Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Why conservatives have more empathy than liberals. Let's have done with "straw men"

 

Daniel Hannan  . . . " 'For too long, you have been told something that simply isn't true," Miliband assured supporters as he announced his program. "That's what's good for the richest and most powerful is always good for the whole of our country. That as long as a few individuals and companies are OK, we can just wait for the wealth to trickle down to everyone else."
"Really? We've been told that? By whom? Who has spouted such bilge? Type "trickle down economics" into Google and it'll prompt you with "myth", "criticism", "debunked" and "doesn't work." But you'll search in vain for anyone actually proposing the idea.
"Not that this deters leftist politicians, election after election, from tearing into it. Here, for example, is Barack Obama in 2008: "We can't afford four more years of the theory that says we should give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else."
 If you start from the conviction that you're standing up for the underdog, you will naturally assume that your political opponents are for the powerful. You will subliminally screen out evidence that challenges that view. As Danusha Goska put it in American Thinker not long ago, "Never, in all my years of leftist activism, did I ever hear anyone articulate accurately the position of anyone to our right. In fact, I did not even know those positions when I was a leftist."
 

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