>Simple test for this is to ask some one to describe the positions of the other party and why they feel the way they do without using any disparaging or cynical terms
That doesn't work because liberals are unable to understand and empathize with conservative views. They lack the same fundamental values, and so they are unable to see conservative views as being within a set of values that are different from their own. Instead they see conservative views as being contrary to values, period. Liberals being asked to answer a survey the way they think a conservative would will answer agree/disagree questions like "one of the worst things a person could do is hurt a defenseless animal" with disagree, but actual conservatives say agree. On the other hand, conservatives are able to accurately answer the same survey as a liberal would. Moderates are able to answer accurately as either a liberal or a conservative.
Both sides do demonize each other, that's not the question. The question is if they understand each other. Abortion is a perfect example. Conservatives understand the liberal position, that a woman's "right" to an abortion is more important than a fetus's "right" to live. Obviously they disagree, and obviously they consider the other view abhorrent. But they understand what that view is.
On other other hand, liberals overwhelmingly do not understand conservative positions. Sticking with the same issue of abortion, most liberals say conservatives oppose abortion because they hate women and want to control their bodies. This despite the fact that the majority of people opposed to abortion are women. They simply believe the reverse of what I stated above: that the fetus's "right" to live is more important than the woman's "right" to have an abortion.
I'm torn on this. The liberal understanding of this is not entirely wrong. The evidence is that if you look at the big pro-life groups, they are not just anti abortion, they are also anti birth control. So it is not entirely irrational for liberals to think the way they do about this. Perhaps the folks who are both pro-life AND pro birth control need to up their game?
edit: I would bet that this is because Roman Catholics provide most of the funding for the big pro-life groups.
>The liberal understanding of this is not entirely wrong
Yes, it is.
>The evidence is that if you look at the big pro-life groups, they are not just anti abortion, they are also anti birth control.
That is incorrect, and a good example of the bubbles being real. You are just looking at church opposition because that's what the media likes to focus on showing. And it would not make the liberal idea of the conservative view correct even if it were true. Christians who oppose birth control do so because they value the traditions of their culture, not because they hate women. Again, most of them are women. And many of the people who are portrayed as "opposing birth control" actually just oppose having their tax money used to pay for other people's birth control, which is not the same thing.
>So it is not entirely irrational for liberals to think the way they do about this.
It isn't irrational. Being wrong is not the same as being irrational.
> It isn't irrational. Being wrong is not the same as being irrational.
Rational: based on or in accordance with reason or logic.
Your argumentative tone is not compelling and you fail to demonstrate your position within some very constrained topics. Perhaps you will reconsider some of these ideas.
Your link does not support your belief that it is in some way partially correct. The catholic church is not a pro-life group. They pre-date the very idea of a pro-life group by many centuries. The largest pro-life group that random person lists does not have a position on birth control. So this does not support the notion that pro-life equals anti-birth control. But again, even if pro-life did equal anti-birth control that would not support the belief that pro-life people are pro-life because they hate women.
In case you missed in the post you are replying to: "And it would not make the liberal idea of the conservative view correct even if it were true. Christians who oppose birth control do so because they value the traditions of their culture, not because they hate women." Even if every single person who opposes abortion also opposed birth control, that would not make the belief that those people oppose abortion because they hate women correct. Opposing birth control is not hating women any more than opposing abortion is. Consider the opposite incorrect belief: "liberals hate babies, that's why they are pro-abortion". Now would you think "liberals also support birth control, so that proves it is because they hate babies" is good support for that belief? Neither supporting abortion nor supporting birth control can be equated to hating babies, just as neither opposing abortion nor opposing birth control can be equated to hating women.
>Rational: based on or in accordance with reason or logic
Yes? The four humors theory of health and medicine was based on reason and logic. It was also wrong. You can have a rational belief based on incomplete or incorrect data.
>Your argumentative tone is not compelling
Please don't assume a "tone" for someone. It does not further discussion.
>Perhaps you will reconsider some of these ideas.
I have. And in light of the lack of contradictory evidence, my views did not change this time.
> Your link does not support your belief that it is in some way partially correct.
Not my belief. I have evidence, so it's what I know, since previously I did not know. I found your arguments compelling and looked it up.
> In case you missed in the post you are replying to:
Nope. You decided to ignore a statement you agreed with for another you wanted to attack.
The largest pro life groups (as a body made up of pie slices) does evidently (ie have evidence) that supports:
> they are not just anti abortion, they are also anti birth control
Which is what was being referenced by at least a partial correctness, since it was a following statement. Not sure who you're trying to fool.
> Yes? The four humors theory of health and medicine was based on reason and logic. It was also wrong
Wrong is a matter of evidence. For the time, it was right as right can be. That's how science works and is in accordance with rationality. Proving a theorem, does not mean that bringing it up as a theorem was/is wrong. Over time, changes in knowledge are part of the process.
Good luck with your religious convictions to these issues.
Then why not present it? Until you establish it is fact, then yes it is your belief.
>You decided to ignore a statement you agreed with for another you wanted to attack.
I have no idea what you mean.
>The largest pro life groups (as a body made up of pie slices) does evidently (ie have evidence) that supports
The link you provided says otherwise. It very clearly shows the largest pro-life group has no position on birth control.
>Which is what was being referenced by at least a partial correctness
That does not make logical sense. The statement "conservatives support abortion because they hate women and want to control their bodies" is not proven to be partially correct even if you believe that all conservatives oppose birth control. Opposing birth control is not hating women.
>For the time, it was right as right can be
No it was not. Incorrect isn't correct if you simply don't know any better.
>Good luck with your religious convictions to these issues.
I find it interesting that you ignore what I say, try to attribute what I say to malice, claim your belief is objective fact, and still suggest that I am the one with religious conviction here. "Conservatives hate women because I say they do" is not fact, no matter how many times you repeat it.
Being against birth control is a very specific thing to the Catholic church. Almost no one else subscribes to that belief, including nearly all religious and non-religious groups in north america.
I couldn't name a pro-life group period. I know a lot of churches are pro-life, but they are not pro-life groups any more than they are anti-theft groups.
> That doesn't work because liberals are unable to understand and empathize with conservative views.
Actually conservatives and liberals do share a lot of values. Let's call this the foundational set V.
Conservatives go on to add additional values to the set V: mostly concerns for purity, respect for authority and a heightened concern for security. Let's call this set A.
Conservatives could then easily predict the answers of liberals because they are both based on V, but it's not symmetrical, because conservatives are working from a bigger set of values V+A.
>Actually conservatives and liberals do share a lot of values
They share two or three values: care and fairness for sure, and maybe liberty (not necessarily a value held by either group, but one held by some subset of both groups). That doesn't contradict my statement that liberals are unable to understand and empathize with conservative views. Views are based on values. Lacking the values that create the view makes it very hard to understand the view.
>Conservatives go on to add additional values to the set V
Precisely, they add loyalty, authority and sanctity. Liberals do not have these values, often even viewing them as evil. And so they do not understand the views based on those values. Conservatives do have the values liberals do, and so they can understand the views based on those values.
Whilst that's one way to phrase it, the underlying differences are deeper and more to do with perception of the span of human nature.
For instance the apparent love of conservatives for 'respect for authority' is not actually respect for authority (why would they be so against big government if that were the case?) nor particular to conservatives, but rather, a preference for systems and formalised power structures over loose, informally specified power structures. One can observe that people with liberal views often have tremendous respect for certain types of unstructured authority, in particular, academics.
The book "A Conflict Of Visions" provides an alternative explanation for this apparent discovery that liberals cannot understand conservatives but not vice-versa. Conservatives see disagreement with their world view as naivety, but liberals see disagreement with their world view as the result of an evil or malign nature. The latter view leads to a belief that attempting to understand such a perspective is itself immoral behaviour, as you might be legitimising it, or alternatively, might be tempted to the dark side by mere exposure to the ideas themselves.
This is why you see so much no-platforming and general censorship coming from people with particular world views: they believe that conservative ideas work like some sort of infectious disease. Conservatives don't think that way about liberal views.
Ok, let me tweak my list of additional conservative values then: heightened concern for purity, intolerance of ambiguity and a heightened concern for security.
NOTE: I am not conservative, so take that for what it's worth.
>For instance the apparent love of conservatives for 'respect for authority' is not actually respect for authority (why would they be so against big government if that were the case?)
Because authority is not the only value they hold, it is just one of six values. Overreaching authority will naturally conflict with those other values, particularly liberty. This is also complicated by the fact that libertarians tend to be lumped into the category of conservatives in the US, when libertarians have little in common with conservatives and overwhelmingly base their moral foundations entirely on liberty. Libertarians don't have respect for authority, conservatives do. But if you call libertarians conservatives, that will make things look weird.
>One can observe that people with liberal views often have tremendous respect for certain types of unstructured authority, in particular, academics.
I can not observe that at all. Quite the contrary, I find overwhelmingly that liberals do not respect authority in any form. Academics are not respected by liberals, they are constantly attacked and vilified for publishing facts that liberals don't like. Liberals will point to an academic that agrees with them to bolster their argument, but they don't actually respect academics, as they have nothing but disdain for an academic that disagrees with them. Look at how James Watson has been treated by liberals, I don't see a lot of respect there. If they had respect for academic authority, they would actually consider what is said, instead of assuming the person saying it is evil and calling them evil.
>The book "A Conflict Of Visions" provides an alternative explanation for this apparent discovery
I'm not sure that's an alternative explanation, it seems like the same explanation. Haidt notes the same thing, that liberals view conservatives as evil because the underlying values conservatives hold are not values to liberals. While conservatives see liberals as ignorant or stupid, because they incorrectly assume liberals are using the same underlying values to come to conclusions about issues and so they must be ignorant of some fact or making an error of reasoning.
That doesn't work because liberals are unable to understand and empathize with conservative views. They lack the same fundamental values, and so they are unable to see conservative views as being within a set of values that are different from their own. Instead they see conservative views as being contrary to values, period. Liberals being asked to answer a survey the way they think a conservative would will answer agree/disagree questions like "one of the worst things a person could do is hurt a defenseless animal" with disagree, but actual conservatives say agree. On the other hand, conservatives are able to accurately answer the same survey as a liberal would. Moderates are able to answer accurately as either a liberal or a conservative.
https://theindependentwhig.com/haidt-passages/haidt/conserva...