The difference between liberals and conservatives -- as people

[Wiregrass Willie]

I've been reading the internet for three years now. During that time I have been conducting an unscientific survey among people I meet in my daily life and on the internet to see if I can decide what major differences there are in people who are liberal and those who are conservative. I've supplemented those observations with a lot of reading of early 19th Century American history. My three years of research has led me to one conclusion.

I can find no real difference in personality, financial success, generosity, love of family and country, sexual persuasion, minority status, spirituality, religious leaning or any other major criteria that I can think of. However there is one difference that I have noticed.

That difference is that people who tend to be conservative have a tendency -- varying between individuals -- to be more subservient to wealth and to people who hold wealth, than do people who lean toward liberalism. Did I say subservient ? The professional conservative types that you find on talk radio and Fox News are downright "slavish" to wealth and it's owners.

That's it, folks. three years in a nutshell.

[rusty quoin]

1. So what you're saying is

Republicans are a bunch of ASS KISSERS. I'll buy that.

[Wiregrass Willie]

7. You summed up my conclusion

I got interested in that thought because I wanted the answer to one question -- "Why did the Plain Folk of the South voluntarily march off to fight the Civil War -- to bail out their rich neighbors ?"

So I started a three year search for the answer. Remember in 1861 the North was fairly liberal and the south was very conservative. I hate to say it, but the mental attitude of the Southerner being subservient to his rich neighbors -- was such that he bought their propaganda hook line and sinker. That sad fact led to the deaths of over 300,000 Southern men who should not have died.

[notadmblnd]

2. I came to a different conclusion

CONSCIENCE. Conservatives have none. Them and theirs is all they care about and as long as they get what they want, to hell with everybody else.

[LeftishBrit]

3. My impression - mostly based on experience in the UK - is that ..

conservatives as a group tend to be (a) more authoritarian than liberals; and (b) have a more intolerant, blaming-the-victim attitude to anyone who is in a position of 'weakness', and are less supportive of accommodations to any form of weakness. Since in this world, money is one of the main things that determines ones position of strength vs weakness, this generally does lead to slavishness toward wealth, and sometimes to an assumption that the rich must be generally superior in some way. But it also has other features: e.g. intolerance towards ill-health, mental or physical disability, or age-related restrictions; and an unwillingness to level the playing-field for minority groups, or even to admit that it isn't level to start with. Right-wing people sometimes explicitly sneer at 'victims' and imply that if you're not 'successful' it must be due to a flaw in your character.

[rusty quoin]

4. There must be something admirable about them.

I'll have to think on it awhile.

[Greyhound]

5. What you describe is simply supplanting the old "law of the jungle",

and if that is correct, they are opposed to civilization (colloquial definition) and will see it destroyed.

[Lint Head]

6. I've studied liberals and conservatives for years on the internet

and for years as a knowledgeable adult on this planet. I now know for a fact that in this country conservative republicans have morphed into fascists. The proof is everywhere. All anyone, with two brain cells to rub together, has to do is open their eyes.
Go Dick Durbin C-SPAN2 right now.
:dem:

[ashling]

8. It all comes down to selfishness

see my sig. line:

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. ~ John Kenneth Gailbraith . .

[Wiregrass Willie]

9. I think you may be right But.. ..

it's like the chicken and the egg. Which came first ? Is it selfishness that causes subservience to wealth or subservience to wealth that causes selfishness ? This may sound silly, but I'm in serious search of an answer. I think the answer will not only tell us why the Southerners fought the Civil War -- when it was not in their best interest to do so -- but also why they continuously, even today, vote against their own self interest in national politics. For reasons I only just now begin to understand, we in the South feel compelled to support "the Man". Whether that man is Robert E Lee or George W Bush.

In other words, the Southern concept of honor forces us to support those who will do us the most damage.