Stop saying conservatives are selfish.

[Suburbia]

Selfish people don't overwhelmingly join public service sectors like police, military and fire. Selfish people don't run into burning buildings, etc.

[darklordoftech]

“Economic conservatism” has been based on the premise that people have a right to be selfish since Herbert Hoover. What else do you think “rugged individualism” means?

[John Dule]

“Economic conservatism” has been based on the premise that people have a right to be selfish since Herbert Hoover. What else do you think “rugged individualism” means?

Economic conservatism is about taking people's self-interest and redirecting it in such a way that it benefits others via market exchange. Ironically, modern leftists are the ones who complain the most about this ("I can't believe that I don't get to just write poetry under a fig tree all day and live an upper-middle-class lifestyle despite contributing nothing to the market that other people want").

[certified hummus supporter 🇵🇸🤝🇺🇸🤝🇺🇦]

Gonna cry? Gonna piss your pants maybe?

[Suburbia]

Gonna cry? Gonna piss your pants maybe?

I am not a hardcore conservative. I'm a moderate.

How can they be selfish and join those fields which demand selflessness?

[Starry Eyed Jagaloon]

“Economic conservatism” has been based on the premise that people have a right to be selfish since Herbert Hoover. What else do you think “rugged individualism” means?

Economic conservatism isn't a thing, unless you want a catch-all term for mercantilism, feudalism, and early 20th century Christian democracy--which would be very funny and is therefore a term I support.

[darklordoftech]

“Economic conservatism” has been based on the premise that people have a right to be selfish since Herbert Hoover. What else do you think “rugged individualism” means?

Economic conservatism isn't a thing, unless you want a catch-all term for mercantilism, feudalism, and early 20th century Christian democracy

Hence I put it in quotes.

[Mr. Smith]

Selfish people don't overwhelmingly join public service sectors like police, military and fire. Selfish people don't run into burning buildings, etc.

If you get access to weapons and get rewarded for glorious things no matter what, why wouldn't you join? It's a true power-trip to join those things, and not everyone is saint.

[Aurelius]

“Economic conservatism” has been based on the premise that people have a right to be selfish since Herbert Hoover. What else do you think “rugged individualism” means?

Economic conservatism is about taking people's self-interest and redirecting it in such a way that it benefits others via market exchange. Ironically, modern leftists are the ones who complain the most about this ("I can't believe that I don't get to just write poetry under a fig tree all day and live an upper-middle-class lifestyle despite contributing nothing to the market that other people want").

Well put. I've said before that "fully automated luxury space communism" is just a pure expression of greed and selfishness than an actual ideology.

[Damocles]

You’re in a Bronz thread.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Incredibly, people's views/actions in one context (politics, public policy) can be very different in another (their work and professional life) because human beings are, shockingly, complicated.

[MarkD]

When it comes to social issues such as abortion, who says things like KEEP YOUR LAWS OFF MY BODY!!, ... conservatives or liberals?

Liberals like to attribute the concept of GREED to the selfishness of conservative doctrine. About 32 years ago, I transferred to a new job within the company I worked for and started sitting next to a new co-worker by the name of Liz. One day, I told her that I was a Republican. She replied that the Republican Party is the party of greed. "That's all they stand for: GREED." Then about a week or two later, she appeared to have forgotten all about what she said to me; she said that she wanted to marry a rich man. I asked, "So, you want to marry a Republican?" Then she replied, "I don't care what his politics are like, so long as he's rich."

Um-hm. GREED.

[Xing]

I think selfishness in general needs to be called out more, not less.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

What if someone was threatening to drop a nuclear bomb unless I said the phrase "conservatives are selfish"? Could i say it then?

[Aurelius]

What if someone was threatening to drop a nuclear bomb unless I said the phrase "conservatives are selfish"? Could i say it then?

Did you do competitive debate in college too?

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

A rich person who believes in anarcho-capitalism and would gladly send millions into poverty for an extra million dollars is selfish. But most conservatives aren't like that, just like most liberals aren't pot-smoking hippies plotting a socialist takeover of America.

[Kleine Scheiße]

Conservatism is about as big a problem for Trump and the Republicans as it was for George W. Bush. George W. Bush took a lot of hits, but he was still in office in 2008. He may have left office with even more credibility in the eyes of the people, but he had a long history in Washington. That was built up, in part, by the Bush presidency.

In contrast, President Trump’s Washington is a blank slate, largely made by his inexperience and lack of preparation. Even though he has appointed many conservative-minded folks to high positions, Trump is starting from a disadvantage of not having gone through the years of experience that many have already had. It’s difficult to establish a career in politics when you’re the president of the United States.

Even if President Trump eventually manages to learn how Washington works, there’s a greater question to be answered.

“If all you are is Republican, and all you care about is ‘we’re all in this together,’ then your policies, you, Trump, and the Republican Party are failing the American people.”

So said Chris Karpinski, a writer who grew up in the heart of Philadelphia, in January 2017, on the first day of President Trump’s presidency. What Karpinski was talking about was the need for Republicans to defend conservatism and to protect it from the liberal-Democrats. But that’s only half the story.

What about defending Trump from the liberals and from his own party?

The Democrats are running a campaign of constant character assassination of the president, accusing him of treason, of bribery, of cheating, of collusion, of lying, and of cheating on his taxes.

Meanwhile, there is no positive campaign on Trump. He has no agenda to push, no legislative goals to enact, no ideas to put forth, and no positive message. There is only criticism, and constant negative press. It’s also part of the general approach of Democrats. They’ve run that sort of race since the 1950s, and the strategy has been to undermine the presidency from day one, to see if they can destroy the executive branch of government. It was successful in the Carter years, and now they’re using it again.

But this is a very small slice of what conservatives and Trump supporters have been through. For example, what happened to the GOP when the so-called War on Women began in 2010? They spent four years attacking and ridiculing a group of women for supporting a man they believed to be unfit for the presidency.

That doesn’t even begin to tell the story.

It’s not enough for President Trump to survive the impeachment crisis and come out of it in a position of strength. He must get stronger. He needs to become a strong and clear conservative, without the baggage