Pondering the Progressive ~ Conservative divide

Marxists and convservaives are more alike than either wish to admit. Niether is progressive. Although their specific goals are different their outlook on the world is very similar. Basically they think that a human can be molded into whatever it needs to be by philosophy. They seem to pay very little attention to the hard-wired nature of mankind. An example of this for the Marxist is the silly notion that property and wealth can be equally owned and administred by all. This is flawed since human beings are heirachial in nature and so the very act of attempting of "administering" that kind of total equity is self defeating. You invariably end up with a group of people controling things for the masses.

The conservative has their own silly examples. Choosing sexual orientation for example. Anyone who has to choose what sex to be attracted to is probably, by nature eitehr bi-sexual, or homosexual and having difficulty admitting that to him/herself. Another great example is work makes people rich. This is true if you consider the worker making the CEO rich. But the fact is that the amount of effort you put into your career has limited value in making you wealthy. More often than not it is luck, inherritance, or marriage that makes you wealthy. There are millions of workers who bust their asses everyday but are not Donal Trump. Objectivist romantics like Ayn Rand, liberitarians, and conservatives all fail the test of statecraft since their ideas do not meld with the reality of the big messy world.

There will always be poor, sick, young, old, crippled, insane, unlucky, unwise, people who cannot simply be thrown away. Any type of society can choose whether or not to take care of its citizens. But the democratic republic MUST choose in the affirmative. I would say that many dictatorships or oligarchies have taken care of their people and many have not. All democratic republics have to do this. It is a means to an end. The conservative can't see this reality.

Whether it is social, spiritual, or economic, the conservative, is forever trying to stop the river. But the river always torrents around them. Though they build dams, the river of progress overtops them. Their view seems real but because it does not take into account the reality of human nature they fail in most of what they do. Even crime and punishment. States with no captial punishement have the lowest rates of violent crime. States with high execution rates have high rates of violent crime and further it seems that punishment by death offers no value to curb crime. The death penalty is a good example of a policy that, on the surface seems solid, however in reality the only humans who are deterred by the death penalty would not be committing the act in the first place.

Morality itself a product of human evolution cannot be reconciled with conservatism. True moral virtue is only possible through the enlightened view of the world based in fact not ideology. Anything less is not morality but favoritism.

So Marx and Grover Norquist would get along nicely.