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To: The_Reader_David

The problem is that conservatism is not actually an ideology, but a temperament or attitude that is essentially opposed to ideology: hang on to the good from the past; don’t accept the “new” simply because it sounds good, critique it on the basis of the common experience of mankind; allow the peculiarities that have grown up as a result of history to survive if not flourish, rather than imposing “rational” solutions on everything (in the American context this is mostly seen as letting the individual be free from government compulsion, but it also includes letting different states do things differently and keeping non-state social institutions be free from government compulsion); accept that life is tragic (the Christian conservative sees this in terms of the Fall, but the tragic sense of life is there in all properly so called variants of conservatism).

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What you just said a communist could say. A lot of people in the old Soviet Union have longed for the good old days when there was “law and order.” Are they conservative?


6 posted on 03/07/2016 8:13:07 AM PST by GilGil
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To: GilGil

No, Communism, the most rigidly ideological of ideologies, was all about rejecting the past by revolutionary change in favor of new untried ideas that sounded good, but flew in the face of human experience — St. John Chrysostom penned a critique of leveling in the 4th century, imposing “rational” solutions and stamping out peculiarities (central planning). It also fundamentally denied the tragic in life, with sneering dicta about breaking eggs to make omelets and millions of deaths being “a statistic”, and its expectation of the perfectibility of Man (”the New Soviet Man”).


8 posted on 03/07/2016 8:19:37 AM PST by The_Reader_David (And when they behead your own people in the wars which are to come, then you will know...)
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