The Glade 4.0

Take your pick, I at least had the expectation that they were adults falling into a deep well of layers of defense mechanisms due to their apathy being a socially unacceptable position. They could be people living in a fantasy world constructed in their mind and reacting like spoiled children when that fantasy construct is threatened as well. Perhaps I was being too charitable?

Really helping someone is hard.

There's a chance that your help will be enough to make a difference, resulting in those you've helped being able to take it from there and move forward.

There's a chance your help will deny them a much needed lesson.

In either case, those you have tried to help will not have accomplished what was needed on their own, and you've just reinforced a lesson that they can't do what's needed on their own. You've made them dependent on someone else for a successful outcome for that problem.

As a parent, my goal was to raise my kids so that as adults, they could make it on their own, and sometimes the hardest thing was to say no to them when they came asking for help. As much love as I have for my kids, I decided long ago that the default answer would be no, unless I knew without a shadow of a doubt that my help was really going to help. They had to convince me that they had a plan and that my help wasn't enabling a bad habit or preventing them from learning a harsh lesson. I cried after my adult daughter came to me and asked for a co-sign for a loan for a new car and she left in tears when her mother and I told her no, totally afraid that she would misunderstand. It took some time, but the message we gave her got through.

So, no, not helping isn't the same as not caring. I'll never be able to convince a bleeding heart liberal that because I'd rather someone fall than learn to lean on the government, it isn't because I don't care. Getting back up is a hard lesson but incredibly valuable, and I won't deny them that value.

No, I've tried. In their bones they know I only care for myself. I'm at peace with that now. I still don't understand how liberals can't make that connection though.

I'm sure there are some that are but those would be the followers not those who push it, not the ones that if a position they just came up with on the spot is critiqued in anyway whatsoever they react if not violently then with the most shocking attacks on the character of the one offering the critique. It's obviously an emotional reaction and one of a degree of which one only finds when one believes themselves to be under attack. They have so closely aligned their own sense of goodness to their opinion, and to an opinion so small it has been in existence for mere seconds, that it is an attack on their own goodness and self worth.

This isn't transference its a conclusion drawn from years of activity and of testing of this theory (I've abandoned many others because reality of observation didn't match the hypothesis). I'll note out you're statement assumes conservatives think themselves as not good people deep down, and if it is transference to fit that model I would have to think of myself as a conservative - I don't.

Lets examine this hypothesis you've stated as fact " many are trying to help their fellow humans."

I don't believe that it could be many, it may be some, and those that it would be could not stay progressives for very long.

1. A person who wants to help people cares about the end result - helping people.
2. Thus a person who wants to help people would examine the consequences of their proposed or realized action.
3. Thus such a person would be open to and may even seek out critique of proposed actions in order to scrutinize the results.
4. This never happens with progressives.

Conclusion:


Talk to a progressive. They will tell you how much they care and why they want this...they talk about intents and their imagined outcomes of policies born of that intent. What they don't talk about is data, possible failures, or anything else. They assume good consequences because they have a good intent. People who want an actual good intent wouldn't do this because their focus is on real consequences to the people they wish to aid. Thus their offered story is false, they don't want to help people. So what purpose is their telling you that they want to help people serving? It's informing you of what moral view of them they would like you to have of them. They are telling you think so you believe they care. They disregard outcomes because they don't actually care, the telling you that they care was all that mattered, when that happens there isn't need for them to investigate further.


The only other option that makes sense is that no progressive believes in objective reality, they honestly believe that the intents of their actions manufacture good outcomes.


So they are selfish bastards or they are children.

Take your pick, I at least had the expectation that they were adults falling into a deep well of layers of defense mechanisms due to their apathy being a socially unacceptable position. They could be people living in a fantasy world constructed in their mind and reacting like spoiled children when that fantasy construct is threatened as well. Perhaps I was being too charitable?

I dont actually agree with Michael on the transferrence thing. Regardless:

My experience of state run national health care in the UK was that it was good, cheaper per head than the US, and taxpayer funded, while my overall tax burden was not notably worse than the one I face here in the US. Anecdotal of course; I haven't done bulk study or analysis.

I think the assertion that all progressives neither care about outcomes, nor empirical evidence as to outcomes seems false on the face of it; I know plenty of progressive scientists, for example, charity workers, academics, etc, who devote their time to helping others, and base their political views on historical and currently available evidence.

Your basic argument is that if you offer someone a hand up that hand always becomes a crutch.

This is of course, demonstrably false in any number of simple situations. You just refuse to extend that logic to the long term, in a self-righteous attempt to justify your own me-first greed.

LOL ok. If you are really saying progressive scientists dont exist I guess the whole idea this conversation was based on evidence is done with ;p

I think there are real risks in the reinforcement of those with capital setting society up to service only those with capital; healthcare, education, the things required to enable you to work, compete and draw yourself up - in wealthy societies with large excess (I realise that will be a contentious and inflammatory term - sorry) denying the poor and weak the chance to get educated and remain healthy enough to forge their own paths seems to me to be scandalous and uncivilised.

One cannot be progressive and have their political views based on science. It's fundamentally anti-science as it requires not simply an ignorance of economics but an active opposition to some of the most basic economic laws.

Progressives have to identify an other as evil.

The only thing that matters is the story they tell themselves that they are good people.

Because they aren't, and deep down they know they arent.

This is complete nonsense. You can only come to this conclusion by deciding that "economics" is settled science and your understanding is unassailable. In point of fact, this viewpoint is, by definition, complete unscientific. It's a faith-based belief. The fact is that like the natural sciences, our understanding of economics is constantly evolving. There are supported progressive theories, supported conservative theories, and everything in between.

If you're going to be so blatantly hypocritical, at least try to do it in two separate posts.

Economics is a soft science with more theories than facts. None of the definitions of economics I found refer to it as a science. Even Merriam-Webster refers to economics only as a social science.

Calling it a science is the basis of your argument of progressives being anti-science. I find it amusing considering that there are and have been many scientists who consider themselves progressives and/or liberals.

Would you say that flat-earthers are not anti-science? What would you say to a chemist that was a flat-earther? Would they not be anti-science because they were a chemist? How do you square that circle? Just so you know this isn't a hypothetical, I know a flat-earther chemist.

Our understanding of physics is constantly evolving yet we haven't changed the laws of thermodynamics. If you increase the price of an elastic good you reduce demand. If you lower the price of an elastic good you're going to see demand increase. These don't stop happening because someone ignores them.

Not hypocritical at all, even if I were it's not a valid attack on an argument. If you cared about the argument you'd focus on valid critiques not about character attacks.

Your entire argument lumps progressives together, then defines them as "not good people". At the same time, you're talking about how progressives have to identify an other as evil, more or less what you're doing here.

It's definitely hypocritical. As to whether I assail your argument, your argument is silly on its face. The first part, that progressives identify others as evil, in my view is pretty much a given - every group tends to do this, as you've just demonstrated. The whole world thinks in terms of "us" and "them". Maybe the others aren't evil, but are separate at a minimum.

As to whether they are good people or not, that's just a dumb statement - you don't know them or their motives, and people aren't "good" as a group, it's based on the individuals.

So no, I don't really care about your silly argument - it was an attack on your specific hypocrisy.

Good people don't put their ego before helping others. Progressives do.

Ergo...

Friction

Use more lube, people.

Blood is a lubricant

No, no it isn't.

This is complete nonsense. You can only come to this conclusion by deciding that "economics" is settled science and your understanding is unassailable. In point of fact, this viewpoint is, by definition, complete unscientific. It's a faith-based belief. The fact is that like the natural sciences, our understanding of economics is constantly evolving. There are supported progressive theories, supported conservative theories, and everything in between.