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Am interested in hearing everyone’s opinion on this.
To me, what some Americans currently call “conservatism,” at least Republican Americans, isn’t. It’s something else, entirely. It’s radical, ultra-reactionary and revolutionary, where real “conservatism” seeks tradition, precedent, stability, “law and order” and so on. Where traditional conservatism always stood squarely with Church and State, with “authority,” this relatively new right-wing form seeks to crash and burn the system — at least that part of the system they see as standing in their way.
And what “way” is that? I see a witch’s brew, a highly contradictory amalgamation . . . from several factions vying for dominance (with some Venn overlap). The Birchers, right-wing religious zealots like the Dominionists, white supremacists and militia groups, right-libertarians, neoconfederates, neocons, etc.
On economic matters, for instance: “Movement” conservatives go against roughly a century and a half of conservative belief when they seek the destruction of the social safety net — which was originally a conservative idea (Bismarck). They go against more than a century of conservative belief when they push for massive spending cuts in the midst of a poor economy, which true conservatives never support, knowing those cuts would lead to recession or depression, with (ironically) no net reduction in deficits. Pretty much the entire GOP called for these massive cuts in the middle of our most recent recession, which could only result in a depression.
And the party standing in the way of this radicalism, this ultra-reactionary, highly destructive witch’s brew? The Dems. The true “conservatives” of our era.
P.S: I’m diametrically opposed to both visions of conservatism, though I see the most recent claim to the title as being far more dangerous.
I recognize the conservatism of Nixon and Reagan because I grew up with it and I was part of that for a time.
I don’t recognize any conservative ideology in current Republicanism
William F Buckley in the early 60’s nearly single-handedly used the power of persuasion to cast out the Birchers and argue against anti-Semitism. Prior to Buckley, the Republican Party couldn’t have cared less about Israel. People don’t know that.
The current rise of anti-Semitism can’t stand with those who support Israel (that came out more nationalistic than I meant it).
In math, there are these problems: solve these equations with N number of variables and N unknowns. Interestingly, whereas in math, we can’t typically solve these if the number of variables is greater than the number of unknowns, in economics we can because they’re not pure unknowns.
In the old days, even if you disagreed with the degrees or amount, the conservative solving of the equation dealt with the 3 variables, the poor, the middle class, and the rich.
Now, it deals with the rich and the middle class are a symptom of dealing with the rich. It’s the poor people’s fault for being poor so they get no consideration. And we see this in lots of policy proposals recently that would never have been proposed in 1982.
So instead of having variables X, Y, and Z, we have X, X1 (which will be a basic function relating to X like if X gets 100 units, X1 the cube root of that amount). There is no Y, because what the middle class gets is a function of what is given to the rich. And there is no Z. And unsurprisingly, this is a much easier equation to solve with plenty of wealthy people who like the solution.
Elimination of unemployment insurance
Elimination of workmans compensation
Elimination of the minimum wage
Elimination of WelfareThis list goes on
Now note that last one was accomplished by a center right corporatist Dem with a Republican House that realized that by having a DINO in the White House, they could actually swing farther to the right than if they had a figure held that would be held to account. And they did.
Nixon gave us the EPA and nearly gave us a single payer health insurance system modeled on Kaiser Permanente… Which is actually MORE to the left than what Bernie Sanders was proposing, which is government paying for the private delivery of healthcare. THAT was a conservative idea THEN.
To not acknowledge this is to not acknowledge the political road we’ve been traveling.
One last thing. We hear about Conservative Dems or Blue Dog Dems. Remember when there were Liberal Republicans? There were! CA, MA and other typically liberal bastions birthed them, but also places like Wyoming where party was family.
The Republican Party is no more the Party of Lincoln anymore than it is the Party of Reagan. Not in any measurable way.
Conservatism has gone to far and needs to find its way back with ideas that affect everyone positively.
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This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by
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This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by .
Sports is the crucible of human virtue. The distillate remains are human vice.
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