Conservatives: do you support Equal Opportunity for all?

Discussion in 'Opinion POLLS' started by Ronstar, May 14, 2019.

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Conservatives: do you support Equal Oportunity for all?

  1. Yes, equal opportunity for all citizens.

    20 vote(s)
    52.6%
  2. No, private sector should have right to discriminate however they like

    18 vote(s)
    47.4%
  1. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    Yes, the Left is the 21stC ultra-conservative (because this insistence of state sanctioned thought control is most definitely conservatism).
     
  2. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    Just 'proposed'? What about the dude in the UK who re-tweeted a limerick about transgenders and was visited by police for questioning?
     
    Last edited: May 22, 2019
  3. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    Correction ... they're not commies. Commies are only interested in getting the potatoes harvested, not your thoughts.

    Such people are Authoritarians.
     
    Last edited: May 22, 2019
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  4. cd8ed

    cd8ed Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Which includes evangelicals. Religious preferences absolutely have special protections not given to the general public. And they are the main proponent of denying gay people services.

    Either everyone should have protections or no one should
     
  5. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Of course everyone, or all law-abiding citizens, should have protections. That's first of all what the state is for, to protect us. All of us.

    But if you are engaged in some sort of activity, which is not harming me -- you're selling apples, or publishing books, or teaching people how to repair lawnmowers -- you're not 'harming' me if you decline to sell me an apple, or publish my book, or teach me how to repair a lawnmower -- or bake my wedding cake. Assuming you're doing this on your own dime, and not as part of the official activity of the state, which I help pay for with my taxes.

    If you don't want my tainted money, be assured that someone will be happy to take it. I'll get my wedding cake made somewhere else. And I might just tell everyone about your refusal of my custom, and suggest that they shouldn't bother you with their money as well.

    If the state -- which belongs ot all of us -- is selling apples, or publishing books, or teaching people how to repair lawnmowers, that's a different story. There had better be a good commonsense reason to refuse to allow me access to these activities, if I'm paying for them.

    There may be such a reason, of course. A state-operated women's restroom should have the right to exclude males. If I'm a vehement Ku Klux Klan member, I should indeed not be hired as a teacher of Black children.

    But in general, the state should treat us all equally, and should let us get on with our private business, regardless of our personal eccentricities, prejudices, unusual customs, weird beliefs.

    Yes, life is complex. Sometimes these good commonsense maxims need to be violated. As World War Two approached, it was just commonsense to watch closely people about whom it was reasonable to suspect they would co operate with our future enemies. People who openly glorify killing Blacks or Jews or Muslims should expect to receive the discreet attentions of the secret police -- that isn't done vigorously enough in the United States, as it happens.
     
    Last edited: May 22, 2019
  6. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Well, the word 'conservative' covers a multitude of sins, as does the word 'liberal'. I just avoid arguing about what conservatism 'is', or what liberalism 'is', because usually these arguments just end up muddling everyone's thinking.

    Most of the liberals I have known have NOT been in favor of state-sanctioned thought control. I believe this is a new development on the soft Left. (The hard Left has always, at least since 1917, been in favor of thought control. But there is a wide spectrum on the left, just as there is on the Right.)

    I don't understand it, actually, although I suspect it's a result of the latest generation of young middle class people having been raised in great comfort, without having to sacrifice anything ... taking for granted that their all their wishes should be gratified in the most powerful country on earth. They're tolerably ignorant, unable to defend their prejudices, so they don't want to hear things that upset them. Thus they only want to hear leftist professors and speakers at their campuses, as they prepare to take their place in the big corporations.

    Now that that American power is eroding away, things are getting unsettled. Just at the time that we need open, critical debate, from all sides ... we're putting ourselves to sleep.
     
  7. Robert E Allen

    Robert E Allen Banned

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    I believe in each person must fight and work hard to create their own opportunity.

    I don't believe a government leveled playing field is good for anyone.
     
  8. cd8ed

    cd8ed Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    So you believe employment and housing protections should be removed from Christians and blacks then, correct?
     
  9. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    1) absolutely. the hard Left has remained immune to thought policing.

    and

    2) absolutely. definitely a product of too much safety and material wellbeing.
     
  10. Robert E Allen

    Robert E Allen Banned

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    I believe employees and employers both voluntarily enter into agreements that thr government has no business regulating.
    An employer should be able to hire the best candidates possible without any consideration of their religion or skin color.
    Likewise a landlord should be able to rent his property to whoever is most likely to pay what they owe on time and do no damage to their property without respect to their religion or skin color.
     
  11. cd8ed

    cd8ed Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    That wasn’t the question.
    Try again.

    It’s a simple yes or no, you are not a politician — stop trying to dance around the question.
     
  12. FreshAir

    FreshAir Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    it mentions gender.. the gender of the couple is covered, same as the race of the couple
     
    Last edited: May 22, 2019
  13. FreshAir

    FreshAir Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    everyone agrees to that, as long as your not discriminating based on race, gender or religion

    I would even say the people should be able to pick the best President without affirmative action for the smaller states
     
    Last edited: May 22, 2019
  14. Robert E Allen

    Robert E Allen Banned

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    I am not dancing around the question.
    An employer should hire whoever they want and a landlord should rent to whoever they want. The government doesn't need to be involved.

    I am against all peotected classes, that is by definition not equal .
     
  15. Robert E Allen

    Robert E Allen Banned

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    I should get a job only when i am thr best fit for the position. That's common sense.
     
  16. cd8ed

    cd8ed Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    It’s not a matter of you only getting the job but keeping it. Should an employer be allowed to fire someone because they are Christian or Muslim? What about a landlord, should they be able to evict because they discovered your child is biracial?
     
  17. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    And exactly how we ended up with such horrific segregation in earlier centuries. You would think that the very people who fought against this stuff (ie, Leftists) would be emphatically opposed to any such inequalities.
     
  18. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    There's no real way to know that, is there?

    As a result, these laws will start looking to other things for "evidence".
    This will include the employer's past free speech, and statistical outcomes.
    Both of those will violate the employer's rights.

    You could just make it illegal for a manager to order the manager below him to discriminate, but I suspect that would not be going far enough for you.
     
    Last edited: May 23, 2019
  19. cd8ed

    cd8ed Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Why can none of you answer such a simple question? That should tell you everything you need to know about your actual motives. Also, please don’t edit out my posts because you cannot answer it using your own logic.

    For the record, I think all forms of discrimination should either be allowed or not allowed — no group should have special treatment. While I definitely believe the US would be a much better place for everyone if we discourage discrimination as long as everyone is equal in their ability to discriminate that is a sad but acceptable outcome.
     
    Last edited: May 23, 2019
  20. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Because it's not a simple question (at least semantically). What does 'support' mean exactly?
    Isn't it possible I can support things in some ways and not others? Maybe I just partially support it. Maybe I support it, but not if it carries certain costs, or threatens certain individual liberties.
     
    Last edited: May 23, 2019
  21. cd8ed

    cd8ed Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Why does it “threaten individual liberties” to protect gay people from employment discrimination but it’s ok to fine companies that fire or not accommodate people over their religious beliefs?

    A gay person cannot decline to bake a cake for a religious person due to their religion but a religious person can refuse to bake a cake for a gay person because of their orientation. It’s completely unequal and special treatment.

    You cannot — logically at least — support both.
     
  22. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The issue isn't exactly that they're being fired for religious beliefs, it's that they're being ordered to do something that's both immoral and incompatible with those religious beliefs.
    Let me give you an example. A general nurse at a big hospital. They shift the nurses around to different departments. They tell the nurses sometimes they have to assist with abortion procedures. If they don't do it, the nurse will be fired.
    They're not hiring a nurse specifically for abortion, they're just expecting general nurses to, on occasion do that, nurses who do everything else in the hospital. In other words you can't be a nurse doing anything else at that hospital unless you're willing to, on occasion, help perform abortions.
    This type of employer action is very easy to prove.
     
    Last edited: May 23, 2019
  23. cd8ed

    cd8ed Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I don’t believe anyone should be forced to participate in an abortion procedure should they not want to be but under current laws only the nurse with a religious objection would be allowed to be exempt. This is unequal.

    There was a case a few years ago where Muslim truck drivers sued and won because they would not haul alcohol as it was against their religious beliefs. People with religious beliefs can also force their employer to give them certain days off, costing actual downtime.

    But a gay person having a picture of their spouse on their desk or a marriage announcement in the paper is where the line is drawn.


    You are editing posts down, refusing to answer basic questions and not discussing with any level of integrity. Good bye
     
  24. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    That's the problem when there are too many different values in society.

    I drew a line between the employer expecting all their employees to do a certain thing and an employer allegedly taking certain actions that you think are because he doesn't like an employee for a certain reason.
     
    Last edited: May 23, 2019
  25. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    It might help this discussion to try to have it without using the concept of "rights", and, in general, to get away from absolutes.

    We have a conflict of values, and of different kinds of values.

    Suppose I own a sawmill, and hire some workers to work in it. It turns out that, occasionally, I need to cut some cedar trees. And it also turns out
    that one of my workers was raised in a culture where these trees have some sort of superstition-inducing quality about them, which makes it
    impossible for him to cut them up. (What's superstition to you and me, is sacredness to someone else. If you're a Christian, imagine that my business
    involves turning old books back into paper pulp, and we get a shipment of used Bibles. Or that I'm a scrap metal dealer, and we get a large supply of
    slightly-imperfect crucifixes to melt down.)

    One would hope that I would excuse this fellow from this particular duty, and his mates would understand and not be too resentful at having to work a bit
    extra to make up for his absence. One would hope that he would understand our slight annoyance, and make it up in some way.

    But not everyone is reasonable, and I might fire him. Or if I didn't, he might decide that the Druids have some truth as well, and start refusing to saw up oak trees.

    It seems to me that this is an area where bringing in the Law, one way or the other, would not really be helpful, in the long run. Having judges waste their time trying to decide what is reasonable, what is sacred, while no doubt encouraging a certain kind of lawyer to develop a specialism in this sort of case, is a waste of society's resources.

    So keep the law out. Some sawmill owners will be reasonable, some cedar-loving employees will be reasonable, and other employers and employees, not. Life is imperfect, and there's a kind of Second Law of Social Dynamics that says it will never be.

    So let hospitals and nurses -- so long as we're talking about private entities -- negotiate their arrangements among themselves. I personally would urge toleration and adaptation to human sensibilties here, but I wouldn't want to send anyone to prison for disagreeing with me when they're running their business or carrying out their duties as employees.

    If anyone reading this is a fan of the late Patrick O'Brian, they will see here Jack Aubrey's problem when dealing with followers of Seth among his crew. His solution was sensible and kept everyone happy.
     
    Last edited: May 23, 2019

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