An interesting conversation...

[armor99]

For anyone that has read my postings I would think it is fairly obvious that I am more conservative in my ideas than liberal. On the other hand I always like to listen to other points of view. I do not have to agree, but if I can understand the other persons point of view, then I feel I have a least learned something, and rarely is that a bad thing.
The other day I found myself having a conversation with my uncle who is admittedly VERY liberal, and I asked him what he thought about certain topics, and we batted it around for a few. I may disagree with my uncle, but he is certainly an eloquent speaker, and not likely to start getting nutty, or start the name calling that typically ends such conversations. It was interesting to hear it from his point of view, and I learned a bit of why I probably find such thinking uncomprehendible.

We started talking about poverty in america, and what should be done about it. So I asked if he believed it was possible to eliminate poverty entirely in the US. As in... no one here is poor anymore.

He steadfastly believes that eliminating poverty IS in fact possible, and should be a goal. According to him we are a prosperous enough nation that NO ONE should be living in poverty in the US. He also had a really hard time defining what poverty was, because he insisted it has nothing to do with money, but just having “enough” (whatever that means). So I asked how we should go about eliminating poverty. I got back a rambling speech sprinkled with terms like “social justice”, “societal responsibilities”, etc. And he never really did explain what should actually be DONE to help fix the problem, but he was CERTAIN our goal should be to fix it.

Another person in the room actually made the very astute observation that I tend to believe that people who are getting welfare (in one form or another) are “freeloaders”, and that my uncle viewed such people as being in an “unfortunate position” that was no fault of their own. And that neither of us would ever really know which percentage was which. My uncle actually admitted that even if he found out that 95% of these people were “freeloaders” (able to work but choose not to) he would still feel the same way, that these people need to be “helped” anyway.

His main thrust was that facts were sort of irrelevant to him. That he thought it was important to help everyone, even if they arrived at their situation due to their own laziness or stupidity. Even if the fact had been, it is impossible to eliminate poverty, he felt you should do all that you can to reach that goal anyway. From my point of view, tilting at windmills is sort of pointless. If you told me to play a game that was impossible to win, my inclination would be not to play, I would see no point in it.

To him, the act was the important thing, not the result. For me…. the result is what justifies the action in the first place. I think I also now understand the “tax the rich” rally cry that most liberals and he share. You can tell that he really “hates” rich people. It came through whenever he spoke of it. He believes that no one really should be able to become that wealthy, because if you are, it means that according to his world view, you have not “helped” nearly enough people. He believes that those that have more “owe” it to those who have less. So if you are wealthy, that means you really do not need all of the stuff you have, and you would have been much better off helping so many more people who have nothing. So according to my Uncle’s world view, you should only have “enough” (whatever that actually means, I could not get a real defination of it), and the rest should be given to anyone that is suffering (by their own hand or not). I could not really follow the logic of it, but of course it is not even close to a logical thought process. But the one thing that seemed to drive the whole thing was the certainty of being “right”, and the use of terms that sound good, but cannot be quantified or measured in any way. Terms like “enough”, “rich”, “society”, etc. He was not really sure how you would even go about measuring it if you were making an impact on the goal of curing “poverty”, and to him it was also irrelevant, the act of trying was most important to him.

So there in a nutshell is why I miss the liberal arguement most of the time. It seems to be a system about "feeling" rather than "knowing". I can never tell somone that what they are "feeling" is right or wrong, that is different for everyone, and certainly not a measurable quantity. The best I can ever do is show various facts, and try to base my decisions on what those facts reveal about the reality of the situation. In my uncles mind it seems not to work that way at all. He spoke alot of our obligation to help "society". A word he could not define for me, but was certain it included everyone... but somehow not me or him.... just these nameless faceless "others" that he or I would never know, but people we owe things to.


I may get flamed over this... or not... it was not my intention to be inflamitory to anyone, I just found it interesting and eye opening to see what he believed. At least I did learn something about what he believes...