The Partisan Divide on Issues

[pbrower2a]

(10-25-2021, 07:26 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(10-25-2021, 04:17 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(10-20-2021, 10:47 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: Dude, there is no cure for COVID. I sure hope you don't believe that the vaccine you received is a cure for COVID.

The covid vaccines prevent covid from developing. The covid pandemic in the USA now is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. People should not have a "right" to go unvaccinated, unless they have medical proof that it would give them a harmful reaction. It is not a question of my body, my right. It is a case of protecting the other's body from my misconduct.

Wherein comes the rub.  Today's right is so fixated on individual "rights" that any talk of communal responsibity is either ignored or actively opposed.  If you read Albion's Seed, it's a problem baked into the country since its founding.  We're essentially a divided nation trying to stay together for mutual benefit.  That may end at some point.

Rights without responsibility is either a command system at its worst or a destruction of the system. If I can demand anything of someone without some positive return, I can only impoverish or destroy that other.

I am delighted to recognize that someone else has read Albion's Seed and drawn some valid conclusions from it. American politics has typically been coalition politics in which a pragmatism that suggests that everyone gets some good while knowing and accepting the price is a necessity. The prime example of such was the New Deal which solved a great mass of problems from regional poverty to instability of the capitalist system. The New Deal is not the destructive "every man for himself" which inevitably leaves much ruin among the least ruthless that at least one side offers.

What went wrong in American politics? The Religious Right. It is no more moral than the rest of America despite its pretensions to such. If one dislikes abortion, then the liberal side that tolerates abortion has fewer abortions. The people who think that sexual superstition saves people from the "sin" of fornication so long as their faith is fervent enough are the ones whose daughters get gulled into having unprotected sex and have an inconvenient pregnancy. The Mountain South (basically the descendants of the Scots-Irish settlers of the Backwoods from Pennsylvania to Georgia) went from a benign Presbyterianism to a hyper-Calvinist "Southern Baptist"* Church that endorses (like Calvinism) a jungle capitalism devoid of mercy in which only the winners can consider themselves blessed, and in which science is suspect. People who lack scientific knowledge are vulnerable to exploitative superstition. If your religious faith sees evolution as a diabolical trick and lure, then it promotes ignorance, superstition, and failure. (Presbyterians long ago abandoned the jungle capitalism and the assumption that poverty was divine punishment... it's hard to expect anyone to accept the whole package of Calvinist doctrine as a guide to a wholesome world-view.

If I had daughters I would want them to know as much as possible without having sex. The more that people know, the safer they are. Sons? That they expect such of the other gender (and if the kids are LGBT, it is a bit more complex, but workable). We can all accept that people can be extremely successful economically while doing great harm (Let us say the Mafia crooks in Goodfellas) and that many people for reasons beyond our understanding are nearly destitute despite their extraordinary toil (like migrant farm workers).

*Let's get this straight. The Religious Right has insisted that its kids read the Bible, and many who do accept the more charitable prescriptions of Christian faith. There are Christian fundamentalists who are fervent in faith, yet not self-righteous. The division of Humanity into economic winners to be admired and losers to be exploited is not a valid teaching. I look at the Sermon on the Mount and I see teachings that people have an obligation to alleviate the hardships and indignity of poverty.