Common notion, but based in ignorance. I've found that the left wing is more idealistic, but in the sense that they have chosen not to learn from history and rely on immediate emotional values. The right wing sees second order effects and acts on them.
Thus, you get the left calling the right heartless/immoral/racist, and the right calling the left idiots.
Slavery, segregation, women’s suffrage, child labor protections, labor rights, Social Security, interracial marriage, homosexuality, civil rights legislation, same-sex marriage, the Vietnam War, the Iraq War, prohibition, environmental protections, public education expansion, healthcare reform, voting rights expansion, immigration rights, disability rights, reproductive rights, minimum wage laws, workers’ compensation laws.
> considered unspeakably cruel
You're not disagreeing on any pragmatic basis, just the emotional one. Like I said.
They could have said things like 'reproductive rights leads to X goods for the populace' or 'prohibition was a net positive in Y ways' or 'minimum wage laws are shown to improve GDP by Z amt on average' - but they didn't. They used an emotional argument. Like I said they would.
And 'wrong side of history' (bandwagon fallacy) and references to 'cruelty' (appeal to emotions) is really, really bad epistemology.
It’s hard to take this one at good faith. The right wing is very publicly melting down the CDC for glue while the second order effects of a preventable measles epidemic spreads through the country. Is there a more targeted claim you want to make?
I suspect that you merely dislike the authoritarian things the government is currently doing; I dislike that the government is authoritarian. We are not the same.
The Republican party traded logic for populism long ago.