Thinking Like a Conservative

[jhenry922]

https://conservativehome.com/2012/04/13/why-liberals-dont-understand-conservatives/

It is, for many conservatives, a familiar feeling – the sense that our counterparts on the liberal left not only disagree with us, but don’t even understand us.

Well, it seems there is hard evidence to support our suspicions. It comes from an unlikely source – the American psychologist (and political liberal) Jonathan Haidt. The basis of his research is a framework of five moral ‘foundations’: care/harm, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion and sacredness/degradation. Gathering masses of survey data (to which you can contribute here), Haidt and his colleagues have built-up a detailed picture of the degree to which these various foundations underpin the liberal and conservative worldviews.

In a book review for Prospect, David Goodhart provides an excellent summary of Haidt’s findings:

• “His main insight is simple but powerful: liberals understand only two main moral dimensions, whereas conservatives understand all five.
• Liberals care about harm and suffering (appealing to our capacities for sympathy and nurturing) and fairness and injustice. All human cultures care about these two things but they also care about three other things: loyalty to the in-group, authority and the sacred.
• As Haidt puts it: ‘It’s as though conservatives can hear five octaves of music, but liberals respond to just two, within which they have become particularly discerning.’”

Haidt’s recommendation to his fellow liberals is to make a greater effort to understand conservative concerns:

• “For example, if you want to improve integration and racial justice in a mixed area, you do not just preach the importance of tolerance but you promote a common in-group identity. As Haidt puts it: ‘You can make people care less about race by drowning race differences in a sea of similarities, shared goals and mutual interdependencies.’”

For David Goodhart – a prominent liberal opponent of multiculturalism – the Haidt approach is the “last chance for the left.” However, one might also argue that if you start acting upon conservative moral insights you might as well become a conservative.

The left Wingers or intelligent people as I prefer to call them understand you all too well. They also realize that it's really hard to convince you even with evidence so we don't even bother you anymore. You guys can just stop taking your vaccines start taking horse dewormer and just kill yourself off for all I care. Every person has the right to kill themselves

 

[SkyBubble]

You already admitted that MAGAs, who dominate today’s Republican Party, aren’t conservatives.

So by your own words, conservatives are irrelevant in America at this time.

Not at all. MAGA is much smaller than you think it is.

 

[SkyBubble]

The left Wingers or intelligent people as I prefer to call them understand you all too well. They also realize that it's really hard to convince you even with evidence so we don't even bother you anymore. You guys can just stop taking your vaccines start taking horse dewormer and just kill yourself off for all I care. Every person has the right to kill themselves

Wrong. You think you do, but the evidence shows you don't. You insist that conservatives believe things we expressly do not, and when that is proven to you, you just claim that the conservatives whose work proves it are lying, then you insist that you know us better than we know ourselves. You haen't teh foggiest idea waht you're talking about.

 

[JohnEngelman]

Generally speaking, I am conservative on many social issues, and liberal on taxing, spending, and the environment. In other words, I am the opposite of a libertarian.

There is economic conservatism and social conservatism. I have read enough of economic conservative perspectives, that I can probably answer a question the way an economic conservative would. I invite an economic conservative to ask me a question, and see if I give the right answer.

 

[jhenry922]

Wrong. You think you do, but the evidence shows you don't. You insist that conservatives believe things we expressly do not, and when that is proven to you, you just claim that the conservatives whose work proves it are lying, then you insist that you know us better than we know ourselves. You haen't teh foggiest idea waht you're talking about.

Then why is RFK jr, and noted Auntie vaxxer, the head of the Health Department in the united states? That lies in absolute contrast with that proof

 

[MajorRewrite]

Not at all. MAGA is much smaller than you think it is.

Not at all. MAGA runs the Republican Party. Real conservatives have been ousted and branded RINOS.

It’s the party of authoritarian MAGA sheep.

 

[DanOkeffie]

Thank you for excerpts!

bla bla bla, thank you for having your head up your asss

 

[LLCox]

Humans are just Neanderthals with a fashion sense.