Father-daughter talk.... the truth about liberalism

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I hate that right-wing delusion that success is due to hard work.

99% of success is due to luck - ie who you know, where and to whom you are born and pure luck itself.

while others make a lot for sitting on their butt all day.

My perspective, after spending the first nineteen years of my life in one of the most conservative areas of the country:
Most of the conservatives I know are social conservatives- homophobes, single-issue anti-abortionists, racists, xenophobes, pro-torture, with no qualms about letting the government play Big Brother because as long as you "have nothing to hide," there's no reason why you should need civil liberties. In my entire life, I have yet to hear anyone put forward a cogent argument for any of the social conservative positions other than pro-life. The small-government economic conservatives are far rarer among the "common people," and those in the general public who do hold such views often have an absurdly distorted take on them.

The Republican Party as I knew it growing up, in a region that has been represented for years by John Boehner, is an abomination with no redeeming qualities. The Republican Party I know, the one of which virtually everyone in my hometown is a staunch supporter, is the Republican Party that tramples civil liberties, places illegal wiretaps, condones torture, drives the economy into the ground by allowing spending to far outpace revenue and then blames it on the Democrats, openly feels contempt for the plight of the poor, is fine with bombing the hell out of civilians as long as they have funny-sounding names, and alienates anyone who is attracted to the same sex or does not fall into the same fundamentalist born-again Christian sect as them. It is not the Republican party of fiscal sanity, of individual freedom, of the Second Amendment, of keeping the government out of our lives. They want the US government to say "to hell with the rest of the world" and nuke anyone who gets in our way. They don't care if spending is out of control as long as it's a Republican who's signing the spending bill. They want the government to force their own specific, narrow interpretation (or, more accurately, bastardization) of Christianity down everyone's throats. They would gladly go back to the old Mosaic law of stoning gays. They don't care if the government reads your mail and installs cameras in your home, and don't believe that any part of the Bill of Rights is significant enough to be worth defending. To them, civil liberties do nothing but protect criminals from justice. In short, they are monsters.

You can say this is just a strawman or a stereotype, but stereotypes come from somewhere. I grew up in this environment, I have seen it first-hand. My public school teachers have, on multiple occasions, argued frankly and openly in favor of torture and of unlimited government surveillance of everything. Whether you want to admit it or not, cretins like these are the base of the Republican Party.

What's delusional about that?

Very few (other than heiresses) make much from sitting on their butt. Sitting in an office chair does not preclude working your butt off.

My perspective, after spending the first nineteen years of my life in one of the most conservative areas of the country:
Most of the conservatives I know are social conservatives- homophobes, single-issue anti-abortionists, racists, xenophobes, pro-torture, with no qualms about letting the government play Big Brother because as long as you "have nothing to hide," there's no reason why you should need civil liberties. In my entire life, I have yet to hear anyone put forward a cogent argument for any of the social conservative positions other than pro-life. The small-government economic conservatives are far rarer among the "common people," and those in the general public who do hold such views often have an absurdly distorted take on them.

The Republican Party as I knew it growing up, in a region that has been represented for years by John Boehner, is an abomination with no redeeming qualities. The Republican Party I know, the one of which virtually everyone in my hometown is a staunch supporter, is the Republican Party that tramples civil liberties, places illegal wiretaps, condones torture, drives the economy into the ground by allowing spending to far outpace revenue and then blames it on the Democrats, openly feels contempt for the plight of the poor, is fine with bombing the hell out of civilians as long as they have funny-sounding names, and alienates anyone who is attracted to the same sex or does not fall into the same fundamentalist born-again Christian sect as them. It is not the Republican party of fiscal sanity, of individual freedom, of the Second Amendment, of keeping the government out of our lives. They want the US government to say "to hell with the rest of the world" and nuke anyone who gets in our way. They don't care if spending is out of control as long as it's a Republican who's signing the spending bill. They want the government to force their own specific, narrow interpretation (or, more accurately, bastardization) of Christianity down everyone's throats. They would gladly go back to the old Mosaic law of stoning gays. They don't care if the government reads your mail and installs cameras in your home, and don't believe that any part of the Bill of Rights is significant enough to be worth defending. To them, civil liberties do nothing but protect criminals from justice. In short, they are monsters.

You can say this is just a strawman or a stereotype, but stereotypes come from somewhere. I grew up in this environment, I have seen it first-hand. My public school teachers have, on multiple occasions, argued frankly and openly in favor of torture and of unlimited government surveillance of everything. Whether you want to admit it or not, cretins like these are the base of the Republican Party.

If you’re talking about Southwest Ohio then I can definitely confirm what you are saying Orwell.

Ah, another Cincinnatian! Yes, I am speaking of Southwest Ohio. Bloody lunatics all around.

The idea that success is from hard work is a delusion because plenty of poor people work hard - usually much harder than those who are not poor. It's used as an excuse to "blame the victim." The reason people are poor is because they are the victim of an unfair system (capitalism.) People are rich due to luck - they were born rich or knew the right people - or due to screwing other people over. I personally think most CEO types should be executed and their money redistributed to the poor.

I personally have a hard time deciding whether capitalism or religion is the worst thing humans ever invented. If I could magically eliminate either from the world I'd have a hard time deciding which.

I would consider it relatively delusional to consider capitalism one of the worst things humans have ever invented. Even if you dislike the workings of the capitalist system, it is hard to claim that it is worse than the preceding systems, and it is hard to claim that the capitalist system isn't intimately linked to progress. You would be hard pressed to find an economist who vehemently opposed capitalism(if you did a survey that is, not if you looked specifically for one using a search engine, because those things can find anything)

Of course to be an economist they have to have studied it by our fascist financial system funded economics courses and make money through the fascist capitalist system. They should mostly go against the wall too. I'd like to see a maximum wage - where in a company the owner, CEO or whatever the highest paid person couldn't make more than 10 times what the lowest paid person in the company makes. Personally I'd rather see everyone make the same wages no matter what they do. Most rich people should be executed if they had anything to do with exploiting the working people.

That's one thing I have at least noticed in this forum, most people are honest enough to admit (in so many words) that by their system of beliefs they'd gladly trade progress or even take lower per capita income all across the board for economic justice if that's what it comes to.

Of course to be an economist they have to have studied it by our fascist financial system funded economics courses and make money through the fascist capitalist system. They should mostly go against the wall too. I'd like to see a maximum wage - where in a company the owner, CEO or whatever the highest paid person couldn't make more than 10 times what the lowest paid person in the company makes. Personally I'd rather see everyone make the same wages no matter what they do. Most rich people should be executed if they had anything to do with exploiting the working people.