someproteinguy wrote:
To start I'm not accusing Republicans of acting any differently than any other group in the world. Every ethnic group has a set of morals and values which are intrinsically beneficial to them. Traditional American values reflect moral stances that your stereotypical WASP would find very agreeable and preferable. That's the reason they became laws in this country in the first place. Every other culture in the world has a similar set of values that make the most sense to them.
The GOP is a party, not an ethnic group. And I'm not sure at the connotation you're using. The logic is backwards. Yes, your stereotypical WASP may find traditional values agreeable, but so do middle class Americans of all races and religions. It's not about skin color.
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However those same values aren't held by other groups to the same degree. Many things about WASP values will not sit well with people from a different background and they'll find adapting to those values more difficult.
Which things though? Let's look at the positions and policies themselves and assess them. Doesn't that make more sense? Otherwise we end out making absurd arguments like "Hitler liked to paint, so anyone who enjoys paintings must agree with Hitler". It's ridiculous. And frankly, I'm not even sure what you mean by "WASP values".
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If given a voice in government they'll use that voice to attempt to alter the laws of the region to be more inline with values they feel are natural and intrinsic. This in turn will put more pressure on the WASP who now finds themselves adapting to cultural values they don't share.
Cultural values aren't always aligned with ethnic groups though. That's the problem I have with much of what you (and many other posters) appear to be saying. It's like you believe that the conservative principles are indelibly aligned with "white majority", and all the other absurdities that follow from that assumption. I don't see that at all though. I see conservative principles as principles which benefit everyone equally. They are fundamentally those which align most closely with those upon which this nation was founded and that they embody the most practical approach to the creation and maintenance of a free society. Those principles have
nothing to do with race.
The racial elements are introduced by the political left. They're the ones who create the "we're for minority groups, so conservatives are against them (cause they're against us), so conservatives are racists" narrative. But that's wholly fabricated and entire made up by the left. While this does not mean that no conservatives are racist, they aren't racist *because* they are conservative. Racism exists on both "sides" of our politics. But if we're going to assess which party has a platform which is explicitly racist, we'd have to conclude that it's the Democrats.
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In one sense this isn't racism perse, people aren't setting out to kill each other, deprive each other of jobs, etc. On the other hand it's very passive aggressive as these value conflicts weight more heavily on other groups. On the first hand though, many of these things are held as important beliefs that define a particular culture, and members of a group can hardly be blamed for upholding the things they believe in.
I disagree. I think that there is a perception of this (largely because that's what the Left keeps telling people). But the reality is that a middle class black man benefits from conservative positions exactly as much as a middle class white man. And a poor white woman benefits from conservative positions exactly as much as a poor black woman. Our positions are about maximizing liberty and minimizing the degree to which the government decides our outcomes. There is no racial element to this and any perception of a racial element steps entirely from the other side intentionally creating one.
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Simply put the values that our country is founded on aren't as universally agreeable as they once were.
Of course they are. Why would you say otherwise? Be specific. I suspect that your idea of what our "founding values are" has been manipulated by the very folks who are trying to convince you that conservatives are inherently racist.
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Those who share the older set of values will view the intrusion of new laws as an attack on them, as it necessitates they act in ways that aren't natural to them. On the other hand those who have been struggling to adapt to values that aren't reflective of their own culture will view the older set of values as oppressive.
Myself, I would view this as passive racism.
Again, I disagree entirely. Can you be specific? Give me an example of a "new law" that is being proposed and which conservatives oppose, and explain why you think that this is aligned on cultural or racial lines, and why it's the conservatives who are being racist in their opposition to said law.
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However, it's also something that's universal across ethnic groups (as I mentioned earlier), and not necessarily evil. It's simply human nature, and something we're all guilty of to one degree or another. The best we can hope for is to minimize the parts of the different cultures that negatively impact others outside the group, while at the same thing trying to celebrate the things that make the different groups unique. There's no clear black line here, and people are often terrible at assessing things in their own culture that negatively impact other groups.
So that's the kind of "racism" I'm talking about, whether or not you'd consider that racism. I would certainly understand why someone would view it in a different manner.
See. This is what I don't get. The whole point of the principles of the right is to create and use a set of rules that allow us to have a society in which outcomes are determined via a process as unbiased and free of corruption and racism as possible. By clearly defining rights and minimizing the degree to which our system of government infringes those rights, we can also minimize the degree to which any one group within our society (racial, cultural, or other) can impose and infringe upon any other. It's not perfect, but it's better than the left's approach of empowering the government to "fix" perceived imbalances between every group in society.
The left's approach is doomed to creating more racism, not less. Which is why I find it so strange that so many people just swallow this idea that by *not* having the government decide which racial group gets what that we're being racist. I think it's the other way around. We can't *not* have racism in a system like the one the Left wants. It's inevitable.
