Comment by FussyZeus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by FussyZeus | Hacker News Reader

> "What happened to us?"

The thing that drove me, a lifelong conservative, into the arms of Bernie Sanders; the Republican party (and the conservative group in particular) are so hard core on social issues that are to be blunt, disgusting (things like preventing homosexual marriage and abortion) and completely antithetical to the idea of "keeping government out of things." No I don't like everything the Left wants to do, but I also have no love left for the Bible thumping I'm-ignorant-and-proud-of-it crowd.

I have too many homosexual friends who I know are good people. I have too many friends who had their contraception fail and aren't in any position to raise a child, recognize that, and want to wait to accept abortion. And more and more I'm realizing that the party of "leave us alone" wants the Government involved in way more things than the other one.

I don't know when this happened, I don't know why, but if you want the explanation there it is. You guys bank harder and harder on ignorance and fear every year until now you've got a candidate like Trump, with practically no ideas and nothing to offer except new things to fear.

I won't belong to the party of fear.

Your question is probably rhetorical, but it happened because the Republican party decided they needed to bring social conservatives (especially Southern whites disaffected by the Civil Rights Act) into their coalition. See "Southern strategy" [1].

I believe anti-choice specifically was brought into the party platform during the Ford years. Outright homophobia was pretty mainstream until well into the 90s, and wasn't much of a differentiator between the parties. Democrats just soft-pedaled their position while the Republicans, specifically the fundamentalists who had grown in power since the 80s, made AIDS and gay marriage boogeyman issues in the "culture wars" [2].

For the record, both parties are coalitions and involve this kind of compromise between different constituencies (see Dems and organized labor, et al.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_war#1990s

Actually it wasn't, I appreciate the links. Thanks.

While the question you wanted to answer is a great question to be asking in the era of Trump, that's not the question that Beck was asking.

"What happened to us?" in this context was, "Why are supposedly conservative groups telling Facebook how to run their business, using many of the same tactics and arguments they've objected to when used by their ideological opponents?"

This very much matters in the era of Trump. The reason there's no ideological consistency is that the publicly-stated ideology is backformed from the private, unacceptable ideology of maintaining racial and economic inequality.

That's why suddenly these people are in favour of "affirmative action" when it benefits themselves; there's no principle at stake other than self-interest.

I think that's massively oversimplifying. Many Republicans really do believe things like: "A nationwide $15 minimum wage would have profoundly negative economic consequences both for small businesses unable to defray the added labor cost, and for the employees they'd otherwise be able to hire."

You can disagree with that belief, but it's not rooted in racism and classism.

In fact my Mother-in law who lived through the Great Depression on onions and milk, remembers when the Minimum Wage went into law. She remembers it as the time of the great job crash. Folks used to be able to be bicycle messengers or doormen or junkyard watchmen - many of those jobs became too expensive and disappeared. Some jobs got folded together into one, making more work for those already employed and putting others out of work. She was not a fan of Minimum Wage.

We'd like to hope that that's an empirical question which economics could answer, but that's not how the discussion tends to go. It also doesn't address the question of how viable life on current minimum wage levels is without external support or high hours, although that depends a lot on local housing costs.

Anyway, none of the parent comment chain mentions minimum wage; we started off talking about social policy and LGBT acceptance/hostility.

> I have too many friends who had their contraception fail and aren't in any position to raise a child

This is an argument for killing it off then?

did you just say that you want to keep 'government out of things', and then support Bernie Sanders?

Or perhaps it's more a matter of "if the government/public sector is going to get involved in a lot of things, they may as well be ones I can get behind".

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