In fact, I think this alone would be one of the be best predictors of a person’s intellect and interest in thinking deeply about things: ask 10 politically polarising questions in different areas and score responses based on how diverse they are.
To illustrate what I'm trying to say, consider the two polarizing issues of abortion and capital punishment. The standard right-of-center view in the US - if you asked almost any Republican - is to be pro-life when it comes to individuals not killing fetuses and pro-death when it comes to the State killing grown adults. This is not only inconsistent in its logical application of whether anyone has a right to kill anyone, but also wildly inconsistent with the right wing's antipathy toward state power over the individual. Meanwhile, the other party in this country is anti-death-penalty by the state and pro-choice for the individual, while preferring state power over individual autonomy in most other cases.
Now who's holding wildly different, inconsistent political stances on polarizing questions? Probably the 70% or so of Americans who hew to either the standard liberal or conservative platforms, without considering their internal contradictions.
Today you're the victim of a lot of conspirators.
Tomorrow you're the hero.
Nevermind the people driving you to kill those other people are also conspirators, using you to kill their personal rivals.
Must be easy to see the world this way. I've never been dumb enough to do it, but maybe you could spare a couple words and explain why it's so great.
"No".
Say you and I both agree our city should build a new ballpark. I think they should put it out in the old industrial zone. You think they should build it conveniently close to downtown, which would involve tearing down my house. The city ends up deciding to build it near downtown, except they're going to tear down your house to do it. Now who's going to take you seriously if you complain about your house being torn down, when you were just arguing it was fine to tear down someone else's?
I want a state that does things according to reasonable, universally applied principles. Sometimes those are going to be things I don't like, but it's more important that the principles be upheld than that I get the result I want. I might want to see someone dead, but the principle of not killing people supersedes that. Because if the city has no guiding logic like, "it's wrong to tear down houses because this guy thinks we should" then they'll eventually come for your house, because you're never gonna be that guy.
It takes some intellect to question the foundations and consequences of your beliefs and to try building a unified framework around them. It also takes some arrogance to assume that if you can't reconcile two contradictory views you hold, nobody else can either, and one of them must be wrong.
For example, I find it rather obvious that nobody deserves to be rich when many poor people are lacking the basic necessities of life. I also find it rather obvious that allowing people to become rich encourages, under the right circumstances, behavior that benefits everyone in the society. I haven't been able to reconcile those views, and I haven't been able to find anyone who can do that and explain it to me. On the other hand, I have found many people who see the contradiction and choose to reject one of the beliefs. They choose to believe that some people deserve to be rich (and others deserve to be poor), or that nobody should be allowed to get rich.
And that's how we get political polarization.
But "allowing people to become rich ... benefits everyone in the society" is, however arguable, a policy position and not a negative judgment on personal behavior. It proceeds from the fact that in every society, ever, wealth stratification emerges; and it accepts that the state has an interest in both allowing some accumulation of capital and in preventing a runaway hoarding of wealth.
So I think you could reconcile these views. Both of your statements follow a consistent, demonstrable underlying argument: That without some intervention by the state, too much wealth will accumulate at the top and extreme poverty will reign at the bottom. From that starting point, your views aren't contradictory; you would be on the side of well-regulated markets. You're not stepping into the fantasy lands where either eating the rich or trickling down wealth will cure poverty.
Think about it this way: you have two countries at two ends of the world. They are independent, have their own policies, culture, economy. People in one are pretty smart about policies and hard work and build wealth over decades while people in the other can't organize, have constant struggle for power, zero social policies and end up not being able to feed their every growing population.
Is there any reason people in the rich country should feel moral obligation to not be rich and devote resources to lift the other country out of poverty? Additional problem is that the poor country won't easily give up independence and accept smart policies so the situation is kinda hopeless.
Now apply to the local level. Even if you feel moral duty towards those in need you can't do much if you don't get some authority over their decisions/culture/education etc.
For examples of how local authority is less impactful than soft power, consider the economic and cultural growth of the entire planet under American cultural dominance from 1918 to 2001.
It's consistent and logical. The values it comes from are just different then yours or mine.
So yeah. I meant to say somewhere else that consistency isn't the only thing.
edit. just in bouncing my eyes between my response and yours I know that we both understand some of the underlying basic honor system of the thing you're describing as a set of ethics. And in protecting their family they ain't wrong, just that that's not what they're really doing, is it.
My main gripe with pro-lifers as with others moral warriors so to speak is authoritarianism. I don't want to prove my values are superior or more consistent . I just want them to leave me and people like me alone. If they want to enforce their views on their community it's fine with me as long as you can voluntarily leave. It's not enough for them though. They want to force everyone else to accept their moral judgement as well.
Authoritarianism and inability to understand that their value call is not universal is the problem here.