Feeling something vs. Doing something
In the real world, I don't care much about politics. Sure, I'll debate it with someone if they'd like but I'm not particularly motivated politically. On-line, I'll talk trash about politics taking a much stronger stance on positions than I would normally give since the point is to get energetic discussion going.
People who know me would describe me as a political "moderate" on most issues. But in reality, I'm all over the place. A left wing position here, a right wing position there. I cherry pick my ideology. I'm very conservative on business/tax issues and somewhat liberal on social issues. But like I said, in the real world, I'm not motivated very much by politics. I deal with the world as it is. And in that sense, I am a conservative.
It's been my experience that people who are conservative tend to be more effective in getting things done. Things that actually do something. It's the liberals who do things that are described as "trying to make a statement". Candle light vigils and showings of solidarity and other warm fuzzy activities make for good PR but ultimately are pointless. These activities are the hallmark of the left.
Go to a business conference of entrepreneurs and you won't find too many liberals there. In fact, the more successful someone is in the private sector, the more likely they are to be conservative. Outside entertainment and academia, you won't find that many wealthy successful liberals.
So why is that? I think it's because conservatives deal with the world as it is rather than how they wish it was. They are much more end result oriented. Liberals, by contrast, tend to be much more "wish really really hard that things were different".
Conservatives also tend to look at cause and effect. They have to because they end up being the ones who actually make decisions that deal with change in the real world.
Take the minimum wage or living wage advocates. They're the same people who also are against outsourcing of jobs. Well which is it? They aren't willing to accept the reality that if you increase low skill labor costs that you are increasing the incentive to move the business out of the country. Conservatives don't have that luxury. They're the ones running those businesses. Raise their costs and they have to make some tough choices -- ones they'll be demonized for by the very people who advocated the policies that caused the problem.
And reality is a messy thing. There are no perfect solutions. There are no perfectly elegant solutions either. Most solutions require substantial trade offs. Worse, those trade offs tend to get exponentially nasty as you near a "perfect" solution.
Want 100% health coverage instead of 90%? Fine, expect massive trade offs in exchange in the form of waiting periods, a slowing in innovation, and decrease in quality of care.
Want to reduce CO2 emissions substantially today? Fine, increase the required gas mileage on cars to 35MPH. But that will mean the end of SUVs, mini-vans, and the subsequent loss of millions of jobs. Which some guy like Michael Moore would then promptly blame on "greedy fat cat businesses".
Want to "save" a few hundred acres of tundra in the ANWR? Fine, but expect our dependence on foreign oil to increase at a faster rate which helps fuel the problems in the middle east.
Conservatives, by their nature, tend to be much more pragmatic. They look for solutions. Real solutions. A protest march isn't a solution. It's a hobby. This tends to make conservatives seem like the bad guys because they end up having to make the tough real world decisions that have negative consequences for some even as they try to benefit the many.
Where the liberal would go all out to save a single person in the village, even if that meant potentially sacrificing the entire village, the conservative would be more likely to take the "cruel" but pragmatic route of letting the individual villager suffer for the good of the entire village. That's not because they like to see people suffer but because they have to weigh the larger issues.
It's sad that millions of children live in poverty. A liberal would argue persuasively that a nation as wealthy as the United States should ensure that no child lives in poverty. A conservative would agree that it's a shame but that as a practical matter, unless you're willing to sacrifice the rest of the society for it, you're not likely to solve that problem. Virtually all children (statistically) that live in poverty do so because their parents made very bad and irresponsible choices. Every practical solution to solve this will end up seeming cruel (take the child away from the irresponsible parent looks cruel and adds more expense for instance).
Liberals are also the ones who push for more help for Africa. A land where the populations are simply far too high to be supported by the land they are on (with some notable exceptions where corrupt government is the cause). Do you send over food aid, artificially masking the underlying problem and creating generations of dependents living in misery? The liberal won't worry about that. They just want to show how much they care. The "cruel" conservative is more likely to look at the big picture. Consistent food aid creates extensive long term damage and can prop up corrupt and brutal regimes.
By the same token, liberals tend to be the ones who argue for AIDS treatments to be sent to Africa at low cost. Thus increasing the healthy life span of the millions of Africans who are HIV positive. Sounds wonderful doesn't it? Except that it also increases the length of time that the disease spreaders will be able to effectively spread the disease.
Then again, liberal groups also got DDT banned for export which was the world's most effective way of killing mosquitoes. Malaria now kills millions of Africans because there is no substitute for DDT that is remotely as cheap and effective. But some birds are safe. Well, maybe.
I could go on and on but I think the point is made. It's not that liberals are bad. They're not. They're just ineffectual in the real world. They are too busy trying to do emotionally satisfying deeds rather than deeds of practicality. Where they do have an impact is in stifling the ability of conservatives for doing what has to be done by constantly demonizing them.
Liberals decried the sanctions on Iraq that had allegedly killed 500,000 children. If you lift the sanctions, Saddam would have gone forward with his nuclear program (that, btw, is something that they did find ample evidence of in Iraq -- he was just waiting out the sancations). The other option is to remove Saddam and put someone in that isn't going to try to create nasty weapons, invade their neighbors, and aid terrorists. Those are your 3 choices and no matter which choice is made, the liberals will demonize the result.
Conservatives who try to put forth practical realistic solutions get demonized as being "hateful", "bigoted" and be called (of course) "Nazis" or "fascists" (even though Nazis and fascists were socialists and technically left wing -- Hitler was many things but the vegetarian artist from Austria was definitely not a conservative). It's demonization that liberals have any general real world impact and that's only because they're impacting the people who actually do things in the real world - conservatives.
I don't expect to change any minds here. You'll have the liberals who have excessive free time trying to nit-pick my examples with exceptions to a generalization as if that somehow disproves the generalization ("Hey Bush is trying to send AIDS help to Africa too!") but none of that changes the bottom line: That the people who run the companies, who actually create the "stuff" we use, are almost always conservative in nature because to accomplish things in the real world means dealing with the world as it actually is rather than as we wish it was.
I can't believe this. I may have broken my foot playing with a balloon. Yes, another balloon-related injury. The four year old and I were trying to bat the balloon as high as we could to get it touch the ceiling (we have a very high ceiling in our living room) and well, I succeeded in that but came crashing down into furniture thus fulfilling the nerd-like stereotype.
