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Why do so many conservatives seem to think that all liberals/progressives or "left-wingers" are Marxists who are too ashamed to admit it, or something? It's always "you liberals want everyone to be equal," "you liberals think that a doctor should make the same as a cashier," "you liberals think that people on welfare should have big screen TVs and mansions."
Part of being conservative is categorizing things into neat little boxes. It makes things a whole lot easier to consume if things are either black or white. It makes things simple.
But, the "left" would like to have a "classless" society. They would like to have the government responsible for you - "cradle to the grave"..
This seems to be your repeated mantra. Yet, I have yet to see any person on this forum advocate for a classless society.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Greatday
The "left" feels that the government knows what is best for you. That you should not be responsible for your well being. The "left" wants to control what you eat, what you drink, what you drive, the type of house you live in, the amount of vacation you have to have etc.
I try to be nice to liberals. I used to be one, you know.
Some of the upper-middle-class white ones you run into on the internet are really just too sheltered to know any better. And, IME, they're just repeating what they learned in college, expecting that they spent all that time actually learning something true or useful; you can't blame them for not knowing that profs don't necessarily know much more than other mere mortals.
As if one stops learning once they graduate from college? Is it at all possible that people continue to learn through out their life, and continue to read. lookup statistics, digest conclusions after years and years of experience and data accumulation?
Hey, the more data I accumulated, the LESS conservative I became. I used to spout some of the right-wing talking points (though I was always moderate, libertarian leaning on personal freedom issues).
For me personally, the alarm is that I believe in incentives. I am a major believer in innovation through incentives, and the drive towards greater efficiencies. I also am a great supporter of a competitive vs a cooperative environment, as a way of creating a better life for practically everyone. I also believe it sets better models for incentivizing kids to become more achievement oriented.
All of that is well and good. But we don't live in a meritocracy. If we did, the outcomes would look a lot different.
How many times did the hard worker get rewarded with more work without a pay increase? How many times did the collegue get a promotion because they were more connected with the powers that be, even though they weren't qualified?
These types of extremely broad generalizations are examples of exactly what I was talking about with the OP. You act as if you know exactly what "the left" wants, as if it were some unibrained communal anthill of same-thinking androids. If I were to stereotype "the right" in this way you would become incensed, would you not?
I find if I stereotype the right the way they do in every 5th post about the left on this forum, then posters come out of the woodwork crying about hyperbole and how unjust that I could portray then like that.
Then, you're far from being a libertarian. The "civilized and just" society that you prefer has been tried and has failed miserably because all economic incentives are removed from society, making everyone simply mediocre at best. Even China has realized that this does not work and is moving more toward capitalism.
Which society is that? The one's that I think you are alluding to did not follow the principals of Marxism to the letter.
However a lot of Northern European countries are doing EXTREMELY well.
Actually, what I provided is proven - look at the various leftist leaning communities - they are doing what I stated
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