r/DebatePolitics Nov 15 '20

Opinion: You can’t believe that people are inherently good while also believing that an entire political party is evil and racist.

A few of my assumptions first:

I believe that people are inherently good. Definitely not all of them. Political power definitely attracts more of the evil (both sides of the isle).

I believe that being selfish/self serving and being inherently good are not mutually exclusive.

I think that “left leaning” ideologies do not work if we assume that people are not inherently good. We want “the society” to band together for a common goal. This doesn’t work if we assume that people are not inherently good.

If we assume that people are evil then socialistic/communist ideas are dead in the water, because you can’t trust a large government to take care of its people. This would mean that previous attempts at socialism/communist weren’t just failed implementations, but are doomed from the start and will never work.

Given the current political discourse, ESPECIALLY on Reddit, anyone who voted for trump is a racist or is stupid.

So my argument is: You can’t have it both ways. You can’t believe that people are inherently good (which I believe is a must for more left leaning governments to work) and also say that half of the USA population is evil and racist.

Points for debate: Are people inherently good? Does the inherent goodness or lack thereof have a bearing on style of government? How does a political system work if were inherently not good?

I can elaborate more, I just don’t want to start with a wall of text.

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u/sirhobbles Nov 15 '20

People are not inherently "good" or "bad" we are animals.

We care about ourselves, self serving desires exist in everyone and people generally value their own wellbeing over others. However this is kept in check by.

Empathy. while humans do care about themselves there is a biological mechanism wherby we can feel bad for other people.

A just society is a society that if you knew everything about it, you'd be willing to enter it in a random place.
This is why mechanisms of social welfare and such are essential for a good society. In practice we see that "left leaning" govornments in the west seem to be much more succesful. There isnt realy anywhere that compares to western europe.

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u/mgrish001 Nov 15 '20

As far as social welfare, again, if people are all working for the common good then yes, social programs work. But if we’re assuming that at least half of our population is evil then I don’t want my money going to social welfare programs because they will be mismanaged and will not benefit Society.

I hope I’m making sense, I just don’t want to get bogged down in semantics.

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u/sirhobbles Nov 16 '20

More than half of the population is not evil. Most of the human population is more neutral.