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Old 05-01-2012, 10:15 PM   #48
Ibby
erika
 
Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: "the high up north"
Posts: 6,127
Quote:
Originally Posted by piercehawkeye45 View Post
It is logically sound just in the same way that it is logically sound to state liberals (leftists in general) are thieves who steal money since technically the money we earn is our property. The problem with both arguments is its framing. Every political philosophy has its positive and negative aspects and how you view a philosophy largely depends on you personally look at it. So yes, we can look at the glass half empty and assume that the mindset associated with economic conservatism is selfish and be logically sound. Yet, that only paints half the picture. The other half is looking at economic conservatism from another way. Some people truly believe that the best way to help someone is to let them accomplish something themselves. Give a someone a rod and not a fish type mindset. This, I am the first to admit, has pitfalls but it also makes a lot of sense in many other situations. Helping people can create dependencies and there is some truth to the idea that if we let everyone on the boat, everyone drowns.

People with those of mindsets are not necessarily selfish people. Some of these are the most giving people but they would rather give on their own accord and not have government intervention.
Yeah, I agree. While I find conservatism, especially in its least compromising iterations - think Ayn Rand - more or less reprehensible, I understand that there are definitely respectable groundings of the philosophy. That's sort of what I meant by logically sound - you can defend the position logically, but not necessarily while accurately doing the other side justice. That's why I tend to stay away from attacking conservative ideology - I take after my utter idol Rachel Maddow in trying to make it a conversation about POLICY, and INSTITUTIONS, and all of that sort of stuff, without necessarily making the conversation about the foundations of the ideology.
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