rolling explaining conservatism

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.