Why do those on the right look down on so many voters?

first off, I take that as a starting off point.

Secondly, umm.... you disagree with my assumption that you are Thai because you referenced Thailand's problems.

Thirdly.... nada.

I did make an argument against trusting my fellow human beings, but you seem to have skipped over that part and focused on the inconsequential.

Maybe I'm not making much sense since I referenced a few people who weren't entirely a positive when it comes to the human race, and entire countries of people who just let themselves be killed?

What sort of value do you see in your fellow man?

 

Well, now that you put it that way, I'll answer your question.

The value I see in my fellow man is their ability with enough time and gentle encouragement, to listen to good ideas, get educated and change for the better. Although humans are capable of doing the most evil of things, we are also capable of changing for the better. I believe all humans have the same desires to live a better life and hence are open to listening to good ideas and solutions.

Every country has it's own political and cultural circumstances. It's 100% an accident where you are born and I promise you that you would not know better if you were born in another country the solution to its problems than anyone else there.

When it comes to fellow voters, it can be very frustrating, but with enough patience I believe they can see things my way or vice versa and I could see the error of my ways.

 

How much more patience should those who were killed in shallow graves in the killing fields of cambodia endured? How about those who were forced to work to death in the salt mines of Siberia under the brutal dictatorship of Stalin? How about those who were tortured by Mao Zedong? The ones who are starving in Venezuela now....

How much more caring should we have for our fellow man before figuring out that there are certain ideas that inevitably lead to a whole lot of dead bodies, and precious little in the way of the milk of human kindness?

Your fellow man is too boneheaded stupid to trust, so we will simply have to keep killing each other until your idea proves correct.

We aren't at that point yet.

 

Most of those bad ideas have been swept away. China is no longer communist in the economic sense. Most no longer want to return to communism in Russia. The price was high, but mankind has learned.

And by the way, the bad ideas you mentioned were introduced through the barrel of a gun and not through popular vote. There are exceptions like Nazi Germany, but Germans have learned that lesson and don't want to go back to that.

There is also the idea of bad systems being replaced by worse systems or vice versa. Cuba: Batista to Castro. I'll go with Castro any day. Iran: US puppet Shah to Islamic Republic. I'll go with Islamic Republic.

 

Everyone alway says they have learned the lessons, but no one ever has.

It is the nature of one man to try and rule over another.
And it is the nature of another man not to allow him.

Which of these two ideas is the bad one?

 

I think it works like this: over the long term the human species is getting better -- more intelligent, more educated, less superstitious, more humane. A liberal academic, Steven Pinker, has been making this case in various books over the last few years. And there are others as well: see Homo Deus by Yuval Harari and Robert Wright's NonZero -- the Logic of Human Destiny. For a quick look at the statistics, go to HumanProgress.org.

But in the short run, where we all live, there are many many examples of the opposite.

People tend to act -- by voting or fighting -- for what they see as their own interests. This is just biology. But ... these perceived interests may conflict with yours. You want to teach one thing about evolution in the schools, they want to teach another. Since your view is obviously the right one, they must be stupid, or evil. (Conservatives see Liberals as stupid (ie naive), Liberals see Conservatives as evil. This applies to the intelligentsia on both sides. They see each other's voting bases as stupid and maybe also evil: ghetto welfare-recipients, redneck racists, etc.)

So what you think about 'the majority' at any given time depends on the outcome of the last election. When Reagan won elections, or GW Bush did in 2004, conservatives congratulated themselves on the good sense of the American people. When Clinton won, or Obama, liberals did. The last election was so close, in terms of the popular vote, that both narratives were plausible.

Historically, the Left has been the most optimistic about the masses: surely they would see that their own interests involved doing away with capitalism. When this didn't happen, they blamed the media, the education system, etc. When Leftist regimes managed to win power, the Left justified the subsequent lack of free elections in these countries by the residual power that capitalists, perhaps financed from abroad, would exercise. They still do this today, to justify the Cuban and Venezuelan regimes.

Interestingly, liberals in Europe -- as opposed to the socialist left -- by no means endorsed universal suffrage, which they saw as a threat to the liberal order, for the same reason that the socialist left supported it: surely, when the masses could vote, they would vote for an 'equal division of property' and destroy the liberal order. It took a long struggle to convince British Conservatives, for example, that they could win significant votes from among skilled workingmen.

The Right, of course, argues the opposite, in the cases of countries governed by Marxists: let there be free elections there! (When free elections put anti-imperialists or Leftists in power, the Right tended to change its tune: thus few on the Right complained about the overthrow of Mossadegh in Iran or Allende in Chile or Arbenz in Guatemala, all of them democratically-elected governments which got in the way of US interests).

At the moment, in the US, the Left has reason to be optimistic, and the Right, pessimistic. Partly, this is due to the advance of 'social justice liberalism' among the upcoming educated generation, who are also abandoning the traditional belief in free speech that used to be an article of faith among this group, and partly due to demographic changes, neither of which can be reversed. But it's also partly due to the obnoxious repulsiveness of Donald Trump, who drives a significant section of the 'center' towards the Democrats.

In Europe, both sides have reason to be optimistic: neo-liberal austerity has created significant discontent in many European countries with a consequent upsurge in support for the Left. At the same time, the prospect of effectively unlimited mass Third World immigration into their countries has alarmed many indigenous Europeans, who have provided significant support for 'populist' Rightwing parties.

This struggle remains to be resolved in Western Europe although the Right has triumphed pretty decisively in Eastern Europe, among peoples who have only recently won back control of their own nations and do not wish to see it lost again.

 

Many voters are idiots.

 

And short.

 

Remember Biden's "back in chains" comments? https://www.cbsnews.com/news/biden-...nce-gop-ticket-would-put-them-back-in-chains/

The left has been making derogatory comments about the right for sometime. Do I approve.....no, language like this is why people are becoming unwilling to "cross the isle" and increasingly divide people.

 

First, Romney was correct in his 47% comment. As for calling names, Democrats are the world champions. Republicans have been called hillbillies, garbage people, racist, misogynist, Islamophobic, homophobic, cultish, etc. with the topper "deplorable". And the use of the term "deplorable" was NOT isolated. It was uttered by a PRESIDENTIAL candidate who would be president of the deplorables had she won, so do NOT make light of it. It was gleefully picked up by her sheep. It seems now there is a name a day with the latest being "cult." But we don't care. We just laugh.

 

Thank you. It's called communicating. Which is lacking in many conversations and debates.

It's easier to just name the greatest country in the world, one that is not a liberal/socialist country.

 

If income correlates with intelligence, otherwise none I've seen. LW goes on and on about "more educated" voting Democrat. However, this is bogus due to teachers, other gov-edu, and bureaucrats receiving more pay the more degrees in whatever from wherever they have, and conflates possession of an actual education with accumulating more and more raw gov-edu product. Who is smarter, a BA from MIT? or someone with 3 Ph.Ds in various social sciences from correspondence schools or local junior colleges? I'll take the MIT grad every time in a raw brainpower contest.

The two lower income quintiles vote overwhelmingly Democrat. GOP wins the next two quintiles up (middle and up taxpayers) and ties on the top quintile that includes professionals, successful entrepreneurs/snall business owners, and most of the "Complex" I go on and on about on the forum.

 

Whoa ... the Islamic Republic had, and maybe has, majority support, but in terms of advancing liberal values, the Shah was the winner ... his regime would almost certainly have liberalized over time, at a far less price in blood. Democracy does not always equal liberal democracy.

And Nazi Germany was not an exception to the gun-not-vote route to power of totalitarians. It seems to be a very popular meme -- "Hitler was democratically elected" -- but it's not true, and is probably due to anti-German prejudice.

In the last free vote the Germans had, in the autumn of 1932, the Nazis got about 32% of the vote, down by five percent from the Spring, whereas the Communists and Socialists together got about 37%. The Nazis got into power due to the Weimar Constitution which allowed the President (a near-senile Hindenburg, conservative/reactionary but not Nazi) to give the Prime Ministership ('Chancellor') to the Party with the largest Plurality in the Reichstag. So Hitler was legally appointed, but not democratically elected.

Due to the insane sectarianism of the German Communist Party, on orders from Moscow, the Left and Center-Left could not agree on a candidate for Chancellor who would have majority support in Parliament, and, perhaps more importantly did not unite their two formidable fighting street-organizations against the Nazi SA. In fact the Communists even co operated in certain situations with the Nazis -- see the 'Red Referendum' to oust the Socialists from power in Prussia, where the Nazis had been growing rapidly, in 1931.

 

The Fascists weren't with the Communists.
The National Socialists teamed up with the Social Democrats.

The top voting winning parties, unable to get a parliamentary majority in their own right, formed a coalition government.
They were directly democratically elected.

Hitler was first elected to parliament and then appointed a cabinet position "Chancellor" through due democratic process.
As leader of the second largest party in parliament, he was appointed the second biggest job in cabinet.

Yes, he was "legally appointed". Legally appointed through due democratic process.

No guns were used.

 

It's a very dangerous argument for anyone on the Left to argue that the mean IQ or educational level of voters is a kind of proxy for the wisdom of their voting choices.

For most of the past 200 years, and in most of the world, the Right has commanded the support of the middle class on up (including land-owning peasants), and the Left has commanded the support of the industrial working class and poor peasants. (It's obviously more complicated than this but it's a valid generalization.) And educational level has correlated closely with class position. (The Nazis, for example, were far stronger on German university campuses than the Socialists or Communists were, vice versa for the docks and coal mines.)

It's only very recently, and mainly in the US, that the college-educated middle class, for social, not economic, reasons, has aligned to a significant degree with the Left. It's a kind of inversion of Thomas Franks' argument about What's the Matter With Kansas?

As for the differences in mean Black/White IQ: please look at this article. Whatever your beliefs, it will provide you with food for thought, always something to our advantage.

 

People lose patience with a dictator when the repression intensifies and standards of living drop. So liberalization cannot come soon enough. There was also the coup in the 1950's so the 1979 revolution was the backlash. I should also point out that just across the water is Saudi Arabia which is much more repressive.

 

Saying Romney was correct confirms to me what I think you do: look down on the millions of people. As for Clinton, many of us on the progressive side of politics do not feel she represents us (You know, Bernie Sanders).

 

In the UK the right has rural poor and the left has urban poor.

The political divide is not rich and poor at all.
It is the self reliant and the socially dependent.

 

If you don't live in the U.S., you, probably, get your impression of us from CNN. Therein lies a problem.

 

This is what I will never get about the progressive left. This meme they create that calls out the conservative population as elitist. It is as if those who claim this just never ever look at the world except through the lens of the propaganda they consume. Conservatism, by nature both respects, and values the right of all the people to have both opinions, and opportunity. And yet, it is always the left, the social progressives who demand instead of respect. To me, that is enormously pejorative of them, and it, to me, provides a clearly elitist view of why they feel that only their plantation theory of life must be the what the rest of us live under.

I would suggest that the thing greenleft seems to chafe at is being actually called on their own inherent elitist paternalism. Reference the Romney reference above. Pointing out that almost half of the population enjoy a benefit that the rest of us do not, and then whining about mentioning it, seems to undercut the veracity and demonstrates the ingenuous nature of the posts.

 

Yes, as I said, Hindenburg appointed Hitler Chancellor, all very legal. Chancellor is 'Prime Minister', the first position in the cabinet, not the second. (Angela Merkel is Chancellor today.)

But the Nazi consolidation of power would have been impossible without his private army of the Sturmabteilung. (SA).


I don't at all understand what you mean by saying the Nazis 'teamed up' with the Socialists. They certainly did not form a coalition government with them! I think you must mean something different ... could you explain?

 

My favorite 'elitist' quote comes from Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic Presidential candidate in 1952 and 1956. He was the original model for the term 'egghead'. We loved him for his obvious good intelligence, as compared to the genial but not obviously-very-bright Eisenhower. But once he slipped up and said something a democratic politician really shouldn't say (assuming he said it):

After one of his typically very intelligent speeches, a woman rushed up to him, and gushed, "Oh, Governor Stevenson, that was a brilliant speech. I'm sure every thinking American will vote for you!"

And he replied, "Yes, ma'am, .... but I need a majority!"

 

Why does the DNC have super delegates? Because they think the electorate is too dumb to be given that responsibility. Hillary won the nomination before the first ballot was ever cast.
Why did Hillary look down her whiskey besotted nose and call the entire Republican party deplorable?
Why did Democrats invent "affirmative action"? Because you look down your noses and minorities and think they're all stupid.

 

The Nazi's were socialists.
They formed a unity government, (a coalition), in 1933 with the Social Democrats; Hindenburgs "conservative" party, who were not socialists, they were democrats.

The top job was President. Chancellor was the number two job.
There is no President today.
I assume that part of the constitution was democratically changed by referendum under Hitler. When the people made him dictator.

In France for example, you have a president and a prime minister.
President is the top job. Prime minister the number two.

 

My college biology book from the 70's has a section on this and alleges the opposite, which doesn't make you wrong. But when I read 19th century literature and read 19th century high school exams, I definitely feel we are regressing. Another indicator is the letters home from GI's in Europe and the Pacific in ww2, which betray a better command of English than that of high school grads of today. These guys were mechanics and farmers.

Even out college, students sound retarded when interviewed on campus and on spring break. "Who was the President during WW2?"

"Uh ... Lincoln, right? No, wait .... Obama?"