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Conservative/Republican atheist

Started by jduster, August 25, 2010, 05:58:02 PM

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Bob T

Quote from: "The Magic Pudding"Welcome jduster

I don't see how a party can call themselves conservative and run such enormous deficits.
I don't think the enthusiasm for war fits either.

For the most part, I consider myself a Rockefeller/Goldwater type conservative, which the Republicans tossed out years ago.
The Republican party no longer supports many of what I consider to be conservative ideals, such as limited spending.
In addition, their party has been hijacked by the religious right, supporting an agenda against personal freedoms, which I can no longer stomach.
Bob T.
"I always prefer to believe the best of everybody, it saves so much trouble." -- Rudyard Kipling

notself

Quote from: "Bob T"
Quote from: "The Magic Pudding"Welcome jduster

I don't see how a party can call themselves conservative and run such enormous deficits.
I don't think the enthusiasm for war fits either.

For the most part, I consider myself a Rockefeller/Goldwater type conservative, which the Republicans tossed out years ago.
The Republican party no longer supports many of what I consider to be conservative ideals, such as limited spending.
In addition, their party has been hijacked by the religious right, supporting an agenda against personal freedoms, which I can no longer stomach.

I totally agree.  Without the return to true conservative ideals which act as a healthy balance to liberal ideals, we are at risk of deterioration of our democracy.  The name calling and just plain character assassination that passes for politics now is as bad or perhaps worse than anytime in our history.  I hope Republicans can rescue their party from the hands of religious wing nuts.

Tank

Quote from: "jduster"I do criticize the Republicans for being fiscally irresponsible, but most of the debt is the fault of a broken entitlement system, necessary defense spending, and a Democrat-controlled Congress.

Come on! Necessary defence spending. The USA spends more on defence than the next 14 countries combined and 11(?) of those are allies! The US accounts for 46% of the world's military expenditure ($1,500,000,000,000 in 2009) so the US spent  $735,000,000,000 on 'defence', that's approximately $100 for every person on Earth!



From http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/ ... y-spending

Necessary 'defence' spending looks like commercial pigs eating at the tax payers expense to me. The combined spending of Russia and China reaches 10.1%, if the US cut it's defence budget by 3/4 to $184 billion it would still slightly exceed their combined level of spending at 11.6% of the 2009 figures. US military spending is out of control not because of need but because to suddenly stop spending would effectively destroy the US economy.
If religions were TV channels atheism is turning the TV off.
"Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt." ― Richard P. Feynman
'It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life.' - Terry Pratchett
Remember, your inability to grasp science is not a valid argument against it.

Tank

On a side note Mexico is happily invading the US on a military budget of $4 billion dollars and winning!
If religions were TV channels atheism is turning the TV off.
"Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt." ― Richard P. Feynman
'It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life.' - Terry Pratchett
Remember, your inability to grasp science is not a valid argument against it.

The Magic Pudding

Quote from: "notself"I totally agree.  Without the return to true conservative ideals which act as a healthy balance to liberal ideals, we are at risk of deterioration of our democracy.  The name calling and just plain character assassination that passes for politics now is as bad or perhaps worse than anytime in our history.  I hope Republicans can rescue their party from the hands of religious wing nuts.
At risk of deterioration?
If a country elects an idiot, who does his idiot work, and shortly after considers another idiot for the job, things have already deteriorated.
When people are so strongly attached to one party, and demonise the other, we have a problem.
The republicans should have faced such a strong backlash they would have been forced to change.

I just heard Jimmy Carter's name raised again in relation to international peace negotiations.
I wonder how many requests George W and Sarah will get in years to come.

Tank

Quote from: "The Magic Pudding"I wonder how many requests George W and Sarah will get in years to come.
They will both get many requests, George W to stop dribbling, and Sarah Palin to STFU!
If religions were TV channels atheism is turning the TV off.
"Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt." ― Richard P. Feynman
'It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life.' - Terry Pratchett
Remember, your inability to grasp science is not a valid argument against it.

jduster

I actually favor George W. Bush, though I will save that for a different discussion.

The fact that the U.S. makes up half of the world's defense spending is no more than a talking point.  The reason why the U.S. spends so much is because Europe contributes so little to the war on terrorism and the U.S. has a much larger population than most country, so proportionately, the difference isn't as much.  But, again, I don't want to hijack the discussion.

But I, as you all do, condemn bigotry and dislike the idea of theocracy.

Intercourseman72

I don't know what it is with atheists being predominately progressive liberal (the young turks kind of "progressive liberal"). It's religious skeptics of all kinds really, not just atheists. You are in a hunt to find republican atheists (Lee Dorin is likely an atheist but has a very religious audience and hasn't declared a stance on religion) and are probably more likely stumble upon an atheist classical liberal (the term used today is libertarian). The fact that you are likely to find more atheists with similar fringe viewpoints to Penn Jillette rather than much more common viewpoints like Karl Rove or some other mainstream Republican is pretty anomalous in my opinion. It's just that atheists tend to not be classical liberals or Republicans, but that they tend to be mainstream leftists.

I can see how Republicanism can be incompatible with the views of any atheist (except maybe fake atheists like s e cupp) simply because of their track record against religion. The Democrats can be pretty evangelical too, but not even close to the republicans on scale or by magnitude. I see that libertarianism in the modern (false) sense of the word is compatible with atheism. Atheists have no craving to worship or believe in an almighty deity that can control everything and prefer independence from such a thing and wish similar independence from a top down leviathan. Sam Harris, who is not at all a classical liberal, commented on how "libertarianism" is compatible with atheism.

Now this leaves us with even less popular fringe political groups and then "progressive liberalism" wherein you want the government out of your bedroom but in everyone else's wallet and want the state to create one giant wallet for everyone in the country. Pretty much Christopher Hitchens minus the fanatical desire to invade and bomb all the Muslims you can find. All I can come up with to explain why so many atheists are these mainstream leftist types is because it's not only popular and kind of natural to default to in the first place, but it's also contradictory to republicanism. If you are going to defy religion as far as to denounce it, aligning politically against religious people seems natural as well. That's pretty much as far as I've gotten with explaining why atheists overwhelmingly are mainstream leftists.

As for the term "conservative", it absolutely does not mean fiscally conservative. This stuff about cutting spending and shrinking the government is Reaganite/Thacherite rhetoric that has almost nothing to do with conservative policy. There are some exceptions throughout history like Robert Taft, Barry Goldwater, Ron Paul, etc. but the overwhelming majority of conservative republicans are politically modeled off the Hamiltonian Federalists, then the Whigs, and then Lincoln's party, which advocated "internal improvements", a very strong national government, intrusive military, central banking, etc. I don't think the term 'conservative' is a misnomer like I do with the modern use of the word 'liberal' or 'libertarian' though. Conservatives are in favor of conserving national traditions. In the US, these traditions are government/business collusion, government controlled currency and set interest rates, a highly interventionist foreign policy (the US has been imperialistic since before it was even the US), ethnic separatism, restrictive borders, industrial protectionism, and plenty more. You will this reflected in Republican legislation much more than their platform campaign rhetoric. They are not 'conservative' of natural resources, 'conservative' when it comes to spending and borrowing habits, 'conservative' when it comes to the use of the military, 'conservative' when it comes to pretty much any use of the government at any time. But they certainly do conserve the traditions of the United States. As for Canadian conservatives, they don't conserve Canadian traditions, but rather American ones because they think they are cowboys. It's rather strange really. Religion and the use of religion in politics is also among American traditions. There is just no church you have to pay to according to conservatives.

Atheists tend to be Bismarckian welfare-statists in favor of fewer restrictions when comes to pretty much all civil conduct except when it involves money.

Thumpalumpacus

I think atheists tend to reject right-wing parties because of the conformity those parties typically demand.  Every atheist, at one point in his or her life, was a non-conformist, and many still are.
Illegitimi non carborundum.

Intercourseman72

Quote from: "Thumpalumpacus"I think atheists tend to reject right-wing parties because of the conformity those parties typically demand.  Every atheist, at one point in his or her life, was a non-conformist, and many still are.

Most atheists are fairly mainstream left-leaning. Not my conception of non-conformity. There surely is political diversity among atheists and non-religious people, but I am pretty sure you will find them overwhelmingly watching Kieth Olberman, The Young Turks, etc and either laugh at or detest Sean Hannity or Niel Cavuto. Maybe there will be some Nietzsche mixed in with their left-leaning views, but it's nothing I would consider "mavericky".

pinkocommie

Quote from: "Intercourseman72"
Quote from: "Thumpalumpacus"I think atheists tend to reject right-wing parties because of the conformity those parties typically demand.  Every atheist, at one point in his or her life, was a non-conformist, and many still are.

Most atheists are fairly mainstream left-leaning. Not my conception of non-conformity. There surely is political diversity among atheists and non-religious people, but I am pretty sure you will find them overwhelmingly watching Kieth Olberman, The Young Turks, etc and either laugh at or detest Sean Hannity or Niel Cavuto. Maybe there will be some Nietzsche mixed in with their left-leaning views, but it's nothing I would consider "mavericky".

All this conjecture amounts to mental skeet.  Let's see some data.
Ubi dubium ibi libertas: Where there is doubt, there is freedom.
http://alliedatheistalliance.blogspot.com/

Intercourseman72

You wanna try looking yourself? How about contributing to the discussion with some research of your own instead of begging for spoon feeds.

Coming by good stats isn't easy, so conjecture and "common wisdom" is pretty much what we have to work with.

pinkocommie

When someone makes a claim, do you feel it's your duty as the person questioning their statements to find the evidence they used to come to their conclusions, or do you ask for it?  So...no data then.  Gotcha.  Have fun with your sweeping, evidently unsupported generalizations.
Ubi dubium ibi libertas: Where there is doubt, there is freedom.
http://alliedatheistalliance.blogspot.com/

Intercourseman72

I have as much data as anyone with access to online search engines. There is no general survey I can find that says "this many atheists are politically affiliated this and that way." I'm not saying the burden to provide evidence is on you, just that if you were at all interested in the topic then you could do your own research as well instead of trying to get others to do the work for you regardless of who is making what claim pertaining to the issue.

It is clear that religiosity and political affiliation correlate very well in the United States by state as well as in Europe. Whether you are democrat or republican correlates very well with being liberal or conservative.
http://pewforum.org/How-Religious-Is-Your-State-.aspx
http://www.npr.org/news/specials/electi ... iew=race08
check out more miscellaneous stuff if you want.
http://pewforum.org/sitemap/

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 132655.htm
Here is science daily's little conjecture on why people with higher IQ tend to be less religious and less conservative.

Anyway, it took me somewhere around 5 minutes to google all of this stuff (somewhat longer to post it) and even less time to figure out that these correlations already existed as did almost everyone who is familiar with this topic. It's not a certainty that atheists follow the same or similar trends that people who become less and less religious as I already stated because as far as I know there is no poll or survey that goes over the details that well.

QuoteWhen someone makes a claim, do you feel it's your duty as the person questioning their statements to find the evidence they used to come to their conclusions, or do you ask for it?
First, that would depend on the claim. Asserting that atheists tend to be more liberal is not at all outlandish in my opinion and is similar to saying men tend to watch sports more than women. To refute such a claim requires more burden of proof given that it is fairly self-evident despite most people believing such a claim without having seen extensive studies and statistics.
Second, yes, I think it's every individual's responsibility (duty is a stupid sounding word for this) to do their own research on topics for which they are interested in forming opinions. And this goes regardless if they are asking for elaboration or asserting a claim from the beginning. It doesn't have to be the same evidence the other person used to arrive at their positions either. You can discuss the same topic using different data and evidence.
Finally, this is a political topic where there is a lot of conjecture and opinions are based on things for which we can't get convincing data for. What is often more important is the logic behind the conjecture in such cases and not the evidence.

pinkocommie

Quote from: "Intercourseman72"Asserting that atheists tend to be more liberal is not at all outlandish.

Oh, I completely agree.  Asserting something like this would be outlandish:

Quote from: "Intercourseman72"Most atheists are fairly mainstream left-leaning. Not my conception of non-conformity. There surely is political diversity among atheists and non-religious people, but I am pretty sure you will find them overwhelmingly watching Kieth Olberman, The Young Turks, etc and either laugh at or detest Sean Hannity or Niel Cavuto. Maybe there will be some Nietzsche mixed in with their left-leaning views, but it's nothing I would consider "mavericky".

Do you see the difference?
Ubi dubium ibi libertas: Where there is doubt, there is freedom.
http://alliedatheistalliance.blogspot.com/