This is a very elitist and condescending ran. Assuming everyone who disagrees with you is being manipulated is not going to bring anyone to your side and will further distance people who disagree.
It's not "everyone who disagrees with me", it's one very specific point: public intervention - be it healthcare, infrastructure, job training for people in dying industries, workers' rights, etc. - is the only way to stave off the natural gravity of economic stratification. But I've seen more Fox News than most people here probably have, I listened to hours of conservative talk radio in the car with my mom over the years, I've argued the points and heard theirs.
They think the solution to everything is faith and the free market. They vote for reduced taxation and deregulation when the only people it benefits are the 1%. They buy into the meritocratic view that the ultra-wealthy earned it, and that it's somehow immoral to try and redistribute some of that insane wealth. They do not - cannot - accept the idea that the meritocracy is a sham, and that they need help from their society if they want things to get better. And I truly believe that most of the strength of that entrenchment is from hours and hours of exposure, day-in, day-out, to the ranting and raving lunatics (or perhaps masterful orators) on Fox News and talk radio.
A lot of what you say is true, but also applies to the likes of MSNBC and (even) CNN. Raving, frothing at the mouth, 'journalism'.
I grew up in a commumity much like the family life you described. Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, etc etc 24/7. There were some non-ideological types who - while staunchly conservative - actually thought through their beliefs. They were the exception.
I left and attended an elite school, where... almost the exact inverse of that existed. Sure, it was more 'educated' types in that in general they had attended better schools, had more degrees, etc. than the people from the rural area I grew up in. However, most of them were startingly dogmatic and could not reason through their beliefs to provide a proper justificatory ground. Just the same tired slogans and phrases recited by academics and students who all already agreed with one another.
To quote David Foster Wallace, "human beings are generally pathetic." You will find many people on either side of the divide who just go with the flow.
And sadly this honestly is just a given with human nature. We should encourage higher levels of critical reasoning and the like in politics, but at the end of the day people are going to choose their communities.
I didn't mean to imply that the left is any less emotional and irrational with its beliefs. I find it equally exhausting.
What's special about the right-wing case, at this present moment, is the profoundly self-defeating nature of it. It isn't just dogmatic, it's actively self-destructive.
The only thing I'd say is that we treat should treat the claim about it's self-destructiveness as possible, and remove the certainty (some conservatives think progressive economic policies are self-destructive).
I would also add that there is a moral element here. Some conservatives take economic policy to be not only an empirical matter but a moral one. Some will interpret poor economic conditions as, say, their lot in life before thinking it right to tax someone more. Is it right to claim that someone who morally detests non-minimal taxation is being self-destructive?
Yep, and I suspect that particular moral conviction may be the root of the whole thing.
The overly-complex moral system that conservatives have is one of the main reasons I left conservatism behind. A plethora of things that should be practical matters just become all gummed-up and given significance they shouldn't be given. And in addition to the cases like this one where it's self-destructive, there are many many more cases where it inspires undue judgement towards others.
That's why, for me, morality is being good to others. That's where it starts and ends. Everything else is just deciding how best to accomplish that in context. If a moral assertion can't be traced back to the good it does for real people, it isn't valid in my book.
So to take this case: "Each person is responsible for his or herself and it's immoral to depend on the government for support or for the government to tax citizens to that end."
I mean, sometimes. If your government is a corrupt dictatorship that does nothing for its citizens with those taxes. Or if you actually are in a position to fully support yourself without any outside help. But there are too many exceptions for me to list them here. Raising generalities like this to universal moral assertions just causes them to crumble like a skyscraper made out of bricks and mortar.
The answer is staring at you. You base all your arguments on agreement that the free market is under attack and being regulatory captured. The govt. is the only institute that can help level the playing field.
