Being open minded?

Question

I consider myself fairly open-minded, politically moderate, realistically iconclastic... etc.

My question is this: Conservatives are often discussed and seen as being closed minded. I can understand this when talking about the far right in particular, especially the religious right. What I fail to understand is how people that say "All conservatives are evil" - "All men just want to put down women"- "Anyone that doesnt think George Bush is an Idiot is stupid" - goes along with the idea of open mindedness.

I feel like i hear just as much closed minded nonsense from the far right AND the far left.

Anyone agree?

comment to life long democrat:
why is it that you see fox news as a propaganda machine but not cnn or the corrosponding liberal propaganda machine?

really... aren't both sides being forcefed.

also kudos to forgetting parties. too many people can't defend their own positions without hearing what their favorite talking head has to say

Answer 1

How about this, forget the right, forget the left, forget Republicans, forget Democrats, forget the parties, forget the ideologies. Now, can you hold a debate with someone on your own? Can you think on your own sustaining individuality with the pressures of the norm pressing on you, or do you give in?

Answer 2

People from all walks of life make generalizations. Take Stony and John Galts answers. They both make some sense and I noticed that John Galt's ends his paragraph by pretty much stating, fear should be your ultimate guide. The pie example...say someone eats a pie that's made from several kinds of berries and that person dies. Should the assumption be that eating any berry will kill you? Or should you study the situation and determine if a certain type did it, did the person have an allergic reaction that maybe others don't have, maybe look into the person's past and/or health?
Moderates have a lot to learn from and I really don't see why anyone would think a political party would have all the answers.
My assumption is that Conservatives are slower to accept change if it interferes with already made assumptions. Some liberal-minded people do, too, but many will at least listen to another point. Some don't and happen to be raised liberal but many are somewhere imbetween.

Answer 3

Yes -- fanatics on both ends of the spectrum like to bash other other end of the spectrum with sweeping generalizations.

And yes, conservatives do tend to be more closed-minded than liberals -- but that's not an insult. That's just they way they process information. Conservatives value tradition, conformity and consistency -- so, to them, the default is "keep what we've got, until there is a reason to change it". That appears closed-minded, because they don't automatically accept anything new.

Liberals value diversity and change -- so they are much more likely to be open to new ideas -- but they also tend to be less consistent with follow through -- because they are open to new ideas and willing to change the mind more often.

The ideal is a balance between the two -- and that's what most moderates strive for.

Answer 4

I agree that both the far left and the far right are narrow-minded, but I think the today's conservatives are worse. The left hasn't routinely said cons are retarded or diseased. They don't have Rush Limbaugh spewing hateful attacks on people who don't think like him and they haven't written any children's books equating liberals as "monsters."
The left hasn't compared the right to Osama bin Laden. OBL killed 3000 including about 100 people I knew. Yet even the GOP candidates are allowing their supporters to compare Democratic candidates to Osama bin Laden. I'm sorry, that's disgusting, offensive and immoral.

On Yahoo, the cons attack more often and are far more obnoxious, offensive and willfully ignorant than the libs.

Like you, I'm independent/moderate but over the past six years I think the GOP has caused the present divisiveness in our society today.

Is the media liberal? Yes, but it always has been and really, should be. The press exists to question authority and that alone is a liberal trait, not a conservative one.

Was Jimmy Carter a failure as president? You bet.

Did Bill Clinton deserve impeachment? HELL YES!

But that doesn't mean that the GOP isn't far more responsible for the negative divisive state of our nation today than are the Democrats.

Answer 5

wow, some people try to sound so reasonable and yet fail so badly. Take Stony, he tries to sound reasonable and then says that republicans compare democrats to OBL. I'm a conservative and I haven't heard that. Of course, as soon as I say that I'm conservative stony thinks I'm some kind of loon. But stony I can't tell you how many democrats I've heard compare Bush and our military to Nazis or Hitler (Murtha, sheehan, Kennedy, Kerry, Feinstein, Boxer to name a few) Your party is damned when it comes to name calling.
To corygryph; being open to every new idea is not a good thing. Just like eating berries in the woods. Better to stick with what you know and determine what is good or bad than to gorge yourself on poison. Too many liberals seem to want change for changes sake. They rush into things that make no sense to most people. Drug legalization, gay marriage, and non marriage to name a couple. I have been around the world a couple of times and I've seen real poverty. I have seen what being too liberal can cause. I don't want that for my country. To some that makes me close minded, hateful, and evil.
A word about moderates; the watch of moderates is compromise. They think that getting half of the pie is good enough. Let me point out a compromise that they are willing to make. A man (or men) want to kill you, you don't want to die and instead want to be free. The moderates will compromise; they will let the bad men put a knife to your throat and promise not to slice off your head. The bad guys get something and you get something. Of course the next moderate compromise will have them slicing your throat rather than cutting off your head.
Extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice.

Answer 6

As a life-long Democrat, I've never said that ALL conservatives are closed-minded, but many of them are. They are fed a lot of propaganda on Fox News. They remind me of a flock of sheep, following the black one with the bell around his neck. How they can defend this administration is puzzling, to me. Our President is frankly embarrassing to this whole nation. He has alienated the whole world and I do not like this feeling of isolation and hate that comes from all directions. He needs to be stopped.

Answer 7

yerr i agree. everyone is genralising and trying to put their views on others. and some people will alwayz think that they are always right. i like to think im open minded but sometimes i get carried away....
xx

Answer 8

I love people who have open mind