I tried to post this to a Facebook Group. After being called a "conservative" plainly enough, the "group rules" wouldn't allow me to respond in defense using the terms "Progressive" or "Liberal". Go figure.
So Here is my response to William Henley ( and another)
First I wrote this:
That is the problem, Everybody has "a story". We have lost the notion that "what's wrong is wrong, and what's right is right." If you do the wrong thing, no matter how noble the cause it is still wrong. This is the "slippery slope". What is you add "Make the rent because she is spending her money on her meth addiction? So much left out of this story. Where is his father? This time he stole for a "noble cause", but without even handed consequences, next time he pushes that boundary a little more. He steals so he can buy her a present. Then he steals so he can have a better pair of shoes than the worn out ones he's got. Then he steals because he thinks the store owner is a crook.
One thing we know for certain. A child who is living a life where he hasn't a father and family that support them is the consequences of either really bad luck or very bad choices. No one incident happened in vacuum. Your success or failure is built upon the foundation of all those that came before you. Same as your morality and ethics.
William Henley responded:
Conservative philosophy is predicated on the notion that everybody is guaranteed a sufficient level of success to sustain themselves, and that if they are having difficulty sustaining themselves it is due to something where that person is inherently at fault. If that person isn't at fault, like a true "bad luck" situation, they have to prove that in order for the assumption of fault to be lifted. A problem in society has to be doing a lot of damage for conservatism to do anything that involves spending taxpayer dollars to address it, and they will frequently use violence and incarceration rather than actually resolve the problem.
Progressivism is predicated on the notion that people's needs aren't just magically there if they try hard enough, and that everybody should have access to the resources they need to survive and hopefully develop to live productive lives that contribute to society as a whole. If a person is able to find a job in the free market to sustain themselves independently and survive if not thrive, great. If not, how do we get that person to where that is the case? How hard do we expect a person who is challenged to work before saying that they may need some level of support, or perhaps even go so far as to say they should not work. If somebody is abusing support systems, what needs to be done to stop them from doing that?
And here is my Full Response.
The problem is that if complex problems were easy to explain then asking 300 million idiots to vote on the right person for the right solution would work. But like any thing science related, for which economics and psychology are both part of, the explanations that are valid take a lot of time and understanding to be understood. Politicians rely on "common sense" and easy exolinations and any unexplained consequences are the result of "magic".
I will have to first admit that you have labeled me “Conservative” accurately, but by the rest of your statement it is obvious you don't know what that means. Seem to understand it as the media driven definition often associated with modern day Republican party in the US and like version around the western world. They are about as “conservative” as they are “Christian”. In name one. The philosophy I believe and can prove valid through science and evidence it in fact the root definition of “conservative”.
Conservative, meaning to “conserve”.
But as a social philosophy it means to “Conserve the political
structures of the past. By contrast “progressive” based upon
liberal policies seek to forget the ways of the past. When you think
of conservative, don't think of Mitt Romney, Liz Cheney, any Bush's,
or certainly not the creation of the liberal agenda Donald Trump.
Those guys might be republicans, but they are not conserving
anything. A different form of individualism, a different form of
progressive ism, but not conserving anything., When you think of
conservatism, think of something closer to Amish or Mennonites, only
without the need for a sky deity
Well this is where I win
the debate before it begins about how people should be expected to
act. For this is the fact that can't be disputed. Since the dawn of
life on this planet we have moved sustainably through time. Every
“choice” of the creatures on the planet were made for the benefit
of sustaining life. Improvements were only made through the lens of
sustainability. That is the way humans also lived through the first
few hundred thousand years of their short and modern existence. A
world existed where if you made bad choices that was called your
fault. If your parents made bad choices, that was called “bad
luck”. Along came this artificial movement known as
“progressivism”. Hundreds of thousands of years of sustainable
live, and we have embraced the idea of “progressiveism” for about
300 years. And in that 300 years, because of the movement, the human
race and most life on this planet is on a collision course with
extinction. Not a single scientific model believes humanity will
exist in 1000 years. If you believe the likes of Hawking and other
prominent predictive modelers, we won't be living on the planet
sustainably in less than 100 years. (If you understand the math
behind “the doubling factor” and exponentiation growth, that
seems more likely.) Here is the indisputable truth, when we collapse,
when the global economy falls, the air becomes so polluted it is
untenable, when plastic make up more of our drinking water supply
than water, when we have over populated the planet to the point there
is no place to grow food to feed us, when sewage spills out of over
crowded treatment plants into our water ways, and garbage dumps are
the only thing we have to build on.. it will be the result of
“progress”. One thing is for certain. If tomorrow we stopped all
of this “progress” and took up the Amish way of life, the way
that “conserves” the values of the past, all of those problems
would reverse.
So yeah. I am a conservative. I recognize
there in a time when the right to collective sustainability was more
important the individual right to pleasure. And the individual who
engaged in such pleasure must be left to suffer from their poor
choices. (Get to that in part 2) The consequences of some choices is
tragically starvation and death.
Visit an Amish community
and ask around. Ask what the “unemployment rate” is in such a
conservative community. Ask what the single mother rate is. These
people value their children from conception. They start working at
the age of 2. The more they have the more land that can be worked,
more security they have as a family. You think they will abort one
that doesn't come an ideal source? Hell no! That is security. The
have had “universal healthcare” for over 100 years within the
community. There has never been an Amish teen overdose on Fentanly.
Not bullying, social media driven depression, and no addiction so
sex. The kind that would lead to bad decisions leading to an 11 yr
old boy needing to pay the rent.
So let's take a look
at our hypothetical situation with the 11 yr old stealing from a
grocery store. (BTW, by 11 the average male Amish can shoe a horse,
plow a field, milk a cow, raise and slaughter livestock, raise a
barn, and most learn to sew and cook to some extent by then. )
Here is where liberals belief in
magic has a light shined on it. This group of people who think they
flush a toilet and it magically disappears without any cost. Like it
can disappears at any cost. Or they can put their plastic in a
“Recycling bin” and save the world. Nevermind that only 5% of all
plastic is recycled.
You say, “ A problem in society has to
be doing a lot of damage for conservatism to do anything that
involves spending taxpayer dollars to address it,” Which is
invalid. Any “damage” caused by progressive philosophies needs
only to revert back to the conservative version. Before the problem
can be fixed that previous understanding must be reestablished. Be it
through policy or punishment. The person who chose to engage in the
self damaging behavior needs to acknowledge and make amends for it.
NOT celebrated and treated as if they had no choice. For example the
progressive idea that “sex for the sake of pleasure and outside of
a committed relationship is a right” is a “progressive” idea.
However, it does not take a social scientist to do the thought
experiment of how damaging that idea has been to our society.
Simple thought experiment. “What would happen if the only time
people chose to have sex was to create a child?” Forgo needing an
inspiration for the condition. That is not required for this thought
experiment. ( I will point out that in 1900 only 8% of women and 11%
of men had more than one sexual partner in their lifetime in the US.
)
What would be the effect of such a change in “behavioral
choices” have on “single motherhood”? What effect would it
have on divorce rates? There is huge financial disadvantages to
both of those conditions. Children of “natural families” have
time and again been shown to be emotionally, financially,
academically, and physically better off than any other form of
family. A policy such as “sex inside of marriage only” would lead
to less crime and less poverty. In this society it would lead to a
reduction in population which would lead to less pollution of all
kinds. Then there is the associated with STDs research and treatment
that would be unnecessary. Our children wouldn't be confused about
who they are supposed to be rubbing their genitalia on. And then
there is the economics for which liberal/ progressives have not
concept of. Divorces and split parenting accounts for as much as 15%
of the housing market. Which in turn causes upward pressure on both
real estate and rent.
So if this simple choice behavior of
“Sex for pleasure sake” is so destructive to our community why
would a political party who has so many people who suffer from those
effects support the practice with every ounce of it's political
weight. Sex in this society is a drug. An “Addiction” is
anything a person or a society does compulsively even though the
negative consequences are known and likely.
So back to our
story. Why is this woman NOT getting help from her family? Even if
say her husband died, in a “conservative” society she would have
the support from her and her husbands family. Why does this kid
believe
I will end here, I doubt anybody read this far.
But the words are said and there for the reading. Liberals don't
understand the hard science of economics. Here is a quick annalogy.
Imagine there is a community with 8 “families” including
a farmer who has a cow that can supply 6 gallons of milk per week.
Every family needs 1 gallon of milk per week. At the high end is
the farmer, the doctor, an attorney. At the low end is a “Single
mother” and an ex con junkie. Imagine each has a “mild budget”
from $8 down to $1 for the junkey and $2 for the single mother. The
middle class are the working class who struggle to make ends meet.
They have a $3 budget for the milk. And that is what milk costs.
The single mom and junkie can not afford their milk week after week.
So some “progressive” politician steps in and either taxes the
wealthy for a total of $5, gives it to the junkie and the single
mother, Now those two go to the farmer and cause inflation to rise
the price to $4. The middle class either has to pay more from some
other budget item or go without while the people who screwed their
lives up are getting what they can't. OR worse, the politician just
make a program to take the milk from the farmer and gives it to the
poor and the farmer is forced to raise the price with reduced supply
and everybody wants to blame him. So in their ignorance because
there is no magic way to make 6 gallons of milk into 8, their attempt
to play Robbin Hood resulted in the supplier (the farmer) get richer,
the poor who screwed up get lifted over the hard working middle
class. And with that the poor become dependent on the government.
And THEN they want to blame the stupidity of their “progressive
policies” on “conservatives” .
I will end with this.
The overturning of Roe V Wade has caused (reported) as much as a
5000% increase in men getting vasectomies and 2000% in women seeing
tubes tied. That is a lot of klepto 11 yr olds that will never be
born. And for years the”progressives” have said “men should be
equally responsible”, Seems getting rid of abortion has done just
that. Likewise Progressives have said, “We need more education.”
Turns out they all know how to prevent pregnancies, what they needed
was “motivation”.
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