rolling explaining conservatism

taxes are theft; therefore, democrats are criminals

selfishness is too a virtue

Making people's lives better is not a function of the state. The state's job is to get out of the way so the market can make people's lives better*.

*or not

wasn't it Jeremy Clarkson that said something once like "governments should build park benches and leave us alone"

if your parents don't have enough money, nothing you do matters

job security is a necessary evil to coerce the talented

if you weren't forced to pay taxes, you could just afford things on your own like insurance and private police protection

in my very amateurish opinion modern conservativism has two major planks:

1) denial of any link between capitalism and the undermining of traditional values.
2) strict and explicit separation of society into categories of, let's say, "elect" and "damned" (those deserving of privilege, security, etc. and those undeserving...white supremacy is obviously a huge part of this)

All conservatism is the rationalization and preservation of privilege. The hatefulness and nastiness that seems to travel with it has always been there, but obviously people have had different expectations throughout history about what's uncouth and which are the parts you aren't supposed to say out loud.

Scalzi's essay is a tad goofy but I liked his nerdy explanation of privilege: "In the role playing game known as The Real World, “Straight White Male” is the lowest difficulty setting there is."

Any policies that increase egalitarianism in Western societies, by necessity, can be seen as mildly increasing the difficulty setting for Straight White Male. If you're not doing so great at The Real World, and you were already on the lowest difficulty setting, then something's clearly very wrong.

life is a golf course. climate change is a chinese hoax

life is a golf ball, I wanna drive it all night long

russian=socialists are the worst ever evil in the world, except when republican president donald trump houses and praises them. government is the problem, as well

states' rights except when not

I'd love to see Scalzi recite his essay to the corpse of a drug overdosed white person whose lost all realistic hope for his/her life. Americans don't know each other anymore.

that is not in his individual self-interest. individual self-interest is all that matters

regulation gets in the way of businesses succeeding and makes capitalism not work. we shouldn't regulate wrongdoing out of existence - the market will react and put evildoing companies out of business. it's ok if 371 people die due to eating salmonella infected peanuts because AFTER those people die, people will boycott the brand!

We could have stopped those people from dying but that would have hurt Planters' sales and really when it boils down to it, aren't 371 lives worth it?

also the Holocaust never happened.

People want the government to be run like a business, so that after a few years they can be surprised by a FOR LEASE sign on City Hall, and no idea what it might turn into next.

Maybe it will be a new coffee place, or a hair salon!

All white grievance is legitimate, especially hopelessness in the face of poverty

except for the four gospels, the judeo-christian bible is the literal word of god, bro

All white grievance is legitimate, especially hopelessness in the face of poverty

― El Tomboto, Tuesday, March 7, 2017 4:20 AM (eleven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ignoring suffering because of classism and identity politics is part of why we're here. People like you have blood on your hands... POC die because of attitudes like yours, which, on the surface, tries to celebrate them. But it's not out of concern for the lives of POC, but for your own narcissism and privilege, which you then flip on others less fortunate than yourself.

Liberalism and conservatism is the same side of the same coin at this point. Is it any wonder why we are where we are?

what would we do without you, larry

have you heard of this guy, jim goad? I think his books would grab you

Well, there was a reason I worked with an Obama appointee, you low-level bureaucratic waste. My ideas make sense and work, they're just not in vogue right now, because of snot wipes like you who want to sip glasses of wine while people suffer and die.

The funniest part of your schtick is that everything I've posted to this thread is either me actually linking to and quoting John Scalzi and the rest is ripped off from Ta-Nehisi Coates - I haven't expressed a single original opinion worth lashing out at. But you man, you got the solutions that make sense, and work!

beef is when I see you
guaranteed to be in ICU

but you won't have healthcare

All conservatism is the rationalization and preservation of privilege.

fucking otm. all hoarding and no empathy. fuck you, got mine. what's that, an oppressed category of people wants equal treatment? get the fuck off my lawn. if you need quotas, that just means you females/non-whites/whatever are simply terrible at what you do. let the free market do its job because the free market is faultless*.

* at preserving old-timey privilege

this is the angriest i've ever been this early in a thread

anger is an energy. it's cool to frack oklahoma into earthquake hell, because profit

the united states is a republic, not a democracy

That one I've honestly never been able to figure out. It's a non sequitur beyond the rest

Democrats fancy themselves civil rights pioneers but it was REPUBLICANS who freed the slaves we are just like that 19th century party

as Martin Luther King famously said, people should be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character

and MLK was a Republican after all!

My ideas make sense and work, they're just not in vogue right now, because of snot wipes like you who want to sip glasses of wine while people suffer and die.

― larry appleton, Tuesday, 7 March 2017 04:39 (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Moonlight swine leap whiff off this one

which ideology is against water fluoridation now?

fluoridation is how the govmint gives you gay mind control cancer, keep up

My ideas make sense and work, they're just not in vogue right now, because of snot wipes like you who want to sip glasses of wine while people suffer and die.

posts that effortlessly etc

maybe start a thread for recommending a good wine to accompany people suffering and dying

Egoism is real, altruism is not. Hence, running a state by egoists’ rules - “like a business,” if you will - is the only sensible option. If the state then falls apart, it’s not because a democracy is inherently altruistic, but because the state is broken and needs to be abolished.

Right, the only motivating factor you can count on is that everyone wants to get rich. EVERYONE. We all like money right guys? Also, everyone cheats, come on.

who among us would not rather have the opportunity, however small, to live beyond the dreams of Croesus rather than to bumble along with our needs generally satisfied but no prospect of rubbing anybody else's nose in it?

tucking your shirt into your jeans is a timeless look

brb I'm off to find a conservative board with a thread explaining liberals and the staggering insights therein

Bow-ties are a legitimate fashion choice

MANY YEARS AGO PRINCE DARKNESS "GANNON" STOLE ONE OF THE TRIFORCE WITH POWER.

That does explain a lot. And the triforce of wisdom being in eight pieces is why the left is so hopeless.

lol @ larry appleton / Tombot guvmint dill-weed beef

have you guys ever considered that conservatism has ideological appeal to its adherents, rather than something dismissive like "the rationalization and preservation of privilege" (what about the millions of non-privileged people who are conservatives? don't say false consciousness!) or "individual self-interest is all that matters"?

I considered, then dismissed it.

Most problems can be pretty easily explained through racism and false consciousness.

Go for it flopson I'm all ears

it seems to me that the US left should maybe have more humility than this CONSERVATARDS WANT THEIR KID TO DRINK POISON WATER LOL attitude that has dominated the discourse since at least gwb... like, we went from being just shy of permanent consensus social democracy in the early sixties, then fucked it up and have sucked for 4 decades, and now say things like 'demographics will save us' or 'we just needed a better candidate'. maybe there is something about conservative ideology that motivates people that the left lacks and we could be more modest? idk

What about Nobel Prize-winning intellectuals like Friedman or Hayek? xp to Frederik

nothing can be explained by false consciousness because it's a tautology and not an explanation: 'you're wrong because your consciousness is wrong'

consider religious tribalism as something other than privilege that motivates conservatives to vote consistently for candidates that promise to restrict access to abortion limit rights for lgbtq people

The existence of non-white conservatives isn't really an argument against conservativism as, at its core, a preservation of (mostly male & mostly wealthy) white privilege. Even those who aren't among the largest beneficiaries of privilege may have a vested interest in keeping the boat from rocking. Consider the relatively well-off African American conservatives in the post-Reconstruction south who resisted integration. They were still basically second class citizens but they were secure enough within a relatively privileged bubble that they had reason to help maintain white hegemony.

i just don't think you would be able to find a conservative who says "i want to rationalize and perserve privilge" so despite our amazing collective abilities as psychoanalysts maybe that's not a good ways to understand its appeal

I think most conservatives would say, if questioned, that inequality was natural and probably necessary

right. and that "liberty" (as they understand it) is a higher value than "equality" (as they think liberals understand it).

xp - it kinda is though, just look at ilx

http://psych.colorado.edu/~vanboven/teaching/p7536_heurbias/p7536_readings/kruger_dunning.pdf

a lot of people just think the government is extremely wasteful and inefficient (which isn't wrong!) and get pissed off at seeing a substantial portion of their hard-earned dollars withheld/taxed.

also, some people think abortion is murder. i think it gets overlooked what a huge issue that still is for a lot of people.

Flopson otm obv

I think most conservatives would say, if questioned, that inequality was natural and probably necessary

― barry snappleton (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, March 7, 2017 8:14 AM (twelve minutes ago)

Yes. When my brother-in-law was still speaking to me, "There have to be winners and losers in life" was one of his mantras.

http://psych.colorado.edu/~vanboven/teaching/p7536_heurbias/p7536_readings/kruger_dunning.pdf

― reggie (qualmsley), Tuesday, March 7, 2017 9:20 AM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh come on. can't think of a more perfect abdication of politics to say, 'it's not our fault the other side is just too stupid!' there's no value in being right and losing in politics

I think most conservatives would say, if questioned, that inequality was natural and probably necessary

― barry snappleton (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, March 7, 2017 9:14 AM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

privilege is not the same thing as inequality though; not every inequality is a result of a privilege, and not every privilege produces a tangible (or material, at least) inequality. conservative and liberal opinions on liberty/inequality differ in degree and not kind, anyway

I think conservativism requires a narrow focus for it to hold up at all. Abortion is a perfect example. Abortion is killing babies and it's horrible! But there's no deeper long-term ideology underlying that. Because if you've successfully railed against an unwanted baby being born, you now have to deal with that unwanted baby and the parent(s) who may not be able to care for that baby. When the next step after the successful reification of your platform is 'welp, sucks to be you', I'd argue that your ideology isn't exactly watertight.

flopson, it's not hard to find conservatives explaining why they are conservative from their own perspective. Obvs lefties are gonna be less sympathetic and explain it either in terms of what conservatism actually does, or in terms of what we believe truly motivates it. As opposed to what its adherents think they think.

My conservative inlaws and acquaintances have a worldview that feels coherent to them, indeed, to them it feels inevitable. As ryan notes, liberty/freedom is seen as among the highest ideals. To my eyes, this has a large component of Marlboro Man cosplay: "I am a rugged individual, I don't want the government or the nanny state or PC whiners coming onto my property and telling me what to do. I succeed or fail based on my own resourcefulness, and by the sweat of my own brow."

I think art has a good point, but it's not even religious tribalism half the time. The lifelong tribal Republicans I run into are almost all non-churchgoing, "socially liberal, fiscally conservative" country club types, it's very much a secular "my family have always been..." kind of a thing.

We need more people on this thread bitching about how we don't sympathize enough with hateful white folks though

morality is set of rules and sense of propriety and not an open-ended obligation towards other human beings. (this is how the abortion thing makes sense, a fetus not being an actual person makes it the perfect object of morality for them)

conservative and liberal opinions on liberty/inequality differ in degree and not kind, anyway

oh please, please back this one up

conservative and liberal opinions on liberty/inequality differ in degree and not kind, anyway

between the majority of conservatives and libs, sure, but other political beliefs are available

privilege is not the same thing as inequality though

agreed, but the conflating of different kinds of inequality is part of the conservative thought process I think - some animals are bigger or faster or smarter than others, therefore some people will "naturally" have more material resources than others purely by dint of birth. conservatism rarely looks at things like inheritance - we could conceive a conservatism that might assert that everybody should start from birth without the benefit of inherited wealth, I think

deems - I have read right-wing boards a lot and their characterizations of lefties are not for the faint of heart. Libs want to control everything because they hate freedom because freedom means manly men doing manly deeds and liberal pantywaists can't stand that. Statists gonna statist; regarding government as a potential solution ignores that government always fucks up (cf. evol's point).

Except D-Day and the moon landing. Those were examples of good government activity, because they were manly deeds done by manly men. I don't wish to minimize the racism but much of the animus is based around traditional gender roles. Recently seen on Carolinian billboard: "Real men provide; Real women appreciate it."

xps Tombot- most conservatives are not absolutist libertarians, most liberals are not communists

xxp to NV, this looks like Rawlsian small-l liberalism to me, not in itself inherently right- or left-wing in and of itself

some revealing comments from conservatives i know:

complaining about people using EBT cards to buy cigarettes and alcohol
if we enacted socialism then "why bother" working or trying at anything (ties into fear of "leveling" or equality--everybody the same)
"i dont want help"
if people dont believe in god then they'll do whatever they want (ie, bad stuff)

xp or at least so Rawls would have had us believe

Perlstein's book on Barry Goldwater is next on my reading list. I'll come back to this thread with any insights I glean.

complaining about people using EBT cards to buy cigarettes and alcohol

If I ever personally hear someone say this shit, I'll see if I can find someone who's willing to lend out their EBT card so that the claimant can show me how this works.

On inequality, "the cream rises to the crop in any society" (I've heard it said exactly this way). The argument goes: if you redistributed all the wealth in the world equally tomorrow, not only would you have millionaires and billionaires again within a year or so, it would probably be the _same_ millionaires and billionaires.

Also: Traditional cultural values - god, guns, guts, family - have worked fine for centuries; why mess with them by accommodating race agitators and tranny freaks in the name of 'diversity'?"

All this said, stereotypically, from the POV of a white male Christian Republican NRA Life Member. He lives on an acre in an outer burb that is a half-hour's drive from Wal-Mart and an hour's drive from an ethnic restaurant. All of his neighbors are also straight white Christian Republican NRA Life Members.

(And yet he characterizes the life of someone in Manhattan, DC, or Hollywood as "living in a bubble." Grr. But let us set that aside for a moment.)

i just don't think you would be able to find a conservative who says "i want to rationalize and perserve privilge"

Any kind of conservatism is rooted in the idea that traditional hierarchies, structures, and values (what liberals would call "privilege") are worth preserving, surely, though?

And, for that reason, I'm not sure that this could be conceived:

we could conceive a conservatism that might assert that everybody should start from birth without the benefit of inherited wealth, I think

I would probably be on board with that but it is socialism, more or less.

more on the liberty/equality thing...

I think for the most part they differ in degree because both liberals (#teamequality, for the purpose of the caricature) and conservatives (#teamliberty) are willing to accept trade-offs between the two: liberals are not up in arms that doctors are paid more than cashiers (and don't demand redistributive taxation to set that right); conservatives accept that they will be taxed to build roads, etc.

obviously the caricature only works to a point because liberals actually care about uh, liberty, some even care about equality to the extent that it furthers liberty. and i think conservatives care quite a bit about things like 'equality of opportunity' and 'a level playing field'. but i think there is a consistent ideology that we all inhabit that takes all of these things into account to varying degrees, rather than some insurmountable cleavage

Perlstein's book on Barry Goldwater is next on my reading list. I'll come back to this thread with any insights I glean.

― (Got A) Key In My Peehole (From Peeing Through a Keyhole) (Old Lunch), Tuesday, March 7, 2017 9:42 AM (eleven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i read this in January and i'm basically regurgitating Perlstein itt lol

Abortion is killing babies and it's horrible! But there's no deeper long-term ideology underlying that. Because if you've successfully railed against an unwanted baby being born, you now have to deal with that unwanted baby and the parent(s) who may not be able to care for that baby. When the next step after the successful reification of your platform is 'welp, sucks to be you', I'd argue that your ideology isn't exactly watertight.

This seems reasonably consistent to me: individuals and families need to be responsible for the consequences of their own choices.

insurmountable cleavage

I grew up around conservatism and still get doses of it when I visit my parents, with whom I share city space. A few months ago I wrote about Cubans and the GOP and why they're proud conservatives.

Thanks to an addiction to leaden polysyllabic words, William F. Buckley, Jr. normalized the detestation of the poor and disregard for complaints from minorities. As the sun set on Richard Nixon's felonocracy, George Will cracked the code for inserting Edmund Burke, Disraeli, Russell Kirk, Churchill, Hayek, and Oakesshott into columns that supported a contempt for busing, public schools, and healthy diets, and endorsements of abattoirs in Central America (later subjects include Allen Ginsburg, blue jeans, and the coarsening effect of Bill Clinton on civic life). In their children they inculcate their children in the conviction that federal laws against discrimination are the government's means of destroying the aspirations of straight white men.

In other posts I've confessed to never recognizing conservatism as a positive force; it can't be. By nature it must oppose. Since at least January 1981 and probably January 1968, what it opposes it must vaporize. The opposition is illegitimate. Busing doesn't work? Fine. Then leave Jim Crow in public schools intact. Oppose welfare? Good. How do we put these young mothers to work? Gays want to get married? Tough luck – lie about pursuing this lifestyle choice. Repeatedly the last forty years of political life have seen conservatives back away from the complexities of modern life mumbling the mantra What's mine is mine. Your bad luck is your business – and your fault, for obviously you deserved it.

"stand athwart history, yelling STOP"?

standing athwart history yelling "GO FUCK YOURSELVES"

i just don't think you would be able to find a conservative who says "i want to rationalize and perserve privilge"

As noted by Tombot towards the beginning of the thread, the acceptability of speaking aloud the tenets of conservative ideology has varied over time. The longer Trumpism continues, the more you're likely to encounter conservatives who are willing to cut through a couched and coded PC word fog and just speak their mind.

oh come on. can't think of a more perfect abdication of politics to say, 'it's not our fault the other side is just too stupid!' there's no value in being right and losing in politics

50% of the country is of below-average intelligence. fact! i'm not a politician. fact! i think the democrats have grown too stuck up to associate with people whose presence doesn't flatter them, and that Koch/ALEC nation has cultivated a network manipulating the less bright among us in order to keep their own tax rates low. how do you reach the less cognitively sharp, pry them out of the grip of Koch/ALEC nation? who knows?

do you reach the less cognitively sharp, pry them out of the grip of Koch/ALEC nation?

You could force them to appear in long-running sitcoms where they were forced by circumstances to get along with those of other backgrounds. There would be hugging and learning. Maybe bring them to gay dance clubs. Eventually their feet would start to move as the rhythm takes control.

OK flopson I was clearly thinking of a different angle on the degree vs kind question. I'll try to explain with other people's words

YMP: The argument goes: if you redistributed all the wealth in the world equally tomorrow, not only would you have millionaires and billionaires again within a year or so, it would probably be the _same_ millionaires and billionaires.
Alfred: Your bad luck is your business – and your fault, for obviously you deserved it.

These arguments, to me, represent a fundamental break from the underpinnings of a liberal political thought. A lot of conservatism relies on fortune favoring the righteous, and thus "prosperity theology" which btw is completely insane just saying; liberalism is based on an understanding that the world is a cruel joke played on the unsuspecting and the gullible. That's not a difference of degree, to me.

Obviously all this is my opiniong and does not represent the position of my stated affiliation and yes there's a g on opinion that I left there on purpose

I agree with YMP, La Cage aux Folles solves everything

Conservatism is a shuck. I used to be like flopson, reluctant to dismiss a so-called system of belief. But it's my life as a gay man working for a public institution that's at stake.

A lot of conservatism relies on fortune favoring the righteous, and thus "prosperity theology" which btw is completely insane just saying; liberalism is based on an understanding that the world is a cruel joke played on the unsuspecting and the gullible.

I'm not as well read on all this as some of you, but as well as fortune-favors-the-righteous conservativism isn't there also a cautious, pessimistic type of conservatism that emphasises how human knowledge is always imperfect and incomplete, that we are fallible therefore we should be wary of grand schemes to reshape society etc (still the same result of leaving existing hierarchies/privileges in place though?).

but this cautious version of conservatism is one whose appeal I feel I understand a little better (and understand why it would appeal to people who aren't all that privileged in the grand scheme of things, i.e. they are the ones who will likely be at the sharp end if the ambitious plans to reshape society end in failure, so better to preserve what little you already have?)

human knowledge is always imperfect and incomplete, that we are fallible therefore we should be wary of grand schemes to reshape society etc

the irony of this is that modern liberalism fits this bill far more than conservatism.

when used to explain away any suspiscion of the status quo it is reminiscent of bernard ingham's memorable version of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor, no conspiracies just cock ups, the boris johnson face of conservatism

there is always more to lose than just your chains, this is truer now than ever imo

soref, yes - there will be some poverty inevitably, due to the problem of scarcity. This may be unfortunate, but government is the wrong instrument to redress it. First, that's not the government's job. (Voluntary private charity is preferable.) Second, government is made up of fallible people, who cannot be trusted not to turn even the most well-intentioned program into a sinecure for their neer-do-well cronies, etc. Using things like public schools, the military, federal highway funds, etc. for social engineering almost always backfires and ends up being neither good for the downtrodden or for the entity's original purpose. For example, all those people saying that the military's job is to kill people and break things, not hasten racial integration or trans acceptance.

The Constitution speaks of general welfare - not of making sure each individual is taken care of as well as they might like.

tempted to argue that modern conservatism is in fact radically anti-political in a sense derived from the tradition of absolute morality (cf. Kosselleck's "Critique and Crisis" which I never shut up about).

from what i can tell this is the core of the conservative worldview:

we live in a nasty, brutish and short world. civilization is tenuous and the walls are keeping the barbarians out. it would be lovely to take care of everyone but resources are tight and any misstep will plunge us into the abyss. we must look after ourselves and our families first and foremost because no one else give a fuck about them and we are the only guarantor of our own survivals. the government can sometimes be useful but much more often becomes a conduit for the wishes and needs of its lifetime employees and its dependents who would suck out all of our resources to fund their own survivals while returning nothing of value to our society - something we cannot afford. we are engaged in a fight to the death with those who ascribe to different gods and different ideologies who would surely destroy us if they had the chance and we must defend ourselves. the government's most paramount responsibility is to engage with war against these other civilizational threats. we must enforce the law when it comes to religious faith in order to maintain the rigid hierarchies that have kept us above water until this point - the father as head of the family, the church as head of civilization. we must ban abortion because killing fetuses is murder/leads to sexual decadence/decreases our population rates which undermine the foundations and safety of society. defend the gates, kill the libtards backstabbers waiting to throw them open to the enemy.

regardless of his intent or even level of cognizance, Trump DID manage to convince a lot of working class, Rust Belt Republicans on the issue of trade to stop voting directly against their own interests. certainly you could argue that was a coincidental byproduct of a larger message of isolationism/protectionism, but at least it suggests that not all conservatives are rigidly unshakable in their beliefs (insert "Bernie Would've Won!" memes here).

xp the ingham line is imo it is another iteration of conservatism as managerialist anti-politics: major reform is an essentially naive and dangerous notion, we're all fallible so let's not be too ambitious, the best bet is to just try not to make too much of a pigs ear of things, have a pat on the head, back to work

a conservative assured me more than once a few weeks ago that conservatives think liberals are dumb and liberals think conservatives are evil. bc liberals think they can help everyone and aren't bright enough to appreciate the threats bearing down on them, and liberals don't understand why dad won't let them spend their last dollar helping the poor. i reassured him that i don't think he's evil, just stupid and self-serving, and that i'm quite aware of the threats bearing down on us. just i'm aware of the real ones like cataclysmic climate change and not interested in the fake ones like the imminent sharia takeover of american society.

like it can be useful to understand conservatives how they understand themselves but ultimately there is an incompatible worldview going on. there's only so far you can agree. esp since a lot of conservative tenants of belief are not consistent. if life is so tenuous - something with which i agree - why the fuck should i let the market speculate with our commodity futures??

Shorter version:

https://rlv.zcache.com/god_guns_guts_pro_gun_troops_bumper_sticker-re1274e1dada344d7a1d7567dd38ff282_v9wht_8byvr_324.jpg

Mordy, I think that's pretty good, and can maybe be summed up in a kind of obsession with security (or "immunity," if you want to get fancy and include concomitant obsessions with purity, etc.) -- I've long thought attitudes toward risk define the modern political landscape (modern taken in the long view, not just right now) but I haven't read enough on that topic to flesh it out.

In the simplest terms, I've described conservativsm as occupying a 'control/selfishness' quadrant opposite a more liberal 'justice/selflessness' quadrant. I've also defined it as a resistance towards honestly acknowledging the injustice of one's own privilege, so I don't think it's even necessarily so much about consciously working to maintain privilege through injustice as it is about refusing to confront the cognitive dissonance that allows a person to be okay with perpetuating injustice.

iirc Galbraith was saying way back in the 1950s that there's an illogical tension between orthodox economics reliance on the notion of imminent scarcity and the real economic situation of western democracies?

the irony of this is that modern liberalism fits this bill far more than conservatism.

thinking about where all the endless leftist/social-justice person debates about who has the right to comment on certain issues etc fit with this - the idea that (for example) if you are white you will never really understand the lived experience of racism and therefore are not qualified to comment on it, it's not your place to disagree with someone who does have that lived experience, that overarching meta-narratives are problematic because they don't take difference into account- that seems to fit quite well with an anti-hubris, cautious conservatism? but then the flipside is that particular viewpoints are effectively infallible and beyond question if they are based on lived experience? which doesn't fit in with the "human knowledge is always incomplete" bit?

in a lot of these twitter arguments about lived experience and subjectivity etc the ppl on the non-social justice-y side are usually Dawkins-esque, "I can understand the entire universe with my infallible logic" types, which seems a very un-conservative worldview?

I'm trying to map the steps from this worldview that is

individualistic
liberty-centric

to racism and kneejerk anti-multicultural feeling. Other aspects of the worldview tend to be:

traditionalist
focused on dire threats

Partly, the mythology is of a melting pot in which previous generations of immigrants assimilated into a culture of common values. These prior waves did not expect America to conform to them, they conformed to it. More recent immigrants are the bad kind - they won't assimilate and they expect us to change to accommodate them. To a conservative this is not a strengthening kind of immigration, but a contributor to the sense of dire peril.

Some adherents round this out with takimag-style "race realism," which flatters tribal identification while conveniently excusing inequality. They'll turn to Bell Curve justifications for achievement disparities, and construct a fictional historical pastopia in which minorities "knew their place."

not interested in the fake ones like the imminent sharia takeover of american society.

traitor

If this were France I may feel differently.

A general needs to know where best to allocate his resources ya know

XP to soref - i think that refusing to consider new information / allow lived experience to adjust prior expectation is a conservative approach. favoring the status quo or being resistant to change seems to me to line up pretty consistently with the conservative mentality in practice at least if not in theory and the unviersial logic approach is just an attempt to rationalize the morality by making it seem empirical/objective

there's a lot of slippage and mutual causation between different explanatory frameworks here, perhaps including:

1) individual psychology (does it buttress a lifestyle/identity/ego)
2) intellectual coherence (does it tell a convincing story about the world, my life)
3) moral/ethical/religious convictions (is it "good," right, etc.)

I think one can be a conservative due to any of these individually, but obviously they all overlap and mutually reinforce. I'd hesitate to give one priority (and there are others I am missing, I'm sure)

thinking about where all the endless leftist/social-justice person debates about who has the right to comment on certain issues etc fit with this - the idea that (for example) if you are white you will never really understand the lived experience of racism and therefore are not qualified to comment on it, it's not your place to disagree with someone who does have that lived experience, that overarching meta-narratives are problematic because they don't take difference into account- that seems to fit quite well with an anti-hubris, cautious conservatism? but then the flipside is that particular viewpoints are effectively infallible and beyond question if they are based on lived experience? which doesn't fit in with the "human knowledge is always incomplete" bit?

Yeah, as I think art is noting, this sort of leftism is still based in wanting to remake society (adjusting curricula, asking for trigger warnings, modifying language, creating sexual harassment regulations, ...) based on human knowledge, the knowledge and testimony of oppressed peoples. A cautious conservative would be wary of making these kinds of newfangled changes and throwing out centuries of wisdom, etc.

Efficiency of production is of paramount importance, efficiency of accrual is out of investigative bounds, efficiency of public expenditure is of paramount importance, efficiency of private expenditure is none of anybody's business.

there is no universalism but the universalism of capital

the collective identity of a people cannot be established on the basis of "humanity" at large but only through a specific set of ethnic/religious/cultural symbols which integrate belonging and solidarity.

and to abandon that symbolism is to surrender your individual/collective identity to a vast administrative state

this sort of leftism is still based in wanting to remake society

Yeah this returns my mind to darraghmac's post: conservatives do believe that liberals want to reshape society. In this regard, they are pretty much right.

(I know I, personally, would like to remake society so that it could be kinder, fairer, more egalitarian, more inclusive, more compassionate. Government is not a perfect instrument for achieving that, but it is often the only entity that's even trying.)

A cautious conservative would be wary of making these kinds of newfangled changes and throwing out centuries of wisdom, etc.

Yeah, given that racism, sexism, and class inequality are baked into society, those whose preference is to "conserve" long-held societal structures will inevitably find themselves on the side of preserving the bad bits as well as the good ones. The cautiousness of the "cautious conservative" will always lead him to preserve oppression.

This may be because he likes the privilege he has, and doesn't want the new order to take any away. But he might also argue from skepticism: The cure may be worse than the disease (fallibility of human actors, unintended consequences).

Inaction also has unintended consequences.

there is no universalism but the universalism of capital

I think this is basically why I always have a hard time with the way right-wing economics gets framed as "economic liberty/freedom" (even by liberals, often). The idea that unrestricted capitalism provides freedom is only one, very specific conception of "liberty" (and seems to overlook that private ownership of property requires state recognition and enforcement).

aight serious-ish question. what's the benefit of understanding conservatives?

understanding is its own reward

to convert them or make them powerless

understanding is its own reward

― Mordy

well if you insist on believing that you'll never understand conservatism.

The idea that unrestricted capitalism provides freedom is only one, very specific conception of "liberty" (and seems to overlook that private ownership of property requires state recognition and enforcement).

Agreed - however, that one specific conception of liberty is EXACTLY the one meant by contemporary conservatives.

They look (however selectively) to the founders' views on natural rights. Isn't "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" is just a PR-savvy twist on Lockeian "life, liberty, and property"?

The Founding White Dudes were pretty clear that the idea of liberty they were interested in involved state recognition and enforcement of property rights, and they had no problem with that. Including, and especially, human property, but I suspect I'm preaching to the choir here.

to convert them or make them powerless

― scattered, smothered, covered, diced and chunked (WilliamC)

and what if you can't convert them, and can make them powerless only by subjugating them?

well if you insist on believing that you'll never understand conservatism.

i don't need to jettison my own values to understand conservatism just like i don't need to start eating human flesh to understand cannibalism

then oh well it was worth a shot, and continue to coexist uneasily xp

xxp there are probably good reasons to protect private property that even contemporary liberals can get on board w/

xxp there are probably good reasons to protect private property that even contemporary liberals can get on board w/

Perhaps, but let's not pretend that it's a question of government vs freedom.

Here's an interesting article that touches on how liberals and conservatives often talk past each other on political issues.

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2016/11/why-is-the-decimation-of-public-schools-a-bad-thing

People therefore interpret political language through ideological lenses. What sounds obviously appalling to one person may seem totally unobjectionable or even desirable to another. People on the left, however, often fail to comprehend this fact. They condemn “marginalization” and “inequality” as if everyone already agrees that those are bad things. (A lot of people don’t.) The same is true of “privilege” and “neoliberalism,” which are treated as self-evidently undesirable even though many people do not know what those things are, let alone share a hatred of them.

don't mean to spam the thread, and i know he's a controversial figure, but i just read this passage from Sloterdijk and i thought it provided a pretty interesting distinction that could be mapped into the difference between liberal and conservative tendencies.

In the era of increasingly nervous encounters between peoples in the second and first millennia BC, there were various attempts to come to terms with the irreducible pluralisms of ethnicities and their religion control systems. At a general level, one can divide these attempts into two opposing blocks of neighborhood policies. On the one side are syncretistic tendencies whose goal is the liberating amalgamation of foreign worlds of peoples and gods. Unifying tendencies of this kind are typical of political theologies such as those attempted in the integration of several ethnicities into an empire and a corresponding higher-level sacred imperial order. In the process, priests of a local cult are retrained as diplomats who can recognize their own gods under the foreign names they bear in other popular cults. The great innovation of this school of thought lies in the discovery that, with intercultural sustainable gods, the inner and the outer converge: what one had taken for a foreign god is revealed, upon closer inspection, as a different guise of one’s own deity. Peoples and cults approach one another as soon as they understand that they have devoted themselves to the same numinous entity under different names. The ecumenically compatible thought model of the one in the many spread among the educated, and the number one became the keyword in educated synthesis…A completely different interpretation of the polyethnic and multicultic situation can be observed in the second block. Here the leading actors respond to the perception of polyethnic existence with a resolute hardening and aggrandizement of their own cult traditions. This tendency to withdraw to what is their own culminates in the refusal to let oneself be compared and to participate in translations. Hence the alternative way out of the inevitable ethnic and cultic comparison invites an escape to singularity. Anyone recommending this strategy for self-preservation amid intercultic competition to a people must also offer the prospect of a great contest: because our god is like no other, our people too will be like no other. Whoever commits to the untranslatable god, the most exclusive of divinities, will be rewarded with endless procreative successes and offspring with long memories. Whoever does not join the confessional community may go under amid the multiplicity, leaving neither traces nor memories behind—biblically put, their name will be struck from the Book of Life.

xxp it sorta is tho, no? who were ppl generally protecting their property against? the gov were the ppl confiscating it basically at will.

if you're pointing out that there's a paradox to have the government guarantee yr right to property against themselves, then you're right. but in historical terms it's not crazy that after dealing w/ monarchies and the church there was a sense that the greatest threat to private property was the overwhelming might of the sovereign.

i mean it seems to me that implicit in this quest for "understanding" is really "how do we make them understand". and maybe you can't. at which point you're dealing with people whose interests are intrinsically hostile to yours and who would probably kill you if they could get away with it. which, honestly, is how a lot of conservatives think of us.

maybe you can "understand" someone as an intellectual exercise, without thinking like them, without trying to envision what they feel on a daily basis, but that's not my approach.

how do we get out of this without mass slaughter? can we?

^_-

I acknowledge the power of the metaquestion, but. Seemstame that a thread question of the form "let us try to understand (thing)" sort of presupposes at least some interest in discussing (thing).

E.g., there has been an "explain the appeal of Dream Theater" thread, primarily concerned with the question implied by the title. One potential response could be exactly one post saying "WHY?" with the next post being "yep, you're right, lock thread." But we would have missed out on fun times.

maybe you can "understand" someone as an intellectual exercise, without thinking like them, without trying to envision what they feel on a daily basis, but that's not my approach.

consider that it is only by understanding someone that you truly understand why you believe what you do - and that those who do not understand conservatism are likely doomed to fall into it themselves as they never understand what they thought they were opposing and end up backing into it as they avoid the fantasy of what they thought it was. i don't think this inoculation effect is the best reason to understand something (which continues to be: for the sake of understanding itself) but if you really feel you need pragmatic reasons to answer this question this might do it for u?

maybe you can't. at which point you're dealing with people whose interests are intrinsically hostile to yours and who would probably kill you if they could get away with it. which, honestly, is how a lot of conservatives think of us.

Isn't that feeling at least somewhat mutual?

Maybe not the killing. But that's prolly just because we're betas and pussies, not skilled with firearms.

if you're pointing out that there's a paradox to have the government guarantee yr right to property against themselves, then you're right. but in historical terms it's not crazy that after dealing w/ monarchies and the church there was a sense that the greatest threat to private property was the overwhelming might of the sovereign.

Yes, the government enforces your right to property against itself but also against other citizens, i.e. your right to own a parcel of land means the government has to restrict someone else's 'liberty' to walk onto your land, eat your bread, etc. Historically, the bourgeoisie were surely fighting both for property rights against the power of the state but also for their ability to use state power to protect the power of property/capital over the propertyless classes? As Puffin notes, in the context of the American Revolution, this also extended to the right to own other human beings.

controversial conservative opinion: private property is good

bringing in slavery muddies the waters i think. there are reasons to think protecting private property is good without simultaneously believing that humans can/should be owned.

I find trying to use Logic and thought-experiments (my personal favourite is Grab World) to headsplode libertarians by forcing them to confront the Awesome Paradox at the heart of their ideology but it's a waste of time imo

CORRECTION:

controversial conservative opinion: private property is good. also, slavery is bad

That link basically says what I was saying. I wasn't arguing that private property is a bad thing in all cases, just that it is just another means of using state power to restrict some people's liberty in order to promote one conception of justice. So, framing left vs right economic positions as an issue of "government vs liberty" is problematic. This is probably undergrad-level poli sci stuff but, eh, it's Spring Break and I'm on the Internet.

right it's definitely not government vs. liberty. that's only if you're a libertarian. if you're a conservative you believe in a government (and in fact the conservative Weltanschauung requires gov in order to prevent the worst crimes of natural man) just a limited government because a broad powerful government can also abrogate freedom. the right size government is one that protects ppl from invaders, and prevents people from killing each other / stealing from each other. i don't think you need to view preventing theft as "restricting some people's liberty in order to promote one conception of justice." it's a pretty foundational crime and only in a particular political context (communism?) does it make sense to even start from a position of "private ownership is unnatural."

Well, what is 'natural' about private property ownership as practised in modern capitalism, beyond basic personal property?

The extent to which it predates modern capitalism and has been guaranteed in legal codes since antiquity. Once you're distinguished between good historical ownership and bad capitalism ownership tho I think the onus is on you to explain where the line lies.

Good points/questions and ones I should definitely try to answer after I get some work done!

soref & flopson otm.

to the extent that modern american conservatism has a coherent underlying ideology, its half religious/cultural, half fiscal/philosophical. the former just want to hand authority over to the bigotries of yesteryear, but the latter often have coherent, (semi-)defensible views. among them that the world is fundamentally unfair, and it's not really the government's place to "fix" that. as others have said, that the "best & brightest" tend to rise to the top in any system, and we all benefit best by restricting them least. that equality of opportunity is a noble goal, but any attempt to legislate our way to an actual equality of outcomes will necessarily verge on tyranny. that government bureaucracies are inherently inefficient and self-serving, once entrenched are all but impossible to dislodge no matter how dysfunctional. that society is profoundly degraded when any reward is attached to non-work, so much so that the inevitable consequences of refusal ("no healthcare for you, no food for your children") are preferable to the cultivation of a persistent underclass dependent on system of entitlements. fundamentally, that "the way things are" in some supposedly "natural state" makes a kind of super-sense that transcends ideology, while the naive, liberal/progressive attempt to pull society away from this towards some pipe-dream engineered utopia is doomed to ruinous failure.

plus racism, yeah. lots and lots of racism.

its its its its it's

XP to mordy re traditional capitalism intersection with conservative ideology - i think a lot about this and especially in the context of how the ideologies will react to increasing cyclical unemployment created by technological advancement over the coming decades. anyway good thoughts above (i especially appreciate when things get back to state of nature)

good list, contenderizer

The abortion thing seems a major difference between US and UK conservatives. No-one gives a flying fuck about abortion over here, save for some headbangers in Northern Ireland (Ulster-Scots, go figure).

Not banning but plenty of Tory MPs have been angling for limits - either to time scales or to who can provide advice.

In the US, I think it has its roots as one of the main ways that the GOP pulled Catholics and Protestants together into the fold, so to speak

Small beer compared to the lunacy that prevails in the US. (xp)

(xp) Conservatism in the UK is Anglican as opposed to Baptist or whatever in the US or, God forbid, Catholic.

No-one gives a flying fuck about abortion over here, save for some headbangers in Northern Ireland

...who prefer to wait till the unwanted wee ones get born, then whack them with a bible and then dump them in the ditch out behind the home for wayward girls.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133?o=0

re: abortion as fundamental conservative issue in the US now

Uh huh, sounds about right.

The Right regards itself as Lincoln and Trump as Grant.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2017/03/07/how-can-conservatives-support-a-thrice-married-trump-he-fights-says-matt-schlapp/?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-e%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.c3e13a5cbe75

interesting read, esp the first couple pages. thanks, milo.

Isn't that feeling at least somewhat mutual?

Maybe not the killing. But that's prolly just because we're betas and pussies, not skilled with firearms.

― may all your memes be dank (Ye Mad Puffin)

i mean, there is a lot of mutuality here. this whole "understanding" thing has been really fucking me up, particularly over the past six months or so, because man the more i feel like i "understand" conservatives the more i hate and fear them. there's this mutually reinforcing/escalating cycle and that cycle does lead, pretty inevitably, to mass political violence. and i don't see any way of breaking the cycle. either don't oppose them and let them commit genocide, or do oppose them and have brutal civil war. what other options are there?

gridlock

Winning - unquestionably - in elections. Bit by bit, at every level, regaining real power so that we don't have to make so many appeals to decency that go in-heard.

Either that, or the sitcom hugging/learning plan.

un-heard

Conservatism is such an amorphous concept in American politics right now that every "explanation of conservatism" that one could give would not apply to some group whose members would vehemently insist they are the 'true' conservatives.

However, if I were to venture an explanation that might apply to a majority of self-described US conservatives, it would be a simple matter of tribal identity, often arrived at by the expedient of being born among self-identified conservatives and taught 'the facts of life' as viewed through that lens, while seldom or never hearing contrary views except as fodder to be caricatured and scorned. This is basically analogous to adopting one's parents' religious identification and religious prejudices.

As explanations go, this is hardly new, sophisticated or surprising, but it is also probably more true than not for most Americans, whether conservative or liberal.

people are inherently selfish, and only fools believe otherwise. the four gospels are allegories about how to get rich. anyone telling you otherwise is just trying to take advantage of you. your self-interest is the only real motivation you can trust, and the only people you owe a living to are your fetuses

Your fetuses are your fetuses, nobody can take them away from you.

always loved that Gershwin tune

https://img.discogs.com/YHbf0_o_VjY6ropG5_ngpfouycU=/fit-in/300x300/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/R-81704-1352916328-5697.jpeg.jpg

people are inherently selfish, and only fools believe otherwise.

I kind of do believe this, but I think it's an individual person's approach to this assertion that determines conservativism. Like, I think that people are inherently selfish but also that participation in a society requires us to transcend our inherent selfishness.

To me, throwing up your hands in the face of that assertion is as morally indefensible as saying, 'people are hardwired to have sex, so you can't expect me to exercise self-control in the employment of my genitals'.

ty to ryan for the sloterdijk, I've never bothered with him but that's juicy

all politicians are liars; i trust in trump. sure he exaggerates here and there, but at least he's a successful businessman

I think that people are inherently selfish but also that participation in a society requires us to transcend our inherent selfishness.

Some conservatives would say that this is just another flavor of selfishness. It's like how when the masochist says "hurt me!" the true sadist would say "no."

You THINK you're acting compassionately by favoring progressive policy. But actually when you favor lefty causes, you're acting selfishly because you get pleasure from it. You preen about your bleeding-heart morality, but in fact your vanity is gratified because you believe you are helping the downtrodden. The thing is, you're doing it with other people's money through taxation (instead of giving through your church, which is how you SHOULD do it). And, as we know from Thatcher, sooner or later you run out of other people's money.

Because liberal elites get their jollies from the feeling that they're helping others, in truth they are making things worse. Not only because government is a bad way to help, but also because handouts only reinforce dependency among the poor. Meanwhile, the liberal elites can advocate for greater wealth redistribution without consequence, because they know THEY won't be truly inconvenienced.

You liberal elites are safe in your enclaves (Manhattan, Georgetown, Hollywood), and it's really only the hardworking REAL American who feels the economic pain that liberal policies cause. You know, all those small-business owners crushed by minimum wage increases, pesky regulation, and competition from illegal labor.

Further, the darker truth behind your supposed "selflessness" is that you get your jollies from controlling other people. You can't bear the thought that people Not Like You (straight, Christian, gun-owning) might thrive.

(All this gleaned from too much reading at ace.mu.nu)

There are thresholds of acceptable selfishness because it's a big bad world and you gotta look after your own somewhere along the line.

Everyone should understand that making the most money and your political party winning are the ultimate aims of the respective games of business and politics and the less rules the purer the achievement.

Religion, incorporating obv reproductive rights, isn't a game and those rules are proper rules not just made up by losers so that we can all play nice

i think too there's a feeling among Fox/Koch/ALEC nation that 'liberal elites' are out of touch trustfunders, born on first base, thinking they hit a single . . . the same way non-"conservatives" look at W and trump and think 'born on third base; thinks he hit a triple'. the vectors of resentment are different, but the resentment itself is real, both on the 'left' and on the 'right', effectively harvested and deflected by Fox/Koch/ALEC echo chambers

Everything we say about Fox/Koch/ALEC echo chambers has its mirror-image in them saying that we just lap up what is fed to us by MSM/WaPo/Soros/NYT/MSNBC.

divided we fall for it

"You said that part of that is that this is what freedom looks like. But is the major decrease in the number of people — according to the CBO — who will have health insurance, is it freedom or is it that some people will no longer be able to afford health insurance under your plan? What they’re saying is that this [a 64-year old making less than $27,000 a year will pay $14,600 a year for health insurance instead of the $1,700 they pay now under President Barack Obama’s law] isn’t freedom, this isn’t people voluntarily deciding not to have health insurance. It’s that your plan makes it unaffordable for people."

"We’re not going to make people buy something that’s so expensive that they can’t afford, that the market is not going to offer. And so where I dispute that comparison is it suggests that we’re going to have the same kinds of plans being offered in 10 years that Obamacare would otherwise offer.The person in their 50s or 60s does have additional health care costs than, say, a person in their 20s and 30s. You’re right in saying — and we agree — we believe we should have even more assistance and that’s one of the things we’re looking at for that person in their 50s and 60s."

“So, you’re going to change the plan?"

“That is among the things we’re looking at doing, yes. And the point I would say is, we’re going to let people buy what they want to buy. We’re going to have more plans being offered, more choice and competition.”

“We can’t do that anymore. We can’t spend money on programs just because they sound good. And Meals on Wheels sounds great.”

_________

"Are you surprised?”

“Yeah. Because he was told ― I was under the influence that he was going to help us.”

“What would you say to him to convince him not to cut this program?”

“What if it was your momma?”

Based on the last few days, conservatism means this amazing (?) quartet of tweets:

https://twitter.com/TomiLahren/status/843115966477164544

https://twitter.com/Gavin_McInnes/status/843245641316864000

https://twitter.com/RichardBSpencer/status/843602974610022404

https://twitter.com/EWErickson/status/843626371830206464

Stood right in some dogtruth

have you ever stood in another person's truth

I don't like that she's pro-choice but I'm not going to be a baby about it.

uh, he is gavin mcinnes

Does he always look crosseyed?

The altright.com "Pro-Life Temptation" article is ... something else.

Forgot we had this thread from the Bush era: What Is Conservatism and What Is Wrong with It?

But mostly I came here to post this quote from LGM / http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2017/05/party-ideas-tm-2

The whole party is just a racket justifying the most upward redistribution of wealth that can pass Congress, justified with asinine back-of-a-cocktail-napkin crap.

"On the other hand, had Hillary cheated her way to presidency, we'd be fighting 2 or 3 wars at this point. Only by Trump's deft use of unpredictability have we kept one step ahead of the enemies who wish to do us harm on our soil, so they lash out at our unprepared allies as a result."

protecting privilege, increasing existing privilege, and violent, hateful spite against anybody who might think they're better than them

feel like all the most virulent strains are substantially rooted in resenting smart kids in grade school

sorry for being boring and obvious though

http://www.aei.org/publication/liberals-or-conservatives-whos-really-close-minded/

the ultimate conservative is tom buchanan, idle rich, openly racist, cheating on his wife. he's who the patriots in galt gulch want to be

xp. a good counter-example to tombot's post - that guy was definitely a bullied "smart kid" in school

wow that was some amazingly shallow clickbait. thanks for sharing.

lol if u needed evidence its thesis is true reread this thread

someone made a book out of an ilx thread again?

i just dont see how ppl can buy into conservatism without a fundamental lack of empathy for those less fortunate than themselves

yes that's the problem. you can't even model a person who has empathy for others and comes to conservative conclusions about how best to express that empathy.

I have seen that argument made over and over again and I still think it's bullshit. I know what conservatives THINK their values are; I just happen to believe they're wrong.

And in any case it doesn't matter. Even if your belief in your values (freedom, order, justice, tradition, family, or whatever) is utterly pure and sincere, your support for policies that fuck over the downtrodden is still vile. The end result is that those who most need help and protection - the poor, the vulnerable, the sick, communities of color - are left mercy to violent winds. No amount of reading William F. Buckley or whatever is going to make me forget or ignore that. Sorry not sorry.

the whole conservative belief that big government aid encourages dependency and saps ppl's dignity and that ppl need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps -- this is not some bullshit they're making up to cover up for "protecting privilege, increasing existing privilege, and violent, hateful spite against anybody who might think they're better than them." this is what they believe.

and they are delusional

and you don't have to apologize to me. it's just good to know what ppl you disagree w/ actually believe and not just what your judgement of the consequences of those beliefs are. you can see conservatives do the same thing when they model liberal thinking. they often ime (tho more often than liberals if that article above is to be believed) just cite their own least favorable interpretation of the motivations and consequences of liberal ideology.

I think it's fair to say that any variety of empathy which extends no further than your loved ones and people in your community who look and think like you isn't actually empathy but an amazing simulation thereof.

less often* i mean in that parenthetical

e pluribus unum bitches

like surely you know they say the same exact things about you right? a little epistemic humility might be useful here.

those beliefs are informed by privilege even if not consciously

fuck that. i've never shown such political bad judgment as to vote for george w bush or donald fucking trump. they owe me an apology

This excellent contenderizer post from a while back deserves greater airing:

> progressives often cluck about the manipulation of poor conservatives, implying that they're mooncalf rubes too dumb to know when they're voting against their own interests. this seems wrongheaded on a number of levels. for one thing, it presumes that such interests can be measured objectively. they can't. the conservatives in question likely stack their towers of relative value quite differently than most progressives. it's also condescending and plays into a well-established conservative narrative, one which holds that the american left is a coalition built cynically on graft, on stealing from the common pot in order to buy the votes of the destitute & lazy. viewed through that lens, the refusal to be so bought, even when one is genuinely needy, becomes a point of pride.

> ― The sandwiches looked quite dank. (contenderizer), Saturday, March 18, 2017 11:00 PM (three months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It remains a good corrective to the "lol dumb right-wingers be manipulated into voting against their interests" narrative. So at least THAT bit needs correcting.

But again, if a policy is racist, supporting it for what you think are non-racist reasons is still shitty in the extreme.

mordy i don't know what superior authority you believe yourself to be arguing from but fwiw i think you are wrong here

the whole conservative belief that big government aid encourages dependency and saps ppl's dignity

for example, this seems to me one of the more brazen and obvious hollow rationalizations that gets thrown around. what are you so confident this is genuine as to use it as your example? note i did exclude the "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" part because ppl do really fall in love with this self aggrandizing fantasy.

"protecting privilege, increasing existing privilege, and violent, hateful spite against anybody who might think they're better than them."

If you think this isn't what they believe, maybe look at what some people are saying about the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire?

Yeah don't really care whether it's genuinely held or not.

Both because it is provably wrong (in the sense that conservatives who speak of "bootstraps" are 99.9% white dudes who benefited from oodles of privilege they may not be aware of) and because the public policies emanating from it are enormously, demonstrably destructive.

that was xp to the above about dependency

anyone who seriously believes in 'bootstraps' past the age of 16, when the rich kids get new cars, is as silly as someone who believes in santa claus or the great pumpkin. trump can have those fools. trump voters are waaaaay outnumbered in the grand scheme. dems should concentrate on appealing to them and motivating non-voters instead of 'figuring out' trump voters and trying to flip them imho

for example, this seems to me one of the more brazen and obvious hollow rationalizations that gets thrown around. what are you so confident this is genuine as to use it as your example?

bc i believe in the principle in a general sense. i think that getting something for nothing is humiliating and unenjoyable and that everyone wants to work to earn their way. no one wants to be on government aid bc it's a mostly shameful thing for most ppl. despite that i support a robust social safety net bc i think that we need to support ppl who for whatever reason are unable to support themselves and bc i think we're all in this together etc etc but i believe the principle conservatives rely upon here is sincere bc it's an extremely relatable principle!

except those people voted for a guy who inherited $200,000,000 for nothing. logic fails that profound are healthier to just walk away from than reason with

Feel like that's one major thing that defines conservatism: others may see the value in the availability of options they may not personally endorse or agree with, while conservatives want to see the world molded to their particular worldview.

One may grant that it's a relatable principle, but believe that the way it is carried out in a policy arena is destructive.

There's nothing noble about the way drug tests for welfare recipients disproportionately stigmatize and harm poor people of color, while steering massive bailouts to banks without asking their executives to pee in a cup.

others may see the value in the availability of options they may not personally endorse or agree with

i think conservatives would laugh at the idea that this describes liberalism fwiw

Well, and I don't even know that I would use that as a descriptor of liberals across the board, but it certainly doesn't seem to describe conservatism.

mordy i think you using your own (non-conservative) reasoning/feelings to explain the sincerity of the conservative position is misunderstanding in m/l the same way you are accusing others in the thread of doing

i suspect i know and speak to more conservatives irl than almost anyone on ilx fwiw

like surely you know they say the same exact things about you right? a little epistemic humility might be useful here.

Well, because this board does not have 500 threads devoted to conservative bile-spewing and angry projection and badly drawn right-wing cartoons, so I never oh wait

i don't have exact numbers but i'd guess a majority of my synagogue went for trump. ppl i eat lunch with every week, pray w/, learn w/, and discuss politics w/

hillary won my county like 80% - 20%. fuck trump voters

i suspect i know and speak to more conservatives irl than almost anyone on ilx fwiw

― Mordy, Friday, June 23, 2017 1:54 PM (thirty-six seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

im a white dude from texas, so probably not

Depends where in Texas you live

the part occupied by Jade Helm

There are very blue areas

have a gop rep, state rep, state senator, conservative school board members, whats up?

for example, this seems to me one of the more brazen and obvious hollow rationalizations that gets thrown around. what are you so confident this is genuine as to use it as your example?

bc i believe in the principle in a general sense. i think that getting something for nothing is humiliating and unenjoyable and that everyone wants to work to earn their way. no one wants to be on government aid bc it's a mostly shameful thing for most ppl. despite that i support a robust social safety net bc i think that we need to support ppl who for whatever reason are unable to support themselves and bc i think we're all in this together etc etc but i believe the principle conservatives rely upon here is sincere bc it's an extremely relatable principle!

― Mordy, Friday, June 23, 2017 11:43 AM (fourteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah this isn't actually true i find. I've met a ton of conservative people who while happily take public resources - living in public housing; working in easy, stable, relatively well-paying civil service jobs; receiving disability assistance; receiving tax credits for being low income etc. - who resent the hell of everyone else who they feel benefits from government largesse

i think that getting something for nothing is humiliating and unenjoyable and that everyone wants to work to earn their way. no one wants to be on government aid bc it's a mostly shameful thing for most ppl.

Taking conservatives at their word, they don't believe the bolded part. They believe that there are untold millions of people who want nothing more than to leech off the government forever, and they don't feel humiliated and ashamed, but they should.

lol 99% of my family lives in a county in NE Ohio that went for Trump 55-40 (plus another 3.5% for Gary Johnson). They also went for Romney 50-48 and were virtually tied in 2008 between Obama and McCain. I know a LOT of conservatives.

i think they'd argue that no one truly wants it and it's not good for anyone but it's very hard to say no when someone is giving u something for nothing and so it's basically a conspiracy against those who get aid - they turn into dependents maybe w/ self-loathing etc. xp

phil maybe u can model conservative beliefs idk

"If you’re a conservative who lives in a major metropolitan area or who simply reads the New York Times, you get used to being outnumbered by liberals. Liberals, by contrast, get used to being surrounded by other liberals, both in person and in culture and the media."

this is a terrible take. "major metropolitan areas" skew liberal, but are often much more purple than conservative strongholds where conservative bleeds redder than raw meat. and i dont need to rehash the whole "everyone is in their own media bubble". a lot of conservatives summarily dismiss "MSM" and stick with fox news and talk radio etc.

nah mordy they're just cheapskates bullshitting why they want their taxes lowered. there's no genuine idealism there. the dream of galt gult is to make enough 'fuck you' money never to have to work again

I'm just offering a counter to "i suspect i know and speak to more conservatives irl than almost anyone on ilx fwiw." Not only are my family mostly Republicans, they're also mostly born-again Christians. (My dad's side is a different story.) And I live in a mostly Orthodox Jewish neighborhood, so most of my neighbors are conservative, too!

But in terms of modeling and the "getting something for nothing" mindset, these people all play the lottery with a nearly religious fervor. Any time they have the slightest fender bender, or trip and fall in a store, they look for a lawsuit angle. They all are fiercely protective of their own Medicare/Medicaid benefits while wanting to cut them for "those people." etc etc.

I agree with Mordy that:

It can be a good thing for liberals to read bizarro descriptions by conservatives of "what liberals / "the left" believe / want," reflect on just how difficult it is to build accurate mental models of other people, and calibrate epistemic humility accordingly

I disagree with Mordy that:

"i think that getting something for nothing is humiliating and unenjoyable and that everyone wants to work to earn their way. no one wants to be on government aid bc it's a mostly shameful thing for most ppl."

On the contrary, I think people love getting something for nothing. Very few people find it "humiliating" to send their kids to kindergarten and that's not because there's some intrinsic difference between getting free schooling and getting free healthcare, it's because no one has chosen to humiliate them for sending their kids to school.

i think generally speaking ppl want to work and feel like they're contributing something and earning their way

yeah this isn't actually true i find. I've met a ton of conservative people who while happily take public resources - living in public housing; working in easy, stable, relatively well-paying civil service jobs; receiving disability assistance; receiving tax credits for being low income etc. - who resent the hell of everyone else who they feel benefits from government largesse

― -_- (jim in vancouver), Friday, 23 June 2017 14:02 (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Jim, I thought this, from the last Ontario provincial election, was an incredibly naked piece by Tasha Kheiriddin, a self-described "life-long small-c conservative" who has always taken a hard-right position on public funding for social services. tl;dr: Despite spending her career clamouring for cuts to big government, she couldn't vote for the Tories because they were finally proposing cuts that would actually affect her own family. (Her daughter has Asperger's and she was concerned about the effects of larger class sizes in public schools.)

mordy i'm not sure what your take is tbh
the people you're described - and i relate/know many of these as a NY suburbanite, believe me - are just all the more despicable and awful. maybe even more so because i expect them to "know better"

i think that getting something for nothing is humiliating and unenjoyable and that everyone wants to work to earn their way.

Sounds like Socialism to me. Maybe Corbyn can reintroduce the commitment to full employment into the next Labour manifesto.

my take is that conservatives have beliefs that are underlined by real principles + sincerely held priors and that explanations of their behavior that seek to attribute their political beliefs to purely vulgar self-interest and hate are failures to build an accurate model. xp

due to fixed-point theorems there's gotta be at least one person out there who's benefiting from society exactly proportional to how much they're contributing to society. i say we find that person and beat them up.

my take is that they're like people who swear that WARRANT is the best heavy metal band of all time and won't hear any opinions to the contrary. i'm not really that curious about the rest of their musical taste except for sheer amusement

xp to Mordy: You could maybe build a consistent conservative worldview with that belief in it (that govt. assistant recipients mostly feel humiliated by it), but I'm not convinced it's widely held. I would be interested to see conservative politicians reflect it in public statements: no one really wants social security, medicare, public school, etc. I wonder why they don't do that, if it's what their constituents really think.

(xp mordy) what about explanations of their behavior that attribute their political beliefs to neither hate, self-interest, or principles, but rather to tribal affiliation, and which furthermore denies that they are even really beliefs at all but mostly affiliative assertions, and which says the same thing about liberals, are those cool?

there should be a term like 'dunning-kruger effect' for people who are so hypocritical they don't even realize how hypocritical they are

besides "conservative" that is

it's fine i'm just suspicious of all models where we're logical, compassionate and honest and the outgroup is incoherent, selfish and cruel. like this is the story of every in-group interpretation of the out-group in history. no one has ever been like "well sure we're selfish and illogical and our opponents are compassionate and wise."

xxp

give me a break

https://www.kitkat.com/images/kitkat-snap.png

i think generally speaking ppl want to work and feel like they're contributing something and earning their way

obviously not everyone does think this so you end up with a false consciousness position, denying ppl for their own good

i think generally speaking ppl want to work and feel like they're contributing something and earning their way

I remember we had a thread about work ethic - most of us on here IIRC said they didn't value work in itself but liked the idea of helping other people, being part of a group endeavour etc

People are often bad at empathy, particularly when it comes to those who see the world through radically different eyes, but it seems like the general project of liberalism (ideally, mind) is taking into account the varied needs and desires of different people and trying to figure out how to structure things such that it maximizes the common good. Conservatism, contrarywise, seems to be about constricting everything as much as possible to one streamlined POV which practically necessitates othering anyone who doesn't share that POV. Not to mention the extensive historical precedent of explicit subjugation and disenfranchisement and exploitation and othering upon which conservatism is built.

it's fine i'm just suspicious of all models where we're logical, compassionate and honest and the outgroup is incoherent, selfish and cruel. like this is the story of every in-group interpretation of the out-group in history. no one has ever been like "well sure we're selfish and illogical and our opponents are compassionate and wise."

Good point this ^

The subjugation and disenfranchisement of unborn babies, for example, hmm? What do you have to say about that, Mr. Compassionate Liberal? xp

(See, this modelling thing is easy. It's not like anyone is suffering from underexposure to conservative views.)

I mean, I can only speak for myself but I try as much as possible to separate out the beliefs from the people espousing them. At least to the extent that they aren't, for instance, proudly proclaiming their racism.

xps Although there's nothing too crazy I would think about the idea that, within the bloc of people who don't like social security and vote against it, some of them will be idealistic about work, some of them will be calculating and thinking they'll become richer in that situation, and most of them will be some mixture of the two, right?

rand is beloved in large part because that is as close as the right has come to a coherent representation of the left as immoral

none of it is sincere. it's always starting with the prejudice and rationalizing backwards.

If an American conservative were willing to acknowledge the extent to which social inequality in our country is due to centuries of bad shit perpetuated by white people and from which white people have largely reaped the benefits, I feel like I'd be open to hearing more about any aspects of conservative ideology that don't rest on the premise that that's an awesome state of affairs which should be perpetuated ad infinitum.

sincere "conservatives" aren't intelligent enough to understand that position, otherwise they wouldn't be "conservatives" in the first place

Yeah, and that's kind of the problem. Any ideology rooted in something that heinous is morally indefensible. I'm open to hearing how that isn't the case but I feel like it would involve an awful lot of rhetorical gymnastics.

citizens united needs to go, and the fairness doctrine reinstated

first amendment solutions

this thread is ridiculous & i'm wary of generalisations, but they are fun, so: i think conservatives aspire to collectively cultivate a certain dignity & elevated spirit through purity & abnegation

Prolly worth noting that these are generalizations drawn about a voluntary self-identification. We're not talking about, like, the French or people with brown eyes.

i think conservatives aspire to collectively cultivate a certain dignity & elevated spirit through purity & abnegation

I ... don't get this?

xp it's more like a generalisation about a religious group

Unless it was a joke? Like, I've known some people for whom this might be true, usually but not always deeply religious people, but conservative political views do not seem to be the determining factor there. And Gandhi, e.g., was far from a conservative. xp

i would say gandhi was very conservative, but obviously the word is loose and vague to the point of being nearly useless

I generally agree with Lunch in terms of effects. But in keeping with the project of showing Mordy we actually can try to see things from the perspective of sincere conservatives, this -

I'd be open to hearing more about any aspects of conservative ideology that don't rest on the premise that that's an awesome state of affairs which should be perpetuated ad infinitum

- is ascribing words to them they wouldn't say. The premise is not necessarily "that's an awesome state of affairs which should be perpetuated ad infinitum." That's lefty ventriloquism, not a way a sincere conservative would formulate it.

Try something more like "historical skepticism," which might be expressed as: traditions became traditions over time, through organic processes. SOMETIMES they need changing - slavery is an example - but they should do so gradually and through the same organic means. It should happen through an open and transparent process where the whole of the culture comes to understand that the change needs to take place. We should not toss aside long-held cultural traditions willy-nilly, or frivolously, or due to fashion. And we should DEFINITELY not have cultural changes thrust down our throats against our wills through aggressive Federal action. Bottom-up, not top-down.

On this view, the idea that people can just choose to be the gender that they "feel like," perhaps "feel like on a given day," and that men can go into women's bathrooms and compete in women's sports, is not just wrong but wrongly adjudicated and wrongly promulgated. It is the Government moving ahead of public opinion, and seeking to impose a change in values, rather than responding to an organic change.

Using government resources (like the military or Federal funding or highways or whatever) to perform "social engineering" is not just bad because conservatives disagree with the values being espoused. It's bad because the government should not be the mechanism whereby we change attitudes - whether it's on gay marriage, trans rights, or when the police should be allowed to shoot black people.

It sure is if it can be used to describe a pacifist anti-imperialist anarchist. xp

Lunch, is that ^ too much gymnastics for you?

It seems like a plausible Buckleyan position. Of course it's both (a) wrong on facts and (b) horrible in practice, but it's plausible.

traditions became traditions over time, through organic processes. SOMETIMES they need changing - kowtowing to russians is an example

you can be a pacifist anti-imperialist anarchist and still think desperately impoverished ppl need to hand spin for their edification. the obsession with an inward-looking moral order is still there, it just (claims) not to require a state to enforce it

bad brackets

Just getting super reductive.

Amodio et al, 2007. Neurocognitive correlates of liberalism and conservatism. Nature neuroscience, 10(10), pp.1246-1247.

> our results are consistent with the view that political orientation, in part, reflects individual differences in the functioning of a general mechanism related to cognitive control and self-regulation. Stronger conservatism (versus liberalism) was associated with less neurocognitive sensitivity to response conflicts. At the behavioral level, conservatives were also more likely to make errors of commission. Although a liberal orientation was associated with better performance on the response-inhibition task examined here, conservatives would presumably perform better on tasks in which a more fixed response style is optimal.

Carraro et al, 2011. The automatic conservative: Ideology-based attentional asymmetries in the processing of valenced information. PLoS One, 6(11), p.e26456.

> In Experiment 1, we demonstrated that negative (vs. positive) information impaired the performance of conservatives, more than liberals, in an Emotional Stroop Task. This finding was confirmed in Experiment 2 and in Experiment 3 employing a Dot-Probe Task, demonstrating that threatening stimuli were more likely to attract the attention of conservatives. Overall, results support the conclusion that people embracing conservative views of the world display an automatic selective attention for negative stimuli.

Hatemi et al, 2011. A genome-wide analysis of liberal and conservative political attitudes. The Journal of Politics, 73(1), pp.271-285.

> The results point toward NMDA and glutamate related receptors as being worthy of further examination. Indeed, in every significant or suggestive chromosomal region these receptors were implicated. Of particular interest to political ideology is the relationship between NMDA and performance on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST). The WCST is a neuropsychological test of the ability to display flexibility in the face of changing schedules of reinforcement. By definition Conservatism and Liberalism have much to do with flexibility of opinion in the face of a changing world

Kanai et al, 2011. Political orientations are correlated with brain structure in young adults. Current biology, 21(8), pp.677-680.

> We found that greater liberalism was associated with increased gray matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex, whereas greater conservatism was associated with increased volume of the right amygdala.

Schreiber et al, 2013. Red brain, blue brain: Evaluative processes differ in Democrats and Republicans. PLoS One, 8(2), p.e52970.

> Although the risk-taking behavior of Democrats (liberals) and Republicans (conservatives) did not differ, their brain activity did. Democrats showed significantly greater activity in the left insula, while Republicans showed significantly greater activity in the right amygdala. In fact, a two parameter model of partisanship based on amygdala and insula activations yields a better fitting model of partisanship than a well-established model based on parental socialization.

Ahn et al, 2014. Nonpolitical images evoke neural predictors of political ideology. Current Biology, 24(22), pp.2693-2699.

> Disgusting images, especially those related to animal-reminder disgust (e.g., mutilated body), generate neural responses that are highly predictive of political orientation even though these neural predictors do not agree with participants’ conscious rating of the stimuli. Images from other affective categories do not support such predictions. Remarkably, brain responses to a single disgusting stimulus were sufficient to make accurate predictions about an individual subject’s political ideology.

Old Lunch makes a lot of good points itt.

I've really struggled with making sense of my good buddies conservatism. He's sympathetic to Trump, flat earthers and many other things that frankly confuse me. What I've noticed is he seems to think these con. groups are counter to the majority and it's almost like he's engaging in a form of rebellion by choosing these beliefs. No matter how much I try to get him to admit there's an agenda in what his side believes, he seems to see their side as "facts" and that they're exposing lies. I love the guy and celebrate our differences but I also find it impossible to get through to him so I give up.

Ogmor, I think you're working with a definition of "conservatism" that is fairly removed from any that I'm usually familiar with. I do hope to see Republicans and Tories champion radical pacifism and decentralized participatory economics in my lifetime, though.

I think social & moral conservatism can (will?) manifest in pretty much any sort of society. I guess I'm saying it's that defensive tendency, that prizing of decorum & dignity & harmony, it's the concern with threats to the social/moral order & hegemony

if not, what is it that conservatism aims to conserve?

Status

I'm just not sure that conserving social order and hegemony (which is emphatically not what Gandhi was doing wrt Empire, capitalism, or the caste system, for starters, although, yes, he wanted to conserve certain traditions as well) is equivalent to cultivating dignity through purity and abnegation (which is not, generally, what I see in most mainstream political conservatism). xp

i think that getting something for nothing is humiliating and unenjoyable and that everyone wants to work to earn their way. no one wants to be on government aid bc it's a mostly shameful thing for most ppl.

Based on what? Is there a rash of middle-clash people refusing their inheritances? People LOVE getting shit without "earning" it.

You're conflating a sense of purpose, authentic life, etc. with 'earning' the right to feel fulfilled via a job - if not for the shame thrust upon people on government aid, they can find that fulfillment through any number of other activities. People feel ashamed of government aid because they're told to feel ashamed, that it's less than manly/adult/honorable to do so.

xp empire&colonialism make it even trickier to talk about conservatism, but i think conservatism can exist on any scale, & can be revolutionary in certain circumstances. i think conservatism prizes institutions/systems that bestow a symbolic conditional dignity onto those who can/will play along (obviously lots of conservatives don't have much economic/political status). the urge to protect the in-group & its moral order is conservative imo

The only contexts I can think of where conservatism and revolution got together are the US Civil War and the Taliban.

Status

― El Tomboto, Friday, June 23, 2017

otm

Conservatism uses the language of counter-revolution.

Yeah, the other contexts I was thinking about were coups in the Americas but if Kissinger is bankrolling you then "revolutionary" it ain't

Although I'm lukewarm on him, Corey Robin's collection of essays published a few years ago traces the lineage from Burke to Scalia.

hanging in the pub with a bunch of conservative friends and as per I can assure you a lot of the motivation is prejudice and contempt

i think that getting something for nothing is humiliating and unenjoyable and that everyone wants to work to earn their way. no one wants to be on government aid bc it's a mostly shameful thing for most ppl.

when I worked in kansass I used to hear this from students, many who came from farming families (so not just Johnson County kids)(and yeah yeah farming subsidies, it's not the point here). I honestly had never heard this point of view before: what would be more shameful about government aid than say familial aid with tuition and housing costs?

over here every family gets government aid (the program is called CAF, "AF" for "allocations familiales"), even if you're rich (as of a couple of years ago it's a little bit "means-tested" but just a little). when kids are no longer dependent on their families then they become eligible for CAF themselves. since everyone, rich or poor, shares this government aid, there's no shame; it's like health care or pensions.

so I wonder where the American shame comes from?

from our evil capitalist overlords who want to pit the proletariat against each other
i'm only half kidding

https://www.google.com/search?&q=not+growing+alfalfa+catch+22

Euler the prevailing theory on that has been, still is: Protestantism

in a more complicated way it's about yr conception of how you shd relate to the state. the US's rugged individualism doesn't really have a European analogy

That's interesting. I actually feel much worse about things I've got from my parents, esp as an adult, than about public services I've received, esp considering that the former are not available to anyone with citizenship.

4xp to Euler

But, yeah, Napster was shut down because of aggressive legal action from the RIAA, not because of public shame about acquiring music without paying for it.

Yes most other countries probably teach every student from 6 and up that a government is a thing you violently overthrow when it taxes your stuff too much

*don't* teach
Ugh

That and Protestantism.

Nordic countries are protestant and has some of the biggest safety nets, though. I'm guessing you think of Max Weber? It's not entirely the same thing.

Lutherans don't count

at anything

Yes fwiw Weber makes clear he is talking about Calvinists in the main. And also that America is the main arena for the Protestant ethic.

yeah my question was kind of rhetorical since it's obv a big topic i.e. Weber Protestant work ethic but it's gotta be more than that since I *think* attitudes differ in Germany Holland Denmark U.K. etc. Well actually I don't know if that's right!

who is the most True Conservative in this book

http://ebible.org/kjv/Job.htm

Protestantism is too broad a brush to use but the uniquely US strains of it are also the root of all our other idiosyncratic conservative attitudes/things/stuff

wrt to Weber it's probably best to understand his argument as being that Protestantism, due a variety of factors, prepared the way for a certain kind of subjectivity which is amendable to American style capitalism--in particular the idea of being an autonomous self tasked with discovering "signs" of salvation in inner-worldly terms. So it's not so much that Protestant lurks behind everything so much as it was the historical precedent for creating the inner life of an autonomous subject--and that being a kind of subject that looks at need *help* from outside (i.e. not the deliverance of grace) as an existential threat.

Try something more like "historical skepticism," which might be expressed as: traditions became traditions over time, through organic processes. SOMETIMES they need changing - slavery is an example - but they should do so gradually and through the same organic means. It should happen through an open and transparent process where the whole of the culture comes to understand that the change needs to take place. We should not toss aside long-held cultural traditions willy-nilly, or frivolously, or due to fashion. And we should DEFINITELY not have cultural changes thrust down our throats against our wills through aggressive Federal action. Bottom-up, not top-down.

i appreciate puffin's framing of conservatism in this way, and i don't doubt that there is a segment of conservatism that actually plays out in this way. but from my interactions with family and friends in MO, these ring more true to me:

if not, what is it that conservatism aims to conserve?

― ogmor, Friday, June 23, 2017 5:26 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Status

― El Tomboto

&

hanging in the pub with a bunch of conservative friends and as per I can assure you a lot of the motivation is prejudice and contempt

― pray for BoJo (Noodle Vague)

when it comes down to it, it's fear. fear of change, fear of people who aren't white, fear of traffic in the city, fear of losing status, fear of being on the wrong side of history.

i'm probably painting with a broad brush. but when conservatives try to describe the motivations of liberals, i don't think that "fear" would be one of the big ones, beyond the common fears that all humans share.

Xposts

in this way I've come to understand conservatism as, at bottom, the idea that the division between the saved and the damned is good and right. Some people are destined to be cast aside. And thus any social arrangement which tries to lift everyone up at once is against divine ordinance as well as a dangerous muddying of the waters wrt to salvation. No massive inequality would threaten the basis upon which I judge my own self-worth, etc. (put in secular terms).

Euler incidentally Charles Taylor's chapter on the disciplinary revolution in "A Secular Age" I thought really laid bare the bones of a certain strain of conservatism!

"Government's role is to act according to the restrictions of our Constitution or amend it accordingly. For the past 50+ years we have voted in politicians that hate our Constitution and continually expand the powers of the federal government and implement rule after rule that is not voted on by the legislature. Why even have the constitution anymore?"

"It's too hard!" "Why should I help, somebody else will do it?" "I don't wanna share." "I don't wanna be responsible." "Why should I have to take out the garbage?" "Let me get this shiny shiny machine gun to show the Russkies, I mean, the liberals!"

Non-Christian cultures also have conservative/liberal divides.

Personally, I think innate differences in cognition play a role. The conservative mindset is built up from disgust and aversion to the body, and to the different. Refs in last post. When parents, peers, and cultures support these innate predispositions, those with them are reinforced with a community.

ILXOR is a self-selecting bunch of mostly musical neophiles, so can count few conservatives, but we're outliers.

In practice, this means that there will always be resistance to social change, as the consensus can take generations to catch up with progressive thinkers. Those who want change must present in benign forms, least likely to arouse innate disgust reactions. "Will & Grace", not leather parades, etc.

Fuck that though, if one person sees footage of a leather parade and realizes "there is a place and time where I can be MYSELF" then everyone wins imo

Also: psychology is in the midst of a replicability crisis, wouldn't count too much on any of the papers you linked

Also also: even if the notional arc of the moral universe bends toward justice eventually, what do conservatives have to say to people suffering right now?

(A: suck it up and die quietly)

"conservatives" aren't 'resistant to change' so much as bootlickers of the powers that be in the status quo. they're the ghouls staring around outside the gates of hell dante didn't think deserved entry even to the inferno. they're the suck-ups on the playground who don't do a thing, or worse, laugh, when the bully picks up and beats up the nerd. american culture enables this spinelessness so that fred koch's boys and their ilk can keep themselves in yachts and helicopters

Tombot may be on to something here:

teach every student from 6 and up that a government is a thing you violently overthrow when it taxes your stuff too much

But for this:

what do conservatives have to say to people suffering right now?

Feel like I've read enough conservative thought (both chin-strokish and spewy) to know that at least some conservatives understand that they are simultaneously on the wrong side of history and, that this is the right place for them to be (standing athwart it yelling stop).

They are often aware that there are people suffering. But they feel that left-liberal "cures" - statism, socialism, and communism - would be worse than the disease.

The solutions they favor for the plight of the downtrodden are local and voluntary as opposed to national and mandatory. Mainly familial, communitarian, and religious charity. It's hooey, of course, but this is an attitude that is widely expressed and, one presumes, sincerely held.

It is sincerely held, and shared by tons of folks who aren't conservative at all. The evidence that institutional philanthropy is insufficient at best and a total scam at worst is all there, it just doesn't have enough megaphones yet and it's dicey to distinguish the argument from "all yr religious charity drives are bullshit"

I've read enough conservative thought

I think what you write (see also: burkean/skeptical defense of organic tradition, above) is a good account of conservative thought, but I can't express too strongly that conservatism as practiced by Americans who call themselves "conservatives" has almost nothing to do with conservative thought as expressed in e.g. the National Review or the writings of Antonin Scalia.

XP

Because a charity drive with clear objectives is a great thing, it makes the donors feel better and such actions can absolutely improve lives of people in need, but giant NGOs with boards full of elites, chief executives who bring home annual compensation in the high-mid six figures or more, and use your milk money to do further fundraising need to end.

To explain to conservative men and women of a certain age that the Boston Tea Party happened because colonists thought the were taxed too little instead of, as the story goes, too much is to watch Virginian learn that Santa Claus is a myth.

I think what you write (see also: burkean/skeptical defense of organic tradition, above) is a good account of conservative thought, but I can't express too strongly that conservatism as practiced by Americans who call themselves "conservatives" has almost nothing to do with conservative thought as expressed in e.g. the National Review or the writings of Antonin Scalia.

Not as different as you think! Conservatism works to preserve hierarchies, and Burke loved'em.

Here's a good summary of Robin's thought:

Conservatism, he says, is a reactionary ideology. It is a defense of hierarchy against emancipatory movements from below. It’s not a disposition or an attitude; it’s not a philosophy of liberty or even of limited government. (It supports the idea of limited government, Goldman says, but that’s a consequence, not a premise, of the theory.) It is first and foremost a coherent set of ideas about inequality that gets forged in the crucible of revolution.

I think what you write (see also: burkean/skeptical defense of organic tradition, above) is a good account of conservative thought, but I can't express too strongly that conservatism as practiced by Americans who call themselves "conservatives" has almost nothing to do with conservative thought as expressed in e.g. the National Review or the writings of Antonin Scalia.

Quite agree! However, I am still trying to respond (however deludedly) to mordy's charge that liberals like us "can't even model" a viewpoint that is simultaneously conservative, and motivated by something other than hate.

I am interested in this question, partly because I keep seeing shit like that American Enterprise piece that says Cons understand Libs better than vice versa. But as I've said, I don't care if there are good intentions behind horrible policies. If you support those policies, you're morally on the hook for their consequences.

cons pick on libs. libs try to understand cons. and cons laugh even more

that's the problem. you can't even model a person who has empathy for others and comes to conservative conclusions about how best to express that empathy

THIS is what I'm trying to refute. I know full well that not every Red Hat Teabagger has read Burke, or even Ayn Rand; they just don't like that they can't tell the fag joke anymore and they think their jobs are gone because of brown people.

"So we understand what you guys want to do, you essentially want to give a very substantial tax-cut, in your case, you don’t want the tax payers in your district to fund Medicaid. Rolling that back making it unlawful for your taxpayers in your district to fund Medicaid, cut overall the cost of Medicaid, it gets less money, and then give individual people tax credits — that’s the plan.”

“That’s the fundamental essence of what we are trying to do. Empower people rather than expanding government to a point where it’s not sustainable. American taxpayers can’t foot this bill endlessly and without a limitation because they are tapped out.”

what do conservatives have to say to people suffering right now?

My brother-in-law: "There have to be winners and losers in life. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ "

that's the core of it, imo. Inequality is Good and Just.

God has always wanted an arbitrary percentage of human families to die horribly with nothing to their name - that's why he made the world the way it is. Also, did any of you do the reading? Judges! Revelation! Get with the program.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1tj2zJ2Wvg

I'm not sure if this is a more British phenomenon but there is also the more wistful 'bicycling vicars' strain of conservative which despite its charm nonetheless hides its own reactionary malice. Really brought home by reading a series of books by John Moore recently- fictionalised memoirs of life in Tewkesbury between the wars - written just after and apparently hugely popular. Full of pleasant barwick green infused vignettes of playing c I let and alcoholic eccentrics, seeing off the urbanites etc.

All through though there is this rich vein of guff about the nobility of the rural poor - they may be poor but at least they could trade their sweated labour for a crust of bread and a jug of cider or poach a rabbit before going back to their slum hovel.

This a strong foundational myth in British and Aussie conservatism and, I guess, is as old as time. If only we could regress to a simpler time everyone would be happy and orderly - in their proper place. It doesn't really chime with neo-liberal economics and is almost in opposition to it - good capital is feudatory and bad capital is mercantile.

social conservativism doesn't really fit in at all with the creative destruction of neoliberal capitalism. i feel like some conservatives understand this but think that government "social engineering" is worse because it creates a dependency class and weakens private organizations like churches

Conservatism, he says, is a reactionary ideology. It is a defense of hierarchy against emancipatory movements from below. It’s not a disposition or an attitude; it’s not a philosophy of liberty or even of limited government. (It supports the idea of limited government, Goldman says, but that’s a consequence, not a premise, of the theory.) It is first and foremost a coherent set of ideas about inequality that gets forged in the crucible of revolution.

i think this is completely wrong. the idea of government as a limiting force on the natural violent state of man (hobbesian gov) is v. conservative imo

i think corey is a good example of the modeling problem

Mordy, you're correct in the narrow sense that no one sits down in his armchair and says to himself "how can I defend the hierarchy against these emancipatory movements from below?" But because that is the end result of basically every policy action of basically every conservative person, the distinction is only minimally interesting.

no one sits down in his armchair and says to himself "how can I defend the hierarchy against these emancipatory movements from below?"

I ... think a lot of conservatives do (give or take the word "emancipatory")?

I am also sceptical that most conservatives can model liberal or leftist thought better than Corey Robin can model conservative thought, btw.

I agree, Sund4r; "liberals are just pandering to poors in order to grab power/$ for themselves and their cronies" is comparable to "conservatives are all just hate-filled greedbags."

Peter Hitchens to thread: he thinks the law is too soft on cannabis and our current Tory party is full of godless nihilists and classic liberals. He has some very strange and exacting standards on conservatism. He also thinks Blair's Labour were Marxists.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/pro-trump-porn-stars-are-scared-silent-the-industry-is-biased-and-no-one-will-admit-it

take it to "rolling explaining conservative porn stars"

He also thinks Blair's Labour were Marxists.

Well he used to be one so you'd think he'd know better.

Talking of batshit UK right wingers, here's Simon Heffer, not that you can read the article, not that you'd want to, but the accompanying photograph will give our American cousins some idea of what Young Conservatives look like in the UK...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/06/24/tories-must-convince-young-moral-case-conservatism/

What's the conservative version of this?

http://www.northernsun.com/images/imagelarge/5381.jpg

Cuckold-porn stars find out that is truly they who have been cucked.

#blackmirror

xxp "A rising tide lifts all boats," but they consider supply-side to be the rising tide, which 40 years of experience has shown it isn't. My reply whenever a conservative friend has used it in earnest is, "Yeah, but if you don't have a boat, you just get drowned."

What's the conservative version of this?

whoever fights their way to the top gets to trickle down on those who cannot

i think generally speaking ppl want to work and feel like they're contributing something and earning their way

― Mordy, Friday, June 23, 2017 12:12 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Nah

I know my friend who is taking a sabbatical from his software developer job and working at a townie bar in a smaller area (ok, he got canned after they treated him badly, feels burned out, and is bar aust fuck it) gets a lot of low wage customers, factory dudes coming off third shift (he starts bar tending at 6am sometimes for the 6-10am bar crowd) has some conservative regulars. I'll ask to see how they view things recently

that was (bartending because, fuck it)

"Well he used to be one so you'd think he'd know better."

Yeah, he was a full Trotskyite in the 70's and SWP member from the age of 17. He fell out with the Conservative party in '03 and is always putting the boot in on them. One of his obsessions is of liberals and "cultural Marxists" trying to replace god with the state. His son Dan rebelled against him by becoming a left-footer and is the deputy editor of the Catholic Herald!

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/history/2017/06/james_mcgill_buchanan_s_terrifying_vision_of_society_is_the_intellectual.html

yeah he was a big part of that adam curtis thingy

How many Nobels in Economics go to reactionary cranks with "research" that is readily falsified IRL?

About the same % as for those in the arts I guess

high quality post read elsewhere:

"They want a two-caste system. The rich elite, accountable to no-one, and the poor working class, a never ending inexhaustible pool of labor, with enough scarcity in employment to make high turnover, and thus lower paying, careers that leave most of the profit of production at the top of the food chain.

"They're more looking towards the... advanced societies of India, and Mexico, and now Russia. Look at all the actions they've taken over the last twenty years, and suddenly, it becomes obvious. Cut education, restrict birth control and abortion, and generally lower the quality of life of the people so that they and their children are happy with less and less. Children are expensive to raise, so unplanned children are a boon that benefit both objectives. They're still securing the religious based procreation directives through religious based law.

"But for a proper oligarchy, they need to cut any forms of control. The last strands of accountability are being cut in front of your very eyes. The White House press briefings no longer permit audio or video recording, to afford plausible deniability. You have a president that intentionally plays fast and loose with fact to dull you to danger of the situation. The ethics committees have been gutted and are useless. The system of checks and balances is broken.

"Even if Trump were somehow impeached, and the House and Senate control flipped to the Democrats, it would only delay all of this, not stop it. Remember, there's a decades long gaslighting program going on, where conservatives are being taught daily that the greatest threat to life on earth is liberalism, that they are their enemy, not their countrymen. That cutting their own throats to splash their blood on the libs is an honorable and brave sacrifice. They have no idea that we're being divided, and that we are all being conquered. Discourse will not sway them, facts will not change their course. They are not enemies, they are victims, and nobody knows how they can be helped. They have an immunity to reason itself."

Read that in the voice of David Thewlis in Naked

one of the lowest quality posts i've ever read i'm glad we could import it from its natural environs to ilx. why exactly is the party of "inexhaustible pool of labor, with enough scarcity in employment to make high turnover, and thus lower paying, careers" in favor of reducing immigration and the party of i guess more high quality jobs for fewer ppl in favor of practically open borders exactly? i thought for a second that maybe they're talking about the neoliberal elite on both sides of the aisle but then it starts talking about trump who if he stands for anything stands for importing less cheap labor and of all republicans seems least interested in restricting abortion/birth control. it's like someone had their talking points and instead of accommodating the change in scenery just decided to slap everything together and hope no one would notice. glad they were able to stick some sweet sweet false consciousness in there.

"the change in scenery"

I'm feeling your pushback but c'mon on this

Huh, I thought that post was blisteringly OTM. Weird.

you have two mutually exclusive options. either trump is trying to reduce cheap foreign labor in which case the concern over deportations, immigration bans and building walls is legitimate, or that's all a bullshit smokescreen and the concern over it is hysteria (it's not). you can't have both. if he's motivated primarily by socially engineering an infinite cheap supply of workers then he isn't trying to keep cheap labor out of the country.

the idea of government as a limiting force on the natural violent state of man (hobbesian gov) is v. conservative imo

also this is some andrew sullivan bullshit, where "conservative" is used like it has an ancient immutable meaning and thus when e.g. Hannity Limbaugh and Scott Baio use it, they're just bringing Hobbes into the 21st century

i.e. most non-conservative people today are not thinking "I wish my life were more violent than it is"---and of course most conservative people usually aren't either. it's more or less a wash

i was responding to the corey robin piece which is specifically about creating a narrative linking the history of conservatism together otherwise i agree w/ u that meanings change

Mordy what did your conservative orthodox acquaintances think about this week's ruling against El Al?

Trump is racist, but has still outsources the shit out of anything he has ever manufactured. It's not that hard to reconcile.

you can have both, mordy. trump is an idiot who doesn't think consistently

about the seating? i haven't discussed it with anyone specifically but my orthodox community is relatively modern and wouldn't be in favor of forcing women to change seats anyway. that's more of an ultra-charedi thing. xxp

No political agenda (in the US at least) is anywhere near that coherent - when you connect your dots and realize you drew Lex Luthor, you may have missed a few

seriously tombot otm please do not post post-apocalyptic handmaiden's fan fic and pretend like it explains politics irl

I still thought it was fun to read

it's waaaaaaaaaaaay more intellectually consistent than the assholes still insisting that prosperity trickles down

they're both fantasies

yeah the seating thing. was thinking of your resistance toward the characterization of conservativism as a drive to preserve hierarchies and how your orthodox communities, that you've said here give you a clearer eye into conservativism than others, sided on that issue (which is a clash over the preservation of a hierarchy imo)

the left has to be 1000% intellectually coherent while the right gets to be 1% intellectually coherent i guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

In my 40+ years of experiencing Mississippi, I find most conservatives a) untroubled by inconsistency, and b) racist as fuck, to an extent that brushes aside "mutually exclusive options" before the first cup of coffee in the morning. The racism Trumps the need for an imported servant class; there are plenty of poor whites to handle the work, they just need to be poked harder.

does that actually square with what you think trump is about? he wants a birth explosion among poor whites in order to produce cheap labor? how does that square with any of his positions or ideas - even if they are half-baked? he isn't particularly anti-birth control. he is relatively pro welfare state compared to traditional (romney/bush) republicans. where is the evidence for his interest in this master plan of increasing US population to create cheap supply of labor? in fact, this is why the romney/GWB right is pro-immigration! bc they don't believe US whites are capable of fulfilling these labor needs. it's like u don't even have a negative interpretation of the right thing. like that article at the very top says - it's not that you're wrong, it's like you don't even understand what he's saying.

Re: post-apocalyptic handmaid's fanfic:

Missouri’s Senate is considering legislation that would allow employers and landlords to discriminate against women who use birth control or have had abortions. The bill, which has the support of the state’s governor, Eric Greitens, was approved by the Missouri House Tuesday.

Known as SB 5, the bill was first passed by the Senate on June 14 following a special session called by Greitens. His aim was to overturn an ordinance that prevents employers and housing providers from punishing women for their reproductive health choices, according to a report by Feministing, a feminist website.

The ordinance was passed by the city of St. Louis, and Greitens had said it made the area into “an abortion sanctuary city.” The Senate seemed to agree with him, as did the House, which on Tuesday passed an expanded version of SB 5 that included more anti-abortion restrictions. Given the Senate’s vote on June 14, it it seen as likely to approve the updated version of SB 5. This would mean that landlords could refuse to offer housing to women based on their reproductive health choices, while employers could fire female staff members who were using birth control, or refuse to hire them. And while of course this isn't information most landlords or employers have access to, under SB 5 they could ask women what forms of reproductive health care they are using.

http://www.newsweek.com/womens-rights-birth-control-abortion-missouri-discrimination-628538

there are republicans, esp evangelical christian ones, who want to eliminate abortion that's not a novelty.

That's a little more than "eliminating abortion." That's actively making someone's life worse because they've had one, or may have one, or may be taking active steps to be in the position of not needing one!

ANd while you might reply that that's, idk, "incentivizing" women not to have them, it doesn't do much to disassociate this subset of conservatives from the cruelty-based philosophy people itt have posited.

does that actually square with what you think trump is about?

Trump is about Trump, and doesn't seem to be in charge of the policy show at any level, local/state/fed. Trump is not relevant to a discussion of conservatism. In other words, Phil D. otm.

Missouri also prevented localities from implementing raises in minimum wage, so workers who were about to see a three-year phased-in increase to $11 per hour are still only making $7.90 per hour, a rate at which it's almost impossible to even live, let alone improve one's life. How does this square with a philosophy of "dignity in work, providing for oneself, bootstraps," etc. etc.?

mordy, i think trump is about being born into a vast fortune, cheating on women, enjoying a life of no consequences, and failing upward bankruptcy after bankruptcy

i think trump voters, petty and prone to false consciousness as they are, idolize that life

That strikes me as much more plausible

you have two mutually exclusive options. either trump is trying to reduce cheap foreign labor in which case the concern over deportations, immigration bans and building walls is legitimate, or that's all a bullshit smokescreen and the concern over it is hysteria (it's not). you can't have both. if he's motivated primarily by socially engineering an infinite cheap supply of workers then he isn't trying to keep cheap labor out of the country.

― Mordy, Sunday, June 25, 2017 9:31 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's completely bullshit. Rep Steve King is probably one of the most notable bigots in congress, fucking loves all the wall rhetoric, and Sioux City, arguable the central city of his district, is somewhere around 17% hispanic/latino as of the last census. The number one employer in the area is Tyson meats. I really don't think there's a long-term republican plan when it comes to employment, education, or business. It's literally "keep me and my family from having to do shitty jobs, don't make us pay for education for anyone other than our own kids, and make sure we don't have to pay our employees very much"

Missouri also prevented localities from implementing raises in minimum wage

pretty sure this was part of a Koch-funded legislative package several states passed at the same time

I believe you are correct -- Ohio passed such a law as well. But it was recently set aside by a judge who ruled that its inclusion in another bill violated Ohio's "one-subject" rule for state bills: http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2017/06/judge_tosses_out_state_minimum.html

it's still in effect in Iowa iirc

Forcing people to do stuff has all sorts of unwanted psychological consequences down the line. Liberals tend to be dimly aware of this and feel guilty when conservatives are all “you can’t force me to be good!!” It’s true; you can’t.

Imo the counterargument would be “you’re not helping to provide ppl with oppurtunities to be good” but that’s utterly anti-Calvinist

the idea that the division between the saved and the damned is good and right.

hm, I don't know if it needs to have an eschatalogical component - certainly not explicitly.

I think the fears & prejudice being described are fears of moral corruption, and it seems obvious to me that there are positive ideals that conservatives see themselves as trying to protect and (hopefully) foster in their group, something like: honour, respect, self-sacrifice, duty. if you're worried about barbarians, you're worried about civilization. conservatism isn't necessarily aggressive and confrontational, & the gentler british conservatism & politesse Ed describes is imo the product of the confidence & hubris of empire.

hitchens is an interesting case bc he has the zeal of a convert to conservatism but also a fairly astute view of the structural forces changing british political culture & reconfiguring its constitutional settlement that gives him a narrative of decline (thinks the british establishment never recovered from the first world war) & leads him to a sort of heroic pessimist voice in the wilderness position, detached & reflective, more mournful than bellicose.

I read Adam Tooze's The Deluge on the strength of a Hitchens' recc. I wouldn't go as far as saying I like him really, but I definitely prefer him to a twat like Tristam Hunt and would respect his book recommendations more than any Blairite airheads.

you can't force goodness, but you can offer people all the resources they need to live a decent life. providing a basic level of healthcare, education, housing, and nutrition isn't unattainable and there are still plenty of opportunities for people to fuck up and face consequences, if your morality feels that's necessary. it just means they're not blocked by extreme circumstances when they try to live their lives.

if overcoming great hardships is the proving ground for making strong contributors to society, I don't see it. I know bright people, kind people, creative people from across the economic and social spectrum and the only difference is that the broke ones, sick ones, are less likely to have opportunities because they spent a hell of a lot of time and effort to get the level of exposure someone with resources had to start with

if overcoming great hardships is the proving ground for making strong contributors to society, and "conservatives" truly believed that, then they'd be eager for a 100% estate tax, so that the heirs of great fortunes wouldn't be diminished by growing up transcendentally advantaged. but "conservatives" are totally full of shit unfortunately

is Adam Tooze conservative?

ah, but once your family is rich, you are part of the rich status quo, which must be vigorously defended. the only good path is poor to rich. throwing rich kids back into the struggle would be wrong!

maybe rich people are so awesome too that competing with other such awesome people at school and in sailboat races and on the rugby field and whatnot is probably much more of a hardship than growing up poor

I wouldn't go as far as saying I like him really, but I definitely prefer him to a twat like Tristam Hunt and would respect his book recommendations more than any Blairite airheads.

I think I mentioned on here before that Hitchens was in my place of work and was very polite and respectful and seemed extremely nice. Actually Tristram Hunt's been in before but I don't remember anything about him.

ah, but once your family is rich, you are part of the rich status quo, which must be vigorously defended. the only good path is poor to rich. throwing rich kids back into the struggle would be wrong!

^ This is almost always the bit where I lose sympathy with them, and why the 'they are just evil and hate people and like to be cruel' take is so tempting

either trump is trying to reduce cheap foreign labor in which case the concern over deportations, immigration bans and building walls is legitimate, or that's and the concern over it is hysteria (it's not). you can't have both.

While Trump's rhetoric spoke of deporting about ten million people and building a massive wall to keep all cheap immigrant labor excluded, his program since the election has not come within 0.1% of fulfilling his rhetoric. So, yes, it's all a bullshit smokescreen.

The stepped up ICE raids have simply spread rampant fear throughout the immigrant community, making them far more exploitable by employers and vulnerable to racist violence. Which is why the concern over it is not hysteria, either.

So, having it both ways does pencil out.

xp to self. It's the vehemence of their condemning attitude toward the poor people on state benefits, contrasted with the lack of any such condemnation toward the inheritors of great wealth

Who have got far more without working than the poor

I think what it comes down to is that conservatism is about protection of privilege and in this increasingly short term world any kind of intellectual or ideological consistency gets thrown out in favour of doing whatever is necessary to stay in power - not a recent phenomenon cf. rotten boroughs, Tammany hall, Jim Crow etc. etc. Say or do anything to hold back the slow tide eroding that privilege - that's how you end up with trump - at least they have their own moron in the White House.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/06/social-darwinism-is-what-truly-guides-trump.html

Rolling chiding conservatism.

"I think I mentioned on here before that Hitchens was in my place of work and was very polite and respectful and seemed extremely nice"

Apparently in his latest column he is ranting against our unusable waste of money Trident, when we can't even provide safe social housing. so on some matters he is actually shoulder to shoulder with Corbz.

Mitch McConnell will be 78 in 2020. We're seeing the last gasp of a man who knows he won't have to live with the consequences. And that might be one of the biggest factors in current conservatism, tbrh.

NRO book review here that aims to rethread the needle.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/448924/henry-olsen-book-working-class-republican-ronald-reagan-lessons-gop

any kind of intellectual or ideological consistency gets thrown out in favour of doing whatever is necessary to stay in power

so yes just like the other side, tho i know people hate to hear that

I think Puffin's post upthread about historical skepticism is OTM: conservatives fundamentally do not believe that a more equal society is possible, and steps towards it will result in chaos/Soviet Russia instead. The belief in this impossibility also makes it possible to process the existence of ppl undeservingly left behind - it's a shame, but since there's no way to fix it, it is unfair to blame anyone.

I also don't think this is exclusive to academic, ivory tower conservatism: it trickles down quite well, partly because it fits in with a sort of common sense ("you can't invite every beggar into your home"), and because it is empowering on some level - if there's a limited amount of seats at the table, that means that if I become strong enough and smart enough I'll have earned my spot.

I think that a lot of the inconsistencies arise from what you take from this idea that a better world is impossible: you can go straight pseudo-darwinist and believe that regardless of social origins the best (within this self-confessedly flawed system) will win out. But another reaction is to think that if there has to be winners and losers, you want the people closest to you to be in the first category - that's where it becomes mutually reinforcing with all kinds of bigotry ("we need to take care of our own"), and also perhaps part of the reason why there's no move against inheritance (though frankly the concept, though blatantly favouring inequality, is so normalized in society at large that I don't think many conservatives have given it a second thought).

I dont think it has been mentioned yet so I wanted to say that along with the "prostestant" idea I think another related idea that comes from Weber, that of asceticism or self-control, is also really important. Conservatives tend to see liberals as hedonistic, as unable to govern their desires, etc. so for conservatives--who see themselves as disciplined, as governing themselves and their desires in a way that's not intended to optimize their gratification but to benefit society as a whole--any kind of "downward mobility" is attributable to a lack of self-discipline. (For instance, I think when you get right down to it they see repression as a vital societal necessity. That there is, pace Freud, perhaps an element of truth to this is what makes it all the more persistent as a mindset that will stay with us.)

any kind of intellectual or ideological consistency gets thrown out in favour of doing whatever is necessary to stay in power

cf. Garland / Gorsuch. An election is only "the people speaking" if a Republican won it.

Republicans love their Freud, love their Weber

Jumping off the Fat Trump pics in the Trump thread. The more grotesque Trump becomes, I think the more popular it would make him with his conservative base. Remember how much they hated Michelle Obama's White House vegetable garden?

Becoming morbidly obese and having your heart explode in your chest from too much bucket chicken is a weird point of pride for some of these people. "You can't tell me what to do, egghead!"

Yet they're defending their right to eat chemically-engineered lab food that's designed to make you addicted to it, which is cynically evil shit. Just the same they defend all sorts of other shit designed to hurt them for profit, like tax cuts for the rich, legalizing corruption, cutting medicare, public benefits of all kinds (including education...)

What the hell is up with these people? They really take pride in getting seriously fucked over.

Yet they're defending their right to eat chemically-engineered lab food that's designed to make you addicted to it, which is cynically evil shit.

nah, the food is engineered to provide the surface characteristics of tasting appealing while keeping the costs as low as possible, much like the veneer of gold and marble over the cesspool of shit that is every Trump enterprise

I was referring to stuff like this: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.html

Not only to eat it themselves, but to allow (make?) schools feed it to everyone's kids over healthier alternatives.

These people who buy into this mentality seem to love getting exploited and taken advantage of, and hate and resent anyone trying to help.

How does someone go from healthy self-preservation, to an idea of "self-preservation" that's actually hurting them? They behave like people do in the worst kinds of abusive relationships, except it ends in shit like Paul Ryan and Trump as president.

scroll back up to where I suggested this has a lot to do with resenting the smart kids in school

don't forget "coal rolling"

I dont think it has been mentioned yet so I wanted to say that along with the "prostestant" idea I think another related idea that comes from Weber, that of asceticism or self-control, is also really important. Conservatives tend to see liberals as hedonistic, as unable to govern their desires, etc. so for conservatives--who see themselves as disciplined, as governing themselves and their desires in a way that's not intended to optimize their gratification but to benefit society as a whole--any kind of "downward mobility" is attributable to a lack of self-discipline.

I think this is related to what ogmor was saying - I will come back to this.

I read Ronald Dworkin's "Liberalism" yesterday, which I found to be good and helped clear some things up for me. (It's came from the coursepack of an undergrad course my fiancée TAd so I'm sure this is familiar reading to a lot of people who studied something other than music. Gonna work through it anyway.) His basic thesis seems to be that what distinguishes liberalism (of any variety from the 18th century onwards) from other ideologies, including conservatism but also e.g. more radical kinds of socialism, has to do with the way in which liberals believe that the government should treat all citizens as equals. While both liberals and conservatives (and many socialists) think the government should treat all citizens with equal dignity and respect, what this means for the liberal is that the government needs to be as neutral as possible on the question of what 'the good life' is, in order to accommodate the diversity of citizens' values and preferences. The alternative, non-liberal, view is that the government needs to hold some view as to what a good life is in order to treat citizens as equals: citizens should be treated as a good person would want to be treated and the government should promote virtue. According to Dworkin, both conservatives and many socialists would hold the non-liberal view but they differ in their conceptions of what a good life is.

Liberal vs conservative positions on social and civil liberties are fairly easy to deduce from this. This also explains, though, that liberals would also favour a market economy insofar as it enables individuals to pursue their conceptions of a good life with relative equality of choice, with prices indicating the costs of their choices to the community. Since, however, not all people are equal with regards to morally neutral (in the liberal's view) qualities such as inherited affluence, ability, racial privilege, etc., intervention in the market is required; similarly, certain valid conceptions of a good life may have less market value but still be worth preserving or promoting. A conservative, who believes the values of his or her own tradition and community to be generally virtuous or good, would also favour a market economy but for different reasons: success in the market rewards virtues of hard work, talent, thrift, self-discipline, etc., as they are applied towards doing work that is valued by the community, while market failure indicates a lack of virtue. Intervention in the market is only justified insofar as it allows citizens equal access to demonstrate their virtue (although, honestly, I'm not really sure that American conservatism even does this).

Where I think our confusion lies tbh, ogmor, is that Gandhi was definitely not a liberal. He had a very clear conception of what the good life is (simplicity, non-violence, community, social equality, ...) and wanted to reorganize society in accordance with this. However, I think his conception was a radical one, far from what would usually be called a conservative one (even by Indian standards of the time, cf. his assassin).

rolling coal is kind of hilarious in it's not prevalent enough to be an environmental problem on its own. the only people who are really going to be affected by it are those who are driving around a poorly-combusting machine. probably at least one of these dudes has driven around his bigass truck enough time to get blackened diesel lung or something

better to reason with the selfish, the ignorant, and the sociopathic who vote to throw people off healthcare, and deny that catastrophic climate change is occurring -- who wants to come off strident and 'impractical'? trying trying again to kick lucy's football is more 'professional' than appealing to (declasse) non-voters :)

xpost great post Sund4r

A conservative, who believes the values of his or her own tradition and community to be generally virtuous or good, would also favour a market economy but for different reasons: success in the market rewards virtues of hard work, talent, thrift, self-discipline, etc., as they are applied towards doing work that is valued by the community, while market failure indicates a lack of virtue. Intervention in the market is only justified insofar as it allows citizens equal access to demonstrate their virtue (although, honestly, I'm not really sure that American conservatism even does this).

Understandably, since it's an article on liberalism, I wonder if Dworkin explained liberalism better than it explained conservatism tbh: it seems clear enough to me that the free market has often worked against the interests of the moral values that conservatives profess, and in the era of globalization, there is no reason to believe that market success would even approximate an appeal to the ('good') values of one's own people. This might explain Trumpxit and the new nationalism idk?

xp Oh, thanks!

yes dworkin is using it as a foil for liberalism but I would identify conservatism as an older and deeper trend bc of the similarities between the ways conservatives function in different arenas through space & time (& under/outside of a wide variety of economic systems). conservatism will arise around pretty much any institution or ideology that tries to define/protect an in-group, it's the prizing of fidelity & preservation over broader more egalitarian concerns. I wld identify a lot of religious thinking as exhibiting conservatism of a kind, so gandhi's reformist impulse to maintain but defang the caste system seems essentially conservative to me when ambedkar was ready to scrap it. most people contain a mixture of impulses and totally pure fanatics are quite rare, but I would absolutely say that a lot of radical extremists are types of ultra-orthodox conservatives

Fwiw, afaict, his views on caste did change over time, in part because of Ambedkar. In historical context, I feel like a "reformist impulse" was left of centre for a Hindu at the time but we might be mostly arguing about semantics at this point.

non-fake news!

http://nypost.com/2017/06/27/trumps-travel-ban-triumph-hollywood-liberals-failure-and-other-notable-commentary/

ryan: I think when you get right down to it they see repression as a vital societal necessity. That there is, pace Freud, perhaps an element of truth to this is what makes it all the more persistent as a mindset that will stay with us.

repression as a political touchstone is an interesting problem to bring up, and probably a little more complicated even with freud - isn't this pessimistic "truth" one of the key points of civilization and its discontents? (e.g. lacan: "freud was not a progressive"). i've never bothered much with deleuze+guattari but their movement seems like it fits right into this question too, maybe as the point when freud died to the left. but anyway, wouldn't a more obvious reading of the state of current politics be that it's the left, not the right, that's the stronghold of repression - at least in the popular take on trump as a crude child (certainly in his opposition to clinton)?

There are probably different types of repression, and different schemes for the dispensation of repression

Like I'm both very much for and very much against sexual repression

well yeah, i don't mean to suggest that it's either one side or the other. (the ideal of society without ANY repression probably died with the utopian communes, right? i doubt anyone seriously holds onto that hope anymore, no matter how far left you look.) just that ryan's characterization, which sounds basically correct to me, also sounds a little old-fashioned when lately the left (already the regime of stuffy political correctness) has been scrambling to compromise effectively with the trump-style populism that's in the spotlight.

The Short, Unhappy Life of a Libertarian Paradise: This Politico story about Colorado Springs probably belongs here. An interesting read regardless.

https://www.thenation.com/article/the-trump-administration-is-planning-an-unprecedented-attack-on-voting-rights/

Skepticism/fear of democracy is def a conservative trope.

if scientists were as smart as they think they are they'd be in business, making fortunes, where the real quality is employed :)

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/science-division-of-white-house-office-now-empty-as-last-staffers-depart/

Well yeah, why would you ever talk to a smart kid unless you needed their lunch money

the only reason they have time to do their homework is because they're too weak and uncoordinated to play sports and too ugly and awkward to hang out with the opposite sex. science is a consolation prize profession alphas would never consider

so much of american life is subtext. what you're avoiding thinking about speeding to work after waking up late from drinking too much the night before because you hate your life. so much of american life is totally phony. mr. trump understands this as well mr. mcmahon does. i asked to see your birth certificate because i wouldn't hire you even to hide my tax returns or build my wall. mr. trump speaks for me when mr. mcmahon's and mr. limbaugh's programs aren't on and i don't want to think about what will happen if i get in an accident speeding home, thirsty for the first drink of the night. mr. trump is who i want to be, in a helicopter

fuck a helicopter I'm holding out for a jetpack

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/liberal-fever-swamps/530736/

I dont think it has been mentioned yet so I wanted to say that along with the "prostestant" idea I think another related idea that comes from Weber, that of asceticism or self-control, is also really important. Conservatives tend to see liberals as hedonistic, as unable to govern their desires, etc. so for conservatives--who see themselves as disciplined, as governing themselves and their desires in a way that's not intended to optimize their gratification but to benefit society as a whole--any kind of "downward mobility" is attributable to a lack of self-discipline.

otm ime

How in god's name is a Democratic senator considered "left"? Or any of what they're talking about in that article.

... You do know where the left-right distinction comes from, right? It's who sits where in parliament.

If you want to be pedantic, we don't have a parliament, you Nordic nitwit.

Wow rude

Sorry, I couldn't resist, I watched too much Lost in Space when I was a kid.

I didn't say you did. The distinction wasn't invented in the US, you self-obsessed idiot.

'Nordic nitwit' is fairly good, though.

liberals are just jealous. rich people are always the ultimate bad guys. i know who the real bad guys are - liberals and takers!

i'm a liberal and i'm going to change my name to snoozer d. moochman.

if i invented a liberal mooching claw that could steal drug money from the pockets of Makers, would that make me a Heroic Entrepreneur?

it depends on how much money/property you've already or will inherit

i love to snooze, i love to mooch, i love to take, from those who make. i'm the moochman. check out my moves, you racist hicks.

http://www.dltk-teach.com/fables/grasshopper/grasshopper.gif

I have a theory about global warming and why people think it's real. Go back, 30, 40 years when there was much less air conditioning in the country. When you didn't have air conditioning and you left the house, it may have in fact gotten a little cooler out there because sometimes houses become hot boxes. Especially if you are on the second or third floor of a house in the summer time, and all you've got is open windows and window fan, or a servant fanning you with a piece of paper. When you walked outside no big deal still hot as hell, now 30, 40 years later all this air conditioning, and it's a huge difference when you go outside. When you go outside now, my golly is it hot, global warming. It's all about the baseline you're using for comparison.

Good Storify thread.

Aside from 'sociopathy' being misspelled in the title, very solid thread, this one.

God damn twitter threads make me so mad.

be angry at other things

i'm tellin ya, poor people have a screw loose..

Angry at plenty of things, but I don't understand trying to write an essay as a series of tweets.

Jesus once said, "Help the poor"
But he doesn't believe that any more

People -- before birth, God rates them
If they are born poor, it means God hates them

And destitute children are no longer worthy of our pity
Although grudgingly, Christ allows an orphanage in the worst part of the city

"Blessed is the richest guy in town"
He says, "For his wealth shall trickle down"

LYSOL DOUCHE

Angry at plenty of things, but I don't understand trying to write an essay as a series of tweets.

― DJI, Friday, July 7, 2017 11:42 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

twitter only lets u write 140 characters per tweets (1/)

sometimes you have more than that to say, but want people to be able to read(2/)

it inside twitter rather than click out to something else.(3/)

if ppl have to click another link, they will probably skip it.(4/)

if u dont want to read tweet threads, skip them. (5/5)

guys, conservatives just love to poop their pants. that's it. psychoanalyse them all you want, that's all there is to it.

Lol @m bison, esp the part where even one goddamn sentence doesn't fit into a tweet and has to be split into two tweets.

I think I found the image that sums it up:

https://tpc.googlesyndication.com/simgad/16612822897549419215

All I see here is a bunch of know-it-all's giving their opinion without having read a lick of Republican literature.

Go on and smash with your baseball bats the lowest hanging fruit of the conservative tree while the rest of us try to live our lives the best we can.

know-it-alls doesn't need an apostrophe

yo snipes i question your assumptions

Possibly not the best username to have whilst complaining about conservative stereotyping

just glad to see Wesley out of prison tbh

Republican literature lmao

Aka the back of a dollar bill

Banana Man, let me give you some homework and then we can talk. How about you read Ideas Have Consequences by Richard Weaver.

Believe it or not, I was once young and went to college just like the rest of you.

But then you were done mowing the lawn and went home

In its pages, Richard M. Weaver argues that the decline of Western civilization resulted from the rising acceptance of relativism over absolute reality. In spite of increased knowledge, this retreat from the realist intellectual tradition has weakened the Western capacity to reason, with catastrophic consequences for social order and individual rights.

so Weaver's being prophetic about modern conservatism?

not to nitpick but weaver isn't really "republican literature" right? it's more like conservative literature. there's lots of great conservative literature.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/LincolnNovel.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b6/Sister-cover.jpg

^ Republican literature

I read Ideas Have Consequences in college too! It's pretty dull iirc

Well, here's a more exciting read

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51ihld5IeIL._AC_US218_.jpg