The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities Throughout American History, by Patrick Allitt

http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=1052 ^ | William Briggs

[mattstat]

What is a conservative? Allitt is not sure. This is odd because you’d think a man who wrote an entire book about conservatism would have provided an unambiguous definition. But Allitt is shy about this important matter, and, like Justice Stewart, is content to know it when he sees it. However, we cannot bypass this question—even though most readers will be satisfied that Allitt identifies all the usual conservative suspects—because when the alleged insult “You’re a conservative!” is hurled, we have to be know what it means.

It cannot be that a conservative is one who wishes to see the past in the present, who struggles to keep the old ways from fading, and who “think[s] of the past as rich and complex, and of the future as thin and vague.” For if this were true, then progressives—the natural enemies of conservatives—would not have railed against welfare reform under Clinton, because welfare had by that time long been the norm. Reform was new, and looking back to the glorious past, struggling to uphold the traditions of the New Deal, were progressives.

Couple this with the empirical observation that capitalism, like no other economical system, has changed (progressed?) the world in more ways and faster than any other. As it is usually conservatives who argue for less government control, and who are most suspicious of centralized we-know-more-about-what-is-good-for-you-than-you-do planning, it is progressives who must answer guilty to the charge of longing for stasis.

Then, for example, there is...

[SMARTY]

“...capitalism, like no other economical system, has changed (progressed?) the world in more ways and faster than any other...”

The uneducated/ill-educated insist on disregarding this basic truth about even the least successful of capitalist systems, but all the demonstrable facts and observable realities prove otherwise.

The most tyrannical and oppressive leadership is ALWAYS paternal...it only works to the benefit of the ‘leader’ or the ‘leading class’.

The man on the bottom (average Joe) is the first to lose, loses the most and loses it forever.

If he begins in ignorance, he remains in ignorance; if he is in poverty, he remains in poverty; if he has no social mobility, he remains fixed in his condition (or sinks lower); if he is without hope and is desperate, he lives and dies without a future…and his children???…. Well just look at all the photos of children in third world countries and oppressed nations… they are ill, hungry, uneducated, betrayed, lost and in their eyes you see the look of a blasted spirit… they never had a chance.