Commandments?

[David Horn]

(08-31-2018, 09:19 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Galen provided a link to a book where conservatives define progressives from a negative perspective.  Progressive books that describe conservatives from a negative perspective would also be common, are similarly off base, full of straw men, and echo the opinions we see here from certain extreme progressive posters when they lay rise to the accusations that progressives don't listen.

Now I don't blame them when straw men are presented, when a progressive describes imagined parodies of conservatives rather than conservatives, or vice versa.  If one has silly imaginings about what someone believes, it is unsurprising that the imaginings are ignored.  Books like the one Galen recommended are examples.  It just makes Galen look silly to people with real progressive beliefs.  When an arch conservative describes progressives in a way where I do not begin to recognize myself, the problem is with the arch conservatives bogus beliefs, not with mine.

Books written by progressives about progressives and books by conservatives about conservatives are more constructive, less likely to be centered on straw men, more likely to address good ideas and legislation.  They are more useful in building a real consensus, in addressing the other guy's concerns while building a consensus that could bring the two parties together.

Again, I don't see the Industrial Age solution of a violent crisis war.  The two world views are evenly matched.  The spiral of violence is not escalating.  Nukes discourage crisis war.  Changes in values seems to come in the new age in the second turning, not the fourth.  Again I would anticipate ecological values becoming more important with the next second turning.

At any rate, the current negative stereotypes seem built to be smashed.  David portrayal of the redneck's absolute belief in a negative portrayal of progressive seems to demand a rebuttal, and I am sure there are opposite world views on the other side which should be rebutted.  If you were locked with someone from the other side, what 'fact' that they are absolutely locked into could and should be rebutted by information that comes from an unimpeachable, objective non partisan source?

There are cases where opposition literature is not only justified but highly instructive. The conservative author Kevin Phillips described the Democratic Party as the second most capitalist party in the US and maybe the world. David Frum, a full-on neoconservative, wrote Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic -- not an expected source but one that should be considered at the very least. There are many other examples, but, as you noted, most authors tend to color inside their respective lines.