
Why Being a Foster Child Made Me a Conservative - jeffreyrogers
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/21/opinion/foster-child-conservative.html
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_bxg1
It's so unproductive the way we make "personal responsibility" vs "victimhood"
a binary choice. You can either be a conservative, and be disallowed from ever
suggesting that something about your circumstances might be the slightest bit
unfair, or you can be a liberal, and be disallowed from ever suggesting that
anyone should try and take responsibility for their lives.

Everyone should try to be personally responsible to the best of their
capacity. And sometimes, systems really are unfair and really need to be
changed. It's not just one or the other.

Tribalism applied to worldview is the greatest casualty of the American
political sphere.

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LyndsySimon
It may be unproductive - and for what it's worth, I agree - but it also
highlights a core difference of ideology. Call it individualism versus
collectivism, personal responsibility versus victimhood, or whatever else you
want to apply to it; the fact remains that conservatives virtue signal by
claiming responsibility while liberals virtue signal by assigning victimhood,
regardless of whether either of those things are strictly true.

~~~
_bxg1
The point is that all of those versus-es you listed are a) spectrums, and b)
situational. The latter is more relevant, I think.

Always picking personal responsibility or always picking victimhood because
"that's your ideology" is like always using a hammer or always using a
screwdriver because "that's your tool".

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yayadarsh
100% agree. This type of dualistic thinking is one of the reasons common
political discourse in the US is so unproductive. There are (almost) no simple
black/white answers to anything, and the devil is usually in the (grey)
details.

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manux
I'm not sure what the author is trying to convey, and why he calls that
conservatism.

I'm not sure how social policies favouring good social and emotional health
for people to enable them to have prosperous and stable relationships have
anything to do with conservatism. I for one would not qualify such policies
like that.

My cynical belief is that the author possesses much more "taboo" conservative
beliefs which he justifies with this argument, but hopefully I'm wrong.

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Barrin92
The author associates his conservatism with a stable two-parent family and
upbringing and the virtue of personal responsibility.

Those two values might not always be the most talked about topics on a liberal
university campus but they're certainly as American as apple pie and largely
unrelated to modern political conservatism as a movement.

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relics443
Slightly off topic, but towards the end, he mentions that:

"Though they experienced homophobia and struggled financially..."

This particular case aside, why is all negativity towards homosexuality
grouped into homophobia? Is anyone who opposes homosexuality afraid of it (in
a literal translation)?

The dictionary.com definition of the suffix phobia is:

"a combining form meaning “fear,” occurring in loanwords from Greek (
hydrophobia); on this model, used in the names of mental disorders that have
the general sense “dread of, aversion toward” that specified by the initial
element:"

What about folks approaching from a standpoint that has neither a dread of,
nor an aversion towards homosexuals? Why are they called homophobic?

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spamizbad
Conservatives have a misunderstanding of liberal views of "non-traditional"
families and upbringings, which I think has been lost in the culture wars. As
a result, articles like these do a good job of tearing down strawmen.

The liberal argument was never "There is no benefit to having more than one
parent." or "It's no big deal if you're raised by a drug addict" Instead, it's
that _responsible_ parents have the right to shape their own household, and
that as a society we shouldn't judge them for that particular decision, and
instead offer support.

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anigbrowl
"Conservatism" is a moveable feast. He mentions homophobia directed towards
his adoptive parents; one wonders what he'd say to conservatives who argue
that homosexual partnerships and adoptions exemplify what's wrong with
society, an attitude it's easy to find examples of.

Not really seeing the HN relevance of this extremely subjective opinion piece
but OK.

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Overtonwindow
Is there a non-paywall link?

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_bxg1
You can open in an incognito tab; NYT uses cookies to track your limited
article count

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Overtonwindow
I didn’t know that, thank you!!!

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mywittyname
Articles like this annoy me. A person's political views are part of their
personality, it's not something they "chose." [0] It's especially ironic to
read an article with this flaw written by a person who literally just
graduated with a degree in Psychology from an ivy league institution.

Being a foster child did not make him conservative. He was born that way. The
tone of the article is that he's very angry that he's "different" and he feels
that people look down on him for it (by calling him a victim). Which is
understandable. But I think this article serves as therapy for the author.
It's certainly not saying anything new or insightful.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscientiousness#Political_at...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscientiousness#Political_attitudes_and_obedience_to_authority)

As an aside, the fact that Conscientiousness negatively correlates with
intelligence also explains why only 12% of the student body is conservative.
He's a rare combination.

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relics443
Who established the fact that Conscientiousness negatively correlates with
intelligence?

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mywittyname
The article I linked has eight citations on this.

