Why do conservatives hate liberals?
I mean, I'm a liberal and I don't hate conservatives. I might disagree with them but I don't hate them. Conservatives seem to think that liberals are ruining this country. They have made this claim countless times, but I cannot recall a single time a liberal has accused a conservative of ruining America. They also are more aggressive in their campaign ads. They accuse Obama of being a socialist (which isn't really that bad) and make ties to Nazism and Communism that don't even exist. Hell, some have even gone so far as to label him the "Anti-Christ". Conservative attack ads are little more than character assassinations and hate-speech, while liberal attack ads focus on their opponents policies. My question is this: why do conservatives hate liberals?
Why do we label ourselves "Liberal" or "Conservative?"?
I think you make a good point, but I think we label ourselves because it makes things easier for us. It is our Western mindset to label things, to categorize them. But you're right that not everything is so black and white (by the way, seeing things as black and white is a conservative quality; believing there are shades of gray is a liberal quality). For example, I consider myself a liberal, but I'm not a big fan of abortion.
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…
Can't decide if I'm liberal or conservative?
GAH?? What am I?? It's so confusing b/c I both have conflicting views that balances itself out. What happens if I'm nothing and want to live life how I want to? What is that considered? Why must there be lines decided who is who, and what is what? I follow the law, but gosh I'm so confused, somebody give me advice/help? ;p
Conservatives: what are some liberal beliefs you have? Liberals: what are some conservative beliefs you have?
I'm a moderate and I have both liberal and conservative views. These labels are imposed on us by people in power who like to divide things into neat little groups to get us fighting with each other instead of fighting against them.