Do liberals understand conservatives better than conservatives understand liberals?
No.There are probably a lot of ways to break this question down. One of them has been studied, and it’s the other way around,with conservatives on average much better at understanding liberals:(1) When asked to fill out a survey about their values, and then fill out another survey describing what your political opposite says they value, conservatives are better than liberals. This doesn’t get into underlying subtleties, it doesn’t weed out misinformation — even at the surface level, liberals tend not to understand conservative values.Conservatives tend to have a large set of values than liberals: liberals stick to compassion, fairness and a particular definition of freedom. Conservatives also directly value leadership/followership, loyalty to your community, and sanctity (it’s hard to label these, but the surveys show clear patterns even if the labels aren’t clear). Liberals tend to misunderstand those values.See Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind, p.287, orLiberals Don’t Understand ConservativesIt’s quite likely that this lack of knowing your opponent is part of why on surveys that are issue-by-issue liberals tend to do better than election-by-election: in surveys significant majorities generally want pre-existing health issues covered, don’t want kids separated from their families, are fine with very minimal gun regulation, but Democrats can’t seem to build this into winning campaigns.(2) A second way that liberals or conservatives could misunderstand each other is the difference between voters (like family members) and political leaders.I think, again, conservatives are better at understanding liberals than vice-versa, partly because there is less of a division between candidates and voters on the left: at least so far, the psychological studies of Obama, the Clintons or Sanders are likely to show up broadly similar patterns as their voters. For conservatives, there is often a big gulf: for example, it’s pretty easy to imagine that Trump wouldn’t have voted for a candidate like Trump, he might well hate a similar person who beat him out to the role of being leader.When liberals decide that their conservative uncle has Trump’s values because he voted for Trump, this tends to be a misunderstanding; again, much of why Trump is in office is from Democrats not figuring out the real values of voters who are frustrated with Democrats.See: The Authoritarians by Bob AltemeyerThere are probably lots of other ways to understand and misunderstand each other…
Do you want conservatives to understand the liberal point of view of Trump? Would you be willing to offer any positive aspects of his presidency that you can agree with as a way to meet them halfway?
>Do you want conservatives to understand the liberal point of view of Trump?No, I want a constitutional amendment limiting the vote to those who can pass a test in American history and civics that is as difficult as what naturalized citizens have to pass. That should pretty well solve the whole problem.>Would you be willing to offer any positive aspects of his presidency?You mean, am I willing to lie, like Trump does?https://www.washingtonpost.com/p...There are no positive aspects to his presidency. He’s an idiot, a fool, a liar, cowardly, and corrupt. His presidency is an abject failure. He is unfit to serve and needs to be legally removed from office.>as a way to meet them halfway?No more than I am willing to meet Ebola “halfway.” It needs to be eradicated.
As a conservative, what do you wish liberals understood?
I wish that everyone, both liberal and conservative, was able to understand what “unintended consequences” are.10 Fascinating Examples of Unintended Consequences - Toptenz.netLiberals often think that if the INTENT of a policy is NICE, then the OUTCOME of the policy will be NICE.Liberals are NICE. Their NICE eyeballs look out onto the world a see a place where we should all be NICE.But being NICE often has negative consequences.Like letting a child molester or a rapist out of prison is NICE because we want to believe that everyone has some good in them. We want to feel that the person can be rehabilitated.But in reality, 92% of violent criminals will commit the same violent crimes when released from prison.So letting criminals out of jail after a few years is NICE and is also EVIL.Another big delusion is that a politician must have STRONG support to be elected.Sometimes politicians get elected because the opposition got bored and stayed home.America is a nation of centrists, that's why we have close elections. They shrug their shoulders and vote for whoever they sort of like better.Trump can get re-elected even if not one single person in the USA likes him. We have a binary party system, so if the voters dislike Trump less than they dislike Hillary (or whoever), then he'll be re-elected.In a binary political system, a politician is turned either on or off by the voters, like a light switch. Whether the individual voter adores him or hates him but hates Hillary more, the pro-Trump vote counts the same.In the last election, the greatest number of voters voted to stay home and watch Dancing with the Stars on TV. 42% of the eligible voters voted for Dancing With The Stars, 26% voted for Trump and Hillary each. In a pure democracy, the cast of Dancing With The Stars would be president.That's what makes Trump Derangement Syndrome so hilarious. After the election, everyone twirled about in confusion and "realized" that their neighbor Timmy who voted for Trump is a secret FASCIST.It's not that Hillary was an unlikable candidate and ran a horrible, disjointed campaign and got beaten by a blowhard. The fun and exciting version is that "Trump activated his white supremacist base." The same people that elected Obama twice are apparently white supremacists. LOL.I’m not a fan of Michael Moore, but he nailed it:
Am I a populist, libertarian, conservative or liberal?
Not really a religion question. But Conservatives and Libertarians would give you the freedom to believe these things, while liberals would demonize you over the points with which they disagree, which would be most of them. For instance, most Conservatives and Libertarians would disagree with charging the rich a higher percentage, but we won't demonize you or tell you that you are a terrible person for it, nor that you can't be a real Conservative/Libertarian and believe it. The Liberals, on the other hand, will say that the fact that you are against abortion means you are a woman-hating bigot who wants the state to control women's bodies. BTW: NO ONE is actually "anti-birth control". This is a straw man the Libs have set up to get votes, but its completely bogus. Edit to add: Of course, believing that the state should not PROHIBIT birth control is TOTALLY SEPARATE from believing that the state should PAY for birth control. Conservatives believe that everyone should certainly have the right to use birth control if they wish, but don't believe it is the government's responsibility to PAY for it.