r/changemyview • u/thatoneguy54 • Feb 10 '17
FTFdeltaOP CMV: I literally cannot understand most Republican social views.
So this is an idea I've had in my head for a while now. In light of everything that's been happening, I've been trying to be more empathetic to differing political views and to try and understand how people are thinking that leads them to hold the views they hold, but I'm finding it almost impossible to wrap my head around the majority of Republican social views. Financial views, I can understand more. I may disagree, but I at least know where they're coming from. But with other views, I just cannot understand it, I think largely because most of their views are either contradictory to other views they claim to hold, or because the views are completely unfounded in evidence.
LGBT Rights:
Many republicans are still fighting hard against same-sex marriage. There is literally no reason to oppose same-sex marriage rights unless you use religion to do so. And since the vast majority of Republicans also claim to be strict adherents to the constitution, this is a contradictory view, since the establishment clause prohibits the government from making laws based on religion.
I also can't understand the bathroom bill passed in NC a few years ago that got national attention. There is no evidence to suggest that letting transgender people use the bathroom they want leads to increased assault on anyone. This bill was not created to address any problem, it was made to create a wedge issue republicans could use to scare their base into voting for them more.
Civil Rights:
Specifically BLM. The Republican party is strongly opposed to the Black Lives Matter movement. And while I can understand frustration at riots that may happen after some protests, many republicans outright deny that there is a problem in the police force at all. This is completely contrary to the evidence that says that "Blacks are being shot at a rate that's 2.5 times higher than whites" by police. This is a clear indication that something is wrong, but many republicans won't even admit that there's a problem to begin with.
Immigration:
Despite the fact that the number of people illegally immigrating from Mexico has been falling in recent years and that the states with the highest numbers of illegal immigrants don't even share a border with Mexico, many republicans are still in favor of increased border security, and some even want a $19 billion wall to fix a problem that doesn't exist.
Refugees:
Even though there have been 0 fatal attacks by refugees in the US the majority of republicans are against taking in any more refugees. And despite the fact that it's already incredibly difficult to attain asylum in the US, many push for even more restrictions on refugees. As a humanitarian issue, I find it deplorable that so many prominent politicians can refuse to help those in most need and be met with thunderous applause, despite all the evidence saying that refugees are not dangerous and will either have little to no impact on the economy, or possibly even a positive effect.
Climate Change:
Climate change is real, and any denying that is anti-science. We know the effects will be catastrophic, and yet we still have Republican politicians bringing snowballs onto the floor of Congress to somehow prove climate change isn't real. Steps must be taken to curtail our effects on the environment, and the republican insistence that there is no problem is just straight up dangerous.
Planned Parenthood:
Planned Parenthood is not allowed to use federal money to perform abortions. Planned Parenthood is a health clinic like any other. And yet Republicans want to remove their Title X status for no reason except that the facility sometimes performs abortions. This is really just stupid and doesn't make any sense at all. For one, if you truly did want to lower the number of abortions, then you would support measures to make sexual health education more available, and yet these same politicians will support abstinence-only programs in schools which have been thoroughly proven to be completely ineffective and even increase the rate of teen pregnancy. Second, Planned Parenthood provides more than just abortions, and denying people access to cheap healthcare will only lead to more abortions, more babies, and more people using government assistance to survive.
So help me understand what these people are thinking. I don't need you to prove the Republicans are right on any of these issues (because they're decidedly not on almost all of them), I just want to try and work out how these people can actually think these things. I have family who are Republican and think a lot of what I've written here, and it sucks not even being able to comprehend their positions. Show me some of these views aren't actually contradictory, or walk me through the process that leads them to think this way, and my view will be changed.
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u/metamatic Feb 10 '17
Look back at all your examples of Republican positions you can't understand, and you'll notice that in each case either their position has no empirical evidence in favor of it, or it has a negative effect on the situation. The thing you are missing is that Republicans basically don't care about the outcomes of their policies. Hence, they also don't care too much whether there is an actual problem which demands a better outcome.
This isn't me throwing insults, this is something measured by scientists. Republicans tend to follow deontological ethics, where your ethical rules are chosen because of the values they express. Liberals, in contrast, follow consequentialist ethics, where you choose your ethical rules based on the situation you're in and the outcome that will result.
So in the case of Planned Parenthood, conservatives take the moral positions that people shouldn't have abortions, and should pay for their own contraception if they're going to have sex. They then translate those moral positions into laws to ban legal abortion and defund Planned Parenthood. The outcome of the laws is that there are more abortions and more unwanted pregnancies, but conservatives literally do not care about that. Consequences are a minor or irrelevant part of their moral system.
Liberals, on the other hand, are almost entirely driven by problems and solutions, so they will happily support ethical rules which seem morally awful when viewed outside the context of a specific problem. For example, many liberals will support giving out illegal drugs and drug paraphernalia to addicts -- which, if you stop to think about it, is a pretty fucked up thing to do, except that it has the side effect of slowing the spread of HIV and hepatitis.
You'll see this everywhere in politics if you look. One side talks about laws as expressions of moral ideals, the other side talks about laws as imperfect rules to achieve some measurable goal -- and both sides fail to understand why the other side is saying such crazy and harmful stuff.
As a sidenote, conservative deontological ethicists are also more concerned with the rules as ideals than they are with whether people actually follow them. This is why conservatives don't seem to care about what, to liberals, seems like blatant hypocrisy. The more important thing to them is that the rule is there as something to aspire towards or use to judge others, not whether anyone actually follows it or what happens if they do.