Thursday, June 24, 2010

What is the Connection Between Retrograde Values and Being a Chump?

I thought I'd ask the googlebots and porn-spammers who visit my site; Why is there such a good fit between voters who are inspired by religious delusion, homophobia, prudery, racism, and law-and-order hypocrisy, and political parties that are the political shills for corporate scum-bags who want to fleece the public?

Why is (for example) harper's "Conservative" Party of Canada so able to rely on the voters who oppose gay marriage, abortion, immigrants, and responding intelligently to the limits of the environment?

Or is it all just perception? Decent progressives will cling to the Liberal Party of Canada or the Democratic Party USA to preserve things like gay marriage and a woman's right to choose, and neither of those parties are worth a damn on economic matters either.

7 comments:

Mark said...

It's just perception. Talk to enough dyed in the wool practicing Christians voting Tory in Canada and you'll quickly realize they share most or all of the same basic economic assumptions as an NDP voter. Joe Borowski is one of your own: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Borowski

Walt Disney (the current company not the founder), amongst other corporations, was showing a much more enlightened attitude towards gays long before the Canadian government jumped on the bandwagon:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Walt_Disney_Company#Criticism

thwap said...

Mark,

If they share the same economic assumptions, then they're essentially selling themselves out for moral garbage.

Why they think that curtailing gay marriage or immigrants' rights are more important than whether they can retire in dignity is beyond me.

I notice Borowski was kicked out of the NDP, whereas in the harpercons he'd be let-off with a mealy-mouthed apology.

Mark said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mark said...

I'm not pro-life, but if person really does believe that abortion is murder, I can only assume that it must function as a categorical imperative in a person's belief system, and would trump any, or at least most, concerns about economics.

I listened to Borowski speak a few years before he died, and while the NDP might have kicked him out, it was clear that he'd never really rethought his NDP principles, at least the ones that weren't related gay marriage or abortion.

thwap said...

Do you think abortion is the trump card there?

Borowski's homophobia and anti-immigrant stuff were just secondary?

(I can see what you're saying.)

Mark said...

In a hierarchy of values, I'd rate a prohibition against murder either near or at the top, as well as the enforcement of that particular dictum. Assuming he genuinely believed that abortion is murder, I'm not surprised that he acted on that belief, and that other issues would be of secondary concern or seen as a "lesser" evil, not quite dissimilar to the distinction that Catholic theology makes between venial and mortal sin.

thwap said...

You know something? You've made me think that we've really got to get the logic of the pro-choice argument across to more and more people.

Because if that's what's influencing a lot of those people to vote for militarism and corporate greed, it really needs to be attended to.