Ask Lord Spatula

From time to time, His Rudeness actually gets...well...asked about stuff.

Yeah, I know.  It's always a major surprise to me, too.

Anyway, today's query comes from the Realm's answer to Bill Whittle, Bob Blount.  And he writes:

It's been my experience over the past 20 years, in talking politics/philosophy with a LOT of people, that conservatives are at least 500 times more willing to accept reasoned disagreement than libs are. In other words, if there's something you and I disagree on, what happens is that sometimes we discuss it, sometimes we don't, but every time we either explicitly or implicitly agree to disagree, we both celebrate the fact that we live in a country where that's possible, and we move on to the next issue.

With libs, that almost NEVER happens. I'm having trouble thinking of even one example where I gave a lib my reasoned disagreement, and he gave me reasoned disagreement back. Instead, what I get back is exactly what we've learned to expect from libs: Hostility, hatred, intolerance, insults as to my motives, etc.

Conservatives seem to have no trouble with the very Jeffersonian idea that someone can disagree with you, and he can still be a good person with good motives who simply has reached different conclusions about a specific topic. To libs, OTOH, that sentence seems to be utterly inconceivable - and I chose that word with care because that's exactly what it is, they literally CANNOT conceive of it, the concept is unable to enter their consciousness.

So my question is the obvious one: Assuming that you've observed the same thing, why do you think that happens? I know what Sowell has written about it, and I know what I think about it, but I'd really like to know what YOU think about it.

Well, what I'm  going to do is this:  I'm gonna throw it open to the Denizens.  And then on Sunday, I'm going to give you my  answer.

I realize that it sounds like an "I dunno, whadda YOU t'ink?" - but I really have some ideas on it, and just need to get them organized.