Several of my friends are conservatives - and they span ethnicities, religions and economic classes. I find conversations with these folks quite insightful and fun. A bit harder to find these folks in Silicon Valley but not impossible. ps: I'm brown too :)
What I like is that these sites help me understand the other side of questions like gun rights/control. I may not agree with it but I'm less belligerent about my views because I appreciate their sincere alternative viewpoints.
Precisely. We need conservatism. We need that part of our conscience which says "well, hold on a minute", or "hey we can't afford that" in order to function properly as a democracy. It's loss is a tragedy, and the corruption of those ideals over the past 30 years into what it has become is breaking our country.
I disagree at this point honestly.
course all I've ever seen of american conservatism is the current republican party.
People who remember the 70s and 80s remember a different political environment.
When things seem overwhelming, I like to remind myself that in the 60s things seemed worse. (To me, the 80s and 90s were very good.)
Why wouldn't they be? The "crazy" ones aren't being elected by no one. They rose to power because voters embraced them. If you don't want to be lumped in as crazy then quit supporting crazy.
> potentially causing them to actually embrace the more extremist ideologies.
I really, really hate this argument. It's just trying to absolve people of their responsibility for choosing white nationalism and other reprehensible ideas. If you joined up because some arrogant jerk offended you one day then maybe you weren't a very good person to begin with.
Besides, how many liberals do you see pushing hateful ideologies and communism because they are sick of being called arrogant elites?
I don't disagree that the Republican party has been hijacked. Personally, I am non-partisan and generally will vote for whichever candidates lean more towards a liberal-libertarian platform, be they R or D. Lately, that's been a lot more D than R.
>If you joined up because some arrogant jerk offended you one day then maybe you weren't a very good person to begin with
Hatred and ostracization make people go to very dark places. A lot of people are lumping people who ideologically believe in lower taxes and fewer government services with white supremacists. I'm obviously not condoning people going to those places, but acting like putting these people on blast and calling them awful because their beliefs partially overlap with those of a genuinely awful group of people is at the least not constructive.
Personally I think who you vote for is a damn good indicator of who you are as a person.
Let's make the sentence read: " The entire movement has been hijacked by sexual deviants and people who don't want to work for a living. Aligning yourself with such an ideology rightfully has a serious social cost now."
Does it seem more offensive to you now?
Failure to look for the merit in the other person's point of view is a mistake. There are good conservative as there are good liberals. Using inflammatory rhetoric (as the author did) does nothing to disprove one's ignorance of the other person's point of view.
If you can't see that republicans have quite a bit of xenophobia and racism in their ranks then you need to open up your damn eyes. Instead of talking about how it's wrong to feel that way think for a minute about why this person feels that way. People thinking this way is what happens when 10s of millions of people vote for a man who is anti-immigrant, racist, and encourages white nationalists.
Explain to me where they are. Provide reliable statistics, please.
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As a brown person, do you know what my first thoughts of someone who describes themselves as "conservative" are? I'll give you a hint: it has nothing to do with fiscal policy. You can't blame people for not wanting to be made uncomfortable in that way.