I'm conservative. How would you convince me to be liberal (in terms of U.S. politics)?
There’s only a couple ways you can convince anyone of anything. And that depends on what you value. As Sam Harris said, if someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument are you going to present to convince them otherwise? It just isn’t going to work. They don’t buy into that system.I believe my logic is sound based on my values. Many conservatives I’ve spoken with also hold this to be true. The only difference I perceive is that I can hammer away at your values altogether, whereas mine have good defenses. American Conservatives don’t seem to believe in “do to others as you would like to be done to you.” The Golden Rule. They may think they do. But instead of how I choose to follow such a guideline, they will typically act in a totally different manner. They think “Oh, I don’t need help and I’ll never ask for it, so I’m never going to help my fellow man!” That is, until they are put into the shoes of a homeless man who lost his job, or a single mother drowning in financial issues, or a well-adjusted but decently well off person suddenly diagnosed with aggressive cancer. That’s the kind of thing that I seem to understand that conservatives do not.You can of course be persuaded emotionally. But I doubt you empathize with the plight of the poor and disenfranchised, or the nonbelievers, or the immigrants, or LGBT community, or apparently fucking anything but “the troops” and Christians and gun owners. So that’s out of the question.The only other option is to live it yourself. I suggest you try the Minimum Wage challenge. Start your life from scratch working on minimum wage and see how it works for you. See what it’s like to be hit with sickness or injury and how that decimates your finances. Try stepping into the shoes of ethnic Americans and nonChristians and see how their lives are different from what you are familiar with. Or how about spending time beneath the invisible drones in the Middle East, wishing for death over the anxiety of waiting for it to come.Conservatives would rather shed a tear for a flag that symbolizes a nation than the actual people who live and die by stupid, stupid policies that can easily be changed for the benefit of so many. If none of this fancies you, then I’m afraid my attempts would be futile.
If Dwight Eisenhower were alive today, how fast would he be kicked out of the Republican Party?
I'm old enough to remember how things were before the 'Reagan Revolution'. For a long time, it was like we had a case of national amnesia--Reagan was the first president most people remembered. These days nobody even remembers Reagan, just his legend. So they don't see how the whole conservative movement went off the rails in the 80s. Eisenhower was such a big hero at the end of WWII that both parties wanted to back him for president. He picked the Republicans, but after he retired he told an interviewer that he nearly walked out of the Republican National Convention in 1952 when he heard the chairman of the party call his opponent a 'communist sympathizer'. Eisenhower was the first Republican president in 20 years. The GOP then, as now, believed that winning one election meant they were now in control, that Americans had finally come to their senses and completely given up on the Democrats. They were not as politically extreme in the early 50s as they are now, but just as arrogant. As for lowering taxes, well it might come as a surprise to you but nobody likes taxes. The Republicans have been running on the promise of lower taxes for 30 years now, but all the actual tax cuts have gone to the top 1% and to corporations. The REAL agenda is only to concentrate wealth.