So I reacted strongly to this title, because I think just about every right-winger would flip the statement and say it's left-wingers who defend the powerful and right-wingers who protect the weak. Now I will prove that with this quiz, which is completely objective and totally fair:
1. I am responsible for my own decisions
2. If I work hard, I should be able to benefit from my hard work.
3. To get ahead in life, sometimes hard work and sacrifices are necessary
4. Some people are just smarter, faster, or more interesting than others.
5. Increased equality of opportunity is beneficial to society
6. If someone else has something I want, I am entitled to take some of it (reverse-scored)
7. It's okay to steal, as long as it's from the correct group (reverse-scored).
8. If I failed at something, it's probably someone else's fault (reverse-scored).
9. The individual is more than just the groups they belong to.
10. All individuals should be given an equal chance in life.
This quiz is
A) politcally aligned
B) if you're being honest, you already know which side.
This *proves* that right wingers are defending the weak, and left wingers are protecting the powerful, right?
Okay, so I was being pithy. But my core disagreement is that your statement is only true *because you're framing the question in a left-wing worldview*. Even talking about groups in this way is already framing the question in a left-wing worldview. Consider #11:
> All groups should be given an equal chance in life. (reverse-scored)
Change 'groups' to 'individuals' and it's suddenly a right-leaning quiz.
I think you *almost* acknowledged this when you talked about the conservative and progressive skirmising over who is representing the strong and who is representing the weak (eg. abortion, guns, hate speech).
The disagreement seems to be about equality of opportunity vs equality of outcome.
Now, both left- and right- believe in both equality-of-opportunity *and* equality-of-outcome, in the general sense.
------------
A socialist father is walking his young son to school.
Son: Daddy, why are you a socialist?
Father: Well let's see. If you had some bread, and you saw someone who was starving, what would you do?
Son: Well I would give him my bread of course!
Father: You mean, you wouldn't tell him that he should get a job? That he probably brought this on to himself?
Son: No, of course not!
Father: Then you are a socialist.
In the evening, the mother is walking the boy home.
Son: Mommy, why are you a capitalist?
Mother: Well let's see. If you saw someone with some bread, do you think you should be able to take their bread?
All questions except 5 and 10 have nothing much to do with the weak versus the strong, whether individual or group. I find 4 particularly confusing, it's obviously true, of course, but I don't see how saying yes to it shows that I, or anyone else who says yes to it, backs the weak. I took it that you're trying to make a list of questions that show support for the weak but that rightwingers would endorse more than leftwingers, but even the ones I supported, I couldn't see how they related to the weak strong dynamic?
5 & 10 do relate to this theme, but will have slightly more leftwingers say yes to them than rightwingers.
"> All groups should be given an equal chance in life. (reverse-scored)"
No, if you change that to, say, people, it's still going to slightly favour the left. We can get some empirical data on this if you like?
One data point: my political views are definitely left-wing, and I scored a perfect 10 on your quiz (whatever it is that the quiz is supposed to be measuring). I suspect that most left-wingers would similarly have high scores. It would be interesting, I guess, to see what a properly conducted survey would show regarding any correlation between quiz score and political leaning.
I recognize the link between some of the statements in the quiz and common centre-right *rhetoric*, but as general principles they are generally unobjectionable to just about everyone, I think. It's just that left-wingers and right-wingers may disagree over the scope and implications of these principles.
One major difference between the left and the right, is the right believes that the weak and strong are a reflection of some underlying genetic, circumstantial and cultural reality. We view it as something that shouldn't be tampered with TOO much, outside of some support for those who are physically not able to work. It's naturalism, and this is why capitalism (real capitalism, not crony-capitalism) is held as the highest ideal for conservatives, because it reflects the types of systems that nature herself produces, where only the competitive and efficient organisms survive.
The poor or middle class man/woman on the right votes for the right not because they view themselves as the strong, but because they accept how the world works instead of trying to change it. For better or worse, it's about dignity and individualism, not money. They think, "if my fate is to be poor, then so be it."
The working class right would vote for the left if the left actually did things that benefited the working and middle class, but they don't. The left (in general) has a great contempt for anyone from rural areas, and this is because they do not like the common men/women in the US. This has always been puzzling to me considering Marx is all about the workers and the common men/women, but the modern left is further than ever from this demographic, and pushing them further away by the day..
I do agree the left and right get things right in different ways, and as such they are both needed. As someone on the right I do try to engage with leftist views sometimes and this is one of the most rational leftist arguments I've read, which admits the theory doesn't always translate in practice, rather than strictly blaming the other side.
"The left (in general) has a great contempt for anyone from rural areas, and this is because they do not like the common men/women in the US." You have been watching too much Fox News or follow the wrong people on ex-Twitter.
Sometimes when I have to talk to rural people, in person, in their homes or just outside as it were, they tell me things. Small talk becomes a rabid hate of, in one example, vaccine mandates. That small talk when not challenged by someone who is clearly on the job and acting with a demeanor of professionalism allows for more, not so small talk. Not so small talk about how someone's spouse for decades has died of a heart attack, caused by a blood clot that has ABSOLUTLY NOTHING TO DO with having a pandemic virus known to cause horrible stringy blood clots... well in the case of this anecdote, it sure got me to back up quickly, after feeling initial disgust that had to be hidden that is.
After leaving and having a chance to look at what this person told me, I have an attack of sympathy as I tried to empathically connect all the times I was duped to the loss of this person's life partner.
I could pay for a weak person to have another chance at life, directly out of my pocket. I could pay in an abstract sense to help a whole class of weakened people via governmental or charitable means. I could at no monetary cost change my internal beliefs, provided my hierarchy of needs allows me this time to even reflect on what's not in front of me.
I just don't see how I could meet this person at a coffee clutch and talk about how birds are a government conspiracy. FFS how could I absolve this person for their role in perpetuating a dangerously sleepy mind virus? After all, we're collectively deciding who drives in this representative democracy, all I can think is "this person wants our leader to be posting on social media while the Tesla autopilot drives all of us off a cliff".
The worst part of it all is that, hey, birds could be a conspiracy, the earth might be flat. Please come up with something that confronts the preponderance of "facts" to the contrary.
I make mistakes, I'm fallible and it's not just my decision who gets put in the driver seat of our collective vehicle. If I'm wrong I want to know it asap if my incorrect assumptions fly in the face of "empirical" data.
Fuck that person and their spouse. Their worthiness is created by their ability to use their time to include "others" and instead make the repeated decision to not. This makes me feel anger and revulsion that they don't even want to think about what might be happening outside of their sphere of experience. Their tiny little circle in the back country is going to be invaded by something they're only told about and have never seen.
It was in fact, by a cleverly disguised person doing their job, filling potholes in their street.
In the meantime I'll hold my contempt close, share it with people I meet who are actually under assault by the culture surrounding them, not the people who are only told that it is so. Let them go back to their sleepy little lives and deal with their first encounter with someone they've been told to otherize, in an environment where inclusion has won the day. People being forced to work alongside each other by circumstance seem to be able to overcome their delusions of difference by having a common goal that is more important. Or they can just die of an easily preventable disease, this is acceptable in my opinion, even if that opinion pushes my own image of self and opinion to the right. People who were enamored with the idea of refusing the vaccine en masse got to experience the horrible deaths of people they actually care about.
Let's see if they learned anything about fire being pretty but not for touching...
Jesus will save us all from the fire anyway. Why should I care about being incorrect about something all of my decisions flow from heuristically when I've already been saved?
In the meantime, while I wait for a better solution than the flowing golden brown locks bouncing on lily white shoulders and strong masculine arms of my savior, driving that golden chariot through the fire to save me and my immortal soul, nobody is gonna come together, or even go anywhere in person while the roads are shit.
That’s okay if you feel contempt. I feel it too, but for different reasons. It’s all too human. I find solace in the fact that each individual is like an experiment of nature, and in any society that could possibly go further than ours, I would suspect that it would always construct two broad camps which hate each other, which inevitably leads to a truth of some sort. It’s as if our beliefs seek to hold us together with others like us, much like how our immune systems attack foreign entities. We may be different, but I fully affirm your right to be different, and it’s my view that our great differences that result in left vs right are caused by the diversity of nature herself, who wants not to put all her eggs in one basket.
Responding to: "stuff we should all see ourselves as entitled to" and "In reality, only very rich people are in any sense really ‘privileged’"
What leftist are doing is placing the boundary between "privileged" and "not-privileged" at a certain level. You say that this level is something 'we should see ourself as entitled to' and it should be at a higher level. What I'm missing is an argument for why it should be at this new proposed level and not somewhere in between yours and theirs. Or for that matter, much lower or not present at all.
I could easily make the argument that none of us are privileged. Consider the 'very rich people' from centuries past that got no internet, no electricity, no plumbing, and just got smallpox and died. Where they very privileged because they were very rich at the time? Didn't they deserve not to die from smallpox?
Well the same thing could be said about todays very rich. They can't travel the stars and when they get certain cancers they die. Don't they deserve to not die from diseases? I think that in a philosophical sense we all deserve more.
Which leaves us with 'privilege', not in the philosophical sense, but as a rhetorical tool. By labeling people with 'privilege', we are attempting to 1) persuade them to redistribute their power more, and 2) foster unity between the non-privileged. It's plausible that your proposed level is the exact optimal level for that endeavor, but I would like to hear some arguments for that.
It seems to all stem from the left’s view of suffering as an inherent bad which is fixable. Christians believe the world is inherently suffering, and that’s why they have the idea of an afterlife without suffering. The left sees the eradication of suffering here in the physical world as the greatest good. The ironic part is that suffering is never going away, although you may shift and mold how that suffering manifests, it will always be there.
P1: A tree's whole existence involves growing taller and broader, as the tree shares nutrients with their cronies in the forest, while simultaneously blocking free access to the sun, disallowing equal distribution of a relatively limitless resources necessary for survival.
P2: Crony capitalism and doing imperialisms are bad.
C: Trees are bad and we should cut them down and eat them to show them who the real king of the jungle is.
The trap that pretty much everyone falls into is to see two opposed camps and to then expect to find some factor that motivates people exclusively toward one camp and away from the other. But the same impetus can motivate people different ways in different contexts.
If a strongly in-group-centered person sees themselves as part of a "weak" group then they are more likely to advocate for the weak. If they are with a "strong" group then they are more likely to advocate for the strong. But have someone who is not very in-group-centered in a strong position and they will tend to be more considerate of the concerns of the weaker out-groups.
That is what the left-right divide really comes down to. How much we tend to prioritise 'us' over 'others' + our actual life experiences and situations. You just have to allow for each camp to be made up of a variety of people with different circumstances.
Bringing Joshi's challenge back into it: Why is one side reliably in favor of the weak, and the other in favor of the strong? It's clear that we don't simply sort ourselves by whether our loved ones are mostly among the weak or among the strong. (e.g. There are millions of poor, tender-hearted old ladies who are solid Republicans; there are millions of highly paid, hardheaded engineers who are solid Democrats.)
"My immediate contention is just that the actually existing right- for whatever reason- prefers the weak over the strong."
I think you meant to type "prefers the strong over the weak".
Thankyou!
Hi Bear.
So I reacted strongly to this title, because I think just about every right-winger would flip the statement and say it's left-wingers who defend the powerful and right-wingers who protect the weak. Now I will prove that with this quiz, which is completely objective and totally fair:
1. I am responsible for my own decisions
2. If I work hard, I should be able to benefit from my hard work.
3. To get ahead in life, sometimes hard work and sacrifices are necessary
4. Some people are just smarter, faster, or more interesting than others.
5. Increased equality of opportunity is beneficial to society
6. If someone else has something I want, I am entitled to take some of it (reverse-scored)
7. It's okay to steal, as long as it's from the correct group (reverse-scored).
8. If I failed at something, it's probably someone else's fault (reverse-scored).
9. The individual is more than just the groups they belong to.
10. All individuals should be given an equal chance in life.
This quiz is
A) politcally aligned
B) if you're being honest, you already know which side.
This *proves* that right wingers are defending the weak, and left wingers are protecting the powerful, right?
Okay, so I was being pithy. But my core disagreement is that your statement is only true *because you're framing the question in a left-wing worldview*. Even talking about groups in this way is already framing the question in a left-wing worldview. Consider #11:
> All groups should be given an equal chance in life. (reverse-scored)
Change 'groups' to 'individuals' and it's suddenly a right-leaning quiz.
I think you *almost* acknowledged this when you talked about the conservative and progressive skirmising over who is representing the strong and who is representing the weak (eg. abortion, guns, hate speech).
The disagreement seems to be about equality of opportunity vs equality of outcome.
Now, both left- and right- believe in both equality-of-opportunity *and* equality-of-outcome, in the general sense.
------------
A socialist father is walking his young son to school.
Son: Daddy, why are you a socialist?
Father: Well let's see. If you had some bread, and you saw someone who was starving, what would you do?
Son: Well I would give him my bread of course!
Father: You mean, you wouldn't tell him that he should get a job? That he probably brought this on to himself?
Son: No, of course not!
Father: Then you are a socialist.
In the evening, the mother is walking the boy home.
Son: Mommy, why are you a capitalist?
Mother: Well let's see. If you saw someone with some bread, do you think you should be able to take their bread?
Son: No! Of course not!
Mother: Even if you really wanted it?
Son No!
Mother: Then you are a capitalist.
All questions except 5 and 10 have nothing much to do with the weak versus the strong, whether individual or group. I find 4 particularly confusing, it's obviously true, of course, but I don't see how saying yes to it shows that I, or anyone else who says yes to it, backs the weak. I took it that you're trying to make a list of questions that show support for the weak but that rightwingers would endorse more than leftwingers, but even the ones I supported, I couldn't see how they related to the weak strong dynamic?
5 & 10 do relate to this theme, but will have slightly more leftwingers say yes to them than rightwingers.
"> All groups should be given an equal chance in life. (reverse-scored)"
No, if you change that to, say, people, it's still going to slightly favour the left. We can get some empirical data on this if you like?
One data point: my political views are definitely left-wing, and I scored a perfect 10 on your quiz (whatever it is that the quiz is supposed to be measuring). I suspect that most left-wingers would similarly have high scores. It would be interesting, I guess, to see what a properly conducted survey would show regarding any correlation between quiz score and political leaning.
I recognize the link between some of the statements in the quiz and common centre-right *rhetoric*, but as general principles they are generally unobjectionable to just about everyone, I think. It's just that left-wingers and right-wingers may disagree over the scope and implications of these principles.
One major difference between the left and the right, is the right believes that the weak and strong are a reflection of some underlying genetic, circumstantial and cultural reality. We view it as something that shouldn't be tampered with TOO much, outside of some support for those who are physically not able to work. It's naturalism, and this is why capitalism (real capitalism, not crony-capitalism) is held as the highest ideal for conservatives, because it reflects the types of systems that nature herself produces, where only the competitive and efficient organisms survive.
The poor or middle class man/woman on the right votes for the right not because they view themselves as the strong, but because they accept how the world works instead of trying to change it. For better or worse, it's about dignity and individualism, not money. They think, "if my fate is to be poor, then so be it."
The working class right would vote for the left if the left actually did things that benefited the working and middle class, but they don't. The left (in general) has a great contempt for anyone from rural areas, and this is because they do not like the common men/women in the US. This has always been puzzling to me considering Marx is all about the workers and the common men/women, but the modern left is further than ever from this demographic, and pushing them further away by the day..
I do agree the left and right get things right in different ways, and as such they are both needed. As someone on the right I do try to engage with leftist views sometimes and this is one of the most rational leftist arguments I've read, which admits the theory doesn't always translate in practice, rather than strictly blaming the other side.
"The left (in general) has a great contempt for anyone from rural areas, and this is because they do not like the common men/women in the US." You have been watching too much Fox News or follow the wrong people on ex-Twitter.
I don't watch Fox News. It's an observation which is confirmed by the opposite, of engaging with left wing media and people.
Sometimes when I have to talk to rural people, in person, in their homes or just outside as it were, they tell me things. Small talk becomes a rabid hate of, in one example, vaccine mandates. That small talk when not challenged by someone who is clearly on the job and acting with a demeanor of professionalism allows for more, not so small talk. Not so small talk about how someone's spouse for decades has died of a heart attack, caused by a blood clot that has ABSOLUTLY NOTHING TO DO with having a pandemic virus known to cause horrible stringy blood clots... well in the case of this anecdote, it sure got me to back up quickly, after feeling initial disgust that had to be hidden that is.
After leaving and having a chance to look at what this person told me, I have an attack of sympathy as I tried to empathically connect all the times I was duped to the loss of this person's life partner.
I could pay for a weak person to have another chance at life, directly out of my pocket. I could pay in an abstract sense to help a whole class of weakened people via governmental or charitable means. I could at no monetary cost change my internal beliefs, provided my hierarchy of needs allows me this time to even reflect on what's not in front of me.
I just don't see how I could meet this person at a coffee clutch and talk about how birds are a government conspiracy. FFS how could I absolve this person for their role in perpetuating a dangerously sleepy mind virus? After all, we're collectively deciding who drives in this representative democracy, all I can think is "this person wants our leader to be posting on social media while the Tesla autopilot drives all of us off a cliff".
The worst part of it all is that, hey, birds could be a conspiracy, the earth might be flat. Please come up with something that confronts the preponderance of "facts" to the contrary.
I make mistakes, I'm fallible and it's not just my decision who gets put in the driver seat of our collective vehicle. If I'm wrong I want to know it asap if my incorrect assumptions fly in the face of "empirical" data.
Fuck that person and their spouse. Their worthiness is created by their ability to use their time to include "others" and instead make the repeated decision to not. This makes me feel anger and revulsion that they don't even want to think about what might be happening outside of their sphere of experience. Their tiny little circle in the back country is going to be invaded by something they're only told about and have never seen.
It was in fact, by a cleverly disguised person doing their job, filling potholes in their street.
In the meantime I'll hold my contempt close, share it with people I meet who are actually under assault by the culture surrounding them, not the people who are only told that it is so. Let them go back to their sleepy little lives and deal with their first encounter with someone they've been told to otherize, in an environment where inclusion has won the day. People being forced to work alongside each other by circumstance seem to be able to overcome their delusions of difference by having a common goal that is more important. Or they can just die of an easily preventable disease, this is acceptable in my opinion, even if that opinion pushes my own image of self and opinion to the right. People who were enamored with the idea of refusing the vaccine en masse got to experience the horrible deaths of people they actually care about.
Let's see if they learned anything about fire being pretty but not for touching...
Jesus will save us all from the fire anyway. Why should I care about being incorrect about something all of my decisions flow from heuristically when I've already been saved?
In the meantime, while I wait for a better solution than the flowing golden brown locks bouncing on lily white shoulders and strong masculine arms of my savior, driving that golden chariot through the fire to save me and my immortal soul, nobody is gonna come together, or even go anywhere in person while the roads are shit.
That’s okay if you feel contempt. I feel it too, but for different reasons. It’s all too human. I find solace in the fact that each individual is like an experiment of nature, and in any society that could possibly go further than ours, I would suspect that it would always construct two broad camps which hate each other, which inevitably leads to a truth of some sort. It’s as if our beliefs seek to hold us together with others like us, much like how our immune systems attack foreign entities. We may be different, but I fully affirm your right to be different, and it’s my view that our great differences that result in left vs right are caused by the diversity of nature herself, who wants not to put all her eggs in one basket.
Responding to: "stuff we should all see ourselves as entitled to" and "In reality, only very rich people are in any sense really ‘privileged’"
What leftist are doing is placing the boundary between "privileged" and "not-privileged" at a certain level. You say that this level is something 'we should see ourself as entitled to' and it should be at a higher level. What I'm missing is an argument for why it should be at this new proposed level and not somewhere in between yours and theirs. Or for that matter, much lower or not present at all.
I could easily make the argument that none of us are privileged. Consider the 'very rich people' from centuries past that got no internet, no electricity, no plumbing, and just got smallpox and died. Where they very privileged because they were very rich at the time? Didn't they deserve not to die from smallpox?
Well the same thing could be said about todays very rich. They can't travel the stars and when they get certain cancers they die. Don't they deserve to not die from diseases? I think that in a philosophical sense we all deserve more.
Which leaves us with 'privilege', not in the philosophical sense, but as a rhetorical tool. By labeling people with 'privilege', we are attempting to 1) persuade them to redistribute their power more, and 2) foster unity between the non-privileged. It's plausible that your proposed level is the exact optimal level for that endeavor, but I would like to hear some arguments for that.
edit: a word
It seems to all stem from the left’s view of suffering as an inherent bad which is fixable. Christians believe the world is inherently suffering, and that’s why they have the idea of an afterlife without suffering. The left sees the eradication of suffering here in the physical world as the greatest good. The ironic part is that suffering is never going away, although you may shift and mold how that suffering manifests, it will always be there.
P1: A tree's whole existence involves growing taller and broader, as the tree shares nutrients with their cronies in the forest, while simultaneously blocking free access to the sun, disallowing equal distribution of a relatively limitless resources necessary for survival.
P2: Crony capitalism and doing imperialisms are bad.
C: Trees are bad and we should cut them down and eat them to show them who the real king of the jungle is.
The trap that pretty much everyone falls into is to see two opposed camps and to then expect to find some factor that motivates people exclusively toward one camp and away from the other. But the same impetus can motivate people different ways in different contexts.
If a strongly in-group-centered person sees themselves as part of a "weak" group then they are more likely to advocate for the weak. If they are with a "strong" group then they are more likely to advocate for the strong. But have someone who is not very in-group-centered in a strong position and they will tend to be more considerate of the concerns of the weaker out-groups.
That is what the left-right divide really comes down to. How much we tend to prioritise 'us' over 'others' + our actual life experiences and situations. You just have to allow for each camp to be made up of a variety of people with different circumstances.
It's that both sides are wrong, but the left is less wrong.
Bringing Joshi's challenge back into it: Why is one side reliably in favor of the weak, and the other in favor of the strong? It's clear that we don't simply sort ourselves by whether our loved ones are mostly among the weak or among the strong. (e.g. There are millions of poor, tender-hearted old ladies who are solid Republicans; there are millions of highly paid, hardheaded engineers who are solid Democrats.)