greater then 75% of these discussions are about morality, not measurables. Take tax cuts - for 40 years conservatives have told us that if we cut top tier income and capitol gains taxes, we will grow the economy by X percent which will overcome the cuts and make everyone's lives better. Not once has that happened. Not once. But COnservatives continue to moralize on how over burdening out tax code is to the REAL drivers of the economy - which they almost never acknowledge to be the middle class whose taxes are mostly NOT cut. Since they choose to ignore the numbers, we have to engage in the morality play.
most of the time I don't think conservatives are arguing about the thing they believe in. Take the CRT kerfuffle. CRT is about systems that create racist outcomes, not about whether an individual white person is a racist. Yet much of the school board level rhetoric being deployed by the Right focuses on how kids are allegedly being made to feel when grappling with difficult racial history (e.g. the self loathing comment made by the mother in Loudan County, VA). What that woman has a problem with is that her little girl is being confronted with uncomfortable history and she - the mom - doesn't want her to be. The only relationship that has to CRT (which is a demonstrable thing with scholarship to back it up) is that both of things are trying address the racist past and institutions of the US. What conservatives appear to want is that we don't do that publicly, particularly in educational settings. But they aren't arguing that openly.
So, Conservatives argue X about teaching our racial history to our children, when their real compliant is about Q. Liberals call them out about Q - because that's the real issue - and get pilloried because Conservatives want to argue about X.
The failure to demonstrate understanding is a roadblock.
I find the bigger roadblock to be that when I explain a persons position back to them, they refuse to believe I "understand it" if I don't use their words back to them.
The only thing I’d add to it is the tendency to describe the other’s motivation for his position.
Part of my original point is that conservatives seem to believe they have the moral high ground in everything, regardless of demonstrated outcome or even language chosen for the argument. Because of this, conservatives are dismissive of liberals motivations as a condition of the engagement. Call me nuts but that is a big roadblock.
I engage with you and other conservatives here all the time - and you repeatedly tell me I don't, in fact, understand conservatives nearly as well as conservatives understand me (as a liberal).
On “Jonathan Haidt And The Preening About A Lack of Understanding”
greater then 75% of these discussions are about morality, not measurables. Take tax cuts - for 40 years conservatives have told us that if we cut top tier income and capitol gains taxes, we will grow the economy by X percent which will overcome the cuts and make everyone's lives better. Not once has that happened. Not once. But COnservatives continue to moralize on how over burdening out tax code is to the REAL drivers of the economy - which they almost never acknowledge to be the middle class whose taxes are mostly NOT cut. Since they choose to ignore the numbers, we have to engage in the morality play.
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most of the time I don't think conservatives are arguing about the thing they believe in. Take the CRT kerfuffle. CRT is about systems that create racist outcomes, not about whether an individual white person is a racist. Yet much of the school board level rhetoric being deployed by the Right focuses on how kids are allegedly being made to feel when grappling with difficult racial history (e.g. the self loathing comment made by the mother in Loudan County, VA). What that woman has a problem with is that her little girl is being confronted with uncomfortable history and she - the mom - doesn't want her to be. The only relationship that has to CRT (which is a demonstrable thing with scholarship to back it up) is that both of things are trying address the racist past and institutions of the US. What conservatives appear to want is that we don't do that publicly, particularly in educational settings. But they aren't arguing that openly.
So, Conservatives argue X about teaching our racial history to our children, when their real compliant is about Q. Liberals call them out about Q - because that's the real issue - and get pilloried because Conservatives want to argue about X.
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You first.
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I think you'll find you make that point to me regularly when I engage with you and your ideas and reach a different conclusion then you do.
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I find the bigger roadblock to be that when I explain a persons position back to them, they refuse to believe I "understand it" if I don't use their words back to them.
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Part of my original point is that conservatives seem to believe they have the moral high ground in everything, regardless of demonstrated outcome or even language chosen for the argument. Because of this, conservatives are dismissive of liberals motivations as a condition of the engagement. Call me nuts but that is a big roadblock.
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well when you do actually mean Y but stick stubbornly to having to have it sound like X . . . yeah it gets frustrating.
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Bingo.
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I engage with you and other conservatives here all the time - and you repeatedly tell me I don't, in fact, understand conservatives nearly as well as conservatives understand me (as a liberal).