Incidentally, I have to stay away from using words like "aristocracy", because they are hair-triggers for emotional reactions and name-calling about "class warfare" and suddenly I get suspected of being a "socialist" or a "communist", etc.
Instead, I use terms like "concentration of wealth", "undue influence on government", etc. ... all progress depends on the unreasonable mensch.(apologies to G.B. Shaw)
However, I should note that if you debate these people in their "fiscally conservative" frame, you can't win. You need to spend energy on shifting the frame, or at least undermining the frame with appeal to other parts of their value system (if that is possible). When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes
Efficiency is mentioned several times in this thread. It is inefficient to talk to people who have strong motives to block your arguments. paul spencer
It may be inefficient, but I don't think it's hopeless. And these are not people who lack compassion, and while they probably have some investments, the bulk of their income comes from their salaries.
I've been thinking a lot about what the purpose of ETPedia after getting slapped around by ThatBritGuy in an earlier discussion on that topic.
In addition to being a position-paper container/ideological framer/attention attractor, I think what ETPedia can do -- through position papers and/or through more modest articles -- is present arguments on issues that are specifically designed to address and defeat oft-used counter-arguments, and to do so in an utterly non-contentious manner that presumes the reader is in good faith and open to considering the arguments on its merits.
In addition to "Why progressive taxation is a good thing", there also comes to mind "Why regulation is a good thing", for starters (and actually another topic I've been debating my friends about.)
I find that reading blogs and commenting is informative, but when it came to debating with my friends, I simply was not able quickly to marshal the evidence and reasoning that nevertheless I had read in abundance on this site. So I guess I figured I should start putting Cliff's Notes (cheat sheets) distilled and/or precipitated from here. ... all progress depends on the unreasonable mensch.(apologies to G.B. Shaw)
Another argument derives from Aristotle's Ethics. He asked how any thinking person could be happy. No matter your current state of affairs and reasons for felicity, you must always be aware that all could change tomorrow. You could be struck mute and paralyzed. See your fortune lost to theft or opportunistic legal actions, see your sons killed and your wife and daughters raped and be powerless to prevent or avenge these events. Knowing this, how can anyone truly be happy? My father used to say: "Only fools are happy."
Think this surely can no longer be the case? Consider the latter years of Joe Kennedy. Consider John Ramsey, his wife Patsy and their daughter, Jon Benet. The only possible defense against such calamities is a strong and caring community and a just society. We are far from it. Your friends can deny that this will happen to them and may well be right, but perhaps these considerations will at least disturb their sleep.
Have any of these things If sanity be culturally normative, then by the norms of this culture I claim insanity.
18 For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief.
Migeru: Does talking about "dynasties" as opposed to "aristocracy" help?
Haven't talked about dynasties because they can so easily point to the Kennedys and Clintons. Though this may be proving the point, in their mind, the existence of "liberal dynasties" is probably evidence of the inherent hypocrisy of liberalism.
Migeru: You need to spend energy on shifting the frame, or at least undermining the frame with appeal to other parts of their value system (if that is possible).
You said it. Shifting the frame is too ambitious (at least for me), so one must undermine it, or rather, gently dismantle it.
I do believe that we share the same values, but we simply put more and less emphasis on different ones. Also, we have different assumptions about reality.
So, for example, the assumption that anyone -- if they try and work hard and persistently enough -- can will succeed. Or that what success we achieve is mainly through one's own efforts and minimally through supporting circumstances.
If a "fiscal conservative" can be made to reconsider those two points, perhaps there would be more chance of persuading them of the validity of both the compound empowerment argument and the vertical equity argument for progressive taxation. ... all progress depends on the unreasonable mensch.(apologies to G.B. Shaw)
And remember this by kcurie: EUROPE.IS.SO.DOOMED. Narrative Edition
In other words, only when a statement or discourse is in direct contradiction with itself and immediate reality can we reach the guys at the other side of our enlightenment narrative/mythology. But we have to reach them, otherwise, they will forget.
Have you ever tried this? Has it ever succeeded? (I am not asking skeptically, but simply to find out.)
Unfortunately, I may not have a proper narrative that I can offer to resolve those contradictions. (Maybe I have one implicitly, but it is not articulated well enough to push on someone else.)
I'll see if I can find a summary of Moral Politics to get Lakoff's main points. I still think my friends and I share the same values, but simply weight them differently. But I am curious as to how Lakoff argues otherwise. ... all progress depends on the unreasonable mensch.(apologies to G.B. Shaw)
Jokes aside, I'm not saying it's easy to do but since these are your friends you actually have a body of previous conversations to have an idea of how you could try to argue to them that they contradict themselves.
You might find that when faced with a contradiction between the profit motive and their values they bite the bullet and drop their values. When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes
It's like debating Creationists... You might get better advice from JakeS or DoDo...
The easiest way to deal with people like that is if you can find a factually wrong statement that is sufficiently vital to their argument that they cannot simply abandon it. Then you nail them to the wall with it and you don't let go until they squirm.
Otherwise, you need to know thine enemy and know thyself.
Creationists and Freepers have about 20 different argument templates (so maybe 30 put together, because there is some overlap). In my experience you need to know them so well that you can immediately dissect any argument you encounter and discover the template, then employ the standard counter-template.
The primary difficulty is that when two completely different narratives clash, the background knowledge that is assumed to be self-evident is in fact disputed, and you have to argue against three or four times as many arguments at any one time as you would have if you were debating with someone who substantially shares your narrative but disagrees with you on a detail here and there.
To take a simple example, the creationist might say "Archaeopteryx is a hoax." You should read this as "[There are no transitional fossils; therefore claimed transitional fossils are hoaxes. For example,] Archeropteryx is a hoax. [Since there are no transitional fossils, Evolution has to be false. Q.e.d.]"
The standard counter is "There are mountains of transitional fossils. For example, the evolution of the modern horse is charted completely from where it branched off from its last common ancestor with humans. Even if Archeropteryx were a hoax, it wouldn't change the fact that transitional fossils are abundant and completely consistent with evolutionary theory."
If you happen to know the details of the Archeropteryx case, you can also insist that it is not, in fact, a hoax (it isn't). But only do that if you are familiar with the case, because some claimed hoaxes are in fact hoaxes (e.g. the Piltdown man). They also know that nailing people to the wall on factual errors is a good tactic and they do exploit it.
As you see, the difficulty in addressing creationist arguments is partly in the fact that it takes 50-odd words to counter a four-word falsehood (or maybe 25 words for someone with a snazzier prose than mine, which is still a factor of six and the loose change).
And of course the usual creationist foot-soldier doesn't have a sufficiently solid grasp of the narrative he works within to be able to phrase the context of his argument as clearly as I have here, which adds another layer of difficulty, on top of this.
Finally, to some extent this approach is geared towards combating professional creationists - who must be assumed to know that what they spout is BS and be willing to Lie for Jesus (or be sufficiently delusional that you can't convince them with anything short of strong anti-psychotics). So the emphasis is more on convincing the onlookers that the professional creationist is full of crap than on convincing the creationist himself.
- Jake Ceterum censeo Chicago esse delendam
Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think is a 1996 book by cognitive linguist George Lakoff. It argues that conservatives and liberals hold two different conceptual models of morality. Conservatives have a Strict Father morality in which people are made good through self-discipline and hard work. Liberals have a Nurturant Parent morality which sees people as something to be cared for and assisted. (The first edition of the book was published with the subtitle What conservatives know that liberals don't.)
(The first edition of the book was published with the subtitle What conservatives know that liberals don't.)
Have you ever tried this? Has it ever succeeded?
I have and sometimes it does.
Around New Years Day 2008 we were at a party. Most of the attendees were 50+. One was a Marine combat veteran from the Vietnam War who has written an interesting self published memoir of his experiences before, during and after. He loves his guns, is an outspoken self professed Republican who found himself surrounded by a bunch of Democrats or worse. He enjoys being outrageous and often indulges indulges in hyperbole. He is in his early 60s and has a form of cancer that affects his spine. He is still physically active, but has had to give up riding his beloved motorcycles as his back won't take the pounding. Now he is reduced to driving his Corvette, carefully.
He relies primarily on the Veterans Administration for medical care. There is certainly a plausible link between his cancer and exposure to Agent Orange. I don't know if the VA has acknowledged his illness as being service related. With all of the strains on the VA from Iraq the VA has become like one of the country's worst HMOs. His alternatives at this point consist of paying out of his own pocket or waiting until he turns 65 and qualifies for Medicare.
We were discussing the medical insurance business in the USA. I said that I could see no excuse even for the existence of the private medical insurance industry. The whole industry was a pack of social parasites. They added greatly to the cost of delivery of medical services and decreased outcomes through rationing that was not justified on medical grounds. A government based single payer system would be the best and fairest system and would give us much more bang for our bucks.
Red meat for a Republican. He bit and started attacking "socialized medicine." He should be able to find and go to the best doctor he could find, etc. I agreed and asked him how he would pay for that in his situation. The best private insurance he had found and for which he might qualify was a low end HMO. I then asked him if he thought it was right that an HMO employee or the VA would make decisions on HIS medical care based on the impact on their bottom line, profit and bonuses rather than on his medical need. He had to say "NO." Amidst barely suppressed smirks around the room he said "That still doesn't mean I'm in favor of socialized medicine." The conversation shifted.
I may still be able to bring him around, at least on medical care. His identification with the Republican party is based not on material self interest but rather on the way in which their rhetoric empowers the bombastic and outrageous side of his persona. I understand. I told his girl friend, who could at times almost be seen to wince at his remarks, although she too voted Republican:
"John, (not his name), and I are a lot alike, except that we come from different political perspectives. At least when he is around I won't be the only or even, perhaps, the most outrageous guy in the room!" She gave me a wan smile. We have run into them again in social settings and for a while John and I will argue and talk past one another, but usually we find something on which to agree. That is always my goal. If sanity be culturally normative, then by the norms of this culture I claim insanity.
You need to undermine their frame by pointing out how their narrative is self-contradictory and then be ready to push your narrative as a way to resolve the contradiction.
I like Pirsig's "Platypus" concept.
"Your view is that animals are classified as mammals and reptiles. Here is a platypus. Explain that?"
We have to confront them with narrative Platypi.
If you cannot get them to consider that and to try to refute that thesis in specific, then you are probably dealing with people whose modus operandi is to listen to Rush and BillO for talking points and then ignorantly spew them forth. The right wing has numerous "think-tanks" devoted to devising devious rhetoric. It is not a real discussion on the merits. It is you, unaided, on a stool, verses them with the Staples Arena sound system. You get drowned out. It isn't fair. Fair is what we have in the fall at the county seat, with the cows, the pigs, and the sheep.
Your best bet is to tell them that you won't waste time responding to Rush and BillO's talking points. Ask them to relate those talking points to events in their lives. How do the talking points do anything other than arouse emotional responses in a flock of manipulable arrested adolescents? They, and their families, if they have any, get fucked and they get the satisfaction of "at least not being a liberal." Just like so many of my Scots-Irish brethren for so long sacraficed the economic well being of their families for the consolation of "at least not being a nigger." The two consolations are of similar moral worth.
If sanity be culturally normative, then by the norms of this culture I claim insanity.
Would it be moral for me to agree the money making class to gather more and more power and influence? Would it be immoral to make their occupation of capturing wealth and power more difficult? Would the majority be moral by knowingly allowing more suffering to itself? If (just suppose) a majority can agree that it is in their interests to control wealth and power balance by progressive taxation, would it be moral (or immoral) for them not to enforce that?
