I agree with a lot of this, so why am I a Democrat?
1. I think the government is bad at lots of stuff and may be getting worse, but it is good at collecting taxes and writing checks. I genuinely mean that. The IRS collects ~$200 for every $1 it spends, way better than any charity (because it can throw you in prison). Programs like Soc Sec and Medicare have very low overhead. I think that taxing people to make sure that all old people get $2k a month so they don't starve is a net utility positive, even if it modestly reduces GDP. Security matters a lot to people. The whole "a dollar raises the utility of a poor person more than a rich person" justifies some redistributionist policies. Finally, government funded scientific research (essentially another form of check-writing) does a lot of good and no one has really come up with a plausible mechanism by which the private sector would fund unpatentable basic discoveries.
2. Most culture war issues don't matter that much, but access to abortion matters a lot to peoples' lives and unlike almost everything else, depends predictably on who controls government.
3. I think global warming is a serious issue that needs to be addressed. I think our best hope of solving it is innovation, largely in the private sector, in batteries and nuclear energy. I'm not 100% sure Democrats are the better party for this happening. But I'm noticing Democrats smartening up on stuff like nuclear/permitting reform etc. and government incentivization of green energy breakthroughs may still be important (and will only come from Democrats).
If you are not a utilitarian (1) or think abortion is murder (2) then you can totally disagree with me. But from my ethical beliefs, here's where I land.
Those are good reasons to be a Democrat, except for social security. I can think of few things more perverse than taking people’s money when they’re young and might invest it in children and future generations and giving it to them when they’re old and it’s mostly useless. The elderly are the wealthiest demographic! Redistributing based on poverty, I can see the case for that, but doing it based on age is wrong.
I would add to the OP above that at this point the only people who are actually pro-market and pro-competition, as opposed to pro-kleptocracy, pro-rent seeking, pro-regulatory capture, pro-public purse is my personal plaything, are the neoliberals on the Democratic side.
The GOP cut some excess verbiage from the federal code last time around, yay.
Did they fundamentally fix anything? OSHA's impossible-to-comply-fully-by-design construction site safety provisions? NEPA's 4-years-of-review-to-replace-a-fucking-box-culvert rules on environmental impact statements? The endless public hearings accompanying any infrastructure project anywhere in the US? Local zoning laws? Occupational licensing? Did they enforce competition and anti-trust law? Did they try to streamline procurement regulations to make public-sector RFPs accessible to more and smaller firms?
No? None of it, and nothing else besides?
Right. Because they don't actually believe in competition or markets. The working class masses voting GOP want a vague promise of a decent living for working their asses off and the right to be left the fuck alone on a bunch of cultural issues. The kleptocrats at the top are *perfectly fine with* the completely captured, overly wide-ranging, bureaucratic, legalistic, anti-competitive, downright stifling nature of the government's regulatory apparatus and highly-concentrated structure of the economy as they stand, and will continue to make them worse whenever it lines the pockets of a narrow shareholder/donor class, who increasingly make up the lion's share of Republican politicians (and, in fairness, Democratic) directly as well.
Arguments over income transfers are largely a distraction from discussions of rampant monopoly power, revolving doors between the retirees from the permanent bureaucracy and the industries it's supposed to keep an eye on, and the complete inability of our state to actually build infrastructure or manage programs that are utterly essential to our security and well-being, from railways to 5th generation fighter jets.
You said it better than I managed to. Republicans are only “free-market” so long as it serves the interest of keeping them in power. Where they do have power, they use it to cut taxes and maintain the socioeconomic hierarchy.
Oh, you are free market? Which party imposes and upholds more blue laws? Who is overreaching into healthcare and prevent doctors from saving lives?
It’s funny because I agree with Richard on most of this post - just not the final conclusion
I don’t actually think any of that has to do with free markets.
They’re bad on all of it… it’s just that they’re not good on markets either, despite Richard simply handwaving that they are and arguing on that basis.
It's clear that overall, Republicans favor fewer regulations. Trump supports all the things you mentioned, and is obviously no libertarian, but yet he cut regulations while Obama and Biden added thousands of pages.
Only an idiot would trust the results of the 2020 election. The CIA and FBI clearly influenced the election and were in the pockets of the Democrats. Biden received more votes than any other Presidential candidates but had NO coattails. They didn't have time to fill out the rest of the ballot.
The CIA and FBI clearly influenced the 2020 election. t51 agents lied. Whitmer would have never happened without the FBI. You're deluded to expect people to trust the results. Nobody should accept the results of an election with the CIA involved. Why were they in Brazil prior to their election?
Teenagers are a tricky case since they aren't old enough to fully consent to stuff, but technically it is anti-free market since if someone is offering the hormones and surgery, under a free market the kids should be able to buy that if they can afford it.
Now if you're going to argue there are reasons the free market should be restricted, you could find people on the left and right who would agree with you, though perhaps not for the same reasons...
And in a truly "free" market, there might also be a "market" for things like child prostitutes, yet we as a society seem to have decided that is off-limits, for some unknown reason. What is wrong with us, why aren't we more free market when it comes to what the "market" may want to do with our children? Clearly we need to stop being so anti-market.
Have you ever investigated what life was like in this country before social security? There is a reason it was created, and all of us, most definitely including the wealthy, would miss it terribly if it ever goes.
The case for taxing young working people in income and employment to redistribute to middle class homeowners is about as sound as banning apartments so middle class homeowners get larger property values. If you're sincerely YIMBY, you simply cannot be in favor of the Democratic party position on this. It's a redistribution between the same groups of people as artificial housing scarcity in booming metro areas.
It's also worth considering that we were incredibly close to just having a universal flat pension until FDR deliberately killed it for reasons to do with Southern Democrats. The myth that Roosevelt did the payroll tax design to make it more politically sustainable isn't reconcilable with our information on public opinion then or now.
Yeah, but they WOULD NOT have invested it! They would have spent it! If they were any good at negotiating the economy and planning for the future, they wouldn't be in a situation where they need social security in old age!
So, yes, we could recast SS as an anti-poverty program, but the social barrier to this is immense. People with some means almost always don't want their money to go to people of less means, period. But SS can be sold as a program for everyone, even if it is effectively anti-poverty. This is why it retains high popular support, whereas "welfare" does not.
Except they don’t, because they don’t understand why it’s good for them. You may object to this kind of hand-holding, but this fact of the matter is that most people are too stupid to act in their own self interest unless they are forced to by the state.
My comment was a very specific rebuttal to “ Of course, government took their money they could’ve invested when they were young and gotten compound returns on.”
*Some* people are too stupid to live, and letting them just be stupid makes society worse for everyone, unfortunately. There can still be juciy incentives for being a net positive contributor.
All welfare systems tend toward either becoming prohibitively expensive over time, particularly in the face of demographic issues, or toward tyranny as the regulators attempt to track down every dollar they can, AKA Means testing.
A society simply cannot tax yesterday's dollars to pay out higher sums in the future. It always devolves into a ponzi.
It would be whatever welfare currently is. Until politicians change welfare.
Asking for irrelevant details seems like deflection.
If you want welfare - we already have it. So we don't need SS and the massive waste and cost it imposes on the 70% of the population who could retire with far more money if SS didn't exist.
Hard disagree on (3). Climate mania is a far greater threat to civilization than global warming. For most of us, natural disasters have minimal impact on our lives, so even if their frequency increased significantly, it would still be quite managable for society to deal with: yet our first baby steps into "decarbonization" and other things pushed by the green movement, like banning chemical fertilizer, have already contributed to a global energy crisis, high gas prices, the destruction of Sri Lanka, etc (see Michael Shellenberger's substack). And I am skeptical natural disasters will increase significantly: I think these claims are much more tenuous than the science of rising temperatures. I actually think the fact that Republicans aren't beholden to climate activists makes them the indisputably superior party, trumping all other issues. Energy is, after all, fundamental to everything else.
This is another angle by which the climate scam is nonsensical (there are many, of course): It is unfalsifiable. The only way that it could maybe in theory be falsified is with data from 100 years in the future, since the claim is that we must act now in order to prevent ourselves from being destroyed by the climate somehow 100 years from now.
And even if, in 100 years people could somehow measure worldwide incident of "extreme weather" or whatever and decide that the weather apocalypse was averted, climate activists would merely take this as evidence that their activism worked, and thus it must continue indefinitely so as to always guard against any future threat of "climate denial."
I forgot that energy is an existential issue for me, since it is directly tied to food production. GOP is, like you say, indisputably superior. Does the OP seriously think Democrats are better on any issue involving something actually getting built that counts on serious people who can be fired for incompetence?
I work in a research field that is commonly cited as an area where government funding is super necessary (if one proposed cutting research funding to my field - which I do - even conservatives would call one heartless), and I've honestly come to believe that most government funded academic/institutional research in my field is a predictable waste. The grant allotment system has little relationship with utility, >99% of research will be read by no more than a few people and probably no one who could use it to practically help people; the structure of institutions channels most young talent toward wasting their time trying to make useless novel discoveries or methods to advance their careers. The most cutting edge research that's revolutionizing the field is increasingly being done by the private sector, like big tech companies (and it's not even a field they specialize in). So at least in my field, I'm increasingly doubtful government funding would actually pass cost benefit analysis. One could take all the money, halve it, and announce that it'll be paid out to what or whoever makes such and such defined innovation and imo accomplish better results than throwing the money at universities and institution.
I too make my living on the government grant teat and the NSF (Engineering Professor at big State school). I agree, 99% of science funding is pure waste. Almost any system would be better. The most successful faculty today are good salesmen and terrible scientists.
I wonder how much this is just an extension of the spoils system. That is, is it less about actually spurring innovation, and more about ensuring academia remains a client class of the Democratic party?
"but it is good at collecting taxes and writing checks. "
I believe this is the essence of why many people vote for Democrats. They don't trust that people will generally do the right thing for their neighbors. So Democrats want to make sure that the money is spent, and that leftist goals are paid for by others, and so Democrats don't really care about the morality of the coercive aspect of treating people that way (which this post even celebrates).
Political choices are generally about value weighting. Democrats, like most socialists, put very little weight on freedom, and happily tolerate very high levels of state force.
It helps in this calculus of trade-offs, that leftist causes are obviously always unquestionably just and perfect, of course...
The way I have been looking at it lately is to view myself as a very small country in the Balkans in WW2 and say "would I rather be occupied by the Germans or the Italians, since independence is not in the cards?". I picked those two for my metaphor (rather than the harder choice between the Germans and the Soviets) because there were much easier A to B comparisons available - e.g. half of Crete was occupied by the Italians and half by the Germans.
Thank you for a largely sensible perspective. In a "liberal democracy," especially our winner-take-all version, voting for the least bad option is what you're stuck with. Trying to be an "enlightened centrist" is silly and mostly motivated by a person's desire to maintain their self-image as an "independent thinker" who is not beholden to playing for a particular team (even though, inevitably, they do anyways, unless they just completely refuse to take any positions on anything at all). And I have no problem agreeing that the Republicans are indeed evil, just less evil than the Democrats, although probably for different reasons than yours.
The two minor things that stand out to me:
1. Is it true that Republicans are "stupider and more immoral" if they are, simultaneously, right enough about the things that matter to earn your vote? This seems like a contradiction.
2. I wouldn't underestimate how much the ruling regime can do to change the culture downstream, when it puts its back into it. You've written quite well on the ways in which "civil rights" transformed our society. I would venture to guess that, if the political battle feels like it's irrelevant to the cultural one, it is because right wingers have not truly held cultural power in the United States, not since the second world war at least. The institutions that matter most in this respect--government, media, university, etc.--have been firmly in the hands of the left since that time if not before.
If we imagine a counterfactual in which these institutions were controlled just as firmly by the right, I am pretty sure that we would not currently be dealing with the phenomenon of "trans kids" (some other bizarre or disturbing behaviors might emerge instead, but they'd be different from the sort of wild sexual deviancy being peddled by these entities today).
The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act was almost entirely a top-down phenonemon, and passed at a time when even the Democrats felt compelled to reassure voters that the ethnic makeup of the country wouldn't change as a result of it. Of course it did change, massively so - and particularly in the states where it changed, we've seen significant ideological shifts
Richard is perhaps correct that the US government can't mold the thoughts of the electorate, but they can - and currently do - mold the electorate that does the thinking through its immigration policy.
Whether or not this will eventually backfire is another question entirely: the key point is that it's utterly churlish to ask these questions about how the electorate can be swayed without considering the makeup of that electorate. Minnesota 40 years from now will be literally unrecognizable, demographically, to that of the 1980s. Are we to expect their next champion to be Walter Mondale?
Side note, but I disagree with your point. This would be happening under Republicans as well, and indeed is happening in red states, including my own, in large part because Richard is correct and this isn't being orchestrated by the federal government, but also because most right wingers have no competing vision of their own to offer the public. Being "against trans kids" is not a convincing worldview - it just isn't, because anyone who's going to take your side is already on it, anyone who's opposed is already opposed, and anyone in the middle will think you're weird for making a big deal out of being "against" something, especially when you have absolutely nothing compelling to offer. In my state, the vast majority of Republicans stand for low taxes and. well, that's about it, really. Maybe going to church. But certainly no kind of worldview that can compete with that of the cultural Left. In fact, the Right doesn't even try. Hence it loses.
As an example consider Hungary or India where the ruling party’s supporters own the Cathedral institutions. (Although, in India perhaps this is easier because the BJP is already the party of that country’s “Cathedral”)
It’s simply a matter of having the guts to remove and replace the “old” regime’s supporters like in Germany and Austria post WW2 or in Eastern Europe post Cold War, once you get elected.
The other solution would be to keep up grassroots efforts to control education - I think this is why Israel’s youth are more socially conservative than other places.
Controlling education is essential, for sure. Unfortunately the education system here is just, so far gone. I think doing anything possible to salvage may be defensible, but I also think people need to go ahead and pull their kids out if they can. If it can't be salvaged, we must let it collapse.
Good point, I have to say so myself I think most American “conservatives” are just classical liberals. That said this problem could be fixed if they were to, in the words of Rod Dreher, “go Benedict”. Israel’s Haredim(especially Hasidim) already do that and I wonder if that also gives then a leg up (check Israel’s latest election results to see what I mean)
I am definitely not a classical liberal, and I would say that many conservatives also are not. However, you are right in that many are. Some are libertarians, some just want to own the libs, etc. This is one reason that implementing a top-down conservative vision would be very difficult. We are not united around it, only united in our opposition to the left.
Perhaps it must be a two-front effort, combining grassroots campaigns at the bottom with McCarthyism on steroids at the top. Once we’ve amended the CRA to allow it of course.
I think you're going to have trouble amending the CRA, or doing much of anything else to impose some kind of conservative vision onto the nation in a top-down fashion. It's not that I'd be opposed to it on principle, but I'm just not convinced that the "conservative" half of the country has the discipline for it. Picking up the pieces after it falls apart may be the best that we can do. This is why I say, if you want to try and save the education system I won't necessarily oppose that, but I think you should go ahead and pull your kids out on the assumption that it's not salvageable.
Most of us on the Right just cope and act like it's some kind of game that's supposed to be subject to fair rules, and the Left only wins because they fight dirty, and if only *we* had control of the levers of the culture (academia, mass media, publishing etc.) everyone would be in lockstep with Paul Ryan or whatever eunuch we're supposed to admire.
You are, of course, correct. We live in a meritocracy in which the highly-educated float to the top. The highly-educated are almost always - not always, but almost always - the most naturally intelligent. The most naturally intelligent tend to score highly on things like "openness to new experiences" and "understanding cultural differences", which are of course very Leftie views in the US. Prizing tradition and conservatism for its own sake is on the other hand usually - but not always - correlated with what we'll rather perjoratively call "closed-mindedness". Now, of course, on certain things, everyone can be closed-minded. But if we instead look at the opposite of "openness to new experience" then we find that is strongly a low intelligence trait. These people, not being highly educated, won't gravitate to the top of the cultural class, and thus can't really influence it.
The Right really needs to understand this, but refuses to. The Right really does think that everyone is just a conservative-in-waiting, and if we just send one more planeload of "migrants" to Martha's Vineyard then the libs will wake up and say, "Oh no! Turns out I didn't want open borders all along! I didn't really think diversity was our strength and I didn't really want people to come here for a better life, subsidized by the US taxpayer!" It's cope. These are very popular, very sincerely-held positions among the cultural Left, and the Right can't win until it acknowledges that and comes up with a way to package ideas unpopular among high culture in a way that reaches people who can be reached. Those people are not in Martha's Vineyard and they're not paying attention to those who are.
Trump is the main one who figured this out, of course. Everyone is busily trying to forget the trail he blazed for us.
I phrased what I meant very badly. Trump won non-college whites because instead of saying "open borders are fine because Hispanics make good food, have family values, and are natural conservatives" (a failed attempt to package the idea for a high audience) he said "if we don't have a border we don't have a country. Illegals are coming to take American jobs, rape people, and sell drugs. We need to close the border." This packaged the idea of restrictionism *for its audience* and was remarkably successful. Indeed, it's precisely what changed me from a Bernie supporter to a Trump supporter.
Aside from that point, leftists are always mewling about Republicans voting against their own interest which, if true, suggests a disconnect between a policy's image and a policy's effect. (The alternative, that they might not be voting against their own interest, could be an option as well.)
Which, in the US at least, is my precise contention: the cultural elite in a meritocracy of the educated will inevitably be socially liberal. The absolute best the Republicans could hope for - and this is how they won the wealthy suburbs for years - is a Rockefellian strategy of low taxes, low crime, but social liberalism (or at least not social conservatism.) Social conservatism fails with the educated because they almost always have high conscientiousness, high openness to experience, and high desire for novelty. So long as the elite is drawn from the educated classes, social conservatism *as policy* won't appeal, and this is true regardless of their own life. (Gavin Newsom's family is straight out of a Rockwell painting. This is, to put it mildly, not the path he has in mind for the median Californian family.)
The only way the Right could win it over, then, is not being culturllally Right. But then you're left with the problem that they're just then discount Democrats. If your heart bleeds for immigrants and you vote on that basis, you are just going to vote Democrat and not the store brand version.
Then the sole remaining option you have is limited triangulation - run to your strengths on your core issue, then be just moderate enough on everything else to overcome a "veto." This, rather than trying to appeal to the elites, is what Blake Masters and Kari Lake are trying in AZ. I hope it works.
What "marketplace of ideas?" This is a ridiculous concept, and not a thing that has ever even remotely existed. Left-wing values "win" in these institutions because those who commit wrongspeak lose their jobs or are otherwise socially ostracized/punished. It has always been such. If we were to take your perspective halfway seriously for a second, this would imply that the viewpoints of the Nazis were necessarily correct because they won in Germany's "marketplace of ideas," or that the governance of Stalin was necessarily correct in the Soviet Union because the very fact that it won out proves that it was most fit in the "marketplace of ideas."
Utter nonsense.
To the extent that an actual "marketplace of ideas" has ever existed, the Internet is probably the closest we've gotten, with its capacity for anonymity shielding people from social consequences for voicing their true thoughts. And the sitting regime will stop at nothing to censor and control the Internet, at any cost. So that should tell you something about your whole "marketplace of ideas" concept.
Okay, but if they shouldn't be winning or if they are winning in spite of being wrong about everything, this disproves the theory that the "marketplace of ideas" is something worth respecting or caring about, if it even exists at all.
Republicans also have better priors when it comes to how they treat people.
Democrats think the peons are inherently bad and need to be controlled (by enlightened and all-knowing Democrats) in order to have a civil society.
Parents cannot be trusted to treat their children well - so leftist schools have a policy to lie - to parents.
You cannot be trusted to save for your own retirement - so SS will be forced upon you. Etc
I vote Republican because Democrats embrace coercion (note Covid) and lying to the peons (note the censoring by recent DHS and denying of it) with the perpetual excuse that it is "for the peons own good".
Since most of the money goes for entitlements, defense, and interest (over 1T for the latter in 2023), and neither party has much chance of cutting any of them, the only question is how far we fall and when it starts. Neither party is equipped to handle a real crisis. The leaders are too old, their replacements lightweights.
The rest of society is moving ever more quickly, while governance does the opposite. Something's gotta give, but it's hard to see what will replace it. Autocrats have troubles of their own, so don't see hope there.
If the Reps do get the legislature, what will they actually do. Slow walk appointments? What can they get past Biden beyond CRs?
This is only true to an extent and it's churlish to act otherwise. Except on foreign policy, where the parties are in near-lockstep - namely in favor of war, lots of it, everywhere, all the time - there are clear and obvious voting differences between them on domestic matters.
The Democrats already rammed through everything that they could until they ran up against Manchin/Sinema. I suppose you could theorize that, if by some miracle the Democrats did not lose control of the House in this election, that might further galvanize them to previously impossible levels of overreach. But as far as the Republicans winning Congress, this mostly just means no more Democrat spending sprees for a while, and again, they already did as much of that as they could get away with.
A Republican winning back the White House in 2024 may have some more genuine consequences, especially depending on who it is and what they have the balls to do if they are actually allowed to take office.
I'll reply to this in full tomorrow, but for tonight suffice it to say that with vanishingly few exceptions - coalescing around Arizona, for a lot of reasons - if they had balls they wouldn't be Republicans to start with. They'd be apolitical and in the private sector.
Well, if we want to go with the theory that election outcomes matter, this will require a Republican president who actually has the stones to wage a scorched-earth campaign against the entrenched federal bureaucracy and the various interest groups surrounding it, and a Republican party with the stones to have his back in the process.
Now if you stop me and say this won't happen, I'll feel inclined to agree. Hence my general apathy towards election outcomes. But let's go with the hypothetical and say that the Republicans aren't *completely* spineless and incompetent, and are willing to make a go of it. Maybe things are so far gone that it will be a futile effort. But I must at least see them try, if I am going to be convinced that voting for them means anything.
And yes, any serious effort to hollow out the federal government from within would require some very big balls. Lord knows I wouldn't want to be the one saddled with such a task.
So 2000 new regulations... 1000 page bills that congress votes on without reading... so obvious that special interests and their lawyers are the ones running the show. I’m sure if we went through things one by one the amount of waste in government would make anyone sick. My GF is a public school teacher in a big city so I get to bear witness to the insanity within that domain. It’s so obvious that they can provide a better education at lower cost just by cutting some of the extremely low hanging fruit, such as “climate staff” who walk around collecting 6 figure paychecks doing absolutely nothing. Yet the democrats literally exist to grow this cartel they call “education”, along with several other useless interests they represent.
Yet republicans have to ruin literally the easiest decision ever by being not even slightly reasonable on abortion. The fact that there are actually republicans in power who would say that if my sister, gf, or daughter is raped, that they should be forced to carry the baby is just such an egregious violation of basic principles that I just can’t bring myself to vote for them. There is a non-0 chance of banning certain contraception. I mean it’s just so extreme. It sucks, but I think I’m just staying home this election.
To be honest I’ve been tuned out of the midterms on a day to day level, so I haven’t seen that. But that’s awesome! I do feel like there’s a big chunk of republicans who don’t actually believe what they say about abortion. They just need to soften their stance to a reasonable 12 weeks and they will have a lot of people jump on board. Even 6 weeks for “at will”, with unconditional rape/health of mother exceptions would be enough for most people IMO. The “up to 40 week” abortions supported by the left are really unpopular as well.
Absolutely. I do understand the ones who have a genuine religious belief about this. If they won't compromise, so be it. But the ones who are playing to the gallery... they need to understand that the voters in this country are largely in the middle.
Masters came into the election a pro-life extremist, and moderated as soon as he saw which way the wind was blowing. Some will call that pandering. I'll call it meeting the electorate where they're at.
I wish more Republicans - those who, as you say, don't really believe what they're saying about life beginning at conception - would do the same.
The thing about abortion is that GOP politicians are having to adapt rapidly to it suddenly becoming subject to the democratic process, and some are failing the test. The pro-life side wasn't moderated by the democratic process because, in large sections of the country, the most pro-life position allowable by law was still pretty broadly popular. Statements about being more pro-life than the law allows (and than most voters supported) were more like tribal signals than real policy proposals, helping politicians win primaries without costing them much support among swing voters in the general.
Now, I'm someone who believes that abortion is a grave evil and should be restricted to the degree it's practical, but I still think Republican politicians shouldn't try to push policies that are more pro-life than is politically viable, and in practice I have enough confidence in the pragmatic corruptibility of politicians to think that's not going to be a problem for long.
The pro-life belief is not a religious one. It is a belief that abortion is a euphemism for the murder of a child. Every atheist that I have met also considers it wrong to murder children. The dispute is about what "counts" as a human being or not, and this is not a matter of religious dogma either. The Bible has little to say on the subject.
The link between religiosity and views on abortion are borne out by polling data time and again. Jewish people, for example, are almost 90% likely to favor liberal abortion laws; evangelical protestants are only 30% likely. Atheists/agnostics are 75% likely. These are slam dunks in terms of the social sciences, albeit the figures are changing over time.
What the Bible says is largely irrelevant to religious self-identification.
Yes, devout Christians tend to be pro-life, just as black people tend to vote Democrat. We do not say of Democrat voters, however, that they simply vote Democrat because they happen to have a particular skin color, as if there is nothing of substance behind the behavior and it is just some kind of robotic action taken out of rigid dogma.
Actually, the dispute is NOT about what "counts". At all.
And your horror relates to your inability to understand the real issue being debated. So please read carefully.
Let us grant that a baby is fully human with all the rights of a human at the moment of conception. Done. Happy?
Now ...
No human has ever had the right to the use of another human's body parts.
Ever. Even to stay alive, I (nor a cute baby) can demand one of your kidneys.
THAT is the issue. Ah ....
The issue with abortion is that there are TWO humans. BOTH with rights.
But the one right that does not exist, is for one of the humans to demand the services of the other one. Just does not exist. Humans have a right to TRY to live (as long as they don't impact others). Humans don't have the "right to life" - at the expense of others. All humans die. Always. You have a right to try to live. If you can't, (and nobody can forever) then bummer.
Formally, an abortion should take the baby human out of the unwilling second human whose rights are being violated, fully alive and unharmed.
It should then be left to die of its own inability to survive (suffer). Practically it makes very little difference how it is done.
>Actually, the dispute is NOT about what "counts". At all.
Not to you, I suppose. Again, every single "debate" about abortion that I have ever seen revolves around the definition of "when life begins" and such. I have never seen someone grant that a fetus is a person and then try to defend killing them just because reasons. Credit for sheer audacity if nothing else.
As for your post here, your perspective justifies a parent's right to kill or otherwise abandon (thus killing via neglect) their children at any time, for any reason. If you actually believe that, I can't exactly prove you wrong, since you're resting on a (very twisted, in my opinion) first principle there. But again, it seems incredibly dense to think this will be a winning argument in the public more generally. Go for it if you want, I guess.
I believe that if all abortion advocates adopted your narrative, it would greatly accelerate the conversion of the population over to a pro-life perspective, because most people still recognize that abandonment/murder of an unwanted child is evil, no matter how hard certain actors may try to warp their view of morality.
I don't understand how "let the States decide" a very contentious topic via legislation reflecting the will of the people, is unreasonable. Not one person in the GOP supported Lindsey's latest stupidity. The odds of the GOP forcing pregnancy on rape victims is zero - and everybody knows it. They couldn't if they wanted to - and they have shown zero indication that they want to.
It is not 0 at all. There is a whole branch of republicans who base their entire appeal off of a total abortion ban. There are a ton of Catholics in this country who are single issue voters on abortion with 0 exceptions. Literally Seth Dillon (founder of the Babylon Bee) was JUST on Joe Rogan attempting to argue for a total abortion ban, no exceptions. It’s actually a fairly common position, probably shared by about a quarter of republicans if I had to guess. And these people CARE. They show up to vote, they donate money, they protest, they do whatever it takes to get people in office who have that agenda. They’re the only bloc on the right that’s actually motivated to win at all costs. It’s an absolute moral deal breaker for them. I find it hard to fathom as well, but it’s true.
Then of that quarter who support a total abortion ban, probably about a quarter of those are against contraception totally. Then even more against plan B. They get politicians elected, and they aren’t even denying this is a possibility when they’re asked about it. It’s depressing as fuck when you realize it. A total abortion ban is not just a side goal, but the ENTIRE reason for politics for a huge chunk of the republican base.
One quarter of the GOP means about 25%/3 = 8% of the population (including independents).
My personal experience would estimate even lower, as I have never met a person with this position (but I do live in a leftist hellhole). Even given your estimate - this is a non-issue to worry about. 8% won't cut it. And no those people are not evil (or depressing as you put it). Simply consistent. If a baby is "gods will" then the rape was "gods will". He works in mysterious ways and all that nonsense.
How can you say 8% won’t cut it when they’ve already had a ton of success rolling back abortion protections beyond the scope of what’s generally popular? My original comment is literally all about how special interests control America.
Yes, of course you don’t know these people if you live in a leftist hell hole. They do not live in cities and if they do they obviously aren’t able to be open about their abortion positions. I can personally attest to the existence of these people considering some of them are my family. Just like you don’t know them, most of these people do not know a single LGBTQ person (that they know of). If you are a practicing Catholic, you are most likely a single issue voter on abortion. You can be an outright socialist economically, but you can never vote that way b/c of their stance on abortion. Yes 8% isn’t a lot of people, but not all 8% “bands” of people are equal. If you have 8% who’s entire life is devoted to this one single issue, who are non-negotiable while providing a ton of funding, and the other 42% are indifferent on it, that 8% band is going to be much more important to pander to.
Hanania literally wrote a whole article on this phenomenon called “why is everything liberal”. Think about how you turn on an NFL game and you’re smacked with woke/LGBT messaging that’s mostly extremely unpopular with the NFL fan base. It’s because there’s a tiny sliver of the population that will ONLY watch it they say this shit, which is bigger than the sliver that will turn off their tv when they see it. Most people will roll their eyes and move on. Abortion works the same way with the Republican Party.
I don’t think these people are evil, and I understand they’re consistent. I just think forcing a 12 year old rape victim to carry the baby is fucking insane. And it’s depressing because it’s SO insane to me that Im forced to stay home rather than voting awful Democrats out of office, and judging by the comments here a lot of ppl feel the same.
Having the people decide on abortion was always the right thing to do.
And lots of people agree with that position. I am pro-abortion and I agree with that position.
I am not tolerating the end of Roe, I am all in favor of it. As are most people because most people want to be allowed to have a say in society's important major decisions.
I actually don't think it is "insane" to force a 12 year old to have a baby. I wouldn't do it or vote for somebody who could do it (note - they can't, and worrying that they can, is oddly as obsessive as the people you are denigrating). The emphasis should be on punishing and preventing pedophile rapists (something the left and Disney are now even promoting) and not getting to the pregnant 12-year-old situation in the first place. And that position was the norm for all recorded history. "Insane" is not something nearly every society did for the last 1000s of years. Chopping off your genitalia on the other hand - was actually considered clinically insane for all of recorded history. And probably still is.
When the left is as appalled about the rape as they are about the pregnancy then they might get a hearing with me. Which is the worse thing?
You are making the exact same arguments I was making just like 7-8 months ago. I don’t know why you’re saying they “can’t” vote to force 12 year olds to have a baby when in many states they are, and there are many pushing for this at the national level. If republicans controlled house, senate, and presidency, a situation that’s not really unprecedented and we could easily have in 2 years, I think the odds of a national abortion ban with no exemptions are above 25%.
I agree that ideally contentious policies such as this should be made at as local a level as possible, but to the point made by the other commenter here, that sentiment is NOT shared by the pro-life single issue republican bloc. To reiterate, their entire reason for politics is a national abortion ban. That is their goal. I agree the emphasis should be on preventing child rape. I agree that Democrats are too “soft on crime” but they are not pro-child rape. It’s easy to say it’s not “insane” to force a 12 year old to have a baby when it’s just an abstraction. But if you are in that situation it is the epitome of insanity.
This is just dishonest. This is exactly like when my Democratic friends and family tell me "nooo all the gender stuff is just Republicans trying to create a culture war where there isn't one! We're not really pushing transgenderism on children! This stuff is a distraction!" To which I ask: OK, does that mean you don't care about it, you're going to let it go, you're going to cede all the policy to the opposition, and you're going to focus on other things? Does that mean the candidate you're backing doesn't have it as an affirmative policy decision? (In your example this means saying - OK, then your candidates will stop running on a complete abortion ban platform?)
Then it gets very quiet, because of course their party supports all these things. So too is true of pro life Republicans. You can't have it both ways: you either run on this or you don't. You can't say you support it with a wink and expect us to get it.
Excuse the aside but I just had a revelation. I'm an immigrant, and while I know what "dog whistle" means, I never really grokked why Americans are always fuming about it. Now I get it. There aren't actually dog whistles like racial ones, where people say something mild and their supporters know it's secret code for something strong. It's the other way around. There's some kind of reverse dog whistle, where the electorate is supposed to disregard someone's stance on abortion because "the odds" don't favor it. That way the candidate never has to take responsibility for what they say.
Call me out of touch but I'd call supporting a candidate because *their own policy positions* are impossible really fucking dumb, but it seems to be in fashion in this country, so I'd better get with the program.
If Republicans don't want to be the party thought of as supporting "forced pregnancy", there's a very easy path to getting there: say "here's what we support, and it's not forced pregnancy." Until then, the 100% pro life faction there is in the party - and to be clear I respect their forthrightness - will be taken at their word.
Like many things, a few politician support it and most don't. Very few hide their position as far as I can tell. And people are free to judge whether somebody like Masters' position on abortion (which they know will never happen) outweighs his positions on border security, federal overspending, political weaponization of the FBI, and things they think can actually happen.
Understand that a genuine pro-life person believes abortion is the murder of a child. "Just let half the states murder children" is not an acceptable compromise.
It is the best compromise. Nobody presumes it is their right to dictate policy in Japan or Tajikistan. Why should Utah have any say about what happen is Delaware or vice versa. Smaller government is better. People need to learn to mind their own business, and to tolerate differences. If they can't do that then let them stew. I don't care.
If we disagree about who counts as a human being or not, and half the states are murdering children due to this misunderstanding, then we can no longer have a union. This "compromise" would involve breaking up the United States. Because yes, we cannot expect to outlaw the murder of the unborn on the other side of the globe, in other countries--but of course pro-life people will always push to outlaw it in their own society. Again, "just let people murder children" will not fly.
This issue is akin to slavery.
Now, if people wanted to actually break up the nation somehow so that the abortionists could live in truly separate societies from those who believe that it is the murder of the innocent, then okay. I could probably get on board with that. Good luck selling it to people more generally, though.
Babies are human at conception. That is NOT the issue. Societies kill people all the time via war, capital punishment, neglect, and now abortion. It is the way of humans. Always has been. I don't disagree with you one iota about when a baby is human. I repeat, that is NOT the issue at hand here.
Nobody is taught about Federalism anymore.
States are separate countries ALREADY. They are countries with a common defense and no trade barriers. The EU is modeled precisely on the USA Federalist idea.
Residents of Norway don't presume to set abortion policy in Catholic Spain, and vice versa.
And resident of Rhode Island similarly have no say in what Kansas want to decide. None.
We don't have to break into 2 countries, because we are already 50.
If you think slavery was a valid excuse to invade and conquer other countries to impose your will - only then it is like slavery.
You will get you way over the people in other States legislative decisions over my and many other's dead bodies. Learn to live with differences, or be prepared for violence.
I say exactly the same thing to leftists. And far more often. Because you are an aberration among conservatives. You honestly should join the Democrat Party. They, like you, believe that their ideas are so righteous they should be allowed to force them on others who definitively decided OTHERWISE.
>Babies are human at conception. That is NOT the issue. Societies kill people all the time via war, capital punishment, neglect, and now abortion. It is the way of humans. Always has been. I don't disagree with you one iota about when a baby is human. I repeat, that is NOT the issue at hand here.
So your position is that killing babies out of nothing more than the mother's perception of inconvenience is uhh, totally fine and cool? Okaaay.
Even if that is really what you believe, it is obviously not the position of 99% of abortion advocates. I have never seen any of them say what you just said. "It is a baby, but killing it is fine anyways." They deny that fetuses are people to justify their position. It seems incredibly dense to believe that "killing unwanted babies is fine just because" is going to be a defensible position for keeping abortion around.
>States are separate countries ALREADY. They are countries with a common defense and no trade barriers. The EU is modeled precisely on the USA Federalist idea.
I wish this were true, but it clearly isn't. When the Supreme Court ruled that gay marriage is somehow protected by the Constitution, all 50 states had to get in line, whether they liked it or not. The same would be true if the Supreme Court ruled that the right to life includes the unborn. This is an unthinkable decision today, but give it another 50 years and who knows.
>If you think slavery was a valid excuse to invade and conquer other countries to impose your will - only then it is like slavery.
Well, like I said, I would actually be okay with *actually* breaking up the nation into separate camps so that people can properly have their differences. I don't favor invading Canada, for instance, to forcibly put a stop to abortions in that nation, as abhorrent as the practice may be. But that's the thing--Canada is actually a separate country. Within my own country, of course I will support the outlawing of what I view as baby murder. How could I possibly do otherwise given my belief on the issue?
I agree that the Republican position on abortion is crazy, but it's much less impactful than other government regulations.
If you need an abortion you can travel to a state that allows them. Obviously this is inconvenient, costly, and possibly dangerous (if rules around health issues are unclear). But how many women will die, or are forced to carry a pregnancy they desperately don't want, because they couldn't get to another state? More than zero, but not millions.
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people died because the FDA slowed down the covid vaccine. If women's health is your priority, getting vaccines approved one day quicker is more important than 20 states banning abortions. Even legalizing kidney sales would probably save more women than legalizing abortion in all states.
Look I actually agree with you. From a purely cost-benefit perspective abortion is actually a pretty unimportant issue. Reforming the FDA would almost certainly save more lives.
But therein lies the issue, not everything can be measured in terms of a dispassionate CBA. Sometimes you have to go by moral principles because that is ultimately what determines the type of society we live in. Hard line Conservatives are not crunching the numbers on abortion and determining it’s bad for the economy or w.e. They simply believe that their version of their religion should be the fundamental organizing principle of society, and that is the main driving force behind many of them in politics. I do not want these people anywhere near politics. At least the people who shill the FDA do it under the guise of a cost-benefit perspective, and you can conceivably make a rational argument for it’s existence. You cannot conceivably make a rational argument for an abortion ban with no rape exception.
To frame it differently, imagine if rather than Christians banning abortion, republicans were mostly Muslims and wanted to require hijabs. From a purely lives lost perspective, almost undoubtedly a less costly policy than an abortion ban. Then costs what, a couple dollars a person?? But it would be such an egregious violation of the principles of most Americans that all other ideas they brought wouldn’t matter. That’s where I’m at with Republicans and abortion right now.
What you’re saying ab states is true, but there is absolutely a lot of republicans making a national abortion ban their priority. There is legitimate talk of looking at contraception. A non-0 chance of that happening is just too high in my book. It’s tough, because I absolutely despise the feminists, and their discourse around abortion has become grotesque. But I can’t let my distaste for certain people allow me to deviate from my principles.
- "I do not want these people anywhere near politics." I agree with you that Republican politicians are evil. Unfortunately so are Democrats, so that doesn't convince me. After all Richard did call them the lesser of two evils.
- "At least the people who shill the FDA do it under the guise of a cost-benefit perspective" Could you point me towards this guise? I (a pro-choice atheist) find anti-abortion arguments far more persuasive than pro-FDA arguments.
- on the Hijab issue, completely agree. I would never vote for a party that wants to force all Americans to cover their faces.
(Sorry, you walked right into that one!)
- if you honestly believe there's a chance all contraceptives will be banned nationwide, it may be rational to vote for Democrats. I would bet you with 100:1 odds that won't happen.
-I actually think on average Democrats are more evil than republicans, but the position on abortion of forcing rape victims to carry the baby is in practice more awful. The other factor at play is that woke Democrats are on average extremely ineffective politicians relative to pro life republicans, so I think they’re less likely to be successful in converting their most extreme beliefs into actual policy. Regardless, I’m not going to vote for Democrats, I’m just not gonna vote at all lol.
-https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5862299/ .... here’s a scholarly article by some biostatisticians that’s shilling the fda. Tbh I just skimmed the beginning after googling “scholarly article fda benefits” and clicking the first result. Seems to fit the bill. I’m not convinced by pro FDA arguments either, but it is something that I can conceivably be convinced on if the facts changed one way or another. Abortion isn’t really something that appeals to logic like that.
- got me on the face coverings! Lmao. Although a hijab only covers the head, not the face lol. But yes masking is insane, and there’s still some Insane people doing it/making kids do it, but on the whole it’s over. I think the chance of a return to masking (all else equal) is 0.
- 1/100 odds of contraception ban at the state level is about where I’m at as well, definitely lower at the national level. It is just such an insane policy to me that 1/100 is too much of a risk to take.
“Society” has a say in what clothes you wear too. I can’t just walk outside with my cock and balls hanging out without getting arrested. There are limits on what I can wear, many legally imposed, depending on the situation. Companies have the right to refuse service based on what people are wearing.
Regardless, thats beside the point. Im not saying that clothing and killing are the same, I’m not saying hijabs and abortion are the same. Im saying the principles determining the positions are the same. They both are positions (and I’m referring to the “total ban, no exceptions” position) that are had by people who believe religion should be the fundamental principle guiding governance. For some reason people who are pro abortion compartmentalize the insanity of a total abortion ban (and even talk of contraception ban!) in a way they never would a hijab requirement. I know it’s not a perfect analogy, but a child victim not being able to abort their rapist’s baby is to me the epitome of cruelty.
The religious position is that life is inherently full of cruelty. And wonderful things come from terrible things. And vice versa. And humans are not placed in a position to predict those ultimate outcomes and are being arrogant when they try to do so. I worry that you are ascribing evil or stupidity to a philosophy which is probably neither. And which is quite probably (though I don't ascribe to it) more rational and reasonable about our place in the world than any leftist's worldview.
I agree with the reasoning process here, but want to explain a different method which may actually get results: deciding a priority, and voting based only on that. An example of results: we went from one state with constitutional carry(Vermont) to constitutional carry in half the states. Almost everywhere else is shall-issue, as well. This is because a substantial number of voters made gun rights the only issue they cared about. A secondary effect is that it's impossible to get elected as an anti-gun Republican, which is convenient because now the gun rights crowd can pick another priority(in theory) and influence the Republican party. Coordinating voters with a single priority can be very effective, although you have to vote in primaries, off-years, etc.
"If one party could snap its fingers and make the kids less gay, it would be worth taking that into account"
Ugh. Repugnant.
Not to mention -- election results denial founded on false claims of widespread fraud? That poison is endemic to Republican candidates now (and apparently infects some of the nuthatches on your comment thread). That doesn't factor in to your 'priors'?
Abrams and Hillary election denial? Or just questioning all the massive irregularities and illegalities of the 2020 election (Zuckbucks, Laptop censorship, unsupervised dropboxes, etc)?
Maybe the prevalence of hypocrisy does factor into his priors.
Please. Election denial was never embraced institutionally by the Democratic Party anything like the GOP has done. And your 2020 conspiracies are plain nuts.
Of course they were! Democrats started it. The reaction to Hillary's loss was incredible.
And included the FBI lying on FISA warrants and spying. What a fabulously short memory.
The Democrats also taught the GOP how to riot in the summer of 2020. But nobody informed the population that rule was that only Democrats are actually allowed to burn and loot. The GOP can't even walk in their own government buildings.
Let's review actual history, not your fantasies. Both the Republicans (McConnell) and the Dems (Obama) saw the same intelligence reports about Russian interference with the 2016 election. These reports were coming in *before the election happened*. Obama wanted to release a public bipartisan note of concern because he thought coming just from one side it might look like trying to influence the election. McConnell was 'concerned' that it would cast doubt on the election and thereby actually help the Russians (though of course his actual concern was that most of the Russian meddling was trying to game the election for Trump and against Hillary, and he was OK with that) . So he refused. In August 2020 the GOP-led Senate panel actually acknowledged in its 1,000 page report that the Russians indeed interfered in the 2016 election. The GOP also condemned the Jan 6 insurrection...until it became inconvenient to do so due to their base being batshit crazy. So tell me again about short memories.
Really. That is the excuse. Some Russians did what they always did for the last 80 years.
It had no effect on anything. But it justifies lying on FISA warrants and spying on Trump, and ginning up 2 years of endless lies by Schiff and all the other Democrat liars. Impressive.
Jan 6th was definitively NOT an insurrection in the slightest. And it shames you people to attempt to sell it that way. Just gross.
The LBGT crowd is the most intolerant, anti-Liberty group in our society and has captured the Libertarian movement. The KKK had more compassion and tolerance. How evil do you have to be to not understand that people might have an objection to grown men in dresses reading to children. The filter in parents who object to this needs to be encouraged, not discouraged. This filter prevents a lot of other evil practices from happening. Racist and homophobic men created the greatest society in history. They did this by protecting values of liberty. You guys are destroying those values and making the Jim Crow South look reasonable.
"Those who generally support allowing the market to set labor conditions suddenly take a different view when it comes to hiring Mexicans"
Those who generally understand supply-and-demand cannot comprehend why wage-labor-suppliers might not want lower wages.
"just as how people who wish American women would have more babies start talking like Malthusians when the topic of immigration comes up."
Reducing immigration relieves competition for scarce resources, the increasing costs of which depress native fertility.
I challenge you to make a purely economic case for open borders -- no morality, just explaining how it on-net puts dollars in the pockets of every native. Bryan Caplan certainly couldn't do it in his risible comic book. I don't think anybody can.
I agree that being pro market in areas where that makes sense -- most ordinary business -- is a good rule. That still leaves the very importunate of externalities, specifically the emission of CO2 into the atmosphere. And although neither party is ready to impose Pigou taxation on emissions, I can see Democrats coming to that position before Republicans. Another pure market distortion is the restriction of US employers hiring the best of the world's talent becasue of immigration restrictions. Again, I can see Democrats favoring immigration reform to recruit high value immigrants before Republicans. The other big issue is trade. Before Trump, I would have given Republicans the nod on that, but now I think they are even more restrictive than Democrats. Finally in macroeconomics, I see Democrats as more likely to increase taxes to decrease fiscal deficits than Republicans to reduce expenditures enough to do so.
So on pro-market/growth I think Democrats, though very far from ideal, are better
What about an alternative strategy where you basically vote to prevent either the Republicans or the Democrats from owning both the Presidency and Congress, on the principle that preventing the government creating new programs is the best result for the country?
> Finally, I am very hopeful about the prospects of humanity making use of embryo selection and genetic engineering, and would consider any attempts to stop progress in this area to be another existential threat to our species.
It seems like getting that right would be very hard, with downstream effects at least as unpredictable as the civil rights laws you're not crazy about. Is your thinking that it wouldn't be a centralized effort, so we wouldn't need to worry about getting things wrong?
Voting on the base of ideology? Stupid. How do you know that markets are the superior solution in the 99% of cases where you have no policy expertise?
Instead, vote on the basis of raw, stupid, self-interest. Even the dumbest person can tell when their personal self-interest is negatively impacted, since their life becomes measurably worse. The total averaged out result of this, across the whole population, is that the government will favor policies that benefit the whole. Yes, there may be cases where, e.g., the long-term externalities are obscured from the individual voters, but guess what? That's also the case for markets. If every X of pollutant kills off n% of the future population, then the market includes literally no mechanism whatsoever to reduce the pollutant load.
This, incidentally, is why I will never vote Republican for the forseeable future: when I was at my financially worst, literally below the poverty line, the Republican party had fought tooth and nail to prevent me from accessing the Medicaid expansion, and I had to pay $3,600 for health insurance that year. The Democrats may refuse to back M4A, meaning that I had to pay $2000 out of pocket after I was bit by somebody else's dog, but $2,000 < $5,600.
"Republicans do make one major exception to their greater trust of markets, and that’s in the areas of immigration and sometimes trade. Many seem to believe that the laws of economics are different depending on whether one is interacting with someone born in the United States or another country. "
Partly yes, and indeed they are because economic 'laws' only kick in when you have things like private property and aa currency, which are creations of political orders. However, the main reason is that the laws of economics change when the items being bought and sold are sentient and have agency. Example: sudden drop in demand for lemons ---> stores of lemons rot in warehouse, whereas sudden drop in demand for Mexicans ---> someone robs your house.
I agree with a lot of this, so why am I a Democrat?
1. I think the government is bad at lots of stuff and may be getting worse, but it is good at collecting taxes and writing checks. I genuinely mean that. The IRS collects ~$200 for every $1 it spends, way better than any charity (because it can throw you in prison). Programs like Soc Sec and Medicare have very low overhead. I think that taxing people to make sure that all old people get $2k a month so they don't starve is a net utility positive, even if it modestly reduces GDP. Security matters a lot to people. The whole "a dollar raises the utility of a poor person more than a rich person" justifies some redistributionist policies. Finally, government funded scientific research (essentially another form of check-writing) does a lot of good and no one has really come up with a plausible mechanism by which the private sector would fund unpatentable basic discoveries.
2. Most culture war issues don't matter that much, but access to abortion matters a lot to peoples' lives and unlike almost everything else, depends predictably on who controls government.
3. I think global warming is a serious issue that needs to be addressed. I think our best hope of solving it is innovation, largely in the private sector, in batteries and nuclear energy. I'm not 100% sure Democrats are the better party for this happening. But I'm noticing Democrats smartening up on stuff like nuclear/permitting reform etc. and government incentivization of green energy breakthroughs may still be important (and will only come from Democrats).
If you are not a utilitarian (1) or think abortion is murder (2) then you can totally disagree with me. But from my ethical beliefs, here's where I land.
Those are good reasons to be a Democrat, except for social security. I can think of few things more perverse than taking people’s money when they’re young and might invest it in children and future generations and giving it to them when they’re old and it’s mostly useless. The elderly are the wealthiest demographic! Redistributing based on poverty, I can see the case for that, but doing it based on age is wrong.
I would add to the OP above that at this point the only people who are actually pro-market and pro-competition, as opposed to pro-kleptocracy, pro-rent seeking, pro-regulatory capture, pro-public purse is my personal plaything, are the neoliberals on the Democratic side.
The GOP cut some excess verbiage from the federal code last time around, yay.
Did they fundamentally fix anything? OSHA's impossible-to-comply-fully-by-design construction site safety provisions? NEPA's 4-years-of-review-to-replace-a-fucking-box-culvert rules on environmental impact statements? The endless public hearings accompanying any infrastructure project anywhere in the US? Local zoning laws? Occupational licensing? Did they enforce competition and anti-trust law? Did they try to streamline procurement regulations to make public-sector RFPs accessible to more and smaller firms?
No? None of it, and nothing else besides?
Right. Because they don't actually believe in competition or markets. The working class masses voting GOP want a vague promise of a decent living for working their asses off and the right to be left the fuck alone on a bunch of cultural issues. The kleptocrats at the top are *perfectly fine with* the completely captured, overly wide-ranging, bureaucratic, legalistic, anti-competitive, downright stifling nature of the government's regulatory apparatus and highly-concentrated structure of the economy as they stand, and will continue to make them worse whenever it lines the pockets of a narrow shareholder/donor class, who increasingly make up the lion's share of Republican politicians (and, in fairness, Democratic) directly as well.
Arguments over income transfers are largely a distraction from discussions of rampant monopoly power, revolving doors between the retirees from the permanent bureaucracy and the industries it's supposed to keep an eye on, and the complete inability of our state to actually build infrastructure or manage programs that are utterly essential to our security and well-being, from railways to 5th generation fighter jets.
You said it better than I managed to. Republicans are only “free-market” so long as it serves the interest of keeping them in power. Where they do have power, they use it to cut taxes and maintain the socioeconomic hierarchy.
Oh, you are free market? Which party imposes and upholds more blue laws? Who is overreaching into healthcare and prevent doctors from saving lives?
It’s funny because I agree with Richard on most of this post - just not the final conclusion
The "socioeconomic hierarchy" will maintain itself irrespective of federal fiscal policy because class position is largely hereditary
I don’t actually think any of that has to do with free markets.
They’re bad on all of it… it’s just that they’re not good on markets either, despite Richard simply handwaving that they are and arguing on that basis.
Some other important ways in which Republicans are not free-market:
Denying presidential election results
Hawkish stances towards trans teens’ choices
Wanting to remove section 230 and regulate social media platforms
Vindictive use of power for personal aims, eg. DeSantis vs Disney
Neither side is “free-market.” Just like free speech, Republicans are just as guilty of trying to control markets in their favor.
It's clear that overall, Republicans favor fewer regulations. Trump supports all the things you mentioned, and is obviously no libertarian, but yet he cut regulations while Obama and Biden added thousands of pages.
Only an idiot would trust the results of the 2020 election. The CIA and FBI clearly influenced the election and were in the pockets of the Democrats. Biden received more votes than any other Presidential candidates but had NO coattails. They didn't have time to fill out the rest of the ballot.
The CIA and FBI clearly influenced the 2020 election. t51 agents lied. Whitmer would have never happened without the FBI. You're deluded to expect people to trust the results. Nobody should accept the results of an election with the CIA involved. Why were they in Brazil prior to their election?
If Disney supported Nazis, you would be OK with maintaining subsidies.
Teenagers are a tricky case since they aren't old enough to fully consent to stuff, but technically it is anti-free market since if someone is offering the hormones and surgery, under a free market the kids should be able to buy that if they can afford it.
Now if you're going to argue there are reasons the free market should be restricted, you could find people on the left and right who would agree with you, though perhaps not for the same reasons...
And in a truly "free" market, there might also be a "market" for things like child prostitutes, yet we as a society seem to have decided that is off-limits, for some unknown reason. What is wrong with us, why aren't we more free market when it comes to what the "market" may want to do with our children? Clearly we need to stop being so anti-market.
Have you ever investigated what life was like in this country before social security? There is a reason it was created, and all of us, most definitely including the wealthy, would miss it terribly if it ever goes.
Of course, government took their money they could’ve invested when they were young and gotten compound returns on.
The case for taxing young working people in income and employment to redistribute to middle class homeowners is about as sound as banning apartments so middle class homeowners get larger property values. If you're sincerely YIMBY, you simply cannot be in favor of the Democratic party position on this. It's a redistribution between the same groups of people as artificial housing scarcity in booming metro areas.
It's also worth considering that we were incredibly close to just having a universal flat pension until FDR deliberately killed it for reasons to do with Southern Democrats. The myth that Roosevelt did the payroll tax design to make it more politically sustainable isn't reconcilable with our information on public opinion then or now.
https://nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/why-is-social-security-regressive
Yeah, but they WOULD NOT have invested it! They would have spent it! If they were any good at negotiating the economy and planning for the future, they wouldn't be in a situation where they need social security in old age!
So, yes, we could recast SS as an anti-poverty program, but the social barrier to this is immense. People with some means almost always don't want their money to go to people of less means, period. But SS can be sold as a program for everyone, even if it is effectively anti-poverty. This is why it retains high popular support, whereas "welfare" does not.
Except they don’t, because they don’t understand why it’s good for them. You may object to this kind of hand-holding, but this fact of the matter is that most people are too stupid to act in their own self interest unless they are forced to by the state.
That definitely is the leftist viewpoint.
Everybody is too stupid to live. I should force them to do as I say.
My comment was a very specific rebuttal to “ Of course, government took their money they could’ve invested when they were young and gotten compound returns on.”
not a general statement.
*Some* people are too stupid to live, and letting them just be stupid makes society worse for everyone, unfortunately. There can still be juciy incentives for being a net positive contributor.
All welfare systems tend toward either becoming prohibitively expensive over time, particularly in the face of demographic issues, or toward tyranny as the regulators attempt to track down every dollar they can, AKA Means testing.
A society simply cannot tax yesterday's dollars to pay out higher sums in the future. It always devolves into a ponzi.
They would be covered by welfare.
No need to force a retirement Ponzi scheme on everybody else.
Your cure doesn't even target the disease.
It would be whatever welfare currently is. Until politicians change welfare.
Asking for irrelevant details seems like deflection.
If you want welfare - we already have it. So we don't need SS and the massive waste and cost it imposes on the 70% of the population who could retire with far more money if SS didn't exist.
Hard disagree on (3). Climate mania is a far greater threat to civilization than global warming. For most of us, natural disasters have minimal impact on our lives, so even if their frequency increased significantly, it would still be quite managable for society to deal with: yet our first baby steps into "decarbonization" and other things pushed by the green movement, like banning chemical fertilizer, have already contributed to a global energy crisis, high gas prices, the destruction of Sri Lanka, etc (see Michael Shellenberger's substack). And I am skeptical natural disasters will increase significantly: I think these claims are much more tenuous than the science of rising temperatures. I actually think the fact that Republicans aren't beholden to climate activists makes them the indisputably superior party, trumping all other issues. Energy is, after all, fundamental to everything else.
This is another angle by which the climate scam is nonsensical (there are many, of course): It is unfalsifiable. The only way that it could maybe in theory be falsified is with data from 100 years in the future, since the claim is that we must act now in order to prevent ourselves from being destroyed by the climate somehow 100 years from now.
And even if, in 100 years people could somehow measure worldwide incident of "extreme weather" or whatever and decide that the weather apocalypse was averted, climate activists would merely take this as evidence that their activism worked, and thus it must continue indefinitely so as to always guard against any future threat of "climate denial."
I forgot that energy is an existential issue for me, since it is directly tied to food production. GOP is, like you say, indisputably superior. Does the OP seriously think Democrats are better on any issue involving something actually getting built that counts on serious people who can be fired for incompetence?
I work in a research field that is commonly cited as an area where government funding is super necessary (if one proposed cutting research funding to my field - which I do - even conservatives would call one heartless), and I've honestly come to believe that most government funded academic/institutional research in my field is a predictable waste. The grant allotment system has little relationship with utility, >99% of research will be read by no more than a few people and probably no one who could use it to practically help people; the structure of institutions channels most young talent toward wasting their time trying to make useless novel discoveries or methods to advance their careers. The most cutting edge research that's revolutionizing the field is increasingly being done by the private sector, like big tech companies (and it's not even a field they specialize in). So at least in my field, I'm increasingly doubtful government funding would actually pass cost benefit analysis. One could take all the money, halve it, and announce that it'll be paid out to what or whoever makes such and such defined innovation and imo accomplish better results than throwing the money at universities and institution.
I too make my living on the government grant teat and the NSF (Engineering Professor at big State school). I agree, 99% of science funding is pure waste. Almost any system would be better. The most successful faculty today are good salesmen and terrible scientists.
I wonder how much this is just an extension of the spoils system. That is, is it less about actually spurring innovation, and more about ensuring academia remains a client class of the Democratic party?
"but it is good at collecting taxes and writing checks. "
I believe this is the essence of why many people vote for Democrats. They don't trust that people will generally do the right thing for their neighbors. So Democrats want to make sure that the money is spent, and that leftist goals are paid for by others, and so Democrats don't really care about the morality of the coercive aspect of treating people that way (which this post even celebrates).
Political choices are generally about value weighting. Democrats, like most socialists, put very little weight on freedom, and happily tolerate very high levels of state force.
It helps in this calculus of trade-offs, that leftist causes are obviously always unquestionably just and perfect, of course...
On choosing between the two parties I am reminded of what Henry Kissinger once said about the Iraq-Iran war: “Too bad they both can’t lose.”
The way I have been looking at it lately is to view myself as a very small country in the Balkans in WW2 and say "would I rather be occupied by the Germans or the Italians, since independence is not in the cards?". I picked those two for my metaphor (rather than the harder choice between the Germans and the Soviets) because there were much easier A to B comparisons available - e.g. half of Crete was occupied by the Italians and half by the Germans.
Thank you for a largely sensible perspective. In a "liberal democracy," especially our winner-take-all version, voting for the least bad option is what you're stuck with. Trying to be an "enlightened centrist" is silly and mostly motivated by a person's desire to maintain their self-image as an "independent thinker" who is not beholden to playing for a particular team (even though, inevitably, they do anyways, unless they just completely refuse to take any positions on anything at all). And I have no problem agreeing that the Republicans are indeed evil, just less evil than the Democrats, although probably for different reasons than yours.
The two minor things that stand out to me:
1. Is it true that Republicans are "stupider and more immoral" if they are, simultaneously, right enough about the things that matter to earn your vote? This seems like a contradiction.
2. I wouldn't underestimate how much the ruling regime can do to change the culture downstream, when it puts its back into it. You've written quite well on the ways in which "civil rights" transformed our society. I would venture to guess that, if the political battle feels like it's irrelevant to the cultural one, it is because right wingers have not truly held cultural power in the United States, not since the second world war at least. The institutions that matter most in this respect--government, media, university, etc.--have been firmly in the hands of the left since that time if not before.
If we imagine a counterfactual in which these institutions were controlled just as firmly by the right, I am pretty sure that we would not currently be dealing with the phenomenon of "trans kids" (some other bizarre or disturbing behaviors might emerge instead, but they'd be different from the sort of wild sexual deviancy being peddled by these entities today).
The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act was almost entirely a top-down phenonemon, and passed at a time when even the Democrats felt compelled to reassure voters that the ethnic makeup of the country wouldn't change as a result of it. Of course it did change, massively so - and particularly in the states where it changed, we've seen significant ideological shifts
Richard is perhaps correct that the US government can't mold the thoughts of the electorate, but they can - and currently do - mold the electorate that does the thinking through its immigration policy.
Whether or not this will eventually backfire is another question entirely: the key point is that it's utterly churlish to ask these questions about how the electorate can be swayed without considering the makeup of that electorate. Minnesota 40 years from now will be literally unrecognizable, demographically, to that of the 1980s. Are we to expect their next champion to be Walter Mondale?
Side note, but I disagree with your point. This would be happening under Republicans as well, and indeed is happening in red states, including my own, in large part because Richard is correct and this isn't being orchestrated by the federal government, but also because most right wingers have no competing vision of their own to offer the public. Being "against trans kids" is not a convincing worldview - it just isn't, because anyone who's going to take your side is already on it, anyone who's opposed is already opposed, and anyone in the middle will think you're weird for making a big deal out of being "against" something, especially when you have absolutely nothing compelling to offer. In my state, the vast majority of Republicans stand for low taxes and. well, that's about it, really. Maybe going to church. But certainly no kind of worldview that can compete with that of the cultural Left. In fact, the Right doesn't even try. Hence it loses.
I don't disagree. Hence why I refer to Republicans as still evil, just less so.
As an example consider Hungary or India where the ruling party’s supporters own the Cathedral institutions. (Although, in India perhaps this is easier because the BJP is already the party of that country’s “Cathedral”)
It’s simply a matter of having the guts to remove and replace the “old” regime’s supporters like in Germany and Austria post WW2 or in Eastern Europe post Cold War, once you get elected.
The other solution would be to keep up grassroots efforts to control education - I think this is why Israel’s youth are more socially conservative than other places.
Controlling education is essential, for sure. Unfortunately the education system here is just, so far gone. I think doing anything possible to salvage may be defensible, but I also think people need to go ahead and pull their kids out if they can. If it can't be salvaged, we must let it collapse.
Good point, I have to say so myself I think most American “conservatives” are just classical liberals. That said this problem could be fixed if they were to, in the words of Rod Dreher, “go Benedict”. Israel’s Haredim(especially Hasidim) already do that and I wonder if that also gives then a leg up (check Israel’s latest election results to see what I mean)
I am definitely not a classical liberal, and I would say that many conservatives also are not. However, you are right in that many are. Some are libertarians, some just want to own the libs, etc. This is one reason that implementing a top-down conservative vision would be very difficult. We are not united around it, only united in our opposition to the left.
Perhaps it must be a two-front effort, combining grassroots campaigns at the bottom with McCarthyism on steroids at the top. Once we’ve amended the CRA to allow it of course.
I think you're going to have trouble amending the CRA, or doing much of anything else to impose some kind of conservative vision onto the nation in a top-down fashion. It's not that I'd be opposed to it on principle, but I'm just not convinced that the "conservative" half of the country has the discipline for it. Picking up the pieces after it falls apart may be the best that we can do. This is why I say, if you want to try and save the education system I won't necessarily oppose that, but I think you should go ahead and pull your kids out on the assumption that it's not salvageable.
Most of us on the Right just cope and act like it's some kind of game that's supposed to be subject to fair rules, and the Left only wins because they fight dirty, and if only *we* had control of the levers of the culture (academia, mass media, publishing etc.) everyone would be in lockstep with Paul Ryan or whatever eunuch we're supposed to admire.
You are, of course, correct. We live in a meritocracy in which the highly-educated float to the top. The highly-educated are almost always - not always, but almost always - the most naturally intelligent. The most naturally intelligent tend to score highly on things like "openness to new experiences" and "understanding cultural differences", which are of course very Leftie views in the US. Prizing tradition and conservatism for its own sake is on the other hand usually - but not always - correlated with what we'll rather perjoratively call "closed-mindedness". Now, of course, on certain things, everyone can be closed-minded. But if we instead look at the opposite of "openness to new experience" then we find that is strongly a low intelligence trait. These people, not being highly educated, won't gravitate to the top of the cultural class, and thus can't really influence it.
The Right really needs to understand this, but refuses to. The Right really does think that everyone is just a conservative-in-waiting, and if we just send one more planeload of "migrants" to Martha's Vineyard then the libs will wake up and say, "Oh no! Turns out I didn't want open borders all along! I didn't really think diversity was our strength and I didn't really want people to come here for a better life, subsidized by the US taxpayer!" It's cope. These are very popular, very sincerely-held positions among the cultural Left, and the Right can't win until it acknowledges that and comes up with a way to package ideas unpopular among high culture in a way that reaches people who can be reached. Those people are not in Martha's Vineyard and they're not paying attention to those who are.
Trump is the main one who figured this out, of course. Everyone is busily trying to forget the trail he blazed for us.
I phrased what I meant very badly. Trump won non-college whites because instead of saying "open borders are fine because Hispanics make good food, have family values, and are natural conservatives" (a failed attempt to package the idea for a high audience) he said "if we don't have a border we don't have a country. Illegals are coming to take American jobs, rape people, and sell drugs. We need to close the border." This packaged the idea of restrictionism *for its audience* and was remarkably successful. Indeed, it's precisely what changed me from a Bernie supporter to a Trump supporter.
Aside from that point, leftists are always mewling about Republicans voting against their own interest which, if true, suggests a disconnect between a policy's image and a policy's effect. (The alternative, that they might not be voting against their own interest, could be an option as well.)
Which, in the US at least, is my precise contention: the cultural elite in a meritocracy of the educated will inevitably be socially liberal. The absolute best the Republicans could hope for - and this is how they won the wealthy suburbs for years - is a Rockefellian strategy of low taxes, low crime, but social liberalism (or at least not social conservatism.) Social conservatism fails with the educated because they almost always have high conscientiousness, high openness to experience, and high desire for novelty. So long as the elite is drawn from the educated classes, social conservatism *as policy* won't appeal, and this is true regardless of their own life. (Gavin Newsom's family is straight out of a Rockwell painting. This is, to put it mildly, not the path he has in mind for the median Californian family.)
The only way the Right could win it over, then, is not being culturllally Right. But then you're left with the problem that they're just then discount Democrats. If your heart bleeds for immigrants and you vote on that basis, you are just going to vote Democrat and not the store brand version.
Then the sole remaining option you have is limited triangulation - run to your strengths on your core issue, then be just moderate enough on everything else to overcome a "veto." This, rather than trying to appeal to the elites, is what Blake Masters and Kari Lake are trying in AZ. I hope it works.
What "marketplace of ideas?" This is a ridiculous concept, and not a thing that has ever even remotely existed. Left-wing values "win" in these institutions because those who commit wrongspeak lose their jobs or are otherwise socially ostracized/punished. It has always been such. If we were to take your perspective halfway seriously for a second, this would imply that the viewpoints of the Nazis were necessarily correct because they won in Germany's "marketplace of ideas," or that the governance of Stalin was necessarily correct in the Soviet Union because the very fact that it won out proves that it was most fit in the "marketplace of ideas."
Utter nonsense.
To the extent that an actual "marketplace of ideas" has ever existed, the Internet is probably the closest we've gotten, with its capacity for anonymity shielding people from social consequences for voicing their true thoughts. And the sitting regime will stop at nothing to censor and control the Internet, at any cost. So that should tell you something about your whole "marketplace of ideas" concept.
Okay, but if they shouldn't be winning or if they are winning in spite of being wrong about everything, this disproves the theory that the "marketplace of ideas" is something worth respecting or caring about, if it even exists at all.
Republicans also have better priors when it comes to how they treat people.
Democrats think the peons are inherently bad and need to be controlled (by enlightened and all-knowing Democrats) in order to have a civil society.
Parents cannot be trusted to treat their children well - so leftist schools have a policy to lie - to parents.
You cannot be trusted to save for your own retirement - so SS will be forced upon you. Etc
I vote Republican because Democrats embrace coercion (note Covid) and lying to the peons (note the censoring by recent DHS and denying of it) with the perpetual excuse that it is "for the peons own good".
Since most of the money goes for entitlements, defense, and interest (over 1T for the latter in 2023), and neither party has much chance of cutting any of them, the only question is how far we fall and when it starts. Neither party is equipped to handle a real crisis. The leaders are too old, their replacements lightweights.
The rest of society is moving ever more quickly, while governance does the opposite. Something's gotta give, but it's hard to see what will replace it. Autocrats have troubles of their own, so don't see hope there.
If the Reps do get the legislature, what will they actually do. Slow walk appointments? What can they get past Biden beyond CRs?
Little of consequence. It is a football game. People will feel happy because their team won, not because it actually matters very much.
This is only true to an extent and it's churlish to act otherwise. Except on foreign policy, where the parties are in near-lockstep - namely in favor of war, lots of it, everywhere, all the time - there are clear and obvious voting differences between them on domestic matters.
The Democrats already rammed through everything that they could until they ran up against Manchin/Sinema. I suppose you could theorize that, if by some miracle the Democrats did not lose control of the House in this election, that might further galvanize them to previously impossible levels of overreach. But as far as the Republicans winning Congress, this mostly just means no more Democrat spending sprees for a while, and again, they already did as much of that as they could get away with.
A Republican winning back the White House in 2024 may have some more genuine consequences, especially depending on who it is and what they have the balls to do if they are actually allowed to take office.
I'll reply to this in full tomorrow, but for tonight suffice it to say that with vanishingly few exceptions - coalescing around Arizona, for a lot of reasons - if they had balls they wouldn't be Republicans to start with. They'd be apolitical and in the private sector.
Well, if we want to go with the theory that election outcomes matter, this will require a Republican president who actually has the stones to wage a scorched-earth campaign against the entrenched federal bureaucracy and the various interest groups surrounding it, and a Republican party with the stones to have his back in the process.
Now if you stop me and say this won't happen, I'll feel inclined to agree. Hence my general apathy towards election outcomes. But let's go with the hypothetical and say that the Republicans aren't *completely* spineless and incompetent, and are willing to make a go of it. Maybe things are so far gone that it will be a futile effort. But I must at least see them try, if I am going to be convinced that voting for them means anything.
And yes, any serious effort to hollow out the federal government from within would require some very big balls. Lord knows I wouldn't want to be the one saddled with such a task.
So 2000 new regulations... 1000 page bills that congress votes on without reading... so obvious that special interests and their lawyers are the ones running the show. I’m sure if we went through things one by one the amount of waste in government would make anyone sick. My GF is a public school teacher in a big city so I get to bear witness to the insanity within that domain. It’s so obvious that they can provide a better education at lower cost just by cutting some of the extremely low hanging fruit, such as “climate staff” who walk around collecting 6 figure paychecks doing absolutely nothing. Yet the democrats literally exist to grow this cartel they call “education”, along with several other useless interests they represent.
Yet republicans have to ruin literally the easiest decision ever by being not even slightly reasonable on abortion. The fact that there are actually republicans in power who would say that if my sister, gf, or daughter is raped, that they should be forced to carry the baby is just such an egregious violation of basic principles that I just can’t bring myself to vote for them. There is a non-0 chance of banning certain contraception. I mean it’s just so extreme. It sucks, but I think I’m just staying home this election.
I was heartened to see that Blake Masters in Arizona immediately softened on abortion when he saw the Kansas results. That shows he's playing to win.
Otherwise I agree with you entirely.
To be honest I’ve been tuned out of the midterms on a day to day level, so I haven’t seen that. But that’s awesome! I do feel like there’s a big chunk of republicans who don’t actually believe what they say about abortion. They just need to soften their stance to a reasonable 12 weeks and they will have a lot of people jump on board. Even 6 weeks for “at will”, with unconditional rape/health of mother exceptions would be enough for most people IMO. The “up to 40 week” abortions supported by the left are really unpopular as well.
Absolutely. I do understand the ones who have a genuine religious belief about this. If they won't compromise, so be it. But the ones who are playing to the gallery... they need to understand that the voters in this country are largely in the middle.
Masters came into the election a pro-life extremist, and moderated as soon as he saw which way the wind was blowing. Some will call that pandering. I'll call it meeting the electorate where they're at.
I wish more Republicans - those who, as you say, don't really believe what they're saying about life beginning at conception - would do the same.
The thing about abortion is that GOP politicians are having to adapt rapidly to it suddenly becoming subject to the democratic process, and some are failing the test. The pro-life side wasn't moderated by the democratic process because, in large sections of the country, the most pro-life position allowable by law was still pretty broadly popular. Statements about being more pro-life than the law allows (and than most voters supported) were more like tribal signals than real policy proposals, helping politicians win primaries without costing them much support among swing voters in the general.
Now, I'm someone who believes that abortion is a grave evil and should be restricted to the degree it's practical, but I still think Republican politicians shouldn't try to push policies that are more pro-life than is politically viable, and in practice I have enough confidence in the pragmatic corruptibility of politicians to think that's not going to be a problem for long.
The pro-life belief is not a religious one. It is a belief that abortion is a euphemism for the murder of a child. Every atheist that I have met also considers it wrong to murder children. The dispute is about what "counts" as a human being or not, and this is not a matter of religious dogma either. The Bible has little to say on the subject.
The link between religiosity and views on abortion are borne out by polling data time and again. Jewish people, for example, are almost 90% likely to favor liberal abortion laws; evangelical protestants are only 30% likely. Atheists/agnostics are 75% likely. These are slam dunks in terms of the social sciences, albeit the figures are changing over time.
What the Bible says is largely irrelevant to religious self-identification.
Yes, devout Christians tend to be pro-life, just as black people tend to vote Democrat. We do not say of Democrat voters, however, that they simply vote Democrat because they happen to have a particular skin color, as if there is nothing of substance behind the behavior and it is just some kind of robotic action taken out of rigid dogma.
Actually, the dispute is NOT about what "counts". At all.
And your horror relates to your inability to understand the real issue being debated. So please read carefully.
Let us grant that a baby is fully human with all the rights of a human at the moment of conception. Done. Happy?
Now ...
No human has ever had the right to the use of another human's body parts.
Ever. Even to stay alive, I (nor a cute baby) can demand one of your kidneys.
THAT is the issue. Ah ....
The issue with abortion is that there are TWO humans. BOTH with rights.
But the one right that does not exist, is for one of the humans to demand the services of the other one. Just does not exist. Humans have a right to TRY to live (as long as they don't impact others). Humans don't have the "right to life" - at the expense of others. All humans die. Always. You have a right to try to live. If you can't, (and nobody can forever) then bummer.
Formally, an abortion should take the baby human out of the unwilling second human whose rights are being violated, fully alive and unharmed.
It should then be left to die of its own inability to survive (suffer). Practically it makes very little difference how it is done.
>Actually, the dispute is NOT about what "counts". At all.
Not to you, I suppose. Again, every single "debate" about abortion that I have ever seen revolves around the definition of "when life begins" and such. I have never seen someone grant that a fetus is a person and then try to defend killing them just because reasons. Credit for sheer audacity if nothing else.
As for your post here, your perspective justifies a parent's right to kill or otherwise abandon (thus killing via neglect) their children at any time, for any reason. If you actually believe that, I can't exactly prove you wrong, since you're resting on a (very twisted, in my opinion) first principle there. But again, it seems incredibly dense to think this will be a winning argument in the public more generally. Go for it if you want, I guess.
I believe that if all abortion advocates adopted your narrative, it would greatly accelerate the conversion of the population over to a pro-life perspective, because most people still recognize that abandonment/murder of an unwanted child is evil, no matter how hard certain actors may try to warp their view of morality.
I don't understand how "let the States decide" a very contentious topic via legislation reflecting the will of the people, is unreasonable. Not one person in the GOP supported Lindsey's latest stupidity. The odds of the GOP forcing pregnancy on rape victims is zero - and everybody knows it. They couldn't if they wanted to - and they have shown zero indication that they want to.
It is not 0 at all. There is a whole branch of republicans who base their entire appeal off of a total abortion ban. There are a ton of Catholics in this country who are single issue voters on abortion with 0 exceptions. Literally Seth Dillon (founder of the Babylon Bee) was JUST on Joe Rogan attempting to argue for a total abortion ban, no exceptions. It’s actually a fairly common position, probably shared by about a quarter of republicans if I had to guess. And these people CARE. They show up to vote, they donate money, they protest, they do whatever it takes to get people in office who have that agenda. They’re the only bloc on the right that’s actually motivated to win at all costs. It’s an absolute moral deal breaker for them. I find it hard to fathom as well, but it’s true.
Then of that quarter who support a total abortion ban, probably about a quarter of those are against contraception totally. Then even more against plan B. They get politicians elected, and they aren’t even denying this is a possibility when they’re asked about it. It’s depressing as fuck when you realize it. A total abortion ban is not just a side goal, but the ENTIRE reason for politics for a huge chunk of the republican base.
One quarter of the GOP means about 25%/3 = 8% of the population (including independents).
My personal experience would estimate even lower, as I have never met a person with this position (but I do live in a leftist hellhole). Even given your estimate - this is a non-issue to worry about. 8% won't cut it. And no those people are not evil (or depressing as you put it). Simply consistent. If a baby is "gods will" then the rape was "gods will". He works in mysterious ways and all that nonsense.
How can you say 8% won’t cut it when they’ve already had a ton of success rolling back abortion protections beyond the scope of what’s generally popular? My original comment is literally all about how special interests control America.
Yes, of course you don’t know these people if you live in a leftist hell hole. They do not live in cities and if they do they obviously aren’t able to be open about their abortion positions. I can personally attest to the existence of these people considering some of them are my family. Just like you don’t know them, most of these people do not know a single LGBTQ person (that they know of). If you are a practicing Catholic, you are most likely a single issue voter on abortion. You can be an outright socialist economically, but you can never vote that way b/c of their stance on abortion. Yes 8% isn’t a lot of people, but not all 8% “bands” of people are equal. If you have 8% who’s entire life is devoted to this one single issue, who are non-negotiable while providing a ton of funding, and the other 42% are indifferent on it, that 8% band is going to be much more important to pander to.
Hanania literally wrote a whole article on this phenomenon called “why is everything liberal”. Think about how you turn on an NFL game and you’re smacked with woke/LGBT messaging that’s mostly extremely unpopular with the NFL fan base. It’s because there’s a tiny sliver of the population that will ONLY watch it they say this shit, which is bigger than the sliver that will turn off their tv when they see it. Most people will roll their eyes and move on. Abortion works the same way with the Republican Party.
I don’t think these people are evil, and I understand they’re consistent. I just think forcing a 12 year old rape victim to carry the baby is fucking insane. And it’s depressing because it’s SO insane to me that Im forced to stay home rather than voting awful Democrats out of office, and judging by the comments here a lot of ppl feel the same.
Having the people decide on abortion was always the right thing to do.
And lots of people agree with that position. I am pro-abortion and I agree with that position.
I am not tolerating the end of Roe, I am all in favor of it. As are most people because most people want to be allowed to have a say in society's important major decisions.
I actually don't think it is "insane" to force a 12 year old to have a baby. I wouldn't do it or vote for somebody who could do it (note - they can't, and worrying that they can, is oddly as obsessive as the people you are denigrating). The emphasis should be on punishing and preventing pedophile rapists (something the left and Disney are now even promoting) and not getting to the pregnant 12-year-old situation in the first place. And that position was the norm for all recorded history. "Insane" is not something nearly every society did for the last 1000s of years. Chopping off your genitalia on the other hand - was actually considered clinically insane for all of recorded history. And probably still is.
When the left is as appalled about the rape as they are about the pregnancy then they might get a hearing with me. Which is the worse thing?
You are making the exact same arguments I was making just like 7-8 months ago. I don’t know why you’re saying they “can’t” vote to force 12 year olds to have a baby when in many states they are, and there are many pushing for this at the national level. If republicans controlled house, senate, and presidency, a situation that’s not really unprecedented and we could easily have in 2 years, I think the odds of a national abortion ban with no exemptions are above 25%.
I agree that ideally contentious policies such as this should be made at as local a level as possible, but to the point made by the other commenter here, that sentiment is NOT shared by the pro-life single issue republican bloc. To reiterate, their entire reason for politics is a national abortion ban. That is their goal. I agree the emphasis should be on preventing child rape. I agree that Democrats are too “soft on crime” but they are not pro-child rape. It’s easy to say it’s not “insane” to force a 12 year old to have a baby when it’s just an abstraction. But if you are in that situation it is the epitome of insanity.
This is just dishonest. This is exactly like when my Democratic friends and family tell me "nooo all the gender stuff is just Republicans trying to create a culture war where there isn't one! We're not really pushing transgenderism on children! This stuff is a distraction!" To which I ask: OK, does that mean you don't care about it, you're going to let it go, you're going to cede all the policy to the opposition, and you're going to focus on other things? Does that mean the candidate you're backing doesn't have it as an affirmative policy decision? (In your example this means saying - OK, then your candidates will stop running on a complete abortion ban platform?)
Then it gets very quiet, because of course their party supports all these things. So too is true of pro life Republicans. You can't have it both ways: you either run on this or you don't. You can't say you support it with a wink and expect us to get it.
Excuse the aside but I just had a revelation. I'm an immigrant, and while I know what "dog whistle" means, I never really grokked why Americans are always fuming about it. Now I get it. There aren't actually dog whistles like racial ones, where people say something mild and their supporters know it's secret code for something strong. It's the other way around. There's some kind of reverse dog whistle, where the electorate is supposed to disregard someone's stance on abortion because "the odds" don't favor it. That way the candidate never has to take responsibility for what they say.
Call me out of touch but I'd call supporting a candidate because *their own policy positions* are impossible really fucking dumb, but it seems to be in fashion in this country, so I'd better get with the program.
If Republicans don't want to be the party thought of as supporting "forced pregnancy", there's a very easy path to getting there: say "here's what we support, and it's not forced pregnancy." Until then, the 100% pro life faction there is in the party - and to be clear I respect their forthrightness - will be taken at their word.
Like many things, a few politician support it and most don't. Very few hide their position as far as I can tell. And people are free to judge whether somebody like Masters' position on abortion (which they know will never happen) outweighs his positions on border security, federal overspending, political weaponization of the FBI, and things they think can actually happen.
Understand that a genuine pro-life person believes abortion is the murder of a child. "Just let half the states murder children" is not an acceptable compromise.
It is the best compromise. Nobody presumes it is their right to dictate policy in Japan or Tajikistan. Why should Utah have any say about what happen is Delaware or vice versa. Smaller government is better. People need to learn to mind their own business, and to tolerate differences. If they can't do that then let them stew. I don't care.
If we disagree about who counts as a human being or not, and half the states are murdering children due to this misunderstanding, then we can no longer have a union. This "compromise" would involve breaking up the United States. Because yes, we cannot expect to outlaw the murder of the unborn on the other side of the globe, in other countries--but of course pro-life people will always push to outlaw it in their own society. Again, "just let people murder children" will not fly.
This issue is akin to slavery.
Now, if people wanted to actually break up the nation somehow so that the abortionists could live in truly separate societies from those who believe that it is the murder of the innocent, then okay. I could probably get on board with that. Good luck selling it to people more generally, though.
Babies are human at conception. That is NOT the issue. Societies kill people all the time via war, capital punishment, neglect, and now abortion. It is the way of humans. Always has been. I don't disagree with you one iota about when a baby is human. I repeat, that is NOT the issue at hand here.
Nobody is taught about Federalism anymore.
States are separate countries ALREADY. They are countries with a common defense and no trade barriers. The EU is modeled precisely on the USA Federalist idea.
Residents of Norway don't presume to set abortion policy in Catholic Spain, and vice versa.
And resident of Rhode Island similarly have no say in what Kansas want to decide. None.
We don't have to break into 2 countries, because we are already 50.
If you think slavery was a valid excuse to invade and conquer other countries to impose your will - only then it is like slavery.
You will get you way over the people in other States legislative decisions over my and many other's dead bodies. Learn to live with differences, or be prepared for violence.
I say exactly the same thing to leftists. And far more often. Because you are an aberration among conservatives. You honestly should join the Democrat Party. They, like you, believe that their ideas are so righteous they should be allowed to force them on others who definitively decided OTHERWISE.
>Babies are human at conception. That is NOT the issue. Societies kill people all the time via war, capital punishment, neglect, and now abortion. It is the way of humans. Always has been. I don't disagree with you one iota about when a baby is human. I repeat, that is NOT the issue at hand here.
So your position is that killing babies out of nothing more than the mother's perception of inconvenience is uhh, totally fine and cool? Okaaay.
Even if that is really what you believe, it is obviously not the position of 99% of abortion advocates. I have never seen any of them say what you just said. "It is a baby, but killing it is fine anyways." They deny that fetuses are people to justify their position. It seems incredibly dense to believe that "killing unwanted babies is fine just because" is going to be a defensible position for keeping abortion around.
>States are separate countries ALREADY. They are countries with a common defense and no trade barriers. The EU is modeled precisely on the USA Federalist idea.
I wish this were true, but it clearly isn't. When the Supreme Court ruled that gay marriage is somehow protected by the Constitution, all 50 states had to get in line, whether they liked it or not. The same would be true if the Supreme Court ruled that the right to life includes the unborn. This is an unthinkable decision today, but give it another 50 years and who knows.
>If you think slavery was a valid excuse to invade and conquer other countries to impose your will - only then it is like slavery.
Well, like I said, I would actually be okay with *actually* breaking up the nation into separate camps so that people can properly have their differences. I don't favor invading Canada, for instance, to forcibly put a stop to abortions in that nation, as abhorrent as the practice may be. But that's the thing--Canada is actually a separate country. Within my own country, of course I will support the outlawing of what I view as baby murder. How could I possibly do otherwise given my belief on the issue?
I agree that the Republican position on abortion is crazy, but it's much less impactful than other government regulations.
If you need an abortion you can travel to a state that allows them. Obviously this is inconvenient, costly, and possibly dangerous (if rules around health issues are unclear). But how many women will die, or are forced to carry a pregnancy they desperately don't want, because they couldn't get to another state? More than zero, but not millions.
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people died because the FDA slowed down the covid vaccine. If women's health is your priority, getting vaccines approved one day quicker is more important than 20 states banning abortions. Even legalizing kidney sales would probably save more women than legalizing abortion in all states.
Look I actually agree with you. From a purely cost-benefit perspective abortion is actually a pretty unimportant issue. Reforming the FDA would almost certainly save more lives.
But therein lies the issue, not everything can be measured in terms of a dispassionate CBA. Sometimes you have to go by moral principles because that is ultimately what determines the type of society we live in. Hard line Conservatives are not crunching the numbers on abortion and determining it’s bad for the economy or w.e. They simply believe that their version of their religion should be the fundamental organizing principle of society, and that is the main driving force behind many of them in politics. I do not want these people anywhere near politics. At least the people who shill the FDA do it under the guise of a cost-benefit perspective, and you can conceivably make a rational argument for it’s existence. You cannot conceivably make a rational argument for an abortion ban with no rape exception.
To frame it differently, imagine if rather than Christians banning abortion, republicans were mostly Muslims and wanted to require hijabs. From a purely lives lost perspective, almost undoubtedly a less costly policy than an abortion ban. Then costs what, a couple dollars a person?? But it would be such an egregious violation of the principles of most Americans that all other ideas they brought wouldn’t matter. That’s where I’m at with Republicans and abortion right now.
What you’re saying ab states is true, but there is absolutely a lot of republicans making a national abortion ban their priority. There is legitimate talk of looking at contraception. A non-0 chance of that happening is just too high in my book. It’s tough, because I absolutely despise the feminists, and their discourse around abortion has become grotesque. But I can’t let my distaste for certain people allow me to deviate from my principles.
- "I do not want these people anywhere near politics." I agree with you that Republican politicians are evil. Unfortunately so are Democrats, so that doesn't convince me. After all Richard did call them the lesser of two evils.
- "At least the people who shill the FDA do it under the guise of a cost-benefit perspective" Could you point me towards this guise? I (a pro-choice atheist) find anti-abortion arguments far more persuasive than pro-FDA arguments.
- on the Hijab issue, completely agree. I would never vote for a party that wants to force all Americans to cover their faces.
(Sorry, you walked right into that one!)
- if you honestly believe there's a chance all contraceptives will be banned nationwide, it may be rational to vote for Democrats. I would bet you with 100:1 odds that won't happen.
-I actually think on average Democrats are more evil than republicans, but the position on abortion of forcing rape victims to carry the baby is in practice more awful. The other factor at play is that woke Democrats are on average extremely ineffective politicians relative to pro life republicans, so I think they’re less likely to be successful in converting their most extreme beliefs into actual policy. Regardless, I’m not going to vote for Democrats, I’m just not gonna vote at all lol.
-https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5862299/ .... here’s a scholarly article by some biostatisticians that’s shilling the fda. Tbh I just skimmed the beginning after googling “scholarly article fda benefits” and clicking the first result. Seems to fit the bill. I’m not convinced by pro FDA arguments either, but it is something that I can conceivably be convinced on if the facts changed one way or another. Abortion isn’t really something that appeals to logic like that.
- got me on the face coverings! Lmao. Although a hijab only covers the head, not the face lol. But yes masking is insane, and there’s still some Insane people doing it/making kids do it, but on the whole it’s over. I think the chance of a return to masking (all else equal) is 0.
- 1/100 odds of contraception ban at the state level is about where I’m at as well, definitely lower at the national level. It is just such an insane policy to me that 1/100 is too much of a risk to take.
Wearing clothing is just not equivalent to killing something.
I am pro-abortion, but I'm not going to lie about what it is.
Killing is always a place where society gets a say. You can't even kill yourself.
The limits on "rights" where society gets no input - end well short of situations where killing happens.
“Society” has a say in what clothes you wear too. I can’t just walk outside with my cock and balls hanging out without getting arrested. There are limits on what I can wear, many legally imposed, depending on the situation. Companies have the right to refuse service based on what people are wearing.
Regardless, thats beside the point. Im not saying that clothing and killing are the same, I’m not saying hijabs and abortion are the same. Im saying the principles determining the positions are the same. They both are positions (and I’m referring to the “total ban, no exceptions” position) that are had by people who believe religion should be the fundamental principle guiding governance. For some reason people who are pro abortion compartmentalize the insanity of a total abortion ban (and even talk of contraception ban!) in a way they never would a hijab requirement. I know it’s not a perfect analogy, but a child victim not being able to abort their rapist’s baby is to me the epitome of cruelty.
The religious position is that life is inherently full of cruelty. And wonderful things come from terrible things. And vice versa. And humans are not placed in a position to predict those ultimate outcomes and are being arrogant when they try to do so. I worry that you are ascribing evil or stupidity to a philosophy which is probably neither. And which is quite probably (though I don't ascribe to it) more rational and reasonable about our place in the world than any leftist's worldview.
Republicans are slightly worse on animals. If you care about animals at all that's a large cost.
Yes thought about that.
I agree with the reasoning process here, but want to explain a different method which may actually get results: deciding a priority, and voting based only on that. An example of results: we went from one state with constitutional carry(Vermont) to constitutional carry in half the states. Almost everywhere else is shall-issue, as well. This is because a substantial number of voters made gun rights the only issue they cared about. A secondary effect is that it's impossible to get elected as an anti-gun Republican, which is convenient because now the gun rights crowd can pick another priority(in theory) and influence the Republican party. Coordinating voters with a single priority can be very effective, although you have to vote in primaries, off-years, etc.
"If one party could snap its fingers and make the kids less gay, it would be worth taking that into account"
Ugh. Repugnant.
Not to mention -- election results denial founded on false claims of widespread fraud? That poison is endemic to Republican candidates now (and apparently infects some of the nuthatches on your comment thread). That doesn't factor in to your 'priors'?
Abrams and Hillary election denial? Or just questioning all the massive irregularities and illegalities of the 2020 election (Zuckbucks, Laptop censorship, unsupervised dropboxes, etc)?
Maybe the prevalence of hypocrisy does factor into his priors.
Please. Election denial was never embraced institutionally by the Democratic Party anything like the GOP has done. And your 2020 conspiracies are plain nuts.
Of course they were! Democrats started it. The reaction to Hillary's loss was incredible.
And included the FBI lying on FISA warrants and spying. What a fabulously short memory.
The Democrats also taught the GOP how to riot in the summer of 2020. But nobody informed the population that rule was that only Democrats are actually allowed to burn and loot. The GOP can't even walk in their own government buildings.
Let's review actual history, not your fantasies. Both the Republicans (McConnell) and the Dems (Obama) saw the same intelligence reports about Russian interference with the 2016 election. These reports were coming in *before the election happened*. Obama wanted to release a public bipartisan note of concern because he thought coming just from one side it might look like trying to influence the election. McConnell was 'concerned' that it would cast doubt on the election and thereby actually help the Russians (though of course his actual concern was that most of the Russian meddling was trying to game the election for Trump and against Hillary, and he was OK with that) . So he refused. In August 2020 the GOP-led Senate panel actually acknowledged in its 1,000 page report that the Russians indeed interfered in the 2016 election. The GOP also condemned the Jan 6 insurrection...until it became inconvenient to do so due to their base being batshit crazy. So tell me again about short memories.
Really. That is the excuse. Some Russians did what they always did for the last 80 years.
It had no effect on anything. But it justifies lying on FISA warrants and spying on Trump, and ginning up 2 years of endless lies by Schiff and all the other Democrat liars. Impressive.
Jan 6th was definitively NOT an insurrection in the slightest. And it shames you people to attempt to sell it that way. Just gross.
The LBGT crowd is the most intolerant, anti-Liberty group in our society and has captured the Libertarian movement. The KKK had more compassion and tolerance. How evil do you have to be to not understand that people might have an objection to grown men in dresses reading to children. The filter in parents who object to this needs to be encouraged, not discouraged. This filter prevents a lot of other evil practices from happening. Racist and homophobic men created the greatest society in history. They did this by protecting values of liberty. You guys are destroying those values and making the Jim Crow South look reasonable.
"Those who generally support allowing the market to set labor conditions suddenly take a different view when it comes to hiring Mexicans"
Those who generally understand supply-and-demand cannot comprehend why wage-labor-suppliers might not want lower wages.
"just as how people who wish American women would have more babies start talking like Malthusians when the topic of immigration comes up."
Reducing immigration relieves competition for scarce resources, the increasing costs of which depress native fertility.
I challenge you to make a purely economic case for open borders -- no morality, just explaining how it on-net puts dollars in the pockets of every native. Bryan Caplan certainly couldn't do it in his risible comic book. I don't think anybody can.
I agree that being pro market in areas where that makes sense -- most ordinary business -- is a good rule. That still leaves the very importunate of externalities, specifically the emission of CO2 into the atmosphere. And although neither party is ready to impose Pigou taxation on emissions, I can see Democrats coming to that position before Republicans. Another pure market distortion is the restriction of US employers hiring the best of the world's talent becasue of immigration restrictions. Again, I can see Democrats favoring immigration reform to recruit high value immigrants before Republicans. The other big issue is trade. Before Trump, I would have given Republicans the nod on that, but now I think they are even more restrictive than Democrats. Finally in macroeconomics, I see Democrats as more likely to increase taxes to decrease fiscal deficits than Republicans to reduce expenditures enough to do so.
So on pro-market/growth I think Democrats, though very far from ideal, are better
What about an alternative strategy where you basically vote to prevent either the Republicans or the Democrats from owning both the Presidency and Congress, on the principle that preventing the government creating new programs is the best result for the country?
The best way to prevent new government programs is to vote for the GOP.
The GOP used to have rules where every new spend - required an equal or larger cut.
They recently proposed an idea where every new law required eliminating two.
And they have also proposed a rule where every law sunsets (has an automatic expiration date, unless explicitly renewed).
This line surprises me:
> Finally, I am very hopeful about the prospects of humanity making use of embryo selection and genetic engineering, and would consider any attempts to stop progress in this area to be another existential threat to our species.
It seems like getting that right would be very hard, with downstream effects at least as unpredictable as the civil rights laws you're not crazy about. Is your thinking that it wouldn't be a centralized effort, so we wouldn't need to worry about getting things wrong?
Voting on the base of ideology? Stupid. How do you know that markets are the superior solution in the 99% of cases where you have no policy expertise?
Instead, vote on the basis of raw, stupid, self-interest. Even the dumbest person can tell when their personal self-interest is negatively impacted, since their life becomes measurably worse. The total averaged out result of this, across the whole population, is that the government will favor policies that benefit the whole. Yes, there may be cases where, e.g., the long-term externalities are obscured from the individual voters, but guess what? That's also the case for markets. If every X of pollutant kills off n% of the future population, then the market includes literally no mechanism whatsoever to reduce the pollutant load.
This, incidentally, is why I will never vote Republican for the forseeable future: when I was at my financially worst, literally below the poverty line, the Republican party had fought tooth and nail to prevent me from accessing the Medicaid expansion, and I had to pay $3,600 for health insurance that year. The Democrats may refuse to back M4A, meaning that I had to pay $2000 out of pocket after I was bit by somebody else's dog, but $2,000 < $5,600.
"Republicans do make one major exception to their greater trust of markets, and that’s in the areas of immigration and sometimes trade. Many seem to believe that the laws of economics are different depending on whether one is interacting with someone born in the United States or another country. "
Partly yes, and indeed they are because economic 'laws' only kick in when you have things like private property and aa currency, which are creations of political orders. However, the main reason is that the laws of economics change when the items being bought and sold are sentient and have agency. Example: sudden drop in demand for lemons ---> stores of lemons rot in warehouse, whereas sudden drop in demand for Mexicans ---> someone robs your house.