What we Already Knew...

[_Droopy]

"Open Minded"? Liberals Prefer to Ignore Arguments They Disagree With



New research out notes that self-identified liberals are indeed more liberal - with the ignore and block buttons on social media platforms when it comes to arguments they disagree with.

As Zeke Miller finds in ORI's presentation, "liberals were significantly more likely to have blocked someone than conservatives," and specifically, they block people "because of their political views."

An old adage is that while conservatives think liberals are wrong, liberals think conservatives are evil. This has been proven true time and time again - liberals prefer to pretend like there's some inherent defect in conservatives rather than acknowledge that there's such a thing as reasonable, honest disagreement.

This brings to mind Jonathan Haidt's research that conservatives understand liberals a lot better than vice versa. In personality tests, conservatives are able to "fake" being a liberal, while liberals are just confounded as to what conservatives think and believe:

What Haidt found is that conservatives understand liberals’ moral values better than liberals understand where conservatives are coming from. Worse yet, liberals don’t know what they don’t know; they don’t understand how limited their knowledge of conservative values is. If anyone is close-minded here it’s not conservatives.

[_beastie]

An old adage is that while conservatives think liberals are wrong, liberals think conservatives are evil. This has been proven true time and time again - liberals prefer to pretend like there's some inherent defect in conservatives rather than acknowledge that there's such a thing as reasonable, honest disagreement.

Either you have dementia or an evil twin.

[_huckelberry]

Droopy, you may have a point, I listen to O'Reilly pretty regularly but Hannity goes off immediately. He is completely censored. But of course O'Rielly is the left wing of the nut station.

You have explained enough times that you are the only intelligent person to post here so I will not converse with you. I will provide an illustration of liberal hearing impairment though.

I hear from conservatives presentations of simple and reasonable things like the value of hard work, personal responsibility, protection of personal freedom, rights of personal ownership, free market and limited government. I think, well I agree these must not be lost. Then conservatives, or at least the more extreme ones, start doing strange turns that sound like ba ba zip da floddle bing bang zap de flop.

Nothing to make of it.

[_Bond James Bond]

How's the subbing going Droopy?

[_Kevin Graham]

Notice Droopy doesn't tell us his source, which is Townhall, just another joke in the Right Wing media. Look at how it takes a conclusion by a sociological study and then engages in non sequitur argument. The study nowhere says Liberals are closed minded or unable to address Conservative arguments. All it said was that they were more likely to block or ignore those folks. Yes, and I can understand why. Most educated folks tend to ignore the village idiots in any given context, especially on these forums. Moreover, most die-hard Right Wingers I know on Facebook do nothing all day but post highly offensive images of Obama dressed up in African attire with a bone through his nose, humiliating his wife, etc. Remember subgenius, who recent called the first lady a "female Patrick Ewing"? Yes, these folks are despicable human beings who should be ignored because they have no intellectual arguments to be heard. All they have is hate driven ignorance. Droopy would love for it to be the case that these people are presenting "arguments" to justify their Right Wingedness, but the study suggests no such thing.

The claim that Liberals have a hard time mimicking conservatives is probably true, but for the reason that given the chance most Conservatives could argue among themselves about what that means. Just look at the way self-professed conservative Runtu reacts on this forum. Last week I had an argument with a guy who spouted every Tea Party/Republican article of faith there is, and half way through his rant he insisted he was no more a Republican than a Democrat. Of course, he said he was a "Libertarian," which is generally a word many Republicans use to make themselves feel unique. Most "Libertarians" I run into are typically Republicans who believe in the legalization of pot. The foundational tenets of the far right (small government, low taxes, etc) they adhere to faithfully. So if this study's conclusion is based on the fact that Republicans feel Liberals misrepresent their views, then that is understandable. Like Wade Englund and WIlliam Schryver, they like to claim misrepresentation when in fact there is no misrepresentation.

Having said all that, I have quite a bit of experience in all this. And I can say I have never deleted or blocked anyone from Facebook because of their political "arguments." I have deleted two or three people over the course of five years, but it was due to their propensity to post highly offensive images, never because of their arguments. In fact most Conservatives I know are so stupid, they wouldn't know what an argument would look like. For instance, a few months ago I had it out with an old friend of mine from elementary school. He is the typical backwoods, minority hating, die-hard Republican redneck in Alabama and he was telling me we went to war with Iraq because of 9-11. He really believed Saddam Hussein was responsible for it and talked to me like I was an idiot for not knowing it. When I provided him with evidence that even Bush admitted this wasn't true, he quickly blocked me.

Last week a friend on Facebook went on a rant about how Obama is to blame for her husband's taxes going up 2% this year. I kindly pointed out that this is simply not true. His taxes went up because a previous tax cut, implemented by Obama, had expired this year. His taxes are still lower now than they were under Bush because of Obama's increased child tax credits (they have six children!).

Several people clicked "like" on my post and she finally got around to responding after a few hours. She said, "Kevin, are you serious?" I explained that I was, and I then noticed all of my responses on that thread were slowly disappearing. She then sent me a private message saying"

Kevin I really like you and your sweet family. I don't want to ruin that with our differences. I am sorry but I feel strongly about these things. I really like you guys.
I hope you understand that it is nothing against you at all.
Political stuff can be tricky and hard to talk about when people see things very differently. I think it is best to not get in an argument with people you really like and care about.
I tend to get upset and say things I shouldn't so I am avoiding it completely because I value our friendship.

To which I responded:

I feel strongly about what's verifiable as true, but who is arguing here? I was just commenting on your thread explaining why his taxes went up slightly. I didn't expect disagreement from anyone. It is a common question this week. All of us have enjoyed really low taxes the past while because of Obama's tax cuts, and many of us forget that. This is an incontrovertible fact and I was just reminding everyone about this. So why fear the truth, or why suppress it? It makes no sense to me. If you're hell bent on hating Obama then there are other things he can be criticized for, but raising taxes on the working class just isn't one of them.

She then deleted me as a friend. This exact situation happened that same week with another friend who complained about her husband's smaller paycheck.

The interesting thing to me about these encounters, isn't only that I am always the one who gets deleted or ignored. The interesting thing to me is that I almost always obtain more "friends" from that other person's friends list because they are like-minded and usually well educated folks. They agree with my posts but refuse to speak up on these threads because they know just how unhinged their Conservative friends can become and they don't want to risk damaging those relationships by disrupting their worldview with facts.

[_Droopy]

An old adage is that while conservatives think liberals are wrong, liberals think conservatives are evil. This has been proven true time and time again - liberals prefer to pretend like there's some inherent defect in conservatives rather than acknowledge that there's such a thing as reasonable, honest disagreement.

Either you have dementia or an evil twin.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/zekejmiller/fiv ... cial-media

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/kevinglass ... h-n1492383

[_beastie]

http://www.buzzfeed.com/zekejmiller/fiv ... cial-media

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/kevinglass ... h-n1492383

Are you really so unaware of your own behavior? You, bcspace, and ldsfaq consistently refer to liberals as if they are evil - sometimes outright using the very term.

[_beastie]

by the way, thanks for the entertainment. The sight of conservatives spinning over the fact that studies show liberals are more open to new ideas is hilarious. To respond, they've had to change or ignore what it means to be open to new ideas. Instead, they refer to Haidt's research that shows conservatives have a better grasp of liberal ideas than vice versa. The people citing this as a rebuttal of the fact that liberals are more open to new ideas obviously have not read Haidt's book, like yourself. These are two different phenomenon. I'll use language as simple as possible in the hopes that you'll follow along.

People are open to new ideas when they are willing to consider that the new ideas may have value and validity. They are thereby more open to altering their previous beliefs in response to new ideas.

People who understand an opponent's viewpoint do not necessarily demonstrate openness to that viewpoint. For example, I'm assuming you understand "Satan's Plan". Understanding that plan does not mean you are open to that idea, or see any value or validity in it. You totally reject it, despite understanding it.

See the difference?

Of course not. More time wasted.

[_Analytics]

Droopy,

After starting a score of threads about how the Left has taken over higher education in America, I finally took your advice and studied the arguments of your key reference: David Horowitz. After taking half-a-day to study and research his claims, I posted my detailed response in the thread, Droopy: My Research on the Takeover of Academia. After starting thread after thread on this topic that you seemed so passionate about and eagar to discuss, you suddenly became silent.

Do Liberals prefer to ignore arguments they disagree with? I don't know, but it sure seems that you do.

[_EAllusion]

I haven't read Haidt's book, but I did listen to a long program with him on a local NPR show. I was not impressed at that time. When we talk about "liberal" and "conservative" we are talking about a coalition of related, though sometimes quite disparate, political viewpoints. They get wrapped in a single label both for convenient shorthand and because it helps predict voting behavior in our 2-party system. If you are going to do research on "liberals" and "conservatives" like this, your data is going to have misleading generalizability until you break down more into more coherent, ideologically and culturally similar subcategories. Reason.com reading libertarians are quite different than WND reading rightwing fundamentalists just as a green party vegan is quite different from Jackson, MS preacher of a traditionally black church. When he was asked questions about this, he handled them very poorly.

Regarding the article at hand, Beastie is right. Open-mindedness and ability to understand contrary viewpoints are not the same thing.