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Watch an extended version of the roundtable discussion: https://youtu.be/IVIoC5ROaHk

Black conservatives and liberals hash it out in the VICE Office.

Who voted for Donald Trump? Who voted for Barack Obama? Whats it like seeing a black person wearing a MAGA hat? Has the black vote been taken for granted?

Watch the Minority Reports episode on Young Black Conservatives to learn more about the rise of the black conservative movement: https://youtu.be/DWam9FSRvGI

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Black Conservatives Debate Black Liberals on Trump, Obama, and American Politics

Social Issues

In terms of views on social issues, conservatives oppose gay marriage, abortion and embryonic stem cell research. Liberals on the other hand, are more left-leaning and generally supportive of the right of gay people to get married and women's right to choose to have an abortion, as ruled by the U.S. Supreme Court in Roe v Wade.

With regard to the right to bear arms, conservatives support this right as it applies to all US citizens, whereas liberals oppose civilian gun ownership - or at the very least, demand that restrictions be places such as background checks on people who want to buy guns, requiring guns to be registered etc.

The different schools of economic thought found among conservatives and liberals are closely related to America's anti-federalist and federalist history, with conservatives desiring little to no government intervention in economic affairs and liberals desiring greater regulation.

Economic conservatives believe that the private sector can provide most services more efficiently than the government can. They also believe that government regulation is bad for businesses, usually has unintended consequences, and should be minimal. With many conservatives believing in "trickle-down" economics, they favor a small government that collects fewer taxes and spends less.

In contrast, liberals believe many citizens rely on government services for healthcare, unemployment insurance, health and safety regulations, and so on. As such, liberals often favor a larger government that taxes more and spends more to provide services to its citizens.

See Also: Comparing Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump's Tax Plans

Some good examples of this policy split are the Environmental Protection Agency, which liberals think is vital and some conservatives want to abolish or scale down, and the Medicare and Medicaid programs, which liberals want to expand and conservatives believe should be partially or completely privatized through a voucher system connected to private health insurers.

In the early part of the twentieth century, liberals - especially those in Britain - were those who stood for laissez fair capitalism. In more recent times, however, the nomenclature seems to have reversed. The exception to this is found in Australia, where the mainstream conservative party is called the Liberal Party and the mainstream non-conservative party is called the Labour Party.

Political liberals believe that parties motivated by self-interest are willing to behave in ways that are harmful to society unless government is prepared- and empowered to constrain them. They believe regulation is necessitated when individuals-, corporations-, and industries demonstrate a willingness to pursue financial gain at an intolerable cost to society--and grow too powerful to be constrained by other social institutions. Liberals believe in systematic protections against hazardous workplaces, unsafe consumer products, and environmental pollution. They remain wary of the corruption- and historic abuses--particularly the oppression of political minorities--that have taken place in the absence of oversight for state- and local authorities. Liberals value educators and put their trust in science. They believe the public welfare is promoted by cultivating a widely-tolerant and -permissive society.

Political conservatives believe commercial regulation does more harm than good--unnecessarily usurping political freedoms, potentially stifling transformative innovations, and typically leading to further regulatory interference. They endorse the contraction of governmental involvement in non-commercial aspects of society as well, calling upon the private sector to assume their activities. Conservatives call for the devolution of powers to the states, and believe locally-tailored solutions are more appropriate to local circumstances. They promulgate individual responsibility, and believe a strong society is made up of citizens who can stand on their own. Conservatives value the armed forces and place their emphasis on faith. Conservatives believe in the importance of stability, and promote law and order to protect the status quo.

Liberals believe in universal access to health care--they believe personal health should be in no way dependent upon one's financial resources, and support government intervention to sever that link. Political conservatives prefer no government sponsorship of health care; they prefer all industries to be private, favour deregulation of commerce, and advocate a reduced role for government in all aspects of society--they believe government should be in no way involved in one's healthcare purchasing decisions.

Jonathan Haidt, a University of Virginia psychology professor, has examined the values of liberals and conservatives through paired moral attributes: harm/care, fairnesss/reciprocity, ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, purity/sanctity. He outlines the psychological differences in the following TED talk:

Haidt has also written a book, The Righteous Mind, based on his studies conducted over several years on liberal and conservative subjects. Nicholas Kristof, an avowed liberal, offered an unbiased review of the book and cited some interesting findings such as:

Liberals should not be confused with libertarians. Libertarians believe that the role of the government should be extremely limited, especially in the economic sphere. They believe that governments are prone to corruption and inefficiencies and that the private sector in a free market can achieve better outcomes than government bureaucracies, because they make better decisions on resource allocation. Liberals, on the other hand, favor more government involvement because they believe there are several areas where the private sector -- especially if left unregulated -- needs checks and balances to ensure consumer protection.

The primary focus of libertarians is the maximization of liberty for all citizens, regardless of race, class, or socio-economic position.

Read more here:
Difference and Comparison - Diffen.com

When Tiger Woods won The Masters this year it shocked the world. His glory days were long since gone; injuries had relegated him to forever live in past accomplishments his career was pretty much over, he just hadnt retired yet. Then he did it, he came back and won. Nearly everyone was not only shocked, they were excited. Americans love a great comeback story.

In the midst of that celebration, something happened to turn a lot of people away from that happiness the president of the United States joined in.

First came a tweet congratulating Woods. Leftists responded the way they respond to everything, they called Donald Trump a racist. Ask them what time it is and youll get the same response.

That wouldve been the end of it if that were the end of Trumps involvement in the story, but it wasnt. The president announced he would present Tiger Woods with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for being such an inspiration, the very thing everyone was celebrating only days earlier.

When it became known that Woods would accept the highest honor our country can bestow on a civilian, liberals were outraged. How could a black man accept an award, any award, from Donald Trump? they demanded, as if Woods owed them an explanation.

Woods doesnt, of course, and hes had a decades-long friendship with the president, having golfed with him many times. Didnt he realize Trump is a racist? media-types asked, ignoring their own history of being friends with Trump for longer than Woods. Those friendships, lasting in some cases more than 30 years, came to an end when Trump announced he was a Republican. Apparently, the people screaming loudest that the president is a racist didnt notice it when they were hanging out. Either that or theyre lying, but they wouldnt do that, would they? (They would, and are.)

In a sea of liberal outrage, one of the worst responses came from the Baltimore Suns editorial board. They wrote, we wish Mr. Woods would have taken a stand against hatred and declined the award given the racial and ethnic rift Mr. Trump has widened and exploited in the country since taking office. The examples they cite arenone. They just hate Trump and, in typical liberal debate style, call anyone they disagree with a racist.

The Sun does admit: Just because he is famous doesnt mean Mr. Woods has any obligation to be a spokesman against racism in America. He did indeed train all his life to play golf, not lead a modern day Civil Rights movement. Awfully nice of them to acknowledge, isnt it? It wouldnt last longer than that sentence.

The next two lines read, But his position as a star athlete, particularly as an African-American in a sport that has historically been overwhelmingly white, makes him a role model in this regard whether he likes it or not. He could use this opportunity to raise awareness of an issue that has surely impacted his life, as well as those of many of his relatives and ancestors.

Suddenly, Tiger Woods became responsible for everyone in his bloodline, ever. Is Mr. Woods oblivious, or does he just not care that the president regularly demonizes minorities and emboldens those who hate? the enlightened Sun wondered, still citing no examples.

In typical liberal fashion, where they know and demand how everyone else should act and think based on the color of their skin, the Sun took to attacking Tiger personally under one of the lefts favorite covers some people.

Some African Americans have long taken him to task for saying he gets offended when called African American, instead referring to himself as cablinasian, a term he coined to reflect his mixed Caucasian, black, American Indian and Asian heritage, they wrote.

To the left, a man can declare themselves to be a woman and it immediately becomes a fact everyone must adhere to, even changing pronoun use to whatever that person wants (including made up words) or theyre a monster. But a man refuses to play by liberal imposed race-labels and hes somehow the problem.

Liberals, as exemplified by the Baltimore Sun, insist everyone, especially minorities, bend the knee to their agenda. They know what is best for everyone, particularly people of color (a meaningless term that if you simply received a penny every time it was uttered, could retire the national debt with just one week of the Democratic primary campaign).

If you play the liberal game, you are praised as a hero. The Sun cited acceptable athletes like Colin Kaepernick and LeBron James, both of whom have a history of spewing real racism, as models Woods should have followed. Really, however, theyre just saying Tiger should do what they want; hold the politics leftists deem acceptable for a person with his melanin level. They know how he should act and what he should think based on his skin color. There used to be a word for that

Derek is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!) and author of the book,Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses.

Read more:
Racist Liberals Attack Tiger Woods - townhall.com

Justin Trudeau's Liberals say they are still hearing support from Indigenous people and leaders, despite concerns raised publicly about Trudeau's expulsion of two ex-ministers who had been central to work on reconciliation.

While the Liberals have repeatedly said that addressing the relationship with Indigenous Peoples in Canada is a top priority, that commitment has been openly questioned by some Indigenous leaders, especially since the ejections of Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott from the Liberal caucus.

Terry Teegee, the British Columbia regional chief in the Assembly of First Nations, suggested the ejections showed a "deeply flawed and dishonest intent" behind Trudeau's previously stated respect for Indigenous Peoples. Wilson-Raybould was one of his predecessors.

"The balance that was being forged within our societies through the process of reconciliation is now threatened," he said when Trudeau expelled the two. Teegee called the decision "wrathful."

Wilson-Raybould, as justice minister until January, had been the highest-ranking Indigenous person ever in the Canadian government. Philpott had been seen as one of Trudeau's most capable ministers; a shuffle that moved her from the high-profile health portfolio to become minister of Indigenous services was a symbol of how important clean water and good housing on reserves, for instance, were to the Liberal government.

Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett, who had worked closely with both, said that while the government is always mindful of triggering cynicism and concern about the relationship she tends, she is continuing to hear "very positive" feedback.

"Whether I'm on the East Coast or the West Coast or in Manitoba, over the last little while, I have to say that people will quietly take me aside and say, 'We need your government re-elected,' " Bennett said in an interview.

"I would never presume that whomever I'm speaking to is speaking on behalf of more than one person," she added. "I think that it's important now for us to earn the respect and continue to make progress."

In the next election, only First Nations, Inuit and Metis will be able to make ultimate determinations about whether their experience with the government has felt more like a partnership than paternalism, Bennett added.

Last week, Trudeau made the decision to remove Wilson-Raybould and Philpott from the Liberal caucus.

The two former cabinet ministers had been outspoken about political pressure to intervene in the criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin, a Quebec engineering giant facing bribery charges over contracts in Libya. Wilson-Raybould believes she was shuffled out of the Department of Justice because she wouldn't give Trudeau what he wanted on the file, overruling a prosecutor's decision not to pursue a plea-bargain-like "remediation agreement." Both ultimately resigned from the cabinet.

Trudeau has denied any wrongdoing but has publicly acknowledged there was a breakdown of trust between Wilson-Raybould and his office.

Wilson-Raybould was not available for an interview but Philpott said she does see the controversy as a "setback" in the government's relationship with Indigenous Peoples.

Trudeau's cabinet worked hard on issues including the recognition and affirmation of rights for Indigenous Peoples, Philpott said, and there was "tremendous enthusiasm" about Wilson-Raybould's being the first Indigenous justice minister in Canadian history.

Wilson-Raybould was moved out of the position into the veterans-affairs portfolio, prior to her subsequent cabinet resignation.

"I think particularly the fact that she was moved out of that role and then subsequently resigned from cabinet, is a setback, without doubt," Philpott said.

As an independent MP, Wilson-Raybould continues to have leverage over her former party and Trudeau in particular as members of Indigenous communities watch her words and actions carefully, says University of Saskatchewan professor Joseph Garcea, a political scientist who studies Canadian politics.

"She's got this government's feet to the fire and it is up to her, really, how high she turns up the heat," he said.

In 2015, the Liberal Party was keen to recruit Indigenous candidates and affirm its commitment to solving longstanding problems, including multiyear boil-water advisories on reserves.

Indigenous voters were also far more engaged in the last election. The Assembly of First Nations identified 51 ridings, including several in western Canada, where First Nations voters could affect the outcome and invested a great deal of effort in outreach.

After that election, Elections Canada reported the gap between turnout on reserves and turnout among the general population had been the lowest since it began calculating turnout for Aboriginal populations in 2004 (with the caveat that it does not capture demographic information at the polls and cannot count Aboriginal voters directly, whether they vote on or off reserves).

Compared to the 2011 election, Elections Canada said turnout on reserves increased by 14 percentage points from 47.4 per cent to 61.5 per cent while turnout among the general population increased by six percentage points to 66 per cent.

For his part, Metis National Council President Clement Chartier said he will not allow a "distraction" like the SNC-Lavalin controversy to "derail" the council's efforts to work with the Liberal government.

"Why would we want to destroy something that has been of significant benefit to the Metis Nation?" he said, suggesting the response to the council from the Trudeau government has been "tremendous."

The Metis National Council will reach out to all the political parties before the election on policy positions, he said, adding Metis citizens can decide for themselves whom to support.

"Until there's an election, we will continue to support this prime minister and this government," he said.

Wilson-Raybould's tenure as the first Indigenous justice minister in Canada will remain a "huge breakthrough," Bennett said. She said her team is very sad there was an erosion of trust with her colleagues.

"We would prefer that [Philpott and Wilson-Raybould] were still members of the team, still supporting the prime minister, but unfortunately that didn't happen," she said, but she believes the government's Indigenous partners want to move on.

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Liberals move ahead on Indigenous agenda after SNC affair ...

GroupthinkDostoevsky foresaw how 21st-century liberalism would undermine itself

6 mins07 February 2019

The revolutionary theorist Shigalyov in Fyodor Dostoevksys novelDemonssums up the progress of his thought: Starting with unlimited freedom, I conclude with unlimited despotism.

This celebrated sentence has long been read as Dostoevskys prognosis of the terrorism that plagued Russia in the late 19th century. Aiming to achieve an unprecedented freedom, small groups of revolutionaries denied freedom and life itself to their own members.

The same transformation occurred on a vast scale when terror was practised by a revolutionary state. Understood as a critique of communism, the formula Dostoevsky put into his characters mouth was prophetic. Wherever the communist project has been attempted, the result has been the same: an eclipse of freedom more complete than any that existed in the tyrannies the revolutionaries overthrew.

Yet the ideas that are the true demons in Dostoevskys novel are not only those that fuelled late 19th-century terrorism and 20th-century communism. They are found among liberals today, who are ready to dissolve religion, family, nationality and the practice of tolerance in order to bring into the world a kind of freedom that has never before been known. Some on the Right believe this freedom will come from unfettered market forces, while others on the Left favour using education to deconstruct practices and institutions that have held societies together in the past. Like the Russian revolutionaries, these liberals are possessed by a vision of ever-increasing human freedom that can only end in tyranny. If Dostoevsky was a prophet of 20th-century totalitarianism, he also foresaw how 21st-century liberalism would undermine itself.

It is easy to forget that Dostoevsky began as a liberal himself. When he was arrested in April 1849 as a member of a group of dissident intellectuals he shared the beliefs of the progressive Russian thinkers of his day. Passionately promoting what they perceived as the most advanced European thinking, they rejected religion and any morality that was based on it. Society had to be founded on scientific materialism and governed by an ethic based in science. Several intellectual movements came together in this mishmash of ideas.

Some favoured the roseate visions of French utopian thinkers such as Charles Fourier, who envisioned society reorganised into phalansteries, ideal communities where work would become a type of play and the task of rubbish collection assigned to dirt-loving children. (Another side of Fouriers thought is shown in his proposal that Jews be confined to duties as farm labourers.) Others were more drawn to hard-headed English Utilitarianism or the radical humanism of the German thinker Ludwig Feuerbach, who interpreted the idea of God as an image of the unlimited possibilities of the human species. All believed that human beings must fashion their own values and make a new world.

Suggested reading

By John Gray

By the 1860s, these ideas had come to be called nihilism, a term made popular in Russia by Ivan Turgenevs novel Fathers and Sons (1862). Today, nihilism means the denial that human life or history have any meaning. In its mid-19th century meaning, however, nihilism accurately describes our contemporary liberal consensus. Like the progressive Russian intelligentsia to which Dostoevsky initially belonged, early 21st-century liberals believe the human future will be shaped by science and values that are somehow derived from science. Religion and everything connected with it must be rejected an obstacle to progress. A nave version of this sort of nihilism is presented in the writings of Steven Pinker.

After his arrest and exile, Dostoevsky rejected the liberal ideas of his day forever. Condemned to death a sentence commuted to hard labour in Siberia after a mock execution by firing squad he returned to St Petersburg in 1860 a lifelong enemy of the ideas for which he had been exiled. His own ideas a murky mix of Russian messianism with a rather dubious version of Orthodox Christianity do not amount to anything much. But his subsequent writings, above all Demons, reveal an astonishingly prescient insight into the liberal mind today.

Published in 1872, the book tells how an ideal in which human beings are freed from any authority or constraint morphs into squalid violence and pervasive repression. Based on an actual incident in which a student who had questioned the leadership of the terrorist Sergei Nechaev (1847-1882) who argued that any means were justified if they contributed to a progressive transformation in society was murdered with Nechaevs complicity, the novel provides a pitiless and extremely funny account of the self-immolation of liberalism.

Demonshas often been attacked as being didactic in tone a criticism that misses the dark humour that runs throughout the novel. But it is true that Dostoevsky aimed to teach a lesson. Revolutionary radicalism in politics has its ultimate source in atheism. Dostoevsky conveys this lesson through the character of Kirillov, an engineer and member of the radical group, who contends that if you do not believe in God you must become God yourself:

To recognise that there is no God, and not to recognise thatat thesame time you have become God, is an absurdity I have found it:the attribute of my divinity is Self-will

Kirillov believes that in order to demonstrate his divinity he must kill himself. By doing so, he would prove that human beings are not ruled by mechanical laws but possess a god-like freedom to do as they will. The core of his atheism is the assertion that without God human beings are free do whatever they chose. Exercising his freedom as a god-man, Kirillov shoots himself.

Kirillov is possessed by the idea, which Dostoevsky explored in Crime and Punishment(1866) and Brothers Karamazov (1879), that if there is no God everything is permitted. Generations of secular thinkers have attacked this as nonsense, and it is true that ethical life can be understood in strictly naturalistic terms. Morality is as much a part of what it means to be human as language. But in a naturalistic perspective, a liberal way of life is only one of many the human animal has invented. The belief that only one morality is ordained for all is a relic of monotheism, and Dostoevsky presents a compelling account of how an idea of unlimited freedom derived from Christianity became the inner logic of liberal humanism.

Among Russian nihilists, atheism meant the replacement of God by humanity a universal subject that shapes its own future by deploying the power acquired by growing scientific knowledge. In this version, atheism is a project of collective human self-deification. Though they are careful to avoid such language, todays liberal humanists pursue the same project. Claiming for the human species the freedom that Christianity attributes to God, they believe humankind can fashion a good life for all of its members.

According to Dostoevsky, however, the end-point of this kind of atheism is each human being acting just as they please. Nechaev justified terror on the ground that it is necessary in order to create an earthly paradise. But if human beings can adopt any means to achieve this end, why cant they also chose their own ends? Why should anyone serve humanity an entity as elusive as the Deity or concern themselves with something as nebulous universal freedom? If any means is allowable, so too is any end. The attempt to create a new world collapses into Kirillovs self-will. It is not surprising that Nietzsche recognised in Dostoevsky one of his predecessors.

Suggested reading

By Giles Fraser

Historically, liberal humanism is a footnote to theism. John Locke grounded human rights in duties to God, while Kant argued for the immortality of the soul as a necessary basis for human freedom. Here again, generations of secular thinkers have insisted that liberal values do not depend on religion. Yet liberal humanists continue to rely on the belief that human beings are by nature freedom-loving a view that is certainly not based on empirical observation. Liberals might respond by asserting that human nature is not fixed it can be transformed by political action. But if human beings are free to alter their nature, what is there to say they will remake themselves as free beings? They may prefer the tranquillized peace of a society like that imagined in Huxleys Brave New World. Or decide that the freedoms of the past are relics of oppression, which must be swept away for the sake of social justice.

The liberal mind at present divides into two schools. One is composed of people who call themselves classical liberals, unwitting disciples of the Russian nihilists that believe human progress is ensured by the continuing advance of science. The other comprises postmodern liberals, who view science as little more than congealed ideology. The two are very much at odds, and yet both are possessed by an idea of unfettered freedom.

Suggested reading

By James Bloodworth

If classical liberals believe human beings can use the laws of nature formulated in science to make a new world, postmodern liberals believe scientific laws including those that apply to human nature, a concept they reject are no more than cultural constructs. The upshot is the same. Humankind can shape its own future unconstrained by any external force or authority. But if freedom is unlimited it is also empty. Whatever latter-day nihilists may say, science cannot supply human values. There is nothing in the laws of physics that prohibits the Holocaust. Equally, deconstructing science cannot validate whatever values are currently regarded as progressive. If science is ideology and human nature a fiction, anything goes. The alt-Right is as much a product of postmodernism as the alt-Left. Either way, the practices of tolerance and free expression that used to underpin liberal values are consumed in culture-wars between rival mobs.

Among western traditions, there are some that limit human freedom without invoking theism. Ancient Greek drama and Shakespeare show human beings are trapped by their own deeds and characters whatever they may will. A sceptic like Montaigne used reason to humble the human mind, not exalt it. The implication of Wittgensteins later philosophy is that freedom is situated in particular forms of life. When all the ways of life humans have fashioned for themselves are rejected as exercises in repression, nothing remains but the assertion of will or feeling. That is pretty much where we are now.

If liberalism were a scientific hypothesis, it would have been falsified many times over. But for its disciples, it is far from being a mere hypothesis. As the ex-liberal Dostoevsky understood, liberalism is nothing if not a religion. In the past, this may have been a strength. Today it is a weakness, and possibly fatal. Shigalyov was right. Trashing old freedoms in order to bring about a new state of unbounded freedom can only lead to despotism. Liberals cannot stem the on-going retreat of liberal values because it is they that are driving it.

Suggested reading

By John Gray

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You're reaping what you sowed, liberals - UnHerd