rolling explaining conservatism

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.