A Rant against Conservatives. Part II

This posting will attempt to make two points. First, that conservatives will put forth arguments that they know to be false. Second, I want to look at the idea they often put forth, trying to justify their opposition to any aid to the poor by saying, "I pulled myself up out of poverty, why can't they?"

My painter, last week, among other things, started to say that taxes--his taxes, naturally--go to pay for unemployment compensation. I pointed out that unemployment benefits are funded through an insurance scheme into which employers pay. Turns out he knew that. (In Part I, I mentioned another example of this same guy using something that he probably knew was incorrect in arguing.) Also he said, in so many words, about those bad people who collect unemployment benefits and get food stamps, "Why can't they just go and get a job?" I failed to remind him that jobs, just now, are hard to get. He'd probably insist that anyone who really wants a job can get one.

On the national scene, one Senator Kyle publicly claimed that Planned Parenthood spends 90% of the funding it receives from the government on abortions. When it was pointed out to him that the correct figure actually is 3%, he (or his lackeys) said of his assertion, "That was not intended to be a factual statement." What??? As I think about that, the only "translation" I can make of that absurd statement is, "It was a lie and I knew it at the time."

The myriad organizations that lobby against rights (such as marriage rights or non-discrimination in employment) for gay people very egregiously use false information: half-truths and out-and-out untruths. I think they use this tactic cynically and calculatingly, and know that they're lying. The belief (or simple prejudice) comes first, and then the wide reach to find something to support the belief. (As an aside, a University of Chicago law professor named Martha Nussbaum has said that she beliefs that nearly all anti-gay prejudice has at its base a disgust at the thought of sex acts between two people of the same sex.) Anyway, their tactics work in fund-raising letters. (Sadly, the "other" side may use at least broadly similar, "the-sky-will-fall-unless-you-send-money," tactics in its fund-raising letters.)

Now, my other point. I think a lot of conservatives are your stereotypical up-from-poverty, Horatio Alger* types. One might think that someone who lived amidst poverty or other disadvantage in childhood might have more sympathy for others who have had similar struggles. But it doesn't seem to work that way. It becomes, "If I could do it (get up and out of the ghetto, or whatever), then why can't they?"

Some people are afflicted by poverty. Some by drug or other additions. Some by disabilities or other liabilities. And some people show wonderful success in how they deal with these problems; others do not.

Also, even if you look at, for example, those with the problem of drug or other addiction, it would seem that, even for a single individual, there might be times when they can deal with the problem successfully and times when they cannot. They might go along for months or years before they somehow become ready, willing, and able to change.

I wrote about this once. But, since I personally never have never had to deal with an addiction, I would have liked a person who has done so to tell me more about what had to first change within them before they could make progress in fighting their addiction.

But it's not completely clear that escape from poverty is analogous to shaking off a substance addiction. It might be said, without much of a stretch, that there are external conditions in both cases. It's almost a cliché—and I don't know enough about the subject to know how true this is—that the addict may begin to use drugs regularly to escape from an unbearable reality. However, although poverty is a matter of an individual's or a family's personal pocketbook, there are definitely impoverished neighborhoods, so it seems to be a social, rather than strictly individual matter.

So, our model person in the Horatio Alger scenario says to him- or herself, "I'm living in these awful conditions, and I don't want to live with plumbing that doesn't work (etc., etc.) for my whole life. So I'm going to study hard, get good grades in school, go to college. . . ." I think that, whether it's this case or that of overcoming other sorts of disadvantages, it takes determination and perhaps a whole lot of internal traits, and maybe luck and other external circumstances such as a mentor, a teacher, someone to inspire, encourage, etc.

And it's not a case of some unchanging internal state: the addict may be able to do something--admitting his problem and going to seek treatment--tomorrow but not today. Today but not yesterday.

The more conservative types will say, Anyone can do it, it's just a matter of wanting to. I think this is a more complicated matter than that and needs more thought and maybe study by scholars.

By the way, the painter quoted here (and in Part I) is a nice guy. He's done some things for me with no remuneration. And a lot of conservatives would strike us (or me) as "nice people" if, for example, we met them on a cruise and did not yet know some of their views. Clearly, people can or will be "nice" to people who they know, but they're not benevolent to some people they don't know--"them." I think it's analogous to the fact that small-town Americans are helpful to their neighbors but can be suspicious of strangers. This is not just an American trait, it's a human trait: the business of "we" versus "they" that I have blogged about before.
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* Alger was a nineteenth-century writer—better known at one time than now—who wrote books for juveniles in which the protagonists rose from rags to riches.

Copyright (c) 2011 by Richard Stein