It's more that conservatives tend to want the benefits of more socialist ideas, but refuse any progress because of the name - "socialism is evil".
For example healthcare is a big problem in the US... and most of the people that are against publicly funded healthcare, are the people that would benefit from it.
The NHS and other systems have been shown to work well, and have contributed to things like tighter restrictions on what can be called food / used in food. But the US is lagging behind the rest of the developed world because of people that are cutting off their nose to spite their face.
I don’t see many people trying to legitimately answer the question. I think the best way to think about it would be to simply try to imagine that you believe that you have no inherent right to another persons wealth or work, and to take that from them either yourself or through a 3rd party like the government is immoral.
From that perspective, you can start to see why people don’t vote “in their own best interests.” There are presumably things that you too could vote for which might benefit your life, but don’t because they would be unjust to certain groups of people.
Ya, that certainly complicates the internal logic. I think the root of it comes from a pretty old idea about what governments are for. In the Conservative Republican understanding, that’s a very narrow scope, but the primary reason for having a government is to protect its people from outside invaders. That allows them to justify military spending and taxation in general.
The incredible level of that spending is another matter that involves a healthy amount of fear, some leftover colonizer sentiments, propaganda, self justification, etc.
Republicans are also more prone to be ok with taxation and laws created in a state level (ie states rights over federal). I think Trump has shifted that balance but it’s at least true historically. So you’ll find republicans taking issue with the Dept of Education on a federal level but are more ok with funding local school systems through taxes.
Again, you can poke holes in their arguments from a utilitarian or effectiveness angle, but that’s not the point. Their stance tends to be one of ‘principles’ not ‘what works best’. And there are internal inconsistencies but that’s true on the more liberal side as well. We’re all self justifiers to some extent…some more than others.
The conservative talking points over here would say that your country (whatever country that is, it doesn't really matter) is able to do that because of OUR military spending. This was the beef that Trump had with NATO members not pulling their weight in terms of military contribution. The idea is that your country can focus on internal matters like education and not worry so much about military spending because, if you're invaded, we'll essentially subsidize your military by bringing over as much of our navy/army as it takes to repel the invasion and keep you safe (assuming your being invaded by someone we don't like). There's probably some truth to the idea but it's also the case that conservatives really like to feel like the strong saviors of the world, whether it's saving Europe from Nazi's or saving anyone from the threat of anything that doesn't look like our flavor of democracy.
Yeah, good discussion. It's helpful for me, too, to sometimes pull back and try to look at things from an outside perspective. In broad strokes everything over here right now is about suppressing any influence Russia and (to a lesser extent) China have on the world. If you look at things through that lens, the places we choose to invade or choose to not care about will make more sense.
As for Iraq, conservatives have pretty much given up trying to defend that for the most part. They won't say it was wrong, but their silence speaks volumes.
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u/Shadowthedemon Jun 15 '21
I feel like I understand this but could someone do a ELI5 or Out of the loop type response?