美国自由派对美国保守派有哪些主要的误解?
2024-07-04 辽阔天空 4127
正文翻译

What major misconceptions do US liberals have about US conservatives?

美国自由派对美国保守派有哪些主要的误解?

评论翻译
Ty Doyle
Because American liberalism is entwined with concepts of caring and being compassionate, I think the single largest misconception that liberals have about conservatives is that because conservatives disagree with liberal solutions to various issues, they don't care about (or worse, hate) the things that liberalism purports to value. In other words, because liberals believe themselves to be good people in part because of their political beliefs, those who disagree with them are not just wrong, but bad people, as well.
If I disagree with Big Government solutions to poverty, it does not mean that I hate the poor. If I disagree with single payer health care, it does not mean that I hate the old and sick. If I disagree that there is a present need to spend trillions of dollars on climate change, it does not mean that I don't care about the environment. If I believe that the US should be able to enforce its immigration laws, it doesn't mean that I hate immigrants. The list goes on and on.

美国自由主义与关怀和同情紧密相连,因此自由派对保守派的一个主要误解是:由于保守派不同意自由派处理各种问题的方法,他们就认为保守派不关心(甚至憎恨)自由主义所倡导的价值观。换句话说,自由派因为他们的政治信仰而自认为是好人,所以那些持不同意见的人,在他们看来,不仅是观点错误,更是品质败坏的人。
如果我不赞成政府大规模干预来解决贫困问题,这并不代表我讨厌穷人。如果我不同意实行单一支付者的医疗制度,这并不代表我不尊重老人和病人。如果我不认同我们需要立即花费数万亿资金来应对气候变化,这并不意味着我对环境保护漠不关心。如果我主张美国应该执行其移民法律,这也不意味着我讨厌移民;这样的例子还有很多。

During my time living in San Francisco, I would often have political discussions with liberals, and while these exchanges were always civil, I frequently heard comments to the effect of "you seem like a nice person, I never would have guessed you were a Republican." This wasn't said with malice; in fact, I suspect it was something of a compliment, as though I was the rare "good" Republican, in contrast to the stereotype of the super-Christian bogeyman who hates everyone but his family (and probably hates them, too).
I love the book The Righteous Mind, and highly recommend it to everyone--some of the basic findings of the book are relevant here. Why liberals need conservatives, and vice versa . Specifically, while conservatives and moderates were pretty good at guessing how the other side views the world, liberals, especially extreme liberals, were frequently off base. For example, a majority of liberals thought that conservatives would disagree with statements to the effect that harming defenseless animals is wrong, or that justice is one of the most important elements of society. Things like that make me wonder if many liberals have ever met a conservative--if I'm too busy to attend a benefit for sea turtles, it's not because I'm at home killing puppies or working to deny others their rights.

在我住在旧金山的时候,我经常和自由派人士进行政治讨论。虽然这些讨论总是很文明,但我经常听到人们说:“你这人看起来很不错,我从来没想过你是共和党人。”这并不是出于恶意,实际上,我猜这是一种赞美,好像我是那个罕见的“好”共和党人,与那些极端的、只关心自己家人(甚至可能连家人都憎恨)的基督徒恶棍形象形成鲜明对比。
我非常喜欢《正义之心》这本书,强烈推荐给大家——书中的一些基本发现在这里非常贴切。为什么自由派需要保守派,反之亦然。特别是,保守派和温和派在猜测对方如何看待世界方面相当擅长,而自由派,尤其是极端自由派,常常偏离实际。
比如,许多自由派人士误以为保守派会反对一些基本原则,比如伤害无防御能力的动物是错误的,或者正义是社会中最重要的组成部分。这样的误解让我感到疑惑,一些自由派人士是否真的了解保守派的立场——如果我因忙碌而无法出席海龟保护的公益活动,这并不意味着我在家中虐待小狗或者试图剥夺他人的权利。

Jeff Kesselman
Okay, here are a few I will say as an honest moderate progressive:
(1) That all conservatives are cheap and don't want to spend money on anyone else.
This is a big one. Conservatives tend to be against big government programs because they are afraid of bureaucracy and the costs thereof, but they arent *necessarily* against financially assisting others. One of the fathers of conservative economics, Milton Friedman, in fact proposed a "negative income tax" that would give every citizen of the US a basic income without any bureaucracy beyond the existing IRS.

好的,以下是我作为一个诚实的温和进步派要说的一些话:
(1) 所有保守派都很吝啬,不愿意在别人身上花钱。
这是一个大问题。保守派通常反对大政府项目,因为他们担心官僚主义及其成本,但这并不意味着他们必然反对在经济上帮助他人。保守派经济学的一位重要奠基人,米尔顿·弗里德曼实际上提出了一个“负所得税”方案,这个方案能够在不增加现有美国国税局之外的任何官僚机构的情况下,为美国每位公民提供一份基本收入。

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(2) That all conservatives are unempathic and don't care about others.
Many conservatives, right or wrong, believe that the best solution that helps everyone is a more free market, and that most of the problems come from market restriction.
(3) That all conservatives are republicans, and that the republican party represents "what it means to be a conservative." There are a lot of conservatives that have figured out that the RP has been doing as much to twist the market for their patrons as anyone, and are not happy about it.

所有保守派都缺乏同情心,不关心他人。
许多保守派人士,不论对错,相信最佳的解决方案是更自由的市场,他们认为大多数问题源于市场的限制。
以为所有保守派都是共和党成员,以及共和党就能完全代表保守派的立场。实际上很多保守派人士已经认识到,共和党为了其金主的利益而操纵市场的行为,与其他人并无二致,他们对此感到不满。

(4) That biggest one-- that Conservatives see the world the same way they do. There is a lot of science now showing that the cognitive biases that tend to lead someone to be liberal are very different from the ones that tend to lead one to be conservative.
(5) That conservatoires don't care about "fairness." They certainly do, they just tend to define it differently. Conservatives tend to define fair by rules, that everyone is playing by the same rules. Liberals tend to define fair by outcomes, that everyone has an equal chance for the same outcome.

最大的问题是——保守派看待世界的方式和他们一样。现在有很多科学研究表明,倾向于使人变得自由的认知偏见与倾向于使人变得保守的认知偏见是非常不同的
保守派不在乎“公平”。他们确实关心,只是他们倾向于以不同的方式定义它。保守派倾向于通过规则来定义公平,即每个人都按照相同的规则竞争。而自由派则倾向于通过结果来定义公平,即每个人都应该有平等的机会获得相同的结果。

Michael David Cobb Bowen
What major misconceptions do liberals have about conservatives?
I was raised as a Progressive within the 'Talented Tenth' in one of the wealthiest black communities in America. When the black sprinters for the US team were booed at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, I was shocked that the best in the world were heckled for raising the American flag. It made me reconsider what black men are expected to do and be with regard to patriotism, especially when they are successful. As part of that investigative process, I registered Republican and strove to understand and become a part of the American Right, and so I began a blog which is a journal of that passage. By becoming this 'paradox' a black American Conservative, I witnessed many myths. Here are some of them.

自由主义者对保守主义者有哪些主要的误解?
我在美国最富有的黑人社区之一,被培养成了一名进步主义者。2000年悉尼奥运会上,美国黑人短跑运动员遭到嘘声,我震惊于世界顶尖运动员因高举美国国旗而受到嘲弄。这促使我重新思考社会对黑人男性,尤其是成功人士在爱国主义方面的期望。作为这一探索过程的一部分,我注册成为共和党人,努力理解并成为美国右翼的一部分,我开设了博客记录这一过程。成为这样一个“悖论”——美国黑人保守派,我亲眼见证了许多关于保守派的荒谬见解,以下是其中的一些。

The first myth is that conservatives are white, want to stay white and interpret all racial issues the same way liberals do and because of that, actively oppose Liberals based on racial or racist principles.
In fact Conservatives spend relatively little time thinking about race and in particular have not evolved ways of speaking different 'racial languages' to different racial constituencies. The myth is that Conservatives speak a 'dog whistle' language to whites. The fact is that Conservatives want to be non-racial and speak to other character traits instead of race. This appeals to people who are not concerned with racial identity as central to politics, which does in fact resonate with people who are nominally 'white'.

第一个误解是,保守派全是白人,他们希望保持白人身份,并以与自由派相同的方式看待所有种族问题,因此基于种族或种族主义原则积极反对自由派。
实际上,保守派并没有过多地纠结于种族问题,也没有形成针对不同种族群体的特殊“种族话语”。流传着一个误区,认为保守派对白人使用一种隐晦的“狗哨”政治语言。然而,真实情况是保守派倾向于不以种族作为区分,而是关注个体的其他品质。这种立场对于那些不将种族身份视作政治核心的人来说很有吸引力,这也确实与那些在名义上属于“白人”群体的人产生了共鸣。

The second myth is that Conservatives are born and not made.
There is this idea that only if you are raised in a particular kind of Christianity, or live in the South or did not get some crucial education or some other demographic stereotype, that you are likely to be and stay Conservative. Liberals almost always ignore or discount those Americans who grew up liberal or progressive and then thought their way away from those ideologies. I don't know for certain, but I would guess that there are more Progressives who became Conservative than the other way around.

第二个误解是,保守派是天生的,不是后天形成的。
有一种观点认为,只有你在特定类型的基督教环境中长大,或生活在南方,或没有接受某些关键教育,或符合其他某些人口统计学上的刻板印象,你才可能成为保守派。自由派几乎总是忽视或贬低那些在自由派或进步派环境中长大,但后来通过思考转变立场的美国人。我不确定,但我猜是进步派变成保守党的人比保守党变成进步派的人多。

The third myth is that the American Right is just like the Right in other countries.
This is especially annoying when it comes to Germany. Liberals tend to blithely associate Conservatism with Fascism when it comes to the matter of Conservative support of military service and military engagement. Very few would stop to look at the founding principles of the Nazi Party and see why, in principle, it is a Socialist worker's party. Because of this, Liberals assume for example, that nobody who escaped Nazi Germany would become an American Conservative, but in fact there is an entire school of Conservative thought called the Straussian School.

第三个误解是,美国右翼与其他国家的右翼相同。
特别是当涉及到德国时,这一点尤其令人烦恼。自由派倾向于不加思索地将保守主义与法西斯主义联系起来,尤其是在保守派支持军事服务和军事介入的问题上。很少有人会停下来查看纳粹党的创始原则,了解它在原则上为何是一个社会主义工人党。因此,自由派可能会错误地假设,逃离纳粹德国的人不会成为美国保守派,但实际上有一个完整的保守思想学派,叫做施特劳斯学派。

The fourth myth is that Conservatism is monolithic.
Liberals mistake conservative political philosophies for a dictionary definition of 'conservative' like 'lack of nerve' or 'unwillingness to change'. Few people, including many if not most Republicans, bother to read books by conservative thinkers like Hayek, Oakshott, Strauss or Kirk. Just as few Liberals, including many if not most Democrats, bother to read books by Adorno, Marcuse or Rorty. I think in general this is because Liberals assume that Republicans are true exemplars of Conservative principles and that their policy positions are principled.

第四个误解是,保守主义是单一的、一成不变的。
自由派常常将保守派的政治哲学误解为“保守”一词的字典定义,如“缺乏进取心”或“不愿意变革”。包括许多共和党人在内,很少有人会去阅读哈耶克、奥克肖特、斯特劳斯或柯克等保守派思想家的书籍。同样,包括许多民主党人在内,自由派也很少有人会去阅读阿多诺、马尔库塞或罗蒂的书籍。我认为这主要是因为自由派认为共和党人是保守派原则的真正代表,并且他们的政策立场是有原则性的。

Doug Garnett
I'm a moderate to conservative Democrat... The misconception that bothers me is that liberals refuse to discuss the extraordinary downside of bureaucracy on issues they care about. (Of course, conservatives are the same way - ridiculing bureaucracy on one hand then demanding extraordinary waste in bureaucracy to make sure "no one ever defrauds welfare"...)
We must begin talking about this - on both sides. Because there are two absolute guarantees for bureaucracy (with only the rarest exceptions):
1. Bureaucracies only grow - they don't diminish.
2. Bureaucracies tend to see preventing risk as their primary guidance. But risk is sometimes/often necessary for success. So they often stand in the way of things we need to do as a country.

我是介于温和派和保守派之间的民主党人。让我感到困扰的一个误解是,自由派往往不愿讨论官僚体制在他们关心的问题上可能带来的严重弊端。保守派也有同样的问题——一方面批评官僚体制,另一方面为了杜绝福利欺诈,不惜在官僚体制中造成巨大的资源浪费。
我们需要在双方之间就此问题进行坦诚的讨论。官僚体制有两个不可否认的普遍特征(只有极少数情况下会有所不同):
官僚体制只会扩张,不会缩减。
官僚体制倾向于将预防风险作为其主要目标。但风险有时是成功所必需的,因此它们往往成为我们国家必须采取行动的障碍。

Bureaucracy IS necessary --- but must be controlled. But try to get my liberal friends to discuss, for example, EPA mission creep or how bureaucratic management of renewable energy programs may not deliver the good benefits we thought they would. (Like wind farms whose energy isn't actually used...but we paid a lot for them to exist.)
That said, try to get a conservative to understand the wasted bureaucratic millions for government paid drug testing that uncovers 3 or 4 cases of abuse
Both sides are really bad on this.

官僚体制是必需的,但必须得到控制。然而,要让我的自由派朋友们讨论这些问题,比如环保署的职能越界,或是官僚体系管理的可再生能源项目并未如我们所愿带来好处,这很困难。(就像那些风力发电场,虽然我们为了它们投入了大量资金,但它们产生的电力实际上并未被有效利用。)
即便这样,要让保守派人士明白,政府出资的药物检测项目往往耗费了数百万美元,却仅仅揭露了几起滥用事件
实际上,在识别和解决这种浪费问题上,双方都做得不够好。

Gary Teal
What major misconceptions do liberals have about conservatives?
Liberals seem convinced that conservatives don't care about people in need, know very well that that they are working against the poor, and are happy that the poor are not being helped. To the contrary, we strongly believe that the best way to help the poor is to allow the free market to create business opportunities not only for jobs but for the poor themselves to become owners and employers.

自由派对保守派有哪些主要误解?
自由派似乎坚信保守派不关心有需要的人,我很清楚他们是在伤害穷人,并且对穷人得不到帮助感到满意。然而,事实恰恰相反,我们坚信帮助穷人的最佳途径是让自由市场创造商业机会,不仅是为工作,也是为了让穷人自己成为业主和雇主。

We believe that even well-intentioned government programs often reduce the availability and value of jobs. This is not in any way a suggestion that there should not be a strong safety net for those who may never be able to care for themselves. But those who are poor and able to work need opportunities to work their way out of poverty, and government can't provide those opportunities (apart from directly employing the poor, which is a good thing and an excellent opportunity for many, as long as the jobs are necessary to the operations of the government and not created merely to employ people.)

我们认为,即使是出于良好意图的政府计划,也经常削弱工作的可用性和价值。这绝不是说不应该为那些永远无法自给自足的人提供强大的安全网。但是,那些能够工作且愿意摆脱贫困的人需要机会,而政府无法提供这些机会(除了直接雇佣穷人,这对许多人来说是好事,也是一个很好的机会,只要这些工作对政府运作是必要的,而不是仅仅为了提供就业而创造的)。

Large government programs, by taking money out of the private economy, can actually prevent many of the poor from escaping poverty. Where that happens, the cost outweighs the gain. This idea that money is more useful in the hands of those who made it can be attacked as trickle down economics or rising tide, etc., but it's not an idea that is discredited or refuted, just one that is fairly criticized as not being a cure-all. In many cases, this discussion turns on the question of whether one believes it's okay for rich people to get richer, as long as middle class and poor people are also getting richer.

大型政府项目通过从私营经济中抽走资金,实际上可能阻止了许多穷人摆脱贫困。当这种情况发生时,代价就超过了收益。这种观点认为,钱在创造财富的人手中能发挥更大作用,常被批判为“滴漏经济学”或潮涨效应等。,但这不是一个被驳斥或证伪的观点,而是一个被公平批评为不是万能药的观点。在许多情况下,这场讨论归结为一个问题,即是否认为只要中产阶级和穷人也在变得更富有,富人变得更富有就是可以接受的。

Conservatives are asking now whether the liberal solution, the so-called War on Poverty, is effective at all. We care about the poor, but don't want to merely maintain them in poverty. We want to see prosperous families that have enough income to live comfortably, make discretionary purchases, and save money both for inevitable downturns and eventual retirement. It seems clear that programs that pay people to stay poor have backfired. Conservatives do not think (as liberals honestly seem to believe) that the poor are primarily lazy or unintelligent. On the contrary, the poor are quite aware of how government programs work, and they know that if they save enough money, the result will be that they will lose their benefits.

保守派现在正在质疑自由派的解决方案,即所谓的“对贫困的战争”,是否真的有效。我们关心穷人,但不想仅仅让他们维持在贫困状态。我们期望看到家庭兴旺发达,拥有充足的收入不仅能保障舒适的生活,还能自由购买非必需品,并为经济不景气时期和退休生活储备资金。显然,那些旨在让人们保持贫困状态的计划已经适得其反。保守派并不认为(正如自由派似乎真诚地相信的那样)穷人主要是因为懒惰或不聪明。相反,穷人非常清楚政府计划是如何运作的,他们知道如果他们存够了钱,结果将是他们会失去福利待遇。

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