[Politics] It isn't easy being Blue.
Dec. 15th, 2005 09:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davywavyWhilst out on the town a few weeks ago, I got talking to a girl in a bar. After a while, for reasons I can't recall, the conversation came round to politics. Suddenly she stopped short and looked at me quizzically.
"You're right-wing, aren't you?"
"Yup", I replied.
"Well, I don't think we should let homeless people starve to death on the street", she said, smugly ensuring her moral superiority over me and my homeless-starving ways whilst necking the booze I'd just bought her like there was no tomorrow.
A friend of mine who shares my political opinions once told me they didn't really like going to social events with many of my friends, because they knew that they would be belittled and insulted for holding their political beliefs. They found it upsetting that they would be insulted by people they barely knew not even for their beliefs, but for what those people considered their beliefs to be without even taking the time to find out the reality of the situation. In other circumstances this sort of behaviour would be considered 'prejudice'. When you're dealing with a lot of people I run into, it's called 'informed debate'. Sometimes it's nice to open LJ and read the wise words of the mind-numbingly gorgeous![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
vulgarcriminal, who is political voice of reason.
The irony of the intellectual intolerance of many people amuses me in a bleak sort of way; most of the people on my friends list consider themselves to be tolerant, understanding and non-judgemental; however this just highlights the basic dichotomy of many people's political views - they're tolerant of any kink, perversion, social attitudes and outre behaviour which they happen to agree with. Their tolerance doesn't extend so far as being polite to people who think that, oh, say, civil liberties have been undermined quite a lot by the current government or that spending thirty-seven billion quid which we don't have every year in a slowing economy might lead to trouble later.
raggedhalo recently made a post in which he compared prejudice against vegetarians to homophobia, and presented himself as being a persecuted minority. Personally I think it's a bit difficult to be a persecuted minority when you're a socialist vegetarian in a student union, but that's just me.
Re-reading his post, it's interesting to me just how much of his argument I can apply to my own point. After all, if he can compare prejudice against sexualities with his own political views, so can I - to object to that would be prejudiced, wouldn't it? Back in the 1980's, being gay would get you socially ostracised and sometimes insulted in public, whilst being Conservative would get you social acceptance and congratulations on your snappy dress sense. And now...?
There's a comparison to be made here, I think...
Of course, I think Joe's comparison is as nonsensical as mine. But it's funny nevertheless.
"You're right-wing, aren't you?"
"Yup", I replied.
"Well, I don't think we should let homeless people starve to death on the street", she said, smugly ensuring her moral superiority over me and my homeless-starving ways whilst necking the booze I'd just bought her like there was no tomorrow.
A friend of mine who shares my political opinions once told me they didn't really like going to social events with many of my friends, because they knew that they would be belittled and insulted for holding their political beliefs. They found it upsetting that they would be insulted by people they barely knew not even for their beliefs, but for what those people considered their beliefs to be without even taking the time to find out the reality of the situation. In other circumstances this sort of behaviour would be considered 'prejudice'. When you're dealing with a lot of people I run into, it's called 'informed debate'. Sometimes it's nice to open LJ and read the wise words of the mind-numbingly gorgeous
vulgarcriminal, who is political voice of reason.The irony of the intellectual intolerance of many people amuses me in a bleak sort of way; most of the people on my friends list consider themselves to be tolerant, understanding and non-judgemental; however this just highlights the basic dichotomy of many people's political views - they're tolerant of any kink, perversion, social attitudes and outre behaviour which they happen to agree with. Their tolerance doesn't extend so far as being polite to people who think that, oh, say, civil liberties have been undermined quite a lot by the current government or that spending thirty-seven billion quid which we don't have every year in a slowing economy might lead to trouble later.
raggedhalo recently made a post in which he compared prejudice against vegetarians to homophobia, and presented himself as being a persecuted minority. Personally I think it's a bit difficult to be a persecuted minority when you're a socialist vegetarian in a student union, but that's just me.Re-reading his post, it's interesting to me just how much of his argument I can apply to my own point. After all, if he can compare prejudice against sexualities with his own political views, so can I - to object to that would be prejudiced, wouldn't it? Back in the 1980's, being gay would get you socially ostracised and sometimes insulted in public, whilst being Conservative would get you social acceptance and congratulations on your snappy dress sense. And now...?
There's a comparison to be made here, I think...
Of course, I think Joe's comparison is as nonsensical as mine. But it's funny nevertheless.
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Re: They're ALL dead Dave...
Date: 2005-12-17 01:08 am (UTC)Connected to: some examples of decisions and actions made by this government and society that you think could be done better, and how...and if you want to bite the bait, by who(m)? :-)
Re: They're ALL dead Dave...
Date: 2005-12-19 11:00 am (UTC)1) The role of the individual is to interact with the machinery of state as little as possible
2) The role of the state is to do and support that which cannot be acheived by private enterprise,
3) Individuals are better at spending their own money for the greater good than are governments
The Conservative party, traditionally, are better at acheiving this. They ahve always been the party more of indirect, rather than direct, taxation (some would argue this is the only real difference between Labour and Conservative) and have at least tried to reign in the public sector.
Things I would do if I were in power:
1) Take the administration of national insurance out of treasury hands in the same way as has been done with the Bank of England
2) Ban unionisation in the public sector (I think there is a strong case for unions in the private sector, but public sector unions are a yoke on society).
There are one or two other things I'd pursue, but I've recently written to the Conservative Party with the ascention of David Cameron and have yet to receive a reply - I'll be posting more when I've got an answer to the questions I've asked and been able to formulate more opinions in the face of a changed political landscape.