On my phone, but a quick reply:

Having a different motivation for behavior isn't a defense in itself. The motivation itself must also be defended.

We can decide this with a thought experiment: if I set off fireworks inside a house and it burned down, you'd ask "why did you do that?/why didn't you make your decision based on rational expectation of fire?"

What would you think if my defense was, "i thought it would look cool, i dont make choices based on whether it might start a fire".

It's clear my criterion for making choices is fundamentally different from yours. I don't consider safety, and you do, we have different frameworks we parse the world in.

The question is, is my criterion okay just because its mine and its different? No, of course not. It's immediate to us that the criterion itself must be judged. If I make decisions on bad criteria, the criteria must be changed.

If you want to argue Republicans vote on different criteria, I totally accept that. People are different and that's good! Diversity of perspectives are good, and I don't mean that in some cheap rhetorical way. But these criteria need their own defense, they are not self-justifying.

I'd say that pretty ****in' badass my dude

I think that's what I'm saying, and what Grossman is saying. I think we both agree with Grossman, but while I think it exonerates Republicans you think it condemns them.

It helps that liberalism is obviously bad for many of its adherents. I think that’s a good measure for a movement, because it means people think it’s the right thing for society, rather than opportunistic looting.

Why do conservatives deny global climate change? Because conservatism skews rural and land-owning. It’s real easy not to want to believe in global warming when your lifestyle has you burning through $200 a month on gas.

Generally speaking they will support Trump policies that align with their values and principles. Conservatives are usually quite vocal about the many Trump policies they disagree with or, perhaps, silent because he's already under relentless assault. I feel like a hardcore Trump supporter cannot be a conservative and is actually more like what Jon describes.

Out of pure curiosity, I wonder how many conservatives would vote for Barack Obama against Hilary Clinton, if he had won the Republican nomination (leaving his race out of the equation).

I mean, out of pure curiosity, I wonder how many US conservatives would vote for Alex Jones if he had the GOP nomination. I never want to find out.

EDIT: no it wouldn't.

Not necessarily. I only said it's not a justification of the behavior in itself. More needs to be said.

I was actually saying that in a multi-party system, voting your actual preference (rather than strategically voting for a big party/potential winner) works better, because the big party losing votes to smaller parties actually forces them to work with these smaller parties in order to achieve the majority needed to govern. These smaller parties are often very ambitious and innovative, which gives fresh impulses. See, it's next to impossible for a single party to win a majority, it's hard enough to achieve a majority coalition with just two parties. Let's put it this way: Over the years, people here seem to have learned that when everybody votes "strategically" for either the big left wing party or the big right wing party, you'll end up with both of them. I'm sure the "mistake" will be made again at some point, but it'll correct itself with the next round of elections.

I really love the dynamics of this multi-party system. The only drawback is that when votes are too evenly spread over all the parties, it may take long to form a government. Also, some coalitions can be fragile, but that just means slightly more frequent elections, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

It honestly sounds like a far more responsive feedback loop than the oscillation between Republican and Democrat that we've got here in the states (which really feels like an illusion of choice while the elite meanwhile pretty much get what they want--which is often simply partisan gridlock as capitalism lumbers along without a terrific amount of regulation being passed that isn't written by industry itself). And sadly, I don't think we'll ever get anything better, if only because becoming more democratic isn't really in the interest of enough people entrenched positions of power. :/

What do you mean?

There's big tensions in the Democratic party right now with this. Basically most of the voting base wants the party to become social democratic and abandon their donors, and there's entrenched elites pushing back. All of the stuff with Ocasio Cortez is bringing this debate out front and center.

And in a multi-party system, we could have had a party dedicated entirely to reform. Instead, what we get is condescending warning about splitting the vote Ross Perot style.

(And on the Republican side, you've of course got basically crickets when it comes to the issue of campaign-finance reform. LOL)

Simply voting by different criterion doesn't make the behavior justified. Just because someone has a different worldview doesn't justify it, either. Both the criteria and the worldview require some justification as well.

At least with a multi-party platform, genuine conservatives could have their own party and Trumpists would be their own thing, and we'd only have a coalition instead of half of the government supporting the fascist.

Yes!

I don't get wtf politicians and pundits are on about whenever they shower the 'two-party system' with so much praise. Maybe they are just praising their own ability to succeed within it.

The two party system ensures the billionaire veto.

That certainly would explain this, then.

Right, so I think that's the point at which we disagree. Unlike you, I don't think a justification is necessary. I think mere explanation here is exonerating, because it makes Republican behavior so much more benign than other explanations for Republican voting behaviors that we've talked about in the past.

Yeah, I think so. Personally I don't think just believing something is justification for believing it, otherwise it would render any and all discourse irrelevant. Which I think we should hope to avoid.

funny thing, conservatives don't much seem to like discourse. At least not as liberals understand the word. Or maybe as I suggested, their interests are different enough that the two sides would be talking past one another, or else arguing in bad faith.

Basically this, and it was a big oversight from the framers of the constitution. They didn't think much in game theory terms.

I've been listening to a podcast recently with a guy who recently wrote a book on the debates between Madison and Hamilton as they pertain to American oligarchy. Hamilton was effectively pro-oligarchy. It's really one of the more amusing things that Hamilton was so celebrated during the Obama administration. Apparently he had fallen out of favor for much of the twentieth century, but apparently the last time Hamilton was celebrated as a great American founder was during the first decades of the 20th century, when the Republican party was trying to legitimize their efforts to forge ties between big business and government by arguing that it was a practice that had roots in the country's founding. There are all these pro-monarchical, pro-aristocratic strains in Hamilton's thought. I believe that Hamilton wanted the president to be elected to lifetime terms, which was the constitutional monarchical system that Poland had at the time.

That's why I think Thomas Jefferson had better ideas, despite being a bigger ******* personally. He was the most liberal of the founding fathers, and pushed more towards sorta-democracy when he could.

It's absolutely true many of the founders were pro-oligarchy. They were more liberal than the monarchies of Europe, but relatively much less liberal than the left wing of the French Revolution. They'd probably feel comfortable on the liberal end of the right wing.

I've said this like this before, but Brandeis really is a figure that the left should be talking about more! As a trust buster, he identified with Jefferson's intellectual legacy. He's like Jefferson but he doesn't come with the baggage. I don't think Democrats these days really care about tying their political agenda to historical American figures in order to legitimize it, but I think they do that to their detriment. I think it'd actually go a surprisingly long way in inoculating (or at least defending) Democrats from Republican criticism as Democrats move to the left on economic issues that their views are somehow un-American.

Jefferson's view are difficult to square with a highly consolidated federal government, which puts him at odds with both parties these days.

Kind of goes back to our discussions waaaaay back about approaching politics impartially/descriptively or with a more definite moral perspective.

I'm not seeing how this is relevant. The discussion is very much about whether Republicans are justified in voting how they do, not a discussion of why they vote the way they do.

A huge amount could be pulled from Thomas Paine. He's surprisingly liberal, even by today's standards.

Haha: exactly! That's why perfectly relevant: this way of parsing the discussion is why we're talking past each other, in a sense. I'm interested in the why (or, really, the what -- I just want to describe Republican opinions or motives impartially), and you're interested in whether the opinions/motives morally defensible. Many of our disagreements throughout this thread have hinged on this sort of thing.

Look, I'm just pointing out we're approaching this differently; I'm not saying one of us is right and the other is wrong.

He's pretty dead / white for a Democratic guy. Although with appropriate sugar-coating, I am sure that Paine's (or Brandeis') ideas could be made palatable to the highly racialized ideology of the progressive activists that are holding sway over young Democratic voters.

Alright, you're welcome not to have an opinion on it.

You might be able to get people interested in those guys if they fought for social justice, though. Clearly Brandeis fits into this category!

(Was Paine an abolitionist?)

Oh wow, interesting:

But only now that he has your permission.

When you put it that way, I don't see the upshot of having an opinion.

Not that it matters, but this is a pet peeve of mine that comes up now and then when I read Reid's posts: short sentences telling people they are entitled to have things they are obviously entitled to anyway.

I think the way to get past that is through RBG and Elana Kagan, who both cite Brandeis as a jurisprudential influence.