If Liberals are so empathetic...

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The straight line Republican part is a minority party in the U.S. Republicans win presidential elections only when the independent voters join forces with them. There are way more Democrats than Republicans in the U.S.

The key to Republic victories nation wide is the independent vote.

ruveyn

Time for Romney to shake up that Etch a Sketch....

The magnets in an Etch a Sketch wouldn't be strong enough to damage his motherboard would they? They must have included some shielding in the general election model.

I think one of the key differences is the degree to which the conservative brand has been polluted by evangelicals.

If we are talking about economic policy, I will maintain that Reagan was most certainly wrong--and Americans are paying the price today for errors he committed thirty years ago. But that's wrong, not evil. But when Reagan sat idle while AIDS took its initial toll on the gay community, that was evil, and there are a great many people who will never forgive him for that.

When social conservatives seek to use the force of law to exert control over a woman's reproductive system; when they seek to use the force of law to deny legal recognition to same sex couples, those policies transcend "wrong." They go to the intrusion of government into the liberty of the individual.

While progressives certainly look to use goverment and the coercive power of the law to achieve goals, in my view they tend to be less intrusive on individuals. It might well be wrong to impose greater regulatory burdens on employers--but I don't see the instrusiveness as having the same degree of individual impact.

The Liberals want to take a bigger piece of my paycheque. But the conservatives want to cut off my partner's health benefits.

And therein lies a difference.

It's like I'm psychic...

I'll give you that one VG, that's one of the major reasons I'm hoping the current GOP implodes even if it leaves the Dems in control for a while. I think a lot more people would go for small government and free markets if they weren't intertwined with religious social conservatism, just as I'm sure some of the disparate elements that make up the Democratic plank might do better if they weren't a package deal.

Did you read the entire article? I only grabbed the one section that I thought I could get people to read in a short sitting and discuss, but the whole thing covers a lot more ground than simply whether liberals or conservatives are better at imitating the other, though that is an interesting experiment unto itself.

Hell, I'd probably vote for that. Provided that you didn't touch medicare. Or my pension.

Is this a satire based on the OP's text?

My understanding of the conservative reasoning is that there is a really, really simple relationship between really high tax rates and the people in those tax brackets moving to Monaco or somewhere similar. When those people do go, they tend to stop starting businesses which employ people in this country Also, other "rich" people don't come to the UK to start businesses who would be in those tax brackets which results in there being less jobs available.

Also, my understanding is that when you increase tax rates above a certain level the actual income received goes down as the people leave the country and stop paying the tax, which in any rational analysis makes taxation at this level pointless, although media sound bytes about the rich not paying their share apparently go down well with certain parts of the electorate.

Personally, I feel that a rational policy would be to pick the highest rate in which people stay in the UK (or maybe a slightly a lower rate to encourage other people to come back?) would be the sensible level to aim for if it increases the total amount of money being collected.

Do you think this is correct?

In the UK that may be the case, in the US taxes have recently been cut, and cut, then cut some more for the wealthiest among us. We've tried trickledown for a long time and it isn't working.

I think that a lot of people tend to exaggerate this untidily. It's really more of US politics being divided up differently. An American conservative is not like "a really insanely extreme British conservative." They are really a different beast altogether. Sure, they can be crazy. I agree that they can be flakes. However, if you really want to understand American politics, you can't really divide them up the same way British politics are.

Oh...to understand this, you have to take into account our Puritan roots and our Scots-Irish roots. They actually have a different mindset altogether from your religious people. Seriously. Way. It's not even something you can boil down to "more extreme." It's a little more like a different flavor of religion, thoroughly. In the USA, religion is seen as a very personal thing, and it's a lot more loosely defined than it is elsewhere.

I'm not saying they are right, but the culture you are talking about might be a little bit alien to anything you have a context for understanding.

I've noticed a lot of that, too.

After all, it was liberals who shamelessly compared the Bush administration to the third reich or even the sith.

In this forum alone we've seen gallons of liberal tears shed over every republican presidential candidate whether they had a snowball's chance in hell or not.

And conservatives haven't said evil, untrue things about President Obama?
And by the way, if those Republican presidential candidates say things like that the availability of birth control should be ceased, or that the civil rights of gay Americans should be curtailed, I think those candidates deserved every criticism they got. Crazy, hateful people ought to be ridiculed.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

I think it is the conservatives who paint criticism as attempts at portraying them as evil. I am sure some people think that is true, but most people probably have the mindset that social/theocrat conservatives are just backwards, ignorant and inexperienced

You appear to have homed in on my statement about the tax break. Do you think changing the top rate of tax from 50% to 45% will change the way the ultra rich go about their tax business? The honest ones, who aren't up to any tax dodges, have just been handed a nice tidy sum to play with. As for the ones who avoid, evade, leave the country, whatever, they'll just continue doing what they always did. What the tax level would need to be to make them happy, I don't know - I'm unable to have empathy for folk who are really rich, but still want more.

I watched Question Time last week (as usual). There was a young audience member, who had dreams of becoming an entrepreneur. He said that knowing he may have to pay high taxes on his income has made him think that he might want to start up business abroad. Another audience member said that revealed more about him than it did about the tax system. That got a huge cheer from the audience and from my husband and I at home. I assume that's the type of people we are talking about. If they are so rich and that's still not good enough, what kind of people are they? The greed of certain members of society totally sickens me. I'm not in the least bit jealous and I don't want any more than I already have, but I do care a great deal about the less fortunate. I really don't have much else to say on that.

Catch-22

If liberals really can't empathize with conservatives because of a difference in brain structure and absence of certain moral building blocks, would they even be aware of the weakness?

Read it again:

Does that sound like empathy?


Bold is mine.

Jonathan Haidt is no partisan, and his research into ideology is widely respected. Here's his TED talk on the subject:

http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt ... _mind.html

If you're uncomfortable with the suggestion of his results, perhaps you should examine your own beliefs and how you assess those of others before casting aspersions.

Yes. Not empathy to the speaker, perhaps, but empathy to mankind at large.