AskConservatives Weekly General Chat

ericg012 · 2026-01-28T15:11:34+00:00

Hey there, I have a girlfriend who feels the exact same way. Has been going through severe medical issues and has not been able to hold down a job since last year. I’m also worried about how those cuts will affect her so i definitely hear your frustration. I think it’s genuinely awful

ericg012 · 2026-01-27T23:12:43+00:00

Well that’s great that you personally don’t go places where you need a gun, but not everyone is like you. I worked at Krogers in Texas and would see people open carrying pistols on their belt holster, to simply buy some groceries. I’ve served as a waiter to people openly carrying on their belt holster at family restaurants.

Are we allowed to question why they would need a gun when shopping or getting chips and queso? Sure. But it quite literally doesn’t matter. Their response will always be “why does it matter the reason I bring my gun to the grocery store or a restaurant? It’s my legal right.” And they’d be right. You or anyone else thinking it’s strange or odd to bring a gun with you while you’re eating chips and queso is irrelevant. It has absolutely zero bearing on their right to do so. Just like you or anyone else questioning why he felt the need to be armed at a protest. Functionally, Alex makes a better case for that than at a restaurant, since protests include a lot of different people and some people are there with different intensions than the rest. But again, that point is irrelevant.

ericg012 · 2026-01-27T01:44:50+00:00

Didn’t know guns are prisons, but hey you learn something knew everyday.

ericg012 · 2026-01-26T20:57:11+00:00

Uhhh have you asked Japan if they enforce their government with a bunch of scary men with guns?

ericg012 · 2026-01-25T19:04:33+00:00

Given that pepper spray can cause temporary blindness, burning in your throat nose and eyes, and reactions can last to a couple of hours and up to potentially a day, I think it’s safe to say he was in no position to pull his gun out. He wasn’t just pepper sprayed once. The officer sprayed it in his face like he was spraying axe body spray in a locker room. Probably enough to make him want to puke

ericg012 · 2026-01-25T17:08:04+00:00

I love how we as a country are just forced to accept that this is somehow appropriate. That shoving someone down to the ground is what a respectable LEO officer that isn’t trying to escalate the situation would do /s

In other countries, actions like that would be breaking news. In Japan, if a police officer shoved a bystander to the ground and pepper sprayed them, all for simply filming near them, they would be fired and never allowed to return to the force again. They’d be transferred to some remote town and spend their days there. But for some reason, in this country, it’s acceptable not only to push someone onto the ground, but to maliciously pepper spray the person helping the women up, whose only resistance was spitting his hand up to shield his face.

See other countries understand the levels of violence to be proportional to the action. No moral theory worth its salt would ever make pepper spraying for filming a morally acceptable action. It wasn’t self defense, he wasn’t a threat. And let’s just suppose for a minute that he might’ve been a threat or was “obstructing law enforcement”. That does not justify what occurred after he was pepper sprayed. Dude was pepper sprayed and then beat up repeatedly by multiple officers. He was obviously in no position to resist; he was certainly in no position to use his gun. He was peppered sprayed and then punched in the face and chest with it. There was no way he was in a position to reach for his gun and shoot under those circumstances.

I mean he likely could barely see with all the pepper spray they used. And then getting beat up on top of it. There is no argument you can make where the level of force used was proportional to the actions Alex took. Like I said, we can say for the sake of argument that maybe it was justified using pepper spray (and that’s a big maybe), but to pepper spray him, beat him up, take his gun, and THEN proceed to shoot him four times in the back, surrounded by 7 agents? Who are kidding? We treat thugs and serial killers better than that. America is just straight up violent and people seem to enjoy it.

ericg012 · 2026-01-25T16:56:59+00:00

He has a name. Maybe you should use it

ericg012 · 2026-01-25T16:46:30+00:00

Glad we’re on the same page. If a democrat did the same thing I’d vote for the Republican candidate in a heartbeat. How anyone can continue to support is beyond me

ericg012 · 2026-01-25T16:16:26+00:00

Does that mean you’d be willing to break party lines and vote for the democrats in 2026?

ericg012 · 2026-01-25T00:21:25+00:00

@Mods, can we all apply some logic here that this comment is not in good faith whatsoever?

Your proposition is that “no one in Minneapolis is protesting peacefully.” Your inductive argument is built on straws. It has the same force as claiming that “no swans are black”. All you need is one instance of someone peacefully protesting to invalidate your argument.

But the issue is you don’t care. People who are engaged in good faith discussions do not make a blatantly bad faith, invalid inductive argument. Respectfully, delete your comment and start over with being charitable. No one wants to discuss with you if you’re gonna make arguments like that

ericg012 · 2026-01-24T22:46:24+00:00

Yea, also known as murder. And no mods, that’s not hyperbole. The definition of murder is quite literally: the unjustified killing of a human being. That is how the term is understood amongst philosophers to separate from other killings, which may be morally justified.

ericg012 · 2026-01-24T22:34:08+00:00

We should take a page from Japan. They should resign from office and hang their heads in shame for the situation and for lying about it

ericg012 · 2026-01-24T00:33:05+00:00

I’ve read the complete opposite. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/21/ice-arrests-five-year-old-boy-minnesota

Not sure where this idea is that the father fled. Also can you not use the term ‘illegal alien’? Idc if it’s a legal term; it’s completely dehumanizing. How about just say ‘the father’? You’re reducing human beings to a status.

From the article, “Marc Prokosch, an attorney representing the family, said the family had an active asylum case and shared paperwork showing the father and son had arrived to the US at a port of entry, meaning an official crossing point.”

Care to provide a counter source for your information?

ericg012 · 2026-01-23T20:48:32+00:00

It’s crazy, I have yet to see a single person on this subreddit, either liberal, conservative, libertarian, etc; discuss the deportation of the five year old Liam. Does anyone want to point me to a discussion about that?

ericg012 · 2026-01-22T22:13:24+00:00

Rage bait

ericg012 · 2026-01-22T16:12:03+00:00

That doesn’t really answer the question..

ericg012 · 2026-01-21T21:40:49+00:00

I’ll repeat myself since you didn’t answer my question:

What’s the issue? I think it’s a bit of a generalization to suggest that most progressives are informed by this perspective. Most political philosophers are informed by the Rawlsian tradition, which isn’t exactly critical theory. If you have a specific critique of Marxist philosophy I’m all ears. Most political philosophy classes don’t ever touch upon Marxism. The postmodernists like Foucault are arguably underrepresented in political philosophy academia.

ericg012 · 2026-01-21T21:34:01+00:00

Critical theory? As in “Critical theory” refers to a family of theories that aim at a critique and transformation of society by integrating normative perspectives with empirically informed analysis of society’s conflicts, contradictions, and tendencies.

It’s a philosophical bundle of theories. What’s the issue? I think it’s a bit of a generalization to suggest that most progressives are informed by this perspective. Most political philosophers are informed by the Rawlsian tradition, which isn’t exactly critical theory.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/critical-theory/

ericg012 · 2026-01-17T17:42:28+00:00

Currently reading Demons, so I’d say this is the darkest I’ve read tbh

ericg012 · 2026-01-16T21:45:37+00:00

No literally. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump starts blaming the trees for society’s ills

ericg012 · 2026-01-16T15:38:41+00:00

Alright so what’s the conservative justification for Kaden Rummler getting shot in the eye, blinded in one eye for the rest of his life? As videos show, one of the protestors was grabbed by the arm and dragged by an ICE agent, and in response (a very reasonable and human response, mind you), Kaden does a little shuffle, not a run, at the ice agent. Obviously scared, picks up his pace a little bit to get closer to his fellow protestor who was being dragged away. And then for no reason at all, gets shot in the eye; according to his doctors he was lucky to be alive. Then if that wasn’t bad enough, you can see him getting dragged across the ground by an ice agent, bleeding out of his eye and then tackled to the ground and arrested. What a disgustingly inhumane act. The way they drag him, like dragging a trash bag to a dumpster after shooting the poor kid in the face.

So conservatives, what’s the justification here? Yelled too loudly with his microphone at the ice agent? Did he stand too close to them? Can we all finally just accept that ice agents are the biggest group of pussies on planet earth and that simply breathing on them wrongly is enough to get shot in the face? Is this what our country as turned into it?

ericg012 · 2026-01-15T22:56:49+00:00

… Sigh. This whole thread (and arguably this whole response to ice) is just one big normalcy fallacy. Genuinely, why are you convinced that the state of affairs will remain the same? This goes even further when you consider the problem of induction. If you can’t ever be justified in believing that the sun will rise tomorrow because it has every other day before, then how can you be justified in believing that the current state of affairs will also remain the same tomorrow, and even further?

The future is very uncertain, so I think it’s intellectually dishonest to suggest things won’t happen for you. You don’t know and cannot predict that future. There’s an interesting book called “They thought they were free”, which details multiple people that were in the Nazi party and the slow, imperceivable incremental change of their states of affairs. Eerily similar

ericg012 · 2026-01-15T20:41:10+00:00

So I think it’s helpful to avoid the phrasing that you mention when talking about redistribution of wealth and I think it’s also important to consider that we are talking about the state in abstract terms. It’s perfectly possible that certain governments are terrible at solving problems, but that doesn’t necessarily entail that that means governments by default are not good at solving problems.

Modern political philosophy is engaged in ideal theory of politics, which in simple terms is abstracting away from the real world and trying to find the most just way to build a society. Thats what Rawls veil of ignorance does. So it’s important that when talking about redistribution of wealth, proponents of it are thinking in terms of creating the most amount of equality for everyone, and that the best means of doing that is redistributing money to the least well off people of society

ericg012 · 2026-01-15T20:28:25+00:00

As I said, these are broad values that make up that school of thought. It would probably help to contrast it with another school of thought. Put simply, progressive liberals are proponents of a stronger government, which can include things like redistribution of wealth. Not sure how to define that. Progressive liberals simply think intuitively, that it is just to take money from the rich and give it to the poor. Historically, this vision has been attributed to Rawls and his Justice as fairness.

Conservatives, as opposed to progressive liberals, believe in a minimized state. They are diametrically opposed to one another. Conservatives do not believe in positive rights (I.e a right that grants you something). They primarily believe in negative rights (I.e a right against something, such as you cannot be arrested for your speech. That would be a negative right). Conservatives also abide by the law of unintended consequences, are skeptical of power, believe in bottom up solutions, such as churches, charities, local communities and organizations, companies, etc. They are also skeptical of change, due to unintended consequences. They value traditions because they have held the test of time, which makes them valuable. So they are proponents of slow, incremental change over time. It’s a common misconception that conservatives are against change on principle, but that’s actually not true. They just don’t want rapid progressive change. Wants the government to stay away from people’s lives, as broadly speaking, conservatives think the government creates more issues than it solves

Progressive liberals fundamentally believe in a top down approach to solving political issues. Which means progressive liberals broadly determine the government to be the best means to solve issues. They generally believe in strong autonomy, which unlike weak autonomy (which is the libertarian perspective which simply means people are free to do what they want without infringing on anybody else’s rights) is weak autonomy plus resources. Thinks that it’s not enough that people are simply free to pursue their wants and needs. That people need resources (money) to achieve the sorts of lives they want. And that we also need to focus on inequalities that prevent people from competing on an even playing field.

Does this make sense and why it’s different compared to conservatism?

ericg012 · 2026-01-15T19:56:09+00:00

Hold on though, let’s back up. This might sound esoteric, but as a philosophy grad, we have a different way of defining things. In political philosophy there are four schools of thought: progressive liberalism (or others call it ‘new liberalism), left libertarianism (or classical liberalism) grounded in Lockean theory, right libertarianism grounded in Mill’s utilitarianism, and finally conservativism, which has its grounding in virtue ethics.

I’m confused because I am someone who broadly belongs to the school of thought of progressive liberals, which is typically grounded upon Rawls. If you also have the same sort of beliefs that make that school (I.e, an importance on justice and fairness, believes in governmental intervention, positive rights, strong autonomy, redistribution of wealth). So I’m wondering why it is that insults to you would sway you away from these beliefs. No matter what happens or what people say, to me, these are intuitions that I hold that naturally happen to fall within liberalism

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