Republicans Suck/political philosophy - Revision history

Woozle: Woozle moved page User:Republicans Suck/political philosophy to Republicans Suck/political philosophy without leaving a redirect: take 2...

2025-02-07T01:34:25Z

Woozle moved page User:Republicans Suck/political philosophy to Republicans Suck/political philosophy without leaving a redirect: take 2...

Woozle: Woozle moved page User:Woozle/Why Republicans Suck/political philosophy to User:Republicans Suck/political philosophy without leaving a redirect: promoting this to a main article

2025-02-07T01:33:58Z

Woozle moved page User:Woozle/Why Republicans Suck/political philosophy to User:Republicans Suck/political philosophy without leaving a redirect: promoting this to a main article

Woozle at 22:06, 16 October 2019

2019-10-16T22:06:46Z

Woozle: /* Republican Political Philosophy */ omg spelling

2016-04-09T00:03:57Z

Republican Political Philosophy: omg spelling

Woozle: moved a chunk here from the "badness" chapter

2016-04-04T14:28:40Z

moved a chunk here from the "badness" chapter

Woozle: seems like a chapter

2016-03-26T19:55:01Z

seems like a chapter

New page

=Republican Political Philosophy=
Plenty has been written about the correlation between Republicanism and authoritarianism; I'm going to take a different (though compatible) tack, and put it in less technical terms based on my own observations:

In short, Republicans don't see politics the way rational people do.

Rational people living in a free society see politics as the process of arriving at policies that work as well as possible for the most people. We may have disagreements about the best policies, but they're based on honest beliefs about what the known evidence suggests. Any discussion should be about sharing evidence to minimize disagreement, and working out compromises until we arrive at a position that most participants agree is at least acceptable.

Yes, we recognize that in reality things often don't work this way -- but it ''bothers'' us when they don't. We see mudslinging as a ''failure'' in our representatives, and we'll tend to vote ''against'' someone who uses personal attacks to overcome an opponent's position.

Republicans, however, see politics as being more like an Olympic gladiatorial mud-slinging contest where the key criterion for a good leader is that they ''defeat the other candidates'', by any means necessary -- not that they ''have the first clue about running a government''.

Republicans will ''cheer'' when one of their representatives manages to change a civilized discussion of relevant issues into a brawl, if that's what it takes to get people to overlook the fact that their position has no merit. The guy won, didn't he? So what's the problem?

In Republican politics there's absolutely nothing wrong with lying to the public, even if it causes harm to your constituents (present or future). All that matters is whether it will help advance your (and by extension the Party's) position and whether you can get away with it. Having won, the winner will naturally be the candidate best qualified for the job -- never mind that the contest filters for qualities almost completely unrelated to job performance.<ref name=fallacy>This is an example of another common Republican belief: the "just world" fallacy, where virtue is dependably rewarded and lack of reward is a reliable signal of non-virtue. I'll discuss this more later.</ref>

Likewise, the only bad thing about accepting a bribe is the risk of your enemies finding out and using it against you; there's not actually anything ''wrong'' with it, in the Republican worldview. It helps fund the Party -- and the Party's ideology thus becomes, over time, the ideology of those with extra money and a shortage of scruples.

To a Republican, positions of power are rewards to be given out for loyalty -- not important work to be done by those best capable of using it, and certainly not implying any kind of responsibility or duty to those underneath or to those supposedly being served.
==Footnotes==
<references />

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	Plenty has been written about the correlation between Republicanism and authoritarianism; I'm going to take a different (though compatible) tack, and put it in less technical terms based on my own observations:		Plenty has been written about the correlation between Republicanism and authoritarianism; I'm going to take a different (though compatible) tack, and put it in less technical terms based on my own observations:

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 To a Republican, positions of power are rewards to be given out for loyalty -- not important work to be done by those best capable of using it, and certainly not implying any kind of responsibility or duty to those underneath or to those supposedly being served.
-It is by this irresponsible and underhanded ethos -- victory at any cost, we're always right {{hilite|(see Moral Aboslutusm)}}, suppress any information that shows we might be wrong, destroy public understanding of government and democracy -- that Republicanism has not only thrived but remade much of American culture in its own image: violent, hateful, narrow-minded, dishonest, ignorant, superstitious, paranoid, blindly loyal to the undeserving and trusting of the untrustworthy.
+It is by this irresponsible and underhanded ethos -- victory at any cost, we're always right {{hilite|(see Moral Absolutism)}}, suppress any information that shows we might be wrong, destroy public understanding of government and democracy -- that Republicanism has not only thrived but remade much of American culture in its own image: violent, hateful, narrow-minded, dishonest, ignorant, superstitious, paranoid, blindly loyal to the undeserving and trusting of the untrustworthy.
 Put more simply: Republican ideology has made us gullible and stupid.

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 To a Republican, positions of power are rewards to be given out for loyalty -- not important work to be done by those best capable of using it, and certainly not implying any kind of responsibility or duty to those underneath or to those supposedly being served.
 ==Footnotes==
 <references />