I think this thread makes good points although I am not 100% onboard with some details. I would emphasize that as strongly and sincerely as I (and possibly you) believe that everyone is a person deserving a life without suffering and with dignity, and that we should help everyone achieve that, the right wing values are held just as strongly: some people do not deserve help, happiness, or dignity. https://mstdn.social/@leahmcelrath/109502550650712354
Often in right wing thinking, people don’t deserve help because of a moral failing, and, often, needing help is a result of a moral failing. To the conservative, poverty is caused by laziness, so poor people naturally don’t deserve help. Illness is caused by an unhealthy lifestyle, lack of self control, laziness. Discrimination is a result of some people (*cough*Blacks*cough*) being naturally more violent, more criminal, and, of course, lazy.
At best attempts to argue with these judgments will be seen as count-intuitive. There must be something wrong with data that shows immigrants engage in *less* criminal activity than “real” citizens. More often, such arguments are viewed with suspicion, lies in service of an immoral program to encourage the *actually evil* act of being poor or coming from another country into *ours*. (“We took this one fair ‘n square. They weren’t using it!”)
The important thing to realize is these beliefs are fundamental, moral judgments. They’re going to be next to impossible to argue out of people. And also realize that conservatives view basic progressive values as *wrong*, if not outright *immoral*.
In addition to peer confirmation, anything that seems to frustrate their own personal striving in any way, as equity goals will do, is perceived as immoral because they feel they are axiomatically innocent.
