Conservative politics and assumption

Speaking of false and actively harmful notions: Literally everything these right-wing populists believe is also in that category.
 
Yeah, that's probably the only way to view it from the Ivory Tower. But it's still a false and actively harmful notion. Donald Trump/Brexit voters aren't acting this way because some demagogic leaders magicked them and made them forget why lies are bad; they simply see an opportunity to get what they actually want. Again the insistence on seeing elections as a personality contest.
I get that. What they actually want, to a great extent, is to get rid of the globalist elites who have pursued a campaign of deindustrialization and the stagnation or decline of the former industrial heartlands and rural areas of the US and UK, while roundly dismissing them as ignorant, bigoted, and generally not worth being listened to. Trump and Brexit are ways to actually change the way things are going by taking a big leap in the dark instead, and a lot of people are now willing to do that.

Many Trump supporters actually don't believe much of what he says, but they love the way he makes fools of the entire globalist establishment and they like the pivot to nationalism he represents. I think a lot would gladly have an incompetent president who isn't a product of the current political system, even if he makes things objectively worse, rather than a competent one who does a good job of continuing a profoundly unsatisfying status quo.
 
Literally anything said to argue against immigration can be viewed as having a racist undertone.

No, immigration can be argued for or against quite easily, its the fact that racist overtones are used that is the problem, not wether to have more, less or no immigration
 
While it's fair to say that strategic incompetence has been the Democrat's worst enemy in the US, I think you underestimate just how well the Republicans are also doing based on what they have been campaigning on. Racism, religious extremism, imperialism, and crony capitalism have been major good sellers in the political marketplace here.
None of that is conservativism, though, as traditionally understood. It's a mismatched bundle. What you're telling me, here, is that the Republicans are ideological mercenaries, and that the mercenary trade is a good one, and I would agree, but anyone who takes conservatives politics should not have a lot of faith in the ability of mercenaries to represent them.

Trifles. I've met many incredibly smart conservative people in my life, and I think most of those are closeted (at least, they don't seem to advertise as much). It's progressivism which dominates any discourse today. Everything is judged by how well it conforms to things like 'gay rights' or 'helping the poor' as if conservatives don't believe in things like rights or helping, and so naturally will make concessions. The extremists on the right get labeled as nutters; the extremists on the left are simply radicals, with whom one might disagree but respectfully.
I don't claim that conservatives are necessarily stupid, and I wouldn't even agree with Mill that stupid people are generally conservative. What I claim is that organised political conservativism is stupid. If progressivism manages to dominate public discourse as thoroughly as you say, that only seems to lend weight to my claim.

Also, I'd struggle to swallow the claim that the left are given an easy ride, given the mauling Corbyn got, and from within his own party, for suggesting that a social democratic party offer social democratic parties. People ignore the far left because the far left are harmless paper-selling nerds; they worry about the far-right because the far-right go around murdering people.

I don't think conservatism can be anything else, really. It is, by definition, a preservation of things as they are (in contrast to progression). But if you're for progression, you must have something you want to progress, which lends itself naturally to argument. It's built in to the viewpoints, I'd say.
If that's so, why did it take until the 1970s to realise itself? Conservatives used to have lots of perfectly intelligent things to say, to each other and the world at large. Very generally mistaken and quite often absurd when removed from a very particular set of assumptions, but, well, that's politics for you. It's only quite recently that conservatives abandoned reflective thought as a menace to common sense.

People who can hold their own in an intellectual setting, than.
Are you contending that consevatives are not capable of holding their own in an intellectual setting?

And yet, through all this, I am the liberal snob.

So it's simply the incompetence of all the progressive parties in the English-speaking world for half a century running which explains why people vote for the right. You cracked it, buddy.
I think so, yes. The major conservative political parties, the kinds that win elections, are terrible at being conservative parties. They're pro-business parties who occasionally indulge the bigotries of their uglier supporters. The left has had a world to lose, and seems to have been dead set on losing it.
 
Speaking of false and actively harmful notions: Literally everything these right-wing populists believe is also in that category.
You would also be either deliberately lying, or delusional.

Why exactly were these posts made? You both clearly aren't arguing about anything anymore. Is it just an inability to make any concession whatsoever to the other side without showing as much contempt as possible? I do think that meets several definitions of fanaticism.

No, immigration can be argued for or against quite easily, its the fact that racist overtones are used that is the problem, not wether to have more, less or no immigration

The thing about sweeping assertions like mine is that they can be refuted with a single counterexample. Is there any particular criticism of immigration, which was actually made at some point in history, that couldn't be seen to have racist undertones?

I don't claim that conservatives are necessarily stupid, and I wouldn't even agree with Mill that stupid people are generally conservative. What I claim is that organised political conservativism is stupid. If progressivism manages to dominate public discourse as thoroughly as you say, that only seems to lend weight to my claim.

I'm only saying that your claim, however true, isn't as relevant as you think.

Also, I'd struggle to swallow the claim that the left are given an easy ride, given the mauling Corbyn got, and from within his own party, for suggesting that a social democratic party offer social democratic parties.

I'm not talking about political parties; after all, it's clearly possible for populist and anti-intellectual politicians to win elections. In the intellectual/social sphere, progressivism dominates completely, and this will slowly but surely shift political discourse in their direction. Until the bubble bursts, as it is doing now.

People ignore the far left because the far left are harmless paper-selling nerds; they worry about the far-right because the far-right go around murdering people.



If that's so, why did it take until the 1970s to realise itself? Conservatives used to have lots of perfectly intelligent things to say, to each other and the world at large. Very generally mistaken and quite often absurd when removed from a very particular set of assumptions, but, well, that's politics for you. It's only quite recently that conservatives abandoned reflective thought as a menace to common sense.

Could the definition of conservatism have shifted during that time? What's your definition of it, and can you give examples of the "perfectly intelligent things" that conservatives used to say?

Are you contending that consevatives are not capable of holding their own in an intellectual setting?

No, I'm saying that ordinary people are not capable of holding their own in an intellectual setting, that grassroots movements tend to consist of ordinary people, and that modern-day conservatism is grassroots and far removed from the world that intellectuals inhabit these days.

And yet, through all this, I am the liberal snob.

Well, since you apparently don't consider people who haven't written a master's thesis as worthy to hold opinions...

I think so, yes. The major conservative political parties, the kinds that win elections, are terrible at being conservative parties. They're pro-business parties who occasionally indulge the bigotries of their uglier supporters. The left has had a world to lose, and seems to have been dead set on losing it.

I assume that political parties want to win, so why are lefties so consistently bad at it? A couple lost elections could be chalked up to incompetence, but dozens seem more like a trend. One that is perhaps evidence that leftist politics aren't so self-evidently appealing as you seem to think.
 
People ignore the far left because the far left are harmless paper-selling nerds

Speak for yourself



Mouthwash said:
I assume that political parties want to win, so why are lefties so consistently bad at it? A couple lost elections could be chalked up to incompetence, but dozens seem more like a trend. One that is perhaps evidence that leftist politics aren't so self-evidently appealing as you seem to think.

Or perhaps bourgeoisie elections are pointless to follow, ''leftist'' parties constantly attack the left as soon as they sniff even a whiff of power, and the bourgeoisie tends to immediately attack anything that's red out of instinct.
 
Well, since you apparently don't consider people who haven't written a master's thesis as worthy to hold opinions...
[...]
ordinary people are not capable of holding their own in an intellectual setting
Maybe get back to me when you've decided which battle you're fighting?

Speak for yourself

Nerds love molotovs.
 
None of that is conservativism, though, as traditionally understood. It's a mismatched bundle. What you're telling me, here, is that the Republicans are ideological mercenaries, and that the mercenary trade is a good one, and I would agree, but anyone who takes conservatives politics should not have a lot of faith in the ability of mercenaries to represent them.


The problem here being that self-identification doesn't match up well with an 'objective' definition. But that's not really a solvable problem, I don't think. Because words and meanings do in fact evolve over time. So you've got a million different groups all saying that they are the true conservatives, and the others aren't. And at that point the word essentially ceases to have any useful meaning at all. So once we walk away from what we see people self identify as, there's not a lot of use it discussing it at all.
 
Maybe get back to me when you've decided which battle you're fighting?

Intellectuals would win any argument, but the ordinary people are more likely to be right, at least about their own local situation. That clear it up?
 
Intellectuals would win any argument, but the ordinary people are more likely to be right, at least about their own local situation. That clear it up?
Well, that has nothing to do with my claim that twenty-first century conservativism is an intellectual vacuum, unless you're claiming that conservativism has always been intellectually vacuous, and they just used to be better at disguising it.

I suppose Cutlas might agree with you on that, but me, I'm a generous soul.

The problem here being that self-identification doesn't match up well with an 'objective' definition. But that's not really a solvable problem, I don't think. Because words and meanings do in fact evolve over time. So you've got a million different groups all saying that they are the true conservatives, and the others aren't. And at that point the word essentially ceases to have any useful meaning at all. So once we walk away from what we see people self identify as, there's not a lot of use it discussing it at all.
It's possible for people to be mistaken, though. Conservatives, in particular, are very good at that. And a lot of what is now propounded is "conservativism" is not conservative in any sense except being anti-liberal, which isn't what "conservative" means and, anyway, doesn't always turn out to be true. After all, if there's any one group in society who should defer to their predecessors on the proper definition of a word, it's conservatives.

It sounds odd, now, but conservativism used to represent that part of public life that took things like faith and beauty and morality most seriously. Their perceptions were often skewed and they didn't always seem terribly concerned about making these things accessible to those outside of the ruling class, but they at least took them seriously. Modern "conservatives", in contrast, seem to worship the vulgar and the profane: money, property, violence. They talk about society in terms of competition and profit and mindless acquisitiveness, the sort of thing that made nineteenth century conservatives ill, and think that a light dusting of racism and homophobia places them in the tradition of the ancients. They're not even a parody of themselves, because parodies are supposed to be recognisable.
 
Well, that has nothing to do with my claim that twenty-first century conservativism is an intellectual vacuum,

I'm questioning the relevance of the argument. Doesn't that have something to do with it?

unless you're claiming that conservativism has always been intellectually vacuous, and they just used to be better at disguising it.

The conservatism I'm thinking of probably was, but again, I don't know if we're talking about the same one. I've asked you to provide examples of these intellectual conservatives from ages past.

It's possible for people to be mistaken, though. Conservatives, in particular, are very good at that. And a lot of what is now propounded is "conservativism" is not conservative in any sense except being anti-liberal, which isn't what "conservative" means and, anyway, doesn't always turn out to be true.

It was still acceptable for leftists to make gay jokes in the 90's. Conservatives have seen one of the fastest ethical transformations in human history take place before their eyes. I don't blame them for being contrarian.

It sounds odd, now, but conservativism used to represent that part of public life that took things like faith and beauty and morality most seriously.

I'd say it still is. You can't be a progressive today and not believe, as John Cheese said, that "we're perpetually working ourselves into a sort of social neutrality, in which it will one day be considered insane to judge or make fun of any person for any reason." This goal is simply nihilism, where nothing can be defined as better than anything else. That's what conservatives perceive to be happening.

Their perceptions were often skewed and they didn't always seem terribly concerned about making these things accessible to those outside of the ruling class, but they at least took them seriously.

So has it occurred to you that you're selectively reading the ideas of elites, and these days commoners tend to express their opinions more often? You are a philosopher, you know.
 
I'm questioning the relevance of the argument. Doesn't that have something to do with it?
Relevance to what?

The conservatism I'm thinking of probably was, but again, I don't know if we're talking about the same one. I've asked you to provide examples of these intellectual conservatives from ages past.
Bolingbroke, Burke, Disraeli. Half the academia of the English-speaking world until 1950, and most of the brighter clergy. This stuff doesn't really need citing because it shouldn't be obscure. That it is, that conservatives have no comprehension of their intellectual heritage, that they're more likely to have read Rand than Burke, really does show how absurd their claims to be "conservative" have become.

To put it in crudely Marxist terms, conservativism used to be aristocratic, and when it encompassed a broad sweep of society, it was a traditional society of hierarchy and deference that was able to imagine itself a coherent social organism, buttressed by traditions and institutions passed down from their ancestors. Contemporary conservativism, in contrast, is thoroughly bourgeois, and now takes for granted that society is a great cannibalistic heap of acquisitive individuals, the only form of hierarchy that emanating from the state, and the only bonds people have in common a shared hostility those who look or act or think differently than they do.

To some extent, this is to be expected, because the world of the aristocracy is long gone. But conservativism, rather than trying to preserve what little of the old traditions they can seems to have embraced the ugliest and most vulgar aspects of capitalism, and imagine that because they do so draped in the flag, their ancestors would approve.

It was still acceptable for leftists to make gay jokes in the 90's. Conservatives have seen one of the fastest ethical transformations in human history take place before their eyes. I don't blame them for being contrarian.
Maybe not. But you'd hope there'd be something underneath the contrariness. Very often, there is not. It's a politics of reaction, not principle.

I'd say it still is. You can't be a progressive today and not believe, as John Cheese said, that "we're perpetually working ourselves into a sort of social neutrality, in which it will one day be considered insane to judge or make fun of any person for any reason." This goal is simply nihilism, where nothing can be defined as better than anything else. That's what conservatives perceive to be happening.
I don't understand what this has to do with the sentence you quoted.

So has it occurred to you that you're selectively reading the ideas of elites, and these days commoners tend to express their opinions more often? You are a philosopher, you know.
In the sense that only elites spent great volumes agonising about God and beauty and the tradition, perhaps, but these are things which still concerned the "commoners", even if they tended to express them in less ornate terms and were quicker to grasp familiar certainties, but they still took these things seriously. They still believe in the idea of a traditional, ordered society directed to something more than the accumulation of money. That's something that modern conservatives, or at least their elected representatives, now seem to regard as a quaint joke.
 
Relevance to what?

To anything, really. Why should I care that conservatism isn't intellectual if it is already defined as not being rooted in intellectual concerns, and that intellectuals aren't qualified to talk about things that aren't?

Bolingbroke, Burke, Disraeli. Half the academia of the English-speaking world until 1950, and most of the brighter clergy. This stuff doesn't really need citing because it shouldn't be obscure. That it is, that conservatives have no comprehension of their intellectual heritage, that they're more likely to have read Rand than Burke, really does show how absurd their claims to be "conservative" have become.

I think that might have do with the how the battle lines were drawn: rural, religious farmers or businessmen, already inclined to be libertarian, have been left completely behind by the shift of values of the media and upper classes. Their opposition to homosexuality and abortion, and their fetishization of work ethic (which was the social norm a generation ago) is now treated as a problem that needs to be overcome, rather than the core of a decent society. The values taught at home and church are now regarded by higher society as despicable.

To put it in crudely Marxist terms, conservativism used to be aristocratic, and when it encompassed a broad sweep of society, it was a traditional society of hierarchy and deference that was able to imagine itself a coherent social organism, buttressed by traditions and institutions passed down from their ancestors. Contemporary conservativism, in contrast, is thoroughly bourgeois, and now takes for granted that society is a great cannibalistic heap of acquisitive individuals, the only form of hierarchy that emanating from the state, and the only bonds people have in common a shared hostility those who look or act or think differently than they do.

You're still trying to interpret it intellectually.

Maybe not. But you'd hope there'd be something underneath the contrariness. Very often, there is not. It's a politics of reaction, not principle.

I don't think modern American conservatism is a real movement (really, how can people still be confused about this during the candidacy of Donald Trump?). They're more like a large, incohesive alliance of voters that would despise each other if they didn't have Obama to focus on.

I don't understand what this has to do with the sentence you quoted.

If someone says that homosexuality is an abomination and that it is human nature to earn mediums of exchange through sweat and toil, they are stating an objective moral standard by which people ought to live. You may not agree with what they view as good (or even find it contemptible) but saying that nobody should ever be judged, that there should be no such thing as a public value, is simply a rejection of morality entirely. Or at the very least, it is a valuing of the human ego over everything else.

Modernity has overturned many values, but that doesn't mean they won't be replaced.

In the sense that only elites spent great volumes agonising about God and beauty and the tradition, perhaps, but these are things which still concerned the "commoners", even if they tended to express them in less ornate terms and were quicker to grasp familiar certainties, but they still took these things seriously.

Shouldn't the definition of conservatism shift, though? Not all societies are the same. From what I know Russia's communists are their equivalent of conservatives, which makes a great deal of sense for people whose main experience outside of absolute monarchy was communism.
 
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