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Understanding the Conservative Mindset

And there you have it. Criminals cannot reform. Once a crim, always a crim.

You must have really hated the end of Return of the Jedi, hey?
There is little evidence a violent criminal can be reformed. If you can't help re-offending after being released, then it's best for everyone that you're put away. But because the progressive mind can't contemplate that people have agency, more people are victimized.
 
There is little evidence a violent criminal can be reformed. If you can't help re-offending after being released, then it's best for everyone that you're put away. But because the progressive mind can't contemplate that people have agency, more people are victimized.
How to you manage to speak out of both sides of your mouth like that?

Conservatives believe that a person is trapped - they do not have agency to reform. Progressives allow that people have agency and can change their behaviour. Hence, conservatives love retributive justice while progressives favour rehabilitation.
 
Tax cuts and limited government could mean deregulation so that the criminal human nature of business leaders can endanger the lives of workers and customers. OK, you are working with human nature here. But third strikes for violent offenders seems to be an attempt to work against the criminal human nature.

No, no. That recognizes that a criminal is who he is and should be kept away from the rest of society.
 
How to you manage to speak out of both sides of your mouth like that?

Conservatives believe that a person is trapped - they do not have agency to reform.

Yes. The scorpion and the frog.

Progressives allow that people have agency and can change their behaviour.

You think John Wayne Gacy or Ted Buddy could've been reformed?

Hence, conservatives love retributive justice while progressives favour rehabilitation.

Rehabilitation does not work and is cruelty to their victims. If you violently rape or kill someone, you deserve no mercy at all.
 
Because reformation and rehabilitation is impossible. People are trapped in their circumstances and can never change.
It's not circumstance. That's such a silly lefty idea. That no one is responsible for what they do. The crime just happened. By chance. The criminal hunting down their victim and stabbing them with a knife had nothing to do with it.
 
It's not circumstance. That's such a silly lefty idea. That no one is responsible for what they do. The crime just happened. By chance. The criminal hunting down their victim and stabbing them with a knife had nothing to do with it.
Some people are just inherently evil, is that it? Is there perhaps any outward sign that might give someone a clue about how evil someone is? Like, say, maybe the hue of their dermal surface?

You're digging yourself further and further in here.
 
The previous GOP campaigns were based on the hate for allegedly criminal immigrants, wokeists allegedly trying to abolish Christmas and Christianity, and LGBTQ+ people allegedly performing sex-change operations on school children. In 2024, the immigrants were allegedly eating people's pets, and furries were placing litterboxes in classrooms, but nobody buys into that idiocy anymore, so what are haters gonna hate in 2026?
I was so bloody wrong!
Aaron Rupar on bsky, July 26, 2026
Education Secretary Linda McMahon and Maria Bartiromo push complete BS about public schools secretly making kids trans without the knowledge of their parents. McMahon says she's doing a number of investigations about it.
With a Fox News video, 2 min.
 
Conservatives don't want people to be better. They don't want people to improve themselves. Bad people are bad, and they will always be bad, so conservative politics should assume that all people will always be bad.

Progressive politics, on the other hand, gives opportunities for people to be better.
Not sure what this means. Conservatives view the way for people to improve themselves differently. Both sides seem to point to this difference of opinion as evil or stupid when directed at each other.

With violent criminals, whether they will always be bad, or how to best rehabilitate them is secondary to limiting their ability to cause harm. Sometimes the most effective fix is simply to age them out of prime criminal years in prison.
 
The concern over crime could be taken seriously if it wasn't limited to non white collar crime
Are you proposing that conservatives do not want white collar criminals locked up or immune from increased sentencing for habitual reoffenders?

It is hard to take your position seriously when I also dont see any progressive rehabilitation advocacy groups focusing on white collar criminals. They actually seem to go in the opposite direction.
 
Whataboutism.
An ideology shouldn't depend on what others are doing.

And yes, there is a fundamental streak in Conservativism, based on a certain concept of Christianity, where material wealth is equated with divine favor, regardless how it was achieved, and "coming from a good family" means coming from generational wealth.

White Collar Crime is far more damaging than violent crime - wage theft is just taken as a given, a perk of an employer.
 
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Whataboutism.
An ideology shouldn't depend on what others are doing.

And yes, there is a fundamental streak in Conservativism, based on a certain concept of Christianity, where material wealth is equated with divine favor, regardless how it was achieved, and "coming from a good family" means coming from generational wealth.

White Collar Crime is far more damaging than violent crime - wage theft is just taken as a given, a perk of an employer.
You are all over the place. Wage theft is a silly concept that shouldn't be taken seriously, especially given the survey the talking point in based on.

There is not whataboutism. A majority of people prioritize violent crime over white collar crime. Conservatives even more than progressives. I was pointing out that this also is represented in the progressive rehabilitation aspect as their focus there is the same.

You try the paint conservatives as uncaring about white collar crime. Then go off on a tangent about religious influence on conservative views of white collar crime. Give me something concrete. Evidence I think id call it.
 
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The concern over crime could be taken seriously if it wasn't limited to non white collar crime
Are you proposing that conservatives do not want white collar criminals locked up or immune from increased sentencing for habitual reoffenders?
I don't think there is much evidence for the proposition that conservatives take white collar crime less seriously than other people do.

It's been awhile since anyone systematically studied this question in a way that allows for regional comparisons, but here is what I could find:

Residents of the New England states were the most lenient in sentencing. In contrast, residents of the two South Central regions, from Texas and Oklahoma on the west and Alabama, Kentucky and Tennessee on the east, gave almost consistently longer sentences to offenders of all kinds.​

See table 10.2 for the breakout by crime types; South Central regions are still tougher on business management crimes such as embezzlement and fraud.
 
what are your thoughts on donald trump selling pardons to white collar criminals
Hate the use in general (presidential pardons). Without looking into specifics id assume his has been far more blatant than his predecessors.
 

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