Question for Progressives: What is the number one reason you're not a conservative?

TheShittyBeatles · 3 months

I believe that public goods (water, healthcare, etc.) should never be permitted to be used by the market to promote profit and propagate inevitable market failure. The market underestimates the value of human life and the cost of human suffering and death, which requires that organized social power (government) take steps to overrule those market valuations through regulation and, in the case of public goods, completely control their proliferation, distribution, and management.

Private Free Market - Efficiency, Effectiveness

Public Regulated Market - Efficiency, Effectiveness, and Equity

danxmason · 3 months

It's a 10-way tie between...

Infringing on personal autonomy by enacting moral laws (drugs, prostitution, gay marriage, etc)
Hypocrisy of saying smaller government while making bigger government
Hypocrisy of saying fiscal responsibility while increasing deficits
War-mongering
Support of inequality of income distribution
Rejecting healthcare as a right
Rejection of science and inability to adapt to changing circumstances and new evidence
Religion
No desire to protect the environment
No desire to solve the energy crisis

rslizard · 3 months

anti-science, anti-reality

AgaveNeomexicana · 3 months

I can't turn off the empathy.

doubledeus · 3 months

I was listening to Hannity's (maybe?) radio show in 2008. A youngish sounding female called in and was bitching because she heard Obama tell a woman he was going to expand the federal student loan system to help her go to school. She was mad because she had already paid off her federal student loans and shouldn't have to pay for someone else to go to school. And she was 100% serious. That mindset is the reason why I'm proud to be Liberal.

noooooooreservations · 3 months

It's in the name. I want a society that is more diverse, open, and evolved than the one we have now. That can only be done through progress.

Conservatives seek to maintain what we have. What we have is inadequate. It is nowhere near the true possibility of human achievement.

UnifiedField · 3 months

Because they're consistently on the wrong side of history.

themandotcom · 3 months

I actually understand economics, and I know that austerity makes recessions worse.

Aeolis · 3 months

The environment. It is the issue I consider to be the most important, as it will have the most effect on our lives and it is the most difficult thing to change.

krtbuni · 3 months

When I was eighteen, a devotee of Ayn Rand and a regular rereader of Atlas Shrugged, I had a college classmate in a wheelchair ask me, "why don't we treat the polio virus as an enemy combatant? We have less chance to reason with it than we do with an actual soldier."

It would take me fourteen years to completely crack out of that mindset, but that's where it started.

jbhuffman · 3 months

Compassion

Samuel_Gompers · 3 months

Economics. I come from a family of coal miners and construction workers. New Deal programs saved my family members from destitution and starvation during the Great Depression. The institutions and economic climate fostered in the subsequent decades allowed my family to rise from poverty to the point where I will be the first man in my direct line (father, both grandfathers, all great grandfathers, etc.) to be able to finish college.

plbogen · 3 months

I was tired of the willingness of conservatives to reject the rule of law and their inability to alter their beliefs in light of new facts.

James_GAF · 3 months

Few if any aspects of modern 'conservatism' hold up to intellectual scrutiny or express values compatible with an open free society.

Cassaroll168 · 3 months

I dont associate with bigots and crazies. Also why I left the church. What a coincidence.

PatrickPlan8 · 3 months

I realize that the only way we can get anywhere in this world is if we work together. No matter what anyone says about limited government we must come at things from a unified front. If a child starves you say then its the parents fault, but why? Is the parent educated, is there a problem that makes it impossible for them to get a job. If so we need to fix that as a society to make sure it doesn't happen more.

Then i look at this small blue dot and realize why do we fight these endless wars. There is a better way and better tools. You say that everyone has a right to be happy but when was making money at the cost of the lives of others and their happiness right?

I believe treat a man with respect because the golden rule of all religions is universal. Treat others as you wish to be treated. If you don't share and don't help your fellow man, they will not be there to help you and share when you might need help. I believe in realizing not everyone has the same point of view. I believe in Consensus through democracy and that the parties need to be broken up so not one party controls more that 25% of the mind share. There is a voice of the people the majority who represent a plethora of ideas ... but extreme on left or right are the only ones heard. There is no middle ground.

I'm progressive because I understand that there are people beyond just my self in this world. I would rather have a well running community with a crossroads of culture and tradition melding together than be filthy rich man alone on my house on the hill any day. I understand that that community will not run the same 20 miles or 100 or 500 miles away because of the situation of resources or land, or cultures of people trying to get along.

Its why i support the idea of the UN. AS we are a family we are a village from a village to town and from a town to a district and from a district to a state and from a state to a country and from the country to a world. Everyone with different views all fighting to be heard. No one is i willing to offer respect in that voice and the conservatives are usually the most offending of that in the current political climate.

Politics is not just liberal or conservative. Black or white. Its shades of gray and some only want to see the pigments of White or Black and never where the rules do not always apply. This is why i am liberal. I try to keep open to the idea but realize there is more at stake than just my life or world view. Now my idea of liberal might be different than yours and yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.

[deleted] · 3 months

I understand the tax code well enough to realize how bad it is and how the conservatives want to make it even more stacked against the middle class.

Anirak · 3 months

Social issues. A close second being the fact that 99% of them aren't even conservative on economic issues.

johnnyawful · 3 months

Empathy

Oliver_the_chimp · 3 months

Game theory. I believe in the natural law of altruism and that others have good intentions for society at large. I believe that extending a helping hand through collective institutions creates the foundation of trust that we need to work together to get through "local minima" toward our shared goals.

Bocephusbear · 3 months

Because I care more about my fellow human being than I do my wallet and protecting whats in it at the detriment of anyone else

man_the_dan · 3 months

I care about people's well-being, even those I'll never meet.

Caradrayan · 3 months

What has progressivism gotten us? progress. What has conservatism gotten us? suffering.

democritusparadise · 3 months

Economically? Two reasons:

It's ethical
It makes economic sense.

Socially? Because I subscribe to the golden rule: any behaviour is ethical provided it doesn't harm others. With this in mind, I do whatever I please, something which really galls conservatives, who believe that heaven has proscribed certain things.

Liberals are the heirs of Jefferson and Locke and Paine and Hume and of the enlightenment; conservatives are the heirs of popes, churches, kings and monarchists, aristocrats, and dictators, enemies of science and equality and oppressors of the poor. Why on earth would I want to be associated with that?

JollyJeff · 3 months

Because they're a bunch of douches, isn't it obvious?

[deleted] · 3 months

My faith is the driving force behind my concern for poor, weak and the sick. I believe the way of meeting that goal is to make housing, food, and healthcare as natural rights of American citizenship.

lucasorion · 3 months

I guess I'm wired this way. I believe in personal responsibility, but not in selfishness. There is an ugly tinge to so much of what I hear from the mouths of conservatives, a bitter taste so palpable to me that I am constantly confounded that it tastes sweet to some. I am so grateful that I turned out this way, that I wasn't indoctrinated into the converse view of the world - it seems to be a path leading to more fear, more isolation, and more bitterness at the end.

selfabortion · 3 months

Because I don't have enough hatred in me.

iongantas · 3 months

Justice.

JTSnidely · 3 months

I believe in protecting civil rights.

newlyburied · 3 months

Just look at the typical conservative psychological profile. But definitions change over time. When I was young, today's conservative was rightly called a "reactionary". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactionary

eaturbrainz · 3 months

Conservatism has moved so far to the far-right that any sense once remaining in it is long-since gone.

writerwrong · 3 months

By its political definition, "conservatism" means to favor or support the current systems in place in society. To me, defending what it exists because it exists is faulty thinking. If there is a better way, it should be pursued, even if it fundamentally changes the way society is structured.

agbortol · 3 months

Conservatives want things to stay as they are (or move backward). They worry that attempts to make things better could fail or backfire. I want things to move forward. I am aware of the possibility of failure, but failure is acceptable while apathy is not.

I would describe conservatives as "afraid." They would describe me as "naive." I am comfortable with that.

constapatedape · 3 months

This quote sums it up pretty well

"What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label "Liberal?" If by "Liberal" they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of "Liberal." But if by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal." " ~JFK 9/14/60

sexyloser1128 · 3 months

Fundamentally, I'm too much of a rebel to be a conservative.

diggballchinian · 3 months

Scientific research that will advance the human race, that is not enhanced by the free market because it cannot turn a profit fast enough.

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