An interesting article that tries to demonstrate the unifying principles of conservatism.
The introduction reads as follows:
Aside from points seven and eight, I seem to be a conservative. Naturally, anyone familiar with my postings in Social Sciences and other fora knows that isn’t the case, which suggests that the thesis is somewhat flawed. Unless “conservativism” is something like Aristotle’s vision of “virtue” where a deficiency in one aspect implies a deficiency in all aspects.
I will say that I feel that most of the principles he outlined are shared with most other political systems, making seven and eight probably the only ones that could be definitively conservative. Others are shared by some systems but not all (2 and 4 are antithetical to post-culturalist radicalism like the feminist and hippie movements and their attached political arms), but overall I’d say the list is too broad.
I think most of us are both conservative and liberal, depending on the circumstances.
However, I think that liberalism takes the lead and that conservatism is essentially a handmaiden to liberalism. Liberals promote change whereas conservative are reluctant to do so.
Conservatism is what preserves the best qualities of the liberal movement, like universal suffrage and human rights. But without liberals taking the lead universal suffrage and human rights would hardly exist. Conservatives have tended just to give lip service to those principles.
Really? They did that all by themselves as the minority party? Especially striking since the Southern Democrats joined the Republican party after the civil rights amendment passed.
Introduced by: a democrat (Kennedy)
Strengthened by: a democrat heading the committee (Celler)
Signed by: a democrat (Johnson)
Supported from the bully pulpit by: a democrat (Johnson)
Rescued from committee in the Senate by: a democrat (Mansfield)
“We’ve lost the south for a generation”
More than one, it would seem.
A little history lesson for the conservatives . . .
It is also worth noting that the conservative/liberal divide between the Republican and Democratic parties is also a more recent phenomenon. They used to be a good deal more porous. Yet another history lesson . . .
Conservatism is weakness masquerading as aggression, i.e. “we believe our opponents to threaten social stability, and so we shall feign a militarist value-system in reaction.” As such it ought to be eliminated wherever possible as a ideology counterproductive to healthy life.
Douchebaggery. I am a socialist (anarco-syndicalist, actually, but you’ll have never heard of them). Please, please, stop with the petty fucking namecalling. I don’t give a good God damn that you’re a moderator, it’s fucking annoying and intellectually dishonest, not to mention degrading to being compared to a Democrat.
Look right beneath those numbers and you’ll see what I mean. Guess which party those people belong to now. “We’ve lost the south for a generation” indeed.
And why not? We’ve seen empirical evidence that tyrannies work quite well (e.g. neoconservatism).
Yes you have, dipshit. Insofar as I’m quite obviously more well-informed than you on the subject, I’ll take this opportunity to enlighten you in regards to leftist politics, so that you don’t embarrass yourself next time by coming across as a fucking Dittohead:
There are Marxists. Marxists advocate direct ownership of the means of production by the proletariat. Not a ‘welfare state’, but direct ownership. There can be conservative Marxists, for instance.
There are syndicalists, such as myself, who believe that the Westphalian concept of the nation-state is as outdated as the tribal system before it and ought to be replaced by a method of arrangement based upon productivity rather than territory. Territory will become superfluous as the world population grows; production never will. We advocate the command of the institutional apparatus currently controlled by the nation-state by trade unions.
There are Social Democrats, who advocate a large welfare state while retaining the basic economic infrastructure of capitalism. There are your Democrats - and only the few hard-liners that haven’t been cowed by a brainwashed, nationalistic populace. Social Democrats are as much an enemy of the socialist or syndicalist as the reactionary inbred because he does not wish to shirk off the social bondage to capital.
Bullllllllllshit. You quite clearly implied that Republicans were responsible for passing it, when a minority in that party voted in favor of the Act. Stop twisting facts, nub.
Not to mention that the Republicans of yesteryear were the Democrats of today. The neoconservatives are almost precisely the opposite of the Roosevelt Republics then still in power. Corporatism has taken the reigns of the GOP.
This topic will be locked for at least 24 hours. That will give people time to cool down, and the site time to pass a couple PMs along. Just as a reminder, insults and epithets are both against the rules, and will not be tolerated. Take the time you would have spent flaming each other and read those links to understand what you’re doing wrong, and how you can improve.
And as always, let me know if you are unclear on my actions or my reasons.
I wonder if one principle of conservatism is to deny ‘climate change’ as Al Gore has presented it. It certainly seems that way by how rabid conservatives have tried to “swift-boat” him, including the Wall Street Journal.
Conservatives are suspicious of such abstract ideas. One has to think like a liberal to understand the concept. To accept and change attitudes would require a revolutionary shift in human behavior. It would also require a concerted effort on the part of the masses to implement a cure. Conservatives are very suspicious of concerted efforts and revolutionary change. Conservatives are threatened by having such change imposed on them. It goes against the grain of individualism. Conservatives are not for what is mutually beneficial.
As a conservative George Bush did not want to see a concerted, central effort made to rehabilitate New Orleans after Katrina. That would have smacked of liberalism. He wanted the free-market to fix things instead of the government. In that respect Bush acted as a true conservative.