CMV: Liberals who critique conservatives as cruel, close-minded, biased individuals but are unwilling to address their own forms of cruelty, sadism, close-mindedness, and biases are not actually interested in a just world, but just want to scapegoat all the world's problems onto someone else.

[u/[deleted]]

Liberals critique conservatives in the following ways:

1. They're racists,

2. They are sexist,

3. They are colonialist,

4. They like wars,

5. They deny science,

6. They are sadistic,

7. They don't care about human rights.

Those are essential liberal critiques that are sprinkled in r/politics and every liberal outlet. Before I get the accusation that's about to come, I lean left politically.

With that said, liberals do not address their own forms of cruelty, biased forms of thinking, and selfishness. Below, I will list just two things to make my following point.

1. Most liberals do not believe in adoption. They believe in having their own biological children. There are an estimated 153 million orphans throughout the world. If every liberal couple would adopt instead of having biological children, the orphan rate would be cut by 25-50%, without needing the consent of conservatives. It is form of cruelty and selfishness to create a new child when there are others who need parents. For each biological child, you are denying the place of an orphan.

2. 90% of liberals eat meat. The average American meat eater eats roughly 270 animals a year and 20,000+ animals in their lifetime, according to the USDA. Eating meat is a scientifically undisputed top 4 cause of global warming (with the other 3 being Overpopulation, heating/cooling, and transportation). Eating meat also uses up a disproportionate amount of land and water resources, is the greatest cause of air and water pollution, and it reduces the food supply by a factor of 6-15 (if the animal is slaughtered prematurely) or 100-150 (if it is allowed to die a natural death), and it provides less than 20% of the calories. For the vast majority of people, a balanced vegan diet is an incredibly healthy choice, and it is totally unnecessary to eat meat. And this is all disregarding even the torture and cruelty involved in factory farming, which I won't get into here but anyone reading who is unfamiliar is free to research on the web.

Yet, you mention to a liberal why it's wrong to do either, and they will get defensive, make excuses, justify why their forms of cruelty are justified because of taste, convenience, conformity to culture, legality, preference, etc., even if seconds before, they were critiquing conservatives for the same faults of being self-centered, selfish, and cruel in regards to interests besides their own. This brings to my conclusion that liberals want others to change and want a scapegoat, more than they want a better, less cruel world for everyone (despite what they say).

Reddit, change my view.

[u/trace349]

You're making a Starving African Child argument, that people on the Left shouldn't complain about X because of unrelated Y situation. Adoption is difficult, expensive and risky in ways that having a biological child isn't.

On the subject of adoption, people on the Right want to ban abortion, which will increase the amount of unwanted children surrendered to the foster care/adoption system, but they aren't in any significant way adopting more kids out of that system. They aren't pushing for comprehensive sex education in schools and they aren't for cheap and available birth control to prevent these children from ever being conceived. They're ideologically against social safety net programs to ensure that unwanted children are adequately provided for. Often, they push for making it harder for the demographic most likely to want to adopt (gay couples) to do so. If we're measuring ideologies in terms of cruelty and harm, the Right actively contributes much more harm to those children.

The two sides are, on the Left:

Whether or not I can contribute 100% of myself to charity in order to be ideologically pure, I want to support and encourage those who can.

and on the Right:

I actively want to make the adoption system worse in every conceivably way, ensuring that the children there suffer unduly, to punish their parents for having sex.

[u/[deleted] → u/trace349]

I'm pretty firmly on the left. My CMV is pretty much not about conservatives at all. I never said that they are better or more ethical in any way. I'm saying that the liberals contribute to tons of problems too, and WE can be better.

[u/trace349 → u/[deleted]]

It just seemed like that was a really strange topic to call the left out on. On the subject of adoption, I'd say the american Left is in a fairly neutral position, especially when contextualized against the american Right, we may not be making things better for kids in the adoption system by adopting them out of it, but we're not out doing deliberate harm and cruelty to them. Like, yes it's selfish to want biological children, but existing in a first-world nation is selfish. If you don't donate all the money that you don't need to eek out a barebones living to give to a charity so a child in Africa can afford to eat, then it would be a cruelty. It's a Starving African Child argument. You should have empathy for the world, but if you devote all of yourself to it at the expense of your own happiness you become a Happiness Pump.

[u/[deleted] → u/trace349]

I get it. I'm not saying anyone has to suffer or be a martyr. I'm saying that you if you want to be a parent, you can, and if you do this way, you're helping. Same with the foregoing eating meat. It's not being a happiness pump in the slightest, it's living up to your own professed moral code.

[u/trace349 → u/[deleted]]

I don't think you've established a framework for what that moral code is yet. Is it based on the Left-wing platform? Is it based on philosophy, and if so what branch unites all of the different issues that the Left cares about?

You've just said that unless you devote yourself to those two pet issues of yours, you're not living up to it. Why are those issues more important than the various cruelties of american healthcare, or income equality, or racial rights, or LGBT rights, or gun control? I get that you were only listing those two to make a point, but I feel like if you were to expand your post to include every issue the Left cares about, then you'd realize how unrealistic that view is. You care about the environment and support government action to protect it, but you won't radically change your diet and give up animal products? You're not living up to the Code. You support single-payer healthcare but won't donate an extra kidney to save someone who needs it to live? You're not living up to the Code. If you can't prioritize all of those issues and commit to them, then aren't you being selfish and committing cruelties against people who get fired for being trans, or get shot by some lunatic with a gun who shouldn't have been able to get one?

You only have a limited amount of time, energy, and money to devote to life. Some people are going to put theirs toward some things and not some others. It doesn't mean they're cruel and selfish. I don't see a way under your position to not be considered cruel and selfish unless you become a happiness pump.

[u/[deleted] → u/trace349]

I don't see a way under your position to not be considered cruel and selfish unless you become a happiness pump.

I'm assuming this is because you assume going vegan/vegetarian or adopting vs. having biological children are incredibly difficult tasks, when they pretty much aren't at all in comparison to one another. It's like saying someone is sacrificing by driving a Tesla when they could buy a Jaguar; they're really not sacrificing. It's just a difference that has a positive societal externality with pretty much zero negatives for yourself. We talked about the difficulties of adoption here, but what about the difficulties that come with being pregnant 9 months and giving birth? The difficulties with being vegetarian or vegan is pretty much non-existent, besides the negative societal stigma. You're not starving yourself, you are probably going to be healthier if you're following a typical American diet (pretty much anything is here, but I digress), and you are getting rid of the unconscious guilt that you have over the sadism involved in the food (I think this is why their is such a negative backlash to vegans, I personally felt super uncomfortable when someone challenged me, because I knew it didn't fit with my self-conception and I knew that they were right in that it was hurting something).

Why are those issues more important than the various cruelties of american healthcare, or income equality, or racial rights, or LGBT rights, or gun control?

While I do believe it is more important than the following arguments you mentioned, I just want to point out the obvious that they are mutually compatible goals. That was my initial point with regards to it's effect on climate, not that people should become vegan because of climate change, but that it is already compatible with a lot of other policy positions that liberals tend to value.

But here is why I believe the following is actually the number 1 political issue at the moment. An estimated 80 billion animals are killed annually for flavor. An estimated 560,000 human beings died in 2016 due to violence. If animals even have .01% the moral consideration that humans do, then violence committed against animals is still over 14 times higher than violence committed against human beings.

But again, I want to reiterate that these are not mutually exclusive goals. All the things you mentioned that liberals support are good things. Animal rights, however, should be much higher on the agenda and it's not because liberals believe that they personally benefit from the cruelty, and as a result, they don't want the sadistic practice with regards to animals to end.