"I confess I find Asian support for these policies mystifying, as I fail to see how they are in Asians’ interest." <- I see this sentiment stated quite frequently. The statement assumes that the person uttering it fully understands what the particular group or individual believes are its interests. It puts interests above all else and principles become irrelevant. That is, of course, a rather dangerous way of looking at the world.
When you place interests above principle then the methods used to achieve those interests become trivial. It places all the focus on the end goal while ignoring the methods to reach those goals. Which, of course, can lead to all kinds of ethically and morally dangerous policies.
Additionally placing interests over principles leads you to inventing reasons why people believe and behave they way they do. For example:
"We can speculate (and, yes, generalize) about Asians’ desire to please the elite, single-minded focus on self-advancement, conformity and obsequiousness, lack of deep post-Enlightenment conviction, timidity toward centralized authority (however unreasoned), indifference to liberty, lack of thoughtful and audacious individualism, and excessive tolerance for bossy, mindless social engineering, etc."
If, instead of looking at interests, you look at the principles people hold dear you do not have to guess or invent reasons why people think of behave in certain ways because they will *tell you*.
I suspect that the principle that Asians support that so confuses Amy is one of fairness. This is another area where a lot of discussion and understanding needs to take place before you can fully understand what drives people. The reasons is that while pretty much everyone agrees that fairness is a desirable goal, the definition of fair actually means differs greatly. For example, a rather simple question: You have 3 poker buddies ordering a pizza for their weekly poker game. The pizza costs $12 and has 12 slices. Poker player Bob is rich, John is middle class and Tom is poor. Due to this, Bob pays $6, John $4 and Tom $2. When the pizza shows up, how do you divide it?
Does Bob take 6 slices, John 4 and Tom 2? That is fair as it is what each contributed when buying the pizza. Or do you divide it so each play gets 4 slices? That could also be considered fair.
When discussing these issues every one talks about fairness but most of the time liberals define fairness differently than conservatives. Liberals tend toward dividing equally while conservatives tend towards dividing by contribution. We see this definitional confusion all the time. The discussions of welfare, taxes, medical care, etc all hinge on fairness but everyone's definition differs. This causes the conversations around these issues to degrade into moral shouting matches where each side, working from their own definition of fair, accuses the other of being evil/hateful/unpatriotic/whatever because they are talking past each other.
I happen to agree that the Democratic Party is a pernicious influence today. And the reason I believe the Democratic Party is going off course is that they are working from a definition of fairness that isn't workable in the real world. The way to counter that is to actually understand why they believe what they do and argue about that viewpoint. In other words, we need to discuss principles instead of interests.
"I confess I find Asian support for these policies mystifying, as I fail to see how they are in Asians’ interest." <- I see this sentiment stated quite frequently. The statement assumes that the person uttering it fully understands what the particular group or individual believes are its interests. It puts interests above all else and principles become irrelevant. That is, of course, a rather dangerous way of looking at the world.
When you place interests above principle then the methods used to achieve those interests become trivial. It places all the focus on the end goal while ignoring the methods to reach those goals. Which, of course, can lead to all kinds of ethically and morally dangerous policies.
Additionally placing interests over principles leads you to inventing reasons why people believe and behave they way they do. For example:
"We can speculate (and, yes, generalize) about Asians’ desire to please the elite, single-minded focus on self-advancement, conformity and obsequiousness, lack of deep post-Enlightenment conviction, timidity toward centralized authority (however unreasoned), indifference to liberty, lack of thoughtful and audacious individualism, and excessive tolerance for bossy, mindless social engineering, etc."
If, instead of looking at interests, you look at the principles people hold dear you do not have to guess or invent reasons why people think of behave in certain ways because they will *tell you*.
I suspect that the principle that Asians support that so confuses Amy is one of fairness. This is another area where a lot of discussion and understanding needs to take place before you can fully understand what drives people. The reasons is that while pretty much everyone agrees that fairness is a desirable goal, the definition of fair actually means differs greatly. For example, a rather simple question: You have 3 poker buddies ordering a pizza for their weekly poker game. The pizza costs $12 and has 12 slices. Poker player Bob is rich, John is middle class and Tom is poor. Due to this, Bob pays $6, John $4 and Tom $2. When the pizza shows up, how do you divide it?
Does Bob take 6 slices, John 4 and Tom 2? That is fair as it is what each contributed when buying the pizza. Or do you divide it so each play gets 4 slices? That could also be considered fair.
When discussing these issues every one talks about fairness but most of the time liberals define fairness differently than conservatives. Liberals tend toward dividing equally while conservatives tend towards dividing by contribution. We see this definitional confusion all the time. The discussions of welfare, taxes, medical care, etc all hinge on fairness but everyone's definition differs. This causes the conversations around these issues to degrade into moral shouting matches where each side, working from their own definition of fair, accuses the other of being evil/hateful/unpatriotic/whatever because they are talking past each other.
I happen to agree that the Democratic Party is a pernicious influence today. And the reason I believe the Democratic Party is going off course is that they are working from a definition of fairness that isn't workable in the real world. The way to counter that is to actually understand why they believe what they do and argue about that viewpoint. In other words, we need to discuss principles instead of interests.