United States to prosper, and that
- Conservatives and liberals are equally intelligent.
I hope you won't disagree with any of that.
In fact, the only difference between a liberal and a conservative is the information they base their different conclusions on—the world of ideas they live in.
Liberals live in (no offense, but there's no way of saying it without saying it) the real world, where
- a free market is a good thing, but needs rules (just like a free country) to keep the big guys from trampling over everyone else's rights,
- the facts show that same-sex marriages pose no threat to opposite-sex marriage,
- guarding each others' rights and taking care of our own is necessary to a free, just, and democratic society,
- there's more to human motivation than economic need; people actually enjoy hard and meaningful work, and don't need to be impoverished wage-slaves in order to be motivated,
- most Muslims are not terrorists, and most American Muslims are patriotic,
- people sometimes need a hand to get back on their own feet, and move toward success, and making a contribution.
That, of course, is just a sort of random sample.
Conservatives, on the whole, live in a fantasy world where
- the "free market" (in the sense of an unregulated market) will fix pretty much anything,
- same-sex marriages are dangerous to opposite-sex marriage,
- liberals are bent on creating a "socialist utopia",
- socialism in any form inevitably leads to laziness and failure, because the average citizen doesn't value hard and meaningful work for its own sake,
- there is no difference between a Muslim and a terrorist,
- giving people a hand up when they are down will keep them from getting on their feet.
It's not conservatives' fault that they believe all these frightening things—it's the fault of conservative pundits: propagandists who never check a fact, and are often willing to lie for the sake of the cause.
If you follow the daily mull at all, you'll have noticed that most of the conservative emails going the rounds are just factually incorrect—and there appears to be an endless supply.
I would love to expose a liberal email; it would do wonders for my street cred.
But the fact is that I rarely receive them—I get way over 100 conservative forwarded emails for every one that's even slightly liberal—and the liberal ones I do receive always check out (So far. I'm still hoping!) when I research the facts.
The recent court case over gay marriage here in California is another case in point.
The case was defended primarily by the people who ran the campaign for proposition 8, against some gay couples who just wanted to get married.
The gay couples, on the liberal side, presented nine expert witnesses, with Ph.D.s and vast experience in the subjects they testified about.
Those witnesses presented evidence rooted in actual studies, with reliable methodologies, which they could explain.
On the other hand, the conservative opposition presented two "expert" witnesses.
Each was disqualified by the court as an expert witness because they were testifying about areas in which they did not have the proper expertise, did not have the proper degrees, did not have the proper experience, could not explain the methodology which led to their opinions, or some combination of these.
When Tam, one of the proponents of prop. 8, was asked the source of his claim connecting same-sex marriage to polygamy and incest, he replied, "The internet."
This may sound like I'm ridiculing conservatives in general, but that would be to miss the point.
My point is that although conservatives are just as caring, and just as bright, as liberals, they live in a world of misinformation—a world created by the conservative media, which is not interested in the truth of any claim, but only its emotional and political effect.
This is what Tam discovered (or perhaps failed to discover) when he had to defend his stance in a court of law which actually cared about how reliable his "facts" were.
The supposed "liberal bias" of our court system is often nothing more than a bias in favor of reliable information.
But Tam is one of the professionals—people whose job it is to sway the voters and win elections, and in that context it doesn't matter whether an argument is sound, but only how it will sound.
He was out of his element in a courtroom.
He's not the average conservative, like you, Chris, who is to some extent at the mercy of these well-financed misinformation campaigns on the right.
Next: A Sort of Defense of Conservatives...
