Conservatives are ignorant, Liberals are naive.

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Both sides of the spectrum have people who just don't seem to get it. These are the kind of people the opposition uses to try to embarrass the other party. This may be a distinction without a difference but to me it seems the craziness of the right is based on ignorance and the craziness on the left is due to naivety. Now I'm just talking about the fringes not the majority on either side.

Any thoughts on this?

I think there's too much political gamesmanship, not enough actual ideas.

I think a lot of what tries to pass for critique on both left and right basically consists of repeating what someone of the 'opposition' has said, but in a sarcastic and/or incredulous tone. Taking out of context helps, too. It's echo-chamber stuff.

That what the conservative or liberal said is clearly painfully, obviously dumb to the respective audience is a given. Quite why it is so is can be a lot harder to break down and explain or understand.

I think it boils down to conservatives saying that the poor should rely on charity (and many conservatives saying they should 'eat cake')and Democrats saying they should rely on the government.

When the government does something there is the inevitable corruption where politicians want a piece of the pie from a bridge building contract for example.

Conservatives seem heartless (and some of them are) but not all of them are like that.

jJFK once gave an anti tax speech , so even the Democrats of the past had conservative values.

I want to make the distinction between average people and politicians. I am referring to people in the general population. The people who aren't just trying to score political points but the "true believers."

It seems like the common discourse veers that way a lot; I've been lucky in my day to find some people who were willing to really talk out what they believed and why they believed it, short of that when people just jeer the other side there's no way to learn anything from it.

You'd have to be more specific as to who you're talking about. Social conservatives are very different than economic conservatives, and they don't necessarily overlap, just to point out one example, and their respective "fringes" have different foibles.

I would say that naivete is primary to a lot of my criticism of mainstream liberals, especially concerning the misuse of programs they support and their economic policies, but plain old ignorance certainly plays a not insignificant role, especially when it comes to guns, GMOs, and the motivations of their opponents. For me personally at least, that last one is the biggest, as having spent time with both very conservative and very liberal populations, my observation has pretty consistently been that while the conservatives might think the liberals are wrong, the liberals think the conservatives are evil, as can be seen already in the comments to this thread. That failure to understand the motivations of others paired with the assumption of bad faith is a huge turn-off to me, especially coming from people who are so quick to try and claim the intellectual high-ground.

If anything, I'm more likely to criticize conservatives for inconsistency than for ignorance, whether it's picking and choosing what parts of the Constitution to support while claiming to champion the whole thing, or claiming to support states rights while also being drug warriors, hypocrisy is my main problem with what passes for conservatism in this country. Again though, religious conservatives are a different breed, where willful ignorance is more of a problem due to the religious angle, where as fiscal conservatives are more likely to have problems with ordinary bias towards data they agree with than straight ignorance. I'd go on, but there aren't many conservatives for me to criticize around here, so my grievances are less developed than those I have against liberals.

I wouldn't have a problem with charity, except the religious right doesn't seem to grasp the fact that if they eliminate the government programs, the private sector won't be able to handle the load of poor and disabled needing help. I remember sone of the hierarchy in the Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, United Methodist, UCC, and Presbyterian churches expressing fear of what might happen if and when the conservatives get their way.

As a fellow Lutheran and mainline Protestant, I very much concur.

I don't think you two have anything to worry about. Hard as it might be for the two of you to believe, there is enough intelligence on the right side of the aisle to know that ending public assistance would likely wreck the country.
It's pathetic to have this many people on the dole but to cut them all off would be worse.

The best we can hope for is a moral renaissance where people of able body and mind (able enough, anyway) and the availability work see the value of earning a living.
I for one am not going to hold my breath waiting for that renaissance.

Well, they agreed on the latest budget deal that passed the House and was signed into law. The conservatives got tax cuts and the liberals got more spending. We got a higher deficit. That is the cost of modern compromise.

Might help if people were offered something like higher wages, benefits, and job security. Holding down a job that pays crap, offers you no aid in case of illness or age, and might not even be there tomorrow is hardly great incentive.

Sigh.....
At least I said: "It's pathetic to have this many people on the dole but to cut them all off would be worse".
I guess I should have said something trollish like round the lazy bums up and gas them.
Hell, I may as well have...


Yes, some employers (not all) could and should offer higher wages and benefits. Many actually do.
I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for it to become universal, though.
As I said in the other thread, jobs that typically pay low (e.g. fast food) should only be used as a stepping stone.

Job security is dependent on too many external factors to be guaranteed.

The homeless charity I did fieldwork for gets a lot of its funding from the Federal Government. That type of system works pretty well, but it takes BOTH sides.

Yes, fast food should just be a stepping stone. But because of the evaporating job market, too many people - including people with families - have no other options.
And actually, my dad had had wonderful job security working for Kaiser Aluminum. He had worked there literally for decades till he retired. Now, more and more employers are embracing the policy of firing workers for whatever whim they have, and too many states are letting them do it. That gives employees little incentive to be loyal, which is something businesses could once count on, and now have little understanding of where that loyalty went.

As a person living in germany, I have heard angela merkel's "without alternative" more often than anyone can bear.
And it made me wonder about what we would want in a society, and howvunavoidable some decisions really are.
Yes, conservatives are ignorant and liberals naive, but when it comes to choosing a side, I'd rather go with the naive and try to make a naive, social and multi-cultural world as real as possible, instead of siding with conservatives trying to reinstate a past that never existed.

Neither of their "visions" will come true anytime soon, but I'd rather, as a society, aim for a star trek future and only half get there than prepare for mad max and help make that happen.