How do right wingers negate social responsibility?

[RadioRaheem84]

I am trying to formulate an argument to mail to my future father in law who has an amatuer newsletter mail list where he constantly spams our emails with the most reactionary of information I've ever seen. It make John Birch look like Malcolm X, it's that right wing. The only reason why I am asking for help is because his email list covers a lot of people, family and friends who are all mostly right wing and regurgitate the same right wing talking points.

I want to ask him or anyone of his subscribers about the conservative philosophy of "personal responsibility". How come this convinient little canard always tends to eliminate any notion of social responsibility? What I mean by this is that by default they're almost saying that the system is near perfect enough to where you are the only one responsible for your own position in life. It's all on you. There is no social responsibility. Yet, how is it that they believe in corruption but think that it can have no social impact on people? They complain that society is corrupt by nature but apparently it's only individuals not our system which was created and is run by individuals? So individually we have all the responsibility in the world to fend for ourselves but socially and structurally we can create systems to where to no one with true gumption can fall through it's cracks?

Help me out here. I am trying to make sense of the personal responsibility logic and why it's utterly flawed thinking. Right wingers join in too to defend this absurd notion.

[Remus Bleys]

I hope this thread goes somewhere. The best info I found is that you can't. They're too obstinate and self-righteous to change their views on anything.

[Jimmie Higgins]

It's never a question of completely negating it or actually putting it on induviduals, it's always part of a battle over who pays for what and who recieves the benifits of it.

For example, the whole "taxpayer" language of personal responcibility is the result of wanting to push increasing "social wage" taxes onto the poorer sections of society. While suburban homeowners were demanding lower property taxes and not to have to pay for services for cities, the suburbs and original low property taxes were only possible through massive post-war government subsidies to developers.

It's simply a political myth: its resonance among some people is due to the way everyone is split into autonomous and in some ways competiting induvidual households. Since the home-owner is usually just a worker middle class profesional or owner, their interaction with the larger market was one of paying for the house and their burdon then is "taxes"... but these two social phenomena, while experienced induvidually, are part of a much larger process. The consumer doesn't set federal loan recomendations, doesn't work with developers or banks, or any of that, so for that induvidual it seems like an "even playing field".

[liberlict]

A lot of right wingers have the same social concerns as the left. They just believe that social problems are better fixed by right-wing solutions.

[AnSyn Blackflag]

I come from a pretty right wing conservative family, though most of them are not so extreme to the right that you cant have a decent discussion with them.

As a general rule, conservatives tend to be very set in their ways and it would seem that their concept of reality is literally and almost immovably different from those of the left.

[RadioRaheem84]

A lot of right wingers have the same social concerns as the left. They just believe that social problems are better fixed by right-wing solutions.

A lot if right wingers don't even think some of the problems we talk about are problems. They see it as a natural occurrence that stretches back since time immemorial and think the issue is some flawed human condition.

This drives their arguments more than anything. They don't just share right wing solutions to the same problems we discuss. They share solutions to stuff they think us a problem like people getting free healthcare! They want to cut off county care and medicaid I've heard from some right wing nuts.

[ThatGuy]

A lot if right wingers don't even think some of the problems we talk about are problems. They see it as a natural occurrence that stretches back since time immemorial and think the issue is some flawed human condition.

This drives their arguments more than anything. They don't just share right wing solutions to the same problems we discuss. They share solutions to stuff they think us a problem like people getting free healthcare! They want to cut off county care and medicaid I've heard from some right wing nuts.

Well, if healthcare was truly free, in the way the air is free, I don't think anyone would be objecting. What we're(I'll take on the cloak of right-winger even though I think the left-right political division is pretty lacking) saying is simply that it is wrong for others to decide what portion of our income should be given to them, or else. That's not solidarity, that's extortion.

There's also a lot of economic advantages to free market healthcare over public healthcare, but that's just bonus points. What really motivates me is the right to self-determination, that is being violated by public healthcare and other public services.

[Positivist]

Well, if healthcare was truly free, in the way the air is free, I don't think anyone would be objecting. What we're(I'll take on the cloak of right-winger even though I think the left-right political division is pretty lacking) saying is simply that it is wrong for others to decide what portion of our income should be given to them, or else. That's not solidarity, that's extortion.

There's also a lot of economic advantages to free market healthcare over public healthcare, but that's just bonus points. What really motivates me is the right to self-determination, that is being violated by public healthcare and other public services.

This is actually one of the stronger positions held by "conservatives" which few typical Fox news pundits or socialists really understand. What "ThatGuy" here is saying is that the planet has limited resources all of which have near unlimited uses, and the only sustainable way to determine how they are used is by mediating their value in a marketplace.

Basically his market theory proceeds as follows: everyone enters the marketplace owning something, whether it be the ability to perform labor, a pile of sticks or a herd of cows, and they negotiate exchanges of these things. Rationally, being motivated by self-interest, no trader will accept an exchange that does not sufficiently renumerate them for whatever they give. In this model all outcomes are equal, and inequalities in the allocation of certain resources is simply a matter of differences in priorities between different actors.

The problem comes when reality is entered into the equation. Due to complex historical sequences, consisting of everything from natural disasters to ethnic wars, different people enter the marketplace in different situations. Not everyone has the luxury of sifting through every option to find a fair deal and instead most are forced to accept exploitative exchanges where they give more of their good (usually labor) for less of another item, because they need that item that they are trading for to survive. Someone who has just survived a tsunami in the villages of Bangladesh for example will be left without living essentials such as food and shelter, and so will do a disproportionate amount of work to acquire these things or be cornered into certain death.

Further harming the strength of the model is the concept of ownership in the first place, as anything other than one's labor power can not be reasonably assumed to be the property of anyone. You can't own a forest.

[RadioRaheem84]

Lets also focus on what right wingers mean by the individual in their ridiculous philosophy. When they speak of individuals and couple it with liberty and all that jazz, they really speak about the few individuals who own or "produce" in their eyes, or people who are thinking about becoming producers. The road must be kept wide open for people to muster all their gumption to succeed. That is their primary right; the right to not be impeded from succeeding. You have no real rights to healthcare, shelter, food or a job, you only have the right to get these for yourself in the marketplace. Any rights enshrined by law that benefit the masses actually harms the individuals self determination. Since we have finite resources and not everyone can be at the top, the mutual benefit to society would be to let those with the most brains and gumption maximize their potential and better society. You're not guaranteed the right to a comfortable life, but you are guaranteed the right to try.

Essentially what libertarianism boils down to is an equal opportunity aristocracy. I remember describing it this way to a libertarian once and he agreed, that yes, essentially it is like that but that I was making it out to be a bad thing. He saw it as the best possible way to create a good society out of a finite world.

[RadioRaheem84]

What really motivates me is the right to self-determination, that is being violated by public healthcare and other public services.

How? Unless you're in the health care business I cannot possibly see how free healthcare would impede you from self determination. In fact wouldn't it help you?

This is the canard of right wing philosophies, under the banner of liberty and for the individual they end up being for the few. If you were to substitute individual in all libertarian texts with owner of business, it would make a hell of a lot more sense.

[rednordman]

They don't. They just think that if your weak and miserable, you must for some reason totally deserve to be weak and miserable. All this 'compassionate conservative' nonsense you hear so much of now was just another insincere ploy to attract liberals to the right, and in the UK it actually worked last election:(.

[Philosophos]

Lets also focus on what right wingers mean by the individual in their ridiculous philosophy. When they speak of individuals and couple it with liberty and all that jazz, they really speak about the few individuals who own or "produce" in their eyes, or people who are thinking about becoming producers. The road must be kept wide open for people to muster all their gumption to succeed. That is their primary right; the right to not be impeded from succeeding. You have no real rights to healthcare, shelter, food or a job, you only have the right to get these for yourself in the marketplace. Any rights enshrined by law that benefit the masses actually harms the individuals self determination. Since we have finite resources and not everyone can be at the top, the mutual benefit to society would be to let those with the most brains and gumption maximize their potential and better society. You're not guaranteed the right to a comfortable life, but you are guaranteed the right to try.

Essentially what libertarianism boils down to is an equal opportunity aristocracy. I remember describing it this way to a libertarian once and he agreed, that yes, essentially it is like that but that I was making it out to be a bad thing. He saw it as the best possible way to create a good society out of a finite world.


These people are not humans. They have been sooo propaganded they can't even understand reality. They want to live as individuals, all alone with no connection to society. Tell them these things if they agree send them to the nearest zoo. If they don't agree try a little more. If they still don't agree just give up you can't really change their minds.

Also slap the libertarian for me please.

[Hegemonicretribution]

It is hard to give a comprehensive answer without a fuller picture of what exactly you are opposing....so rather than risk attacking a straw man, I would suggest a simple question; What of the army/police force? Just as many on the right resent taxes spent on social services, many on the left resent taxes spent on arming and training agents of the state.

Of course they may not support taxes for security either, but my bet is that they do to some extent. Without at least preliminary responses to your questions, it would be difficult to offer a suitable response to you future father in law's views.