He did not say progressives, he said " anyone who spends a lot of time thinking about this type of thing", which I interpreted as the conservatives which can't stop talking about this.
I'm just using colloquial terms. I don't consider progressive people progressive (they're much more regressive in many ways), but it's a simple way to describe the people involved. Republican, alt-right, trump supporters, qanon; whatever label you prefer over "conservative" is probably good enough to get my point across
>"Is anything you're attributing to "progressives" not a quality of "conservatives" as well?"
I'm going to go out on a limb and speculate - keeping in mind I am not talking about all conservatives or even trying to estimate a percentage of them who fit this observation.
There are many conservatives who hold an "I just want to be left alone" or "the free market will fix it" mindset. The result is that when they are upset about something, they tend to act individually and "vote with their wallet" while hoping that the silent majority will follow suit. This is not to say that conservatives don't organize protests or mass boycotts, just that it seems like they don't do so as readily because they expect the free market to produce the pressure that brings about change. Again, this isn't true for every conservative cause and certainly not the major ones like the 2nd Amendment or overturning Roe v Wade.
I contrast that with how progressives tend to see problems as structural or systemic. In this worldview, they have to be active and vocal to dismantle these systems in order to bring about change. If they don't, the system will continue functioning because that is how it was designed. Because it takes much more energy to reform or replace a system than it does to maintain one, I sense progressives necessarily have to be active and vocal.
Broadly speaking, I believe that conservatives expect that "system will fix it" while progressives expect to "fix the system".
Thank you for elucidating what I've been attempting to communicate to people when I tell them I'm a liberal, not a progressive. Your point about conservatives being progressives of sort just in the other direction is spot on.
Thank you for elucidating what I've been attempting to communicate to people when I tell them I'm a liberal, not a progressive. Your point about conservatives being progressives of sort just in the other direction is spot on.
To be honest, I think using "people" rather than "progressives" would be less insightful and would ignore a genuine perception that I, and probably many others, have with progressives as a whole. They are insistent, they are vocal, and they seem particularly driven and uncompromising when it comes to fighting for what they believe. I wanted to present this in a neutral or matter-of-fact way. It can either be seen as a negative (progressives are pushy and obstinate), or it can be seen as virtuous (progressives are relentless in the pursuit of justice).
After reading through all the comments in this thread, I get the sense that many commenters want to dismiss any perception that is remotely negative about the behavior of progressives by attributing the alleged attributes as something that, one, other groups do more, and two, something that everyone does. But in so doing, progressivism becomes something you can only ascribe unquestionably positive attributes to.
Conservatives rarely talk about such things, they're a type of center leftist. I think you meant to say right wingers or, as it's being spelled now across the Internet for reasons I don't understand, rightwingers.
Total agreement. But curious, you've had to explain this to progressives until you're out of breath? The progressives in where I live are the only ones talking about this, and the (so-called) conservatives are the ones able to deftly brush the subject aside. Trippy.
This has been a wild thread, and I appreciate the thoughtfulness of all your comments.
It's pretty interesting to me the difference between how your comments are seen vs a comment with "progressives" replaced with "conservatives". In my experience, a reply saying "well progressives do that too" (just like every response to all of your comments but about conservatives) would very quickly have several replies claiming it's just whataboutism, or just flagged (like yours was!).
He's just using the dictionary definition of "conservative". A physicist who assumes new developments have little to no merit unless shown otherwise. Contrast with a "progressive" physicist who comes up with a new radical physics theory every month.
By analogy: a conservative programmer is somebody who would generally look at tools like C++ and Java and .NET to solve his problems, because the tools are proven and have well known pros and cons. A progressive programmer would be more tempted to consider the language du jour.
Sorry I only read the article. I didn't realize that "devoted conservative" refereed to a specific subgroup within the study.
Regardless the study sorted people into groups and then the article attempts to draw conclusions from that sorting that doesn't necessarily follow.
The demographics of the "progressive activists" doesn't say anything about the makeup of people are likely to support policies that could be defined as politically correct--just the makeup of people who are likely to support all progressive policies.
The only thing you can get from the GP's quote is that white people tend to be overrepresented on both extremes of the political spectrum.
I think that's why you and the person you replied to are disagreeing. You're using "conservative" as the definition of the word itself, i.e. inclined against changing the status quo for better or worse, while the person you replied to is using "conservative" to refer to the meaning that the word has taken on with regard to American politics.
To your example about them therefore not being "progressive", I think they are saying, "I wish society would not change in that direction, I wish it to change in this direction instead." Which would be progressive.
You are presuming conservatives think like progressives - where ideology is paramount - it's NOT and they DON'T. Read Jonathan Haidt's book about this.
"progressive" is very much the wrong term to use here. Many of the worst measures have been pushed by parties that position themselves as "conservatives".
"At least in the United States, where I live, this doesn't happen because the "progressives" are radicalizing towards utopianism while the "conservative" faction is themselves split between utopianism and reaction."
Sometimes It feels like the "conservatives" are more utopian than the progressives. They just live in the utopia of a past that never existed.
Progressive is just the label they choose to use for themselves, so it's polite to use that same label when addressing or describing them.
It doesn't really mean that automatically makes their views or policies inherently better than those who disagree with them. It's important to analyze things people say and and investigate their claims for yourself, and not just tribally agree with them on everything they say just because they use an adjective that sounds nice to describe themselves.
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