Our landlord at the birth center is a very nice guy. He's also a very active Republican. I've had a number of conversations about social justice and inequality with him; from his perspective, if you succeed you deserved it and if you failed you deserved it and it's only fair that those who succeeded have more benefits than those who failed. Our conversations usually end up with me pointing out that deserve or not, his life is better if those who failed are incentivized to not erode the social structure within which he succeeded or else he'll have to succeed all over again within a newer, meaner social system. Which, now that I think about it, is the philosophy of every post-Revolutionary French philosopher I've had stuffed in my ear for the past three weeks. A healthy republic and social welfare is essential to keep the proletariat from rising up and guillotining you. Perhaps that's the trouble with the modern Republican party. They're too far removed from rebellion.
With early Libertarians like Rothbard trying to make common cause with anti-authoritarian leftists in the 60s and 70s and guys like Bannon and Schwarzenegger openly admiring Lenin, I'd say the trouble with the modern Republican party is they're attracted to rebellion but they're on the wrong side of the barricades.Perhaps that's the trouble with the modern Republican party. They're too far removed from rebellion.
To be fair, in a lot of ways that's a very fair perspective. I can see in my own life where I have made poor decisions and suffered from them and good decisions and benefited from them and while hindsight is 20/20, I do know the good decisions came about because I wasn't being rash or giving too much into emotion and the bad decisions came about cause of the other. I worry that if I thought otherwise, I'd stop trying to do better, maybe even slide backwards. At the same time, I think it's fair to expect some kind of reward for succeeding, otherwise there wouldn't be any point in trying to do better. Why try harder if you know you're gonna have the same as someone who doesn't try hard at all?from his perspective, if you succeed you deserved it and if you failed you deserved it and it's only fair that those who succeeded have more benefits than those who failed.
I have come to the conclusion that Republicans value fairness while Democrats value compassion. Both positions are admirable and defensible. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with either mentality. Civilization is hard work. It takes the cooperation of differing opinions to succeed at it.