You can’t spend the first half of the debate witching about how the immigrants are ruining the country and the second half on the uplifting stories of you immigrant parents.
Bill Maher also attaches the empathy gene to how personal experience can make exceptions to the rule with the example of Right-wing lunatic Dick Cheney’s support of gay marriage because his daughter is gay. Maher also brings Lady Gaga’s performance of TIL IT HAPPENS TO YOU into it which follows her even bigger message from a few years ago BORN THIS WAY. Which makes me wonder who or what helps change the most people for the better? A hit movie? A hit song? A book? A teacher? An education?
I suppose this was best covered by Atticus Finch to his daughter Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird:
“First of all, if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”
O over 20 years ago I tried my hand at explaining this in the first article I ever wrote:
Is Conservatism Genetic? [From Rack Jite’s 1993 newsletter The Journal of Hard Response Volume 1 Issue 1 Article 1]
“But on the basis of a new study, a team of political scientists is arguing that people’s gut-level reaction to issues like the death penalty, taxes and abortion is strongly influenced by genetic inheritance. The new research builds on a series of studies that indicate that people’s general approach to social issues – more conservative or more progressive – is influenced by genes.” Some Politics May Be Etched in the Genes – by Benedict Carey, NYT, June 21, 2005 [this added 12 years later.]
Conservatism has many definitions depending upon who does the defining, but the four basic traits of the conservative nature cannot be denied:
First comes the base meaning of the word, aversion to change. Holding to the historic notion of keeping power and wealth in the hands of the few.
Secondly is the selfishness; freely admitted and proudly accepted.
Thirdly the basic intolerance which permeates every philosophical, political and social issue they set voice to.
And lastly, their most basic traditional value: A callous, often violent disregard for anyplace or anyone considered different, The Other.
Parents, friends, environment, religion and education all play an important role in the development of today’s conservative, but as the ideology has existed virtually unchanged for a million years, one could argue that it may be genetic in origin. Perhaps conservatism is the natural state of all animal life; that it takes strength, effort and a bit of a creative inclination to evolve out of the primordial soup and become human.
When confronting the truckloads of conservatives we do each day going about our business, if we listen carefully one element seems to underlie every issue. That total lack of any capacity to see things from any point of view but their own. Could this inability be the fault of biology? Could there be a point of view gene that when absent retards the areas of the brain which control understanding, compassion and tolerance? Following are some clues that point to conservatism being biological rather than environmental:
Women are typically more compassionate and tolerant than men. This biological difference relates directly to the quantity and intensity of men being more conservative than women.
We hear quite often about liberals changing over and becoming conservatives, or Democrats switching to Republicans. Do we hear of it happening the other way around? Is it even possible? [Even the big to do concerning Senator Jeffries was only a move from Republican to Nothing.] And if it is not possible, isn’t this proof of a biological origin?
Next time you are listening to a conservative do their usual harangue against Blacks, the homeless, Gays or some Other, when they pause long enough to wipe the spittle from their chins, politely inquire how they would feel if they happened to be Gay, Black or Other. Invariably comes the same answer, “I am not Gay! I am not Black! I am not homeless! And if I were, which I am not, I would overcome any and all obstacles in my path.” These statements are then followed by high decibel bootstrap speeches and Neanderthal Law of the Jungle platitudes. Considering that no amount of reason, logic or facts can dissuade them, it may very well point to an inborn disability.
The conundrum here is painful, for if it is true that this is a genetic deficiency, and conservatives have no choice but to be the selfish callous intolerant a wholes they are, then it would be prejudiced, bigoted and discriminatory to insult or make fun of them for that which they cannot help.
This of course would lay waste our liberal purpose here which is to loudly respond to the sores that such intolerance and bigotry blot upon the human condition. In this case our only alternative is to sink to the same low argument as they.
As conservatives know damn well homosexuality is driven by biology, but for ideological argument deny it as it cannot be proved in the absolute, liberals too must deny the biological cause of conservatism. As we have not proved a genetic cause in the absolute, it’s open season on the sonsawitches.