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The Democrats have their own flaws certainly, but I’m having such a hard time finding a consistent ideology among conservatives. Free speech absolutism, mixed w

The Democrats have their own flaws certainly, but I’m having such a hard time finding a consistent ideology among conservatives. Free speech absolutism, mixed with parent choice, no choice for women, censorship for some kinds of speech, anti-regulation limited government but strong regulation of tech products. I just can’t square any of this.

staunton 4y ago
What do you need a "consistent ideology" for? These things seem to be what the majority of people in those states want (for better or worse).
yieldcrv 4y ago
Your cognitive dissonance comes from thinking this is a monolithic party platform thing. This is a Utah thing, with burgeoning consensus in a couple other states.
twodave 4y ago
That’s just humanity in a nutshell. I’d be more worried if everybody had the same views.
wincy 4y ago
Look, I’ll take a risk here and speak my thoughts, assuming you genuinely want to learn more about Republicans in 2023. It’s confusing because they aren’t unified. I was a Democrat until 2015, when it felt like both sides had lost their mind and I voted libertarian. It seemed like there was no place for free speech advocates in the Democrat party anymore. Eventually, my wife and I decided to become officially Republican when we realized that the Libertarians were totally ineffective as a party (the libertarian convention is literally just an excuse to have orgies and do drugs) and couldn’t fight back against the progressive ideology that we see as harmful towards successful child rearing, as well as us retaining a principled moral stance for free speech against the primarily leftist ideologies that had become so pervasive in social media circles. We feel like Elon Musk purchasing Twitter was one of the most important positive events of 2022, and a huge win for free speech. There’s a lot of weird transition going on in the Republican Party because of this new group of “former Democrat refugees” who tend to be libertarian and free speech supporters are trying to integrate with the old guard republicans. We roll our eyes at this kind of stuff, but figure “it’s better than the crazy stuff going on these days on the other side”. Republican is turning into a much wider tent.
- Dalewyn 4y ago
  Speaking as someone who more or less went down the same road as you have politically, this is spot on.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
weberer 4y ago
I don't know if there's a term for this fallacy, but I see it happening all the time. You're trying to break the world down to us-vs-them where "us" is a single narrowly defined group and "them" is everyone outside that group. In this case you're incorrectly grouping together classical liberals, neocons, Christian/Jewish/Islamic fundamentalists, Laissez-faire neoliberals, and paleoconservatives. Then being confused why they all disagree on different issues.
stametseater 4y ago
> I’m having such a hard time finding a consistent ideology among conservatives I'm having a hard time figuring out why you would expect to find one. The people who "vote conservative" do so for numerous different sorts of reasons, conservationism is not their root ideology, it is downstream of other disparate ideologies. A conservative voter who is Mormon has different motivations than a conservative voter who is a secular small business owner, and both have a different root ideology from an old school Catholic or an anti-communist Cuban-American. Knowing this as I'm sure you do, why would you expect "conservatism", aka "voting for republicans", to be a consistent ideology? The people who do so were never all coming from the same ideological position in the first place. Btw, the group of people who vote for democratic candidates also do so for a wide array of reasons, and don't all share much of a common and consistent ideology either. Welcome to the two-party system, in which innumerable ideologies get pigeonholed into two bins.

staunton 4y ago

What do you need a "consistent ideology" for? These things seem to be what the majority of people in those states want (for better or worse).

yieldcrv 4y ago

Your cognitive dissonance comes from thinking this is a monolithic party platform thing. This is a Utah thing, with burgeoning consensus in a couple other states.

twodave 4y ago

That’s just humanity in a nutshell. I’d be more worried if everybody had the same views.

wincy 4y ago

Look, I’ll take a risk here and speak my thoughts, assuming you genuinely want to learn more about Republicans in 2023. It’s confusing because they aren’t unified. I was a Democrat until 2015, when it felt like both sides had lost their mind and I voted libertarian. It seemed like there was no place for free speech advocates in the Democrat party anymore. Eventually, my wife and I decided to become officially Republican when we realized that the Libertarians were totally ineffective as a party (the libertarian convention is literally just an excuse to have orgies and do drugs) and couldn’t fight back against the progressive ideology that we see as harmful towards successful child rearing, as well as us retaining a principled moral stance for free speech against the primarily leftist ideologies that had become so pervasive in social media circles. We feel like Elon Musk purchasing Twitter was one of the most important positive events of 2022, and a huge win for free speech. There’s a lot of weird transition going on in the Republican Party because of this new group of “former Democrat refugees” who tend to be libertarian and free speech supporters are trying to integrate with the old guard republicans. We roll our eyes at this kind of stuff, but figure “it’s better than the crazy stuff going on these days on the other side”. Republican is turning into a much wider tent.

Dalewyn 4y ago
Speaking as someone who more or less went down the same road as you have politically, this is spot on.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

weberer 4y ago

I don't know if there's a term for this fallacy, but I see it happening all the time. You're trying to break the world down to us-vs-them where "us" is a single narrowly defined group and "them" is everyone outside that group. In this case you're incorrectly grouping together classical liberals, neocons, Christian/Jewish/Islamic fundamentalists, Laissez-faire neoliberals, and paleoconservatives. Then being confused why they all disagree on different issues.

stametseater 4y ago

> I’m having such a hard time finding a consistent ideology among conservatives I'm having a hard time figuring out why you would expect to find one. The people who "vote conservative" do so for numerous different sorts of reasons, conservationism is not their root ideology, it is downstream of other disparate ideologies. A conservative voter who is Mormon has different motivations than a conservative voter who is a secular small business owner, and both have a different root ideology from an old school Catholic or an anti-communist Cuban-American. Knowing this as I'm sure you do, why would you expect "conservatism", aka "voting for republicans", to be a consistent ideology? The people who do so were never all coming from the same ideological position in the first place. Btw, the group of people who vote for democratic candidates also do so for a wide array of reasons, and don't all share much of a common and consistent ideology either. Welcome to the two-party system, in which innumerable ideologies get pigeonholed into two bins.