Liberals And Conservatives After Reading This Would You Be Willing To Become A Nationalist

What is the best conservative reading for a liberal?

Quora knows no borders. But it’s assumed we’re talking about American politics and America’s culture wars.The last thing you want to do is to read books written by the media squawkers such as Savage, Limbaugh, and Ingraham. It’s the saddest thing about America today. With the help of social media flaming idiots both Left and Right have gone from annoying side-show to center stage. This is how we’ve ended up with a second-rate reality show clown in the White House.So who should you read? First on my list would be David Frum. He was educated at Yale and Harvard. He was a speech writer for George W. Bush. He’s definitely a conservative. But he has no problem lashing out at conservatives when he sees fit. He announced he was voting for Hillary in 2016. From a conservative view, he is able to put the 60s -70s social transition and the emergence of the culture wars into perspective. Intelligent. Fair. I recommend the book he wrote in 2000:How We Got Here, David Frum, 2000Next I would recommend these two anti-feminist books written by two intelligent, educated women:Domestic Tranquility: A Brief Against Feminism: F. Carolyn Graglia, 1998Feminist Fantasies, Phyllis-Schlafly, 2003Conservative African-American scholar Thomas Sowell graduated from Harvard magna cum laude; received his masters from Columbia, and his Phd in economics from the University of Chicago. I recommend his most recent book:Discrimination and Disparities: Thomas Sowell, 2018But for a taste of the full array of his ideas I recommend this book:The Thomas Sowell Reader, Thomas Sowell, 2011Conservative Indian-American author Dinesh D’souza has turned into one of the pop culture war flaming idiots i suggested you avoid. But he began as an excellent author. Here are two books from the 90s that are worth reading:Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus: Dinesh D'Souza, 1992The End of Racism, Dinesh D’Souza, 1996Finally, I have to throw in a weird one. I don’t think a person can truly understand America’s culture wars without understanding postmodernism and how it relates to politics. So here is an excellent book that explains the effect of political postmodernism from a conservative point of view:Explaining Postmodernism, Stephen R. C. Hicks, 2004PoMo began as a weapon used by the Left. But now it is being used by the Right —in a disturbing way.So there you go —eight books guaranteed to turn a Left thinking head 180 degrees to the Right, albeit temporarily.

What do liberals think about conservatives blaming Jews for everything?

Speaking as a liberal Jew, I say a pox on both your houses. The new left wing anti-Semitism is deeply disturbing, but conservative love for Jews and Israel is largely a sham. Right wing support for Israel is based on creepy fundamentalist eschatology about sacrificing a red heifer on Temple Mount so Jesus can return, and can only end in disappointment and a resurgence in the anti-Semitic undertones which underlie conservative attitudes. Even Donald Trump's supposed philosemitism is based on his daughter's marriage and conversion. We are literally one divorce away from Trump throwing us to his alt right dogs… which is why they're so excited about his administration.Getting back to left wing anti-Semitism, all I can say is fuck you, douchebags. The Progressives are busy purging the Jews from a movement we largely created. Zionism is the nationalism of the Jews and unless you are willing to reject ALL forms of nationalism—including Palestinian nationalism—anti-Zionism IS anti-Semitism. In the meantime, see how you get along without us. We'll go it alone, as we always have. Too bad, we thought we'd finally found some kindred spirits among the Gentiles, but apparently not.

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.

Is it a contradiction to call yourself a conservative Christian?

It’s not good. Neither is calling yourself a “liberal Christian”. The fact is that an honest, unfiltered, reading of the Bible will probably lead you to be hard-line conservative on some issues, and distinctly to the left on others.Then there is the problem of what C.S. Lewis called “Christianity And”, in other words the combining of some other idea with being a Christian. In The Screwtape Letters, an imagined conversation being a senior and a younger demon, Lewis wrote this:The real trouble about the set your patient is living in is that it is merely Christian. They all have individual interests, of course, but the bond remains mere Christianity. What we want, if men become Christians at all, is to keep them in the state of mind I call ‘Christianity And’.You know—Christianity and the Crisis, Christianity and the New Psychology, Christianity and the New Order, Christianity and Faith Healing, Christianity and Psychical Research, Christianity and Vegetarianism, Christianity and Spelling Reform. If they must be Christians let them at least be Christians with a difference. Substitute for the faith itself some Fashion with a Christian colouring. Work on their horror of the Same Old Thing...So the enemy of Christianity would prefer someone be a Conservative Christian, or Liberal Christian, rather than merely being a Christian. Any dilution of pure Christianity is the goal.The same goes of Christianity and nationalism, that’s a dangerous road as well. Very dangerous in fact. Non-nationalist Christians get thrown to the lions; nationalist Christians have sometimes started brutal wars. I can’t see how Jesus wants us to adopt such labels such as “British Christian” or “American Christian”. Nationality is a worldly concept, not a Christian one. We have nationality, I’m not advocating some Christian sovereignty idea, but the Bible says we are in the World, but not of the World (John 17:14–15).Many Christians in the United States, in particular, have dangerously diluted their faith by adopting two “Christianity And” identities, “Conservative” and “American”.