Posted on 03/07/2016 7:53:41 AM PST by GilGil
Under the 2D filter of life, conservatives are united by a common ideology that is supported by reason. But under the Master Persuader filter, conservative is a word created for the purpose of identity persuasion. Nothing more. According to my filter, conservative has no logical or coherent reason for existing. While I assume it once had a noble birth, at this point it is just a hodgepodge of ideas that disagree with Democrats. Some of the individual ideas have merit, but they don’t belong together in the same bag for any reason that is obvious to me.
(Excerpt) Read more at blog.dilbert.com ...
Maybe this is a function of my advanced age, but it seems that there have not been coherent explanations of conservatism since Edmund Burke, Russell Kirk and assorted thinkers now referred to as paleoconservatives (currently maligned as nativists, racists, mercantilists). Suffice it to say that the victory of William F. Buckley over Russell Kirk infected conservatism with libertarian and corporatist viruses (IMHO).
I posted earlier that I had re-watched Triumph of the Will just to reinforce to myself what real Nazis looked like. You're never going to get that in the United States but if our open borders friends keep on scratching they may find themselves a national front.
Is Dilbert or his author some kind of deep thinker with a deep understanding of history or has he found his niche and drawn the same 6 cartoons for 25 or so years? Not saying I find it unentertaining. It’s a comic strip.
I’d take my philosophy of life from Miley Cyrus, too, if I had the chance.
I heartily disagree that you’ve not heard a coherent description of “conservative”, at least in the American concept, from L & L. Sure, a neanderthal who was plucked out of his time and context suddenly found himself plopped into the 21st century might feel so out of place that he wishes to revert to his prior life. So he’d be a conservative, right? Word games.
This whole election has bred an widespread mindset among libs and conservatives alike which goes something like: “Some facts matter and some don’t; I get to choose, and once I’ve decided to toss out this set of facts, that decision has been permanently made.” Those who support HRC, for the life of me, support a treasonous arch criminal. No amount of emails on her pvt server matter. They weren’t classified until AFTER she wrote and disseminated them. No, she doesn’t hear about classified or top secret stuff and then talks about it in an unclassified email. Sure. That’s the way it works.
Well I have not heard a definition for with L&L.
If there is one where is it. And if you have to refer me to a bunch of books then that is exactly the problem.
If you cannot tell me what conservatism is that is the whole problem. You don’t even know what it is.
Well I have not heard a definition for conservatism with L&L.
If there is one where is it. And if you have to refer me to a bunch of books then that is exactly the problem.
If you cannot tell me what conservatism is that is the whole problem. You don’t even know what it is.
Russell Kirk offered one pithy definition: "Conservatives are people who favor liberty over equality."
In its broadest sense, it is an ideology that rejects change for change's sake, and that honors those values and behaviors that have stood the test of time. It doesn't aspire to perfection, admitting that such a state is beyond the human race. Instead, it seeks refinement of proven principles, and embraces change only after it has proven itself.
As such, it is the opposite of liberalism, which confuses change with progress.
That question has come up a lot this campaign season. So far, as best I can tell there is only one true “conservative principle”, which appears to be open borders forever at any cost and screw you for daring to change it.
So you have never listened to Rush’s CPAC speech I take it? Speech, not book.
>I< don’t know what conservatism is because Rush didn’t explain it to YOU adequately?
This is logic? You don’t know anything about me, yet you posit a conclusion about me that you absolutely could not know anything about. What’s the next topic change? Do I get to pick among racist or shall I be assigned some category in which you find me deficient?
Where is YOUR responsibility to understand the sources of info that are out there. How should this information be transmitted to your consciousness? Implants? Is the preference now to have some government agency be charged with explaining conservatism?
You’re making a very common mistake, which is to believe that because you do not understand something, it cannot be. I don’t understand brain surgery nor eye surgery. Yet they happen every day.
"Conservative" does not reduce to a true label because it is larger than labels. It is a one-word warning that an emotional enthusiasm for the trend of the moment is an insufficient foundation for a society or even a point of view. How does this come up? From its unfortunate opposite.
"Conservative" (the idea of saving what will prove useful) came into political use with Edmund Burke, a philosopher and member of the British Parliament, observing the Terror phase of the French Revolution--when aristocrats, priests, commoners, farmers, and soon, the revolutionaries themselves, were guillotined for being obstacles to the Revolution. There is something in times of great material innovation--including our own times--that tempts people to believe that a political innovation will make human fallibility irrelevant to governance.
That makes no sense. Human fallibility is the only reason for governance.
The danger of ruling by attachment to promise alone, rather than incorporating the lessons of history and common sense as our Founders did in The Federalist Papers, is that a dreamed future contains no evidence, nor does it tolerate evidence. That's why promise alone is the favored tool of liars and tyrants. Remember, Mr. Adams, fascism was once a modern novelty full of promise, which is why the Soviets, Nazis, and their followers had such wide appeal to the young and inexperienced.
Adams himself is of course a modern liberal. Such a man, according to Sobran, is unencumbered by beliefs, except for this one: "Past, him bad." Conservatism reminds us that denial is an unreliable substitute for observation.
So you have never listened to Rush’s CPAC speech I take it? Speech, not book.
>I< don’t know what conservatism is because Rush didn’t explain it to YOU adequately?
This is logic? You don’t know anything about me, yet you posit a conclusion about me that you absolutely could not know anything about. What’s the next topic change? Do I get to pick among racist or shall I be assigned some category in which you find me deficient?
Where is YOUR responsibility to understand the sources of info that are out there. How should this information be transmitted to your consciousness? Implants? Is the preference now to have some government agency be charged with explaining conservatism?
You’re making a very common mistake, which is to believe that because you do not understand something, it cannot be. I don’t understand brain surgery nor eye surgery. Yet they happen every day
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Your answer illustrates exactly my point. No one is able to explain conservatism in a clear simple way.
You simply get snobbish and holier than thou trying to intimidate people into thinking they are stupid.
That is precisely why conservatism has failed. No one seems able to explain it simply and clearly.
Adams should of course stick to dialogue balloons. He has apparently read little outside of them. If he’d like to play ideas, he should begin with the late, great Joseph Sobran’s long essay in the 30th-anniversary edition of National Review defining conservatism.
“Conservative” does not reduce to a true label because it is larger than labels. It is a one-word warning that an emotional enthusiasm for the trend of the moment is an insufficient foundation for a society or even a point of view. How does this come up? From its unfortunate opposite.
“Conservative” (the idea of saving what will prove useful) came into political use with Edmund Burke, a philosopher and member of the British Parliament, observing the Terror phase of the French Revolution—when aristocrats, priests, commoners, farmers, and soon, the revolutionaries themselves, were guillotined for being obstacles to the Revolution. There is something in times of great material innovation—including our own times—that tempts people to believe that a political innovation will make human fallibility irrelevant to governance.
That makes no sense. Human fallibility is the only reason for governance.
The danger of ruling by attachment to promise alone, rather than incorporating the lessons of history and common sense as our Founders did in The Federalist Papers, is that a dreamed future contains no evidence, nor does it tolerate evidence. That’s why promise alone is the favored tool of liars and tyrants. Remember, Mr. Adams, fascism was once a modern novelty full of promise, which is why the Soviets, Nazis, and their followers had such wide appeal to the young and inexperienced.
Adams himself is of course a modern liberal. Such a man, according to Sobran, is unencumbered by beliefs, except for this one: “Past, him bad.” Conservatism reminds us that denial is an unreliable substitute for observation.
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Good grief what a bunch of BS.
You just soaked up bandwidth saying absolutely nothing.
This proves the point. Conservatives have no idea what conservatism is. You simply cannot explain it simply and clearly which is why conservatism is a total failure.
Conservatives are for Ted Cruz except that Cruz voted for TPP/TPA which means milions of jobs lost and he voted for the Croker bill which gave Iran $150 billion and a nuclear Iran. Hardly conservative but Ted is conservative.
Meanwhile no one can explain conservatism simply and clearly. You guys are making my point in spades. That is why conservatism is failing.
Indeed. Any political philosophy that can't be expressed in a 'tweet', or on a bumper sticker is useless in the age of Kardashian.
Personally, I would prefer that people get educated. I suggest folks start with Locke and work forward from there.
OK, here’s my explanation.
Conservatism is the ideology of stupid. It believes that man is the stupidest creature who ever walked the earth. That is because even a lowly bacterium knows how to eat, breathe, and crap from the moment it is a distinct entity from its parent or trans-parent. Even a newborn kitten knows to nurse. Humans do not. So in this way, liberals are exactly right. Humans, especially conservative humans, should by all rights be extinct. Liberal humans, knowing only that the only way out of stupidity is to do exactly what everyone else does in the hopes of surviving, seek to elevate the general activity of doing what everybody else does. Because our brains are so f’ed up, being stupid, we really ought to forego using them because they just get us in trouble. Everywhere, always.
The liberal aspiration is to act like everyone else. Bugs, cattle, amphibians. Just go with your internal instincts, or if you have none, just copy someone else. We live in a jungle of constant peril, after all, and survival is utmost. Liberals don’t think they are smart or stupid, they act like they think they are smart when they see all their liberal friends think they are smart. Unless it becomes voguish to pretend you are stupid. Then they go that way.
Some folks, though, because we know we are possessed with inferior, stupid brains, and I mean conservatives, have arrived at a set of guiding principles to prevent stupid- brain action from screwing things up. If I do not list in this one place all those things in 17 words or less for you, it is because they are in many many places and if in that I am defective and racist, you may ESAD with my blessing.
Some years ago, a country was established that worked hard and fought wars trying to enact as many of those guiding principles as possible. That country went from nothing to world dominance in a few hundred years, quite literally saving the a**es of much of the rest of the world who was so blissfully civilized. Under those principles, giant strides have occurred and many many mistakes were made.
On balance, though, one should, if they are choosing systems under which to live, try to reject the ones that have had crappy results and embrace the one or ones that have improved life. It is absolutely equivocal whether life is better with a washing machine or better if you have to beat your clothes against a rock in a stream. If there are enough people around you, all acting like and you like them, then maybe your river looks like the Ganges River in India and you wash your clothes and your body in a stream of others’ sewage. Maybe where things are more rural, almost any mountain stream is drinkable water. Who thought that one up? And who thought one was better and what right did they have to do think that way?
Maybe you also should stick to dialogue balloons. Conservatism--heeding history and human nature when planning for the future--is something that only needs to be invoked in eras like ours, when people are over-excited by current trends to the exclusion of common sense. It's to keep a lid on people who are distracted by a man on a horse or a squirrel in a tree.
By the way, what are you doing on a site that describes itself as conservative? ("Free Republic is the premier online gathering place for independent, grass-roots conservatism on the web. . .")
I suggest you tell me in 50 words or less what conservatism is. Not one freeper on this forum knows what it is.
I seriously doubt this is the premier conservative site. If it were there would be at least one person who could tell me what conservatism is and not one can tell me.
It just amazes me how snobbish conservatives are. They can’t make a difference in the world but they are all paper tigers in the classroom.
Read Marx and Lenin (and maybe Mao) if you want to know what Communism was about, rather than looking at nostalgic old folks in Russia. There was law and order under the Tsars (but also freedom be bear arms), but these folks are too young to remember that.
I told you what conservatism is, and others suggested if you want a fuller explanation to read Russell Kirk, Barry Goldwater or Edmund Burke (where you will find the ideas I sketched in brief expanded on at great length). I’d add Lord Acton to the reading list.
You completely issued my point. I know what communism was about.
One of the tenets of conservatism is keeping things like they were. My point is that there has to be more than that otherwise communism would be conservatism at least according to some who wish things were as they were under the Soviet Union.
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