Conservative Stands for Refugee Rights; Gets Booed by Leftists

[Jason Harvestdancer]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CG-gomduRmA[/youtube]

A friend of mine on Facebook gave me this commentary. I disagree with some of the particulars but agree with the overall, so I'll just quote his comments.

This video is worthy in its own right as a conservative perspective against the full on refugee ban, but also note how some people in the audience react. Booing and jeering him despite being there to support the same damn cause they are. . Because he's conservative. This is a problem with the modern left. This is the same movement that banned a pro-life feminist group from sponsoring the women's march then had two speakers, one who openly supports sharia law and another who had been in prison for raping and torturing a man to death. And what was the big controversy on the left? The pussy hats "erased women without vaginas" and thus all who wore them are transgender hating white supremacists. LOL. These are among the reasons I can't associate with the modern left. Now I'm not with conservatives either. I know full well many pull similar shit. Many disown folks on their side for daring to criticize the dear leader trump. And they do stuff like claiming to be pro life but not wanting us to help refugees (all lives matter right) or suddenly worried about homeless people being ignored over the refugees even though we all know they'd call it socialism and oppose it if we tried. Well the hard right anyway, sensible republicans like ones in Utah are helping the homeless and they'd have my vote. I wonder how many are in my boat seeing insanity to the right of me (including our dear leader) and insanity to the left and fearing for our country. We need pragmatic centrists working for we the people, not their rich donors or driven by purist ideologies.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

I think the issue is that there is a subset of people who identify so much with their cause that everything is viewed through the filter of said cause and against the long-term advancing of their agenda. In this case, for instance, while the conservative guy might agree with them on this one particular issue, giving credence to conservative ideas is a potential setback for left wing causes, so it's better as a whole to be against him entirely rather than giving potential legitimacy to other of his stances by agreeing with him on this one. Similarly, there are left-wingers who are batshit crazy and while you would prefer that they wander the fuck off and not associate their nutbar positions with yours, they are at least moving the needle to the left, so that's a net positive which you want to encourage.

Then again, they may just be a group of idiots and trying to find the rationalizations behind their actions is as futile as trying to find the rationalizations behind the actions of a group of idiots.

 

[blastula]

Maybe there's an audio problem but all I hear are cheers. He says "go ahead and boo" at the end while people are cheering him.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Your friend is right about sensible centrists. There is simply no place for them in today's political climate. It is like being a biracial person in a race war; both sides see you as the other and the enemy and paints you with all of the views they hate about the other "side" regardless of what you may actually think or say. Rational discourse has fallen to bumper sticker and drum circle thinking, and this is on both the right and the left. I used to see it mostly on the left (remember Bush's with us or against us rhetoric and all the people that would call you a traitor if you disagreed with them on their right wing views?) but now I see more and more of it on the left with the rise of the regressives. It seems that it is becoming about seeing everything on a group level, and dealing with individuals not based on what they actually stand for or who they actually are, but for which group they get associated with.

Here is a great example of a rare exception: Gay married man discusses gay marriage, abortion, porn, the scandal in the church, etc with a Catholic priest. They discuss things calmly and rationally and you get to see the points from the other side. He has had other great interviews with others that he's on the other side of issues of. Great stuff. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYWBNMOCrlo

Let's face it..... If you think there are only two sides to a social issue, that your side is absolutely right and the other side is absolutely wrong, and you insist that they hold positions they haven't actually stated, and that nobody on the other side has any real insight of any value, you are a radical blinded by your own ideology, and more the problem than the solution.

 

[ZiprHead]

Maybe there's an audio problem but all I hear are cheers. He says "go ahead and boo" at the end while people are cheering him.

Agreed.

 

[Mumbles]

Then again, they may just be a group of idiots and trying to find the rationalizations behind their actions is as futile as trying to find the rationalizations behind the actions of a group of idiots.

No, you're pretty close. There are certainly "Bernie Bros" and the like who, to put it one way, demand purity and flip out when they get anything else (and no, I'm not speaking merely of voting - that's far more complicated, especially in the US with our goofy-ass electoral system).