2009-05-31 Why do people persist in voting Republican/woozle/2009

Analysis

Preface

This post is mainly about an article written by Jonathan Haidt, but adding two things:

• Focus on the two paragraphs beginning with "A Durkheimian ethos...", implying that they are of particular interest
• The parting "You might even conclude, as I suspect Haidt does, that Republican voters tend to be more nuanced and sophisticated than Democratic voters."

If we're talking about the validity of Barone's post, then, we're mainly talking about the validity of Haidt's article (with emphasis on those two paragraphs) plus Barone's additional parting shot.

Here is the analysis of the Haidt piece; it's a logical and scientific mess.

Barone's interpretation of it:

You might even conclude, as I suspect Haidt does, that Republican voters tend to be more nuanced and sophisticated than Democratic voters.

....yyyyeahhh, right.

What Haidt has shown is that Republican voters will buy anything if it's packaged right, and that he is willing to sacrifice the integrity of his own research (by front-loading his starting premises) to make his results appealing to them. He argues strenuously for the right of conservatives to choose one's medicine based on what color it is, and that it is the doctor's fault for not making the right medicine the right color because chromatic consistency is necessary for their group identity and all their cute little institutions will fall apart if they start looking inside things to see what they are made of instead of just reading the name on the cereal box. If it's called "Sugar-Coated American Family Jesus Puffs", it can't be bad, right?

Keeping the kids away from the heavy machinery is still the ticket here, I think.

Opinions

Midian

As a liberty-minded individual, I vote Republican only because I cannot come around to the Democrat mindset.

• The premise that an unborn child's life is worth less than a convicted murderer; murder is murder, all life is sacrosanct, I am against capital punishment AND free (gov. funded) abortion, but if I had to choose, as I do in politics, my choice is clear, I side with the innocent.
• That a criminal should have more rights than a true victim. For those who have shown they hold no regard for others, that they do not value life itself, I have no pity. Over 60% of violent offenses are by repeat offenders (DOJ). Incarcerate them and keep them incarcerated, you stop over 60% of violent crimes. 60%!
• The government knows better how to spend the money I earned by the sweat of my brow than I do. I give to the charities that I choose to promote. I don't want the government subsidizing/promoting things I find detrimental to society as a whole, and if they have less of my money, they can't spend it.
• That weapons of self defense should be kept out of the hands of the only people who are capable of defending themselves. The police are not required to protect you (Supreme Court: Castle Rock v. Gonzales) and even if they are so inclined, they cannot act until a crime has already been committed. Only you can keep yourself safe from harm. The more gun control laws we pass, the easier it becomes to obtain firearms illegally. Why should we be unarmed in the face of an armed aggressor?
• Free enterprise in a competitive society, while far from perfect, is far superior than government run industry. The health care industry, as profit-driven and heartless as it is, spends $1 of every 3 it earns on health care for sick people. The government run medicare spends $1 of every 50 it earns on health care for sick people. (Ideally a non-profit co-op health insurance company would be best, but that's another topic altogether).

I have similar issues with the Republicans (legalize marijuana already), however, when weighing one against the other, these are more important to me than those. Without the 2nd amendment, who will stand up for the others? "When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty." -Thomas Jefferson

Woozle responds

• [M] "The premise that an unborn child's life is worth less than a convicted murderer..."
  • Framing it as a matter of "worth" is oversimplifying the issue. First off, a convicted murderer may in fact be innocent (and states with a death penalty tend to have a higher error rate, from what I can tell). Second, is it really in a child's best interests to be born to parents who don't want a child, and who may be inadequately prepared to take care of it? More generally, "pro-life" people seem to be under the illusion that it is always better to be alive than not to be, but this is not always the case, and we can only use our best judgment as to when life is preferable and when it is not.
• [M] "That a criminal should have more rights than a true victim."
  • That is certainly not a liberal premise, and seems much closer to views expressed by the Republicans. (If you're going to turn around and define "victims" as "unborn children" and "criminals" as "abortion doctors", then (a) I refer you to my previous comment, and (b) you can't go calling someone a criminal when they aren't doing anything illegal.)
• [M] "The government knows better how to spend the money I earned by the sweat of my brow than I do."
  • So you, voluntarily, will send money to help ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity? How many others will join you? Where do we send the money to?
• [M] "That weapons of self defense should be kept out of the hands of the only people who are capable of defending themselves."
  • Liberals are not against gun ownership; we just want to minimize the number of gun owners who are criminals, crazy, unstable, or otherwise should be kept away from heavy machinery. Would you disagree with this? If you disagree with existing gun control laws and proposals, how do you propose keeping guns out of the hands of such people?
• [M] "The more gun control laws we pass, the easier it becomes to obtain firearms illegally."
  • Is this true? Sources, please.
• [M] "The health care industry, as profit-driven and heartless as it is, spends $1 of every 3 it earns on health care for sick people. The government run medicare spends $1 of every 50 it earns on health care for sick people."
  • This is completely opposite the figures I have heard, which were something like 30% of private healthcare premiums go towards administrative overhead, while only 2% of government healthcare expenditures go towards overhead. Sources, please?

Yes, the government should fear -- or at least be answerable and accountable to -- the people. We seem to be losing that. (...with help from Republican arguments against "populism", thanks. The Republicans are not your friends on this issue.)

Midian responds

• You have the chance to save an innocent baby from drowning or a convicted murderer. Who do you dive in and save?
• 1 innocent executed is far too many. This is why I am against capital punishment. Our system is broken. A justice system where liberal judges release violent offenders far too often, where there is only a 1 in 10 chance of a conviction for capital crimes, and where the average time spent for murder 1 is 5 days. Also, corrupt cops, judges, and lawyers all convicting the innocent and releasing the guilty by keeping evidence hidden, fabricating evidence, fabricating and hiding testimony, doing deals, etc. Until the system is fixed, there should not be executions because you can't undo that once someone is found innocent after the fact, which happens far too often.
• Education, focus on the children before they make the wrong choices. And don't give them a free ride out of responsibility after they made bad choices.
• Handgun Control Inc. has stated repeatedly that their goal is the repeal of the 2nd amendment. "The right of the people" repeated many times in the constitution is quite clear in every amendment, yet liberals want to change it only for the 2nd to mean the national guard or some form of militia.
• I buy guns, through retailers and other shadier venues, and as the laws become more restrictive I know which becomes easier to obtain through. Washington DC had a long time outright ban on guns (declared unconstitutional finally), yet, it had the highest firearm murder rate in the world per capita.
• How much of our federal budget does not go to the explicit stated purpose of the federal government? How much is wasted on pork projects to pay off people who got politicians elected? I'm willing to bet far more than 50%. How much do we pay for the health care and retirement plan of our elected officials? Want to see true reform? Make them use the same Social Security and Health Care system they are trying to foist on us.
• It appears my previous numbers were off, though waste (like the billions spent in Medicare fraud every year) isn't taken into account, the numbers reported here [1] are 12% vs 5% for overhead. It appears most of the waste is due not to insurers but providers, and no matter who the insurer is, the AMA won't let that change, that's why they have a tight rein on how many doctors are allowed into school every year. To see how a government run industry will work we just need to look at current industries: USPS (always in the red, now cutting back on service) vs. UPS (profitable company) Government inefficiency won't help us solve this problem, only people working for the greater good of all (which definitely does not describe our representatives, on either side of the fence) will find a true solution.

How I see it is the Republicans and Democrats are different rails of the same track, both heading us in the wrong direction. However, typically (but not always, especially locally) the Republicans allow me more freedom to make my own choices with my money, my health, my defense, my freedoms.

Woozle responds at length

preface one

I will respond in more detail later (gotta go pick up kids from school in 20 minutes), but I need to make something clear.

Abortion is not execution. Also, whether you support it or not, in our society it is not murder. It may be wrongful killing, but to be "murder" it would also have to be illegal, and it isn't. George Tiller was not a murderer; the animal terrorist who killed him is.

Second... as morally correct as you seem to feel about defending innocent children from heartless abortion doctors, I feel just as strongly about defending those doctors and the right of those would-rather-not-be mothers to perform those abortions -- and I do not agree that you are doing those unborn children any great service by "defending" their right to be born. I've explained why this is so, and you haven't offered any arguments to counter my position, so that is where it remains.

I will get to the rest of your post as soon as I can.

--Woozle 19:51, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

preface two

People who call themselves "pro-life" often tend to take the view that morality is more important than cold logic and rationality. So far, I have been arguing on a purely logical/rational basis; perhaps it's time to put this in moral terms.

People own their bodies. Anything less would be slavery.

This means that everything inside a person's body belongs to them (unless it previously belonged to someone else and was taken without their consent, e.g. someone stealing a diamond and swallowing it). You can't go up to someone and say "You know, you have two kidneys, and I need yours." You can't even say "people are dying right now because we're running low on blood supplies, so we need some of yours". You can ask, but you may not demand.

This includes fetuses. The fetus comes from the woman's body, and belongs to her. She has the power of life and death over it because, until it is born and the umbilical is cut, it is part of her.

And that, for me, is the end of the story as far as the need to keep abortion completely legal.

Further: Supposedly one of the pillars of the US Republican Party, which you apparently support, is the belief that government should not interfere with private lives and business. How is reaching into a woman's womb and telling her what she may and may not do with its contents not the very worst and most intimate kind of government interference? (Not that this ever stopped republicans; they're perfectly happy to go into people's private bedrooms and tell them what acts are okay between consenting adults, what kinds of images or films they should be allowed to watch, etc. The GOP doesn't seem to be big on consistency, and I don't see how anyone can support them anymore -- even if you happen to agree with a few of their positions.)

full response

• [M] "You have the chance to save an innocent baby from drowning or a convicted murderer. Who do you dive in and save?"
  • Probably the baby, unless I happen to know that the murderer is innocent, in which case I play it by ear. (Is the supposed murderer someone I care about? Is the baby the offspring of someone I care about? Is there perhaps some way I could save both of them?) What does this have to do with abortion?
• [M] "And don't give them a free ride out of responsibility after they made bad choices."
  • What if the bad choice was bad luck -- she used contraception properly, but the wrigglers (as they often do) found a way to get around it? Why punish someone for that? Why punish someone for having sex? What if she was married and didn't want kids?
  • You think paying for an abortion is a "free ride"? Like, all a teenage girl has to do is get pregnant then go get an abortion and she's set for life? Like going to an abortion clinic isn't taking responsibility? (There's a disturbing trend, which I've both heard of and witnessed myself, of teenage girls deliberately having children out of wedlock as a kind of status badge -- is that better than repeatedly having unprotected sex and then getting abortions? Not in my book.)
  • You would rather, perhaps, pay for welfare and childcare for the teen mother and her unwanted child? (What was that about free rides, again?) Or were you planning to just let them starve? (Gee, it's heartening that you care so much about unborn babies that you'd rather see them grow up malnourished, unwanted, and uneducated than prevent them from being born in the first place.) Is there a third option?
• [M] "Handgun Control Inc. has stated repeatedly that their goal is the repeal of the 2nd amendment."
  • I had never heard of that organization, but Wikipedia says they are now called the Brady Campaign, and I do receive emails from them under that name -- although I have never sent them any money. They probably got my email address when I signed a petition against the "shoot-first" law in Florida.
  • I am not a fan of personal weaponry. As our land fills up and fewer people live in rural or wild areas, they become less and less necessary and useful and more likely to be misused... and I do object to some of the more ridiculous positions taken by the NRA (no background checks? concealed weapons in national parks? WTF??).
  • However, I concede: (1) that in some parts of the country they may be necessary; (2) making something illegal does not get rid of it, and sometimes makes it worse (e.g. the war on drugs); (3) I dislike the principle of banning personal ownership of any class of goods. This is something where it makes much more sense to defer to states' rights, rather than making a one-size-fits-all law for the whole country.
  • I don't personally know of any liberals who are out to repeal the second amendment. I think this would be a mistake.
  • The Brady Campaign itself has apparently changed its mind on this subject; their mission statement now includes this: "The Brady Campaign, the Million Mom March and the Brady Center believe that a safer America can be achieved without banning all guns."
  • I'm kind of neutral on the 2nd amendment, as I don't think personal firearms can protect us from the government anymore; although Posse Comitatus supposedly prevents the military from being used against US civilians, even well-armed militia groups have not been able to hold out when they went up against the federal government. (Note: I am totally not a supporter of such groups; my point is that if it comes down to a battle of force, the federal government will always prevail if there is sufficient support for its aims -- and if there isn't sufficient support, there are other ways to defeat it, as long as we maintain even the mere pretense of a democracy.)
• [M] "Washington DC had a long time outright ban on guns (declared unconstitutional finally), yet, it had the highest firearm murder rate in the world per capita."
  • We're in agreement on that one... making something illegal is not the way to fight it. The same goes for drugs, alcoholism, and abortion. Unfortunately, outlawing problems seems to be the GOP's primary approach to solving them.
• [M] Want to see true reform? Make them use the same Social Security and Health Care system they are trying to foist on us.
  • I'd sign that petition. We agree.
  • You imply, though, that the current healthcare reform initiative is being "foisted" by the government on an unwilling citizenry; this is false in at least two ways:
    • First, it is overwhelmingly popular, despite strong minority opposition from easily-manipulated Fox News viewers. The only "foisting" is that we are not getting a single-payer system, and instead have to make do with this "hybrid" system where a public option will hopefully be adequate as an alternative and/or force the commercial insurers to lower their prices in order to remain competitive, because the Obama administration has refused to discuss single-payer. If we get at least a public option, though, then we are setting up the infrastructure for single payer -- it is a move in the right direction, however hesitant.
    • Second, how can something be "foisted" if it's only being presented as an option?
• [M] "It appears my previous numbers were off, though waste (like the billions spent in Medicare fraud every year) isn't taken into account, the numbers reported here [1] are 12% vs 5% for overhead..."
  • The point is, government-run healthcare programs are significantly less wasteful. The TPM numbers are basically saying that private insurance wastes almost 2.5 times as much as Medicare -- and if we were to focus more energy on improving Medicare rather than trying to dismiss it because of its flaws, we could probably trim that down even further.
  • And if we require insurers to cover everyone at the same rate (i.e. universal healthcare), we can also trim out the wasted time insurers spend screening their clients' histories for any risk factors which might justify a rate hike or coverage refusal -- not to mention a great deal of the time spent on both ends arguing about whether care for various services should be covered or not.
• [M] "It appears most of the waste is due not to insurers but providers, and no matter who the insurer is, the AMA won't let that change, that's why they have a tight rein on how many doctors are allowed into school every year."
  • If that's true, then that's what you need to be fighting -- not the reform. You want more reform, not less.
• [M] "To see how a government run industry will work we just need to look at current industries: USPS (always in the red, now cutting back on service) vs. UPS (profitable company)..."
  • ...and overpriced, in a lot of ways. I have an online store where I do a lot of shipping of items weighing between 5 ounces and 2 pounds, and I would have to raise my shipping rates by 2 or 3 times if the USPS's services weren't available. The USPS was heavily dependent on revenue from letter-delivery (indeed, that was originally their core business), and the rise of the Internet (email) has cut heavily into that. To some extent it serves them right for trying to prevent the UPS from getting into that business (UPS was not allowed to deliver letters in the early 1980s; I'm not sure when this changed), but the point remains: USPS delivers a good service at a far lower price than the private competition, and they have continued to improve it (spurred on, I'm sure, by said competition). This is the kind of situation we are hoping will be created by the "public option".
• [M] "Government inefficiency won't help us solve this problem..."
  • "Government inefficiency" is one of those phony arguments-by-word-association that Republicans love to toss around, like "tax-and-spend liberal" (taxes, federal budgets, and deficits tend to go up under Republican regimes). No, government inefficiency won't help us, but government efficiency might. If Republicans hate the federal government so much, why are they always arguing for more federal spending on roads and highways?
• [M] "...typically (but not always, especially locally) the Republicans allow me more freedom to make my own choices with my money, my health, my defense, my freedoms."
  • ...because they take away more of it through subtle means that you don't always notice, so of course they are happier to let you control what's left.
    • Examples: huge tax breaks for large corporations and the über-rich, giving the rest of us less government bang for our buck; huge, inefficient, costly wars that give us absolutely nothing but a phony half-promise of safety; selectively destroying the government agencies that do the most to help people who lose their place in the economic wagon train, leaving many people helpless and a drain on the economy

As much as liberals may sometimes fall too much for the idea that "all men are created equal" means that everyone is equal in competence, skill, talent, etc., conservatives seem to fall for the similar idea that everyone is perfectly capable of taking care of themselves, and that anyone who isn't doing so is just lazy. They also seem to have this idea that if someone is having difficulty with one particular area of their lives (e.g. managing money, or substance abuse) that this renders them worthless as a person.

That whole attitude totally stinks. I could still respect it somewhat (while disagreeing with it) if the GOP was still showing any signs of integrity, but in the past few years they have repeatedly demonstrated that they have no interest in reality; to them, it is more important to be certain in your righteousness than it is to be right, it is more important to be in agreement than to actually solve problems. Trust in God, follow God's will -- and they'll helpfully tell you what God wants, just in case you had any ideas of your own.

The idiocy of trying to use Stephen Hawking as a poster-boy for private medical care is surpassed only by the hypocrisy of Republicans trying to use a handicapped individual to support their cause in any way: if it were up to them, people in wheelchairs would have to climb the stairs like everyone else, blind people would need to read properly, and deaf people would have to learn how to speak properly or shut up. If it were up to them, anyone who was in any way dysfunctional would be on the street corner selling newspapers or holding up a cardboard sign containing the words "homeless" and "god bless".

That's not the America I grew up in, and it's not a direction I want to see us going in. --Woozle 20:10, 4 November 2009 (UTC)