What does the American Conservative stand for anymore?

[Ajidica]

Tolerance, but distinction. Procreative family units aren't the 'same' as gay relationships. Gay people who want to be celibate shouldn't be pressured otherwise or told that they are denying their true selves.

Part of me is really interested in what tangled bundle of neurosis lead you to think gay celibacy is an issue worthy of concern.

(I'll also be the first one to say I don't get drag. Not the dressing up and being camp part, doesn't bother me. No, it is the creation of alter egos that seem to veer very close to sexist or racist tropes. Not opposing it mind you, just don't get it.)

 

[Lemon Merchant]

Procreative family units aren't the 'same' as gay relationships.

They most certainly are. How is a relationship between two people who love each other different just because one set of them can procreate and the other can't? I am most interested to see how you can spin this.

 

[Farm Boy]

...or, maybe you're depraved.

It's always good to assess. So since we have a video, lets! The girl is doing a 24 year old music video. The lyrics are not sexual in nature, they're about a girl going out into the world, how she feels, and how the world interacts with her. Apt choice for a 12/13 year old going through a rite of passage stepping one bit further into age*. The girl in the video is dressed in sneakers. She's in long baggy pants. She's in a loose fitting shirt that shows some, but not much, midriff if she's moving a bunch. The hair and makeup are in the style of Gwen Stefani in the music video, not a huge fan, but bedroom eyes they aren't. The dance style is not sexual. The stage setup is a bit weird, but not because of the lights which are rockish, but because of the money, which is a bit stripperish. But that's me being depraved, not the situation, particularly if that is supportive family and friends in clear daylight which it seems to be, posted on the internet and all. Out of line to attribute that bare inkling of depravity to her, or them.

It's not hoop skirts, that's true. And if I associate her too closely with the 1995 music video Hygro linked(I didn't have MTV in the 90s and haven't revisited them like this, so new to me) I might associate some of the holywowyowza that is Gwen Stefani, but again, that would be me associating being attracted to somebody who is sexually attractive but not acting sexually with somebody else acting in the same manner. The parts of society that allow people to be attractive without acting sexually are the parts of society that allow for a lot of healthy closeness. Some of which may progress towards mutual sexuality, and most will not.

*Particularly girls as they start to mature in earnest around that age. The world treats people like they look at first glance, and a significant portion of it sideline, backburner, or overtly considering the possibility of sexing you is a big ass adjustment, so it would seem. It was a big damn change to suddenly wind up with it on the mind, I tell you what.

 

[Lexicus]

In a way, the way MW's framing his arguments shows that he is somewhat right about the absolute cultural power of "liberalism". MW needs to make his arguments in terms of liberating people from an oppressive aristocracy comprised of social liberals and globalists and postmodern neomarxists, twisting reality to make submission to hierarchy itself into a kind of liberation.

 

[Mouthwash]

Part of me is really interested in what tangled bundle of neurosis lead you to think gay celibacy is an issue worthy of concern.

It's important because there is nothing we can offer people who are doomed to 'live in torment' if they can't fulfill their desires. Nothing is more corrosive to the morale of traditionalists (in other areas as well, e.g. pornography) than the notion that they are going to fail and give in at some point, so why bother? The point isn't to eliminate or even reduce it, it's just opening up the possibility of success, and providing a model to follow.

They most certainly are. How is a relationship between two people who love each other different just because one set of them can procreate and the other can't?

In 2019? They aren't. But that doesn't prove much besides that all sexual relationships become similar in a corrosively individualist society. Procreative marriage, which is the link between generations and always relies on strict protocols and taboos, is probably the most significant aspect of any culture. It informs the appropriate ways for the opposite sex to be treated versus your own sex, how your life is lived into old age, the social stratum you occupy, how strangers are dealt with, the type of job you have, where you live, etc (I suppose this is why LGBT activists view the entire past as intolerant burning cruelty towards gays, because as moderns they think of personal self-fulfillment as being the highest good and can't imagine a valid reason for not accepting it). Choosing to spurn all this is to take a wrecking ball to society.

Right now, this wrecking ball is being deliberately used against Western cultures. Tolerance becomes the right to marry, which is quickly spun into a list of injunctions aimed at removing 'heteronormativity' from public life. I'm not sure how the deliberate celebration of deviancy and kinkiness is creating a better life for anyone, but it clearly is dissolving social norms and expectations and replacing group bonds with atomized consumers. No one should be surprised that conservatives rejected it as an attack on traditional marriage - it was.

Now, if we want to rebuild a genuine family unit, it isn't actually necessary to reject gay relationships. The important thing is that the two are not conflated. A guy and a guy who are together have to occupy a different social category, by definition.

In a way, the way MW's framing his arguments shows that he is somewhat right about the absolute cultural power of "liberalism". MW needs to make his arguments in terms of liberating people from an oppressive aristocracy comprised of social liberals and globalists and postmodern neomarxists, twisting reality to make submission to hierarchy itself into a kind of liberation.

Liberalism is essentially rule by appetite, which doesn't seem very free to me. Of course I'm not arguing for 'hierarchy' as the remedy, but I understand you like to feel like you're opposing fascism.

 

[Berzerker]

Various gods and creators embodied both sexes leading some cultures to view certain non-straight people as sacred.

 

[Ajidica]

It's important because there is nothing we can offer people who are doomed to 'live in torment' if they can't fulfill their desires. Nothing is more corrosive to the morale of traditionalists (in other areas as well, e.g. pornography) than the notion that they are going to fail and give in at some point, so why bother? The point isn't to eliminate or even reduce it, it's just opening up the possibility of success, and providing a model to follow.

I mean, nobody is requiring that gays be celibate or live in some sort of sexless limbo. If someone for whatever reason wants to live a sexless life because of some neurosis or weird opinions, not really my concern.

 

[Farm Boy]

You're going to have to explain to me how monogamous married and socially bonded homosexuals are a force for social dissolution any more than a hetero infertile one, a cloister of nuns, an order of monks, an unmarried member of the clergy, or two brothers/sisters who live together. It's certainly preferable in my conservative view to a womanizer, serial monogamist, or polygamist. Lays down a socially cohesive unit that even if not actively investing in the future, likely maintains a socially useful unit and contributes property and labor to the social endeavor without spreading disease or unmet obligation/work for other people to pick up in their lazy self-gazing fulfillment. A lot of socially useful work is done with things other than genitals.

Save your ire for bigoted creeps actually looking to strip rights and burrow windows into souls like the baked goods obsessed lawyer and governing board in Colorado persistently prosecutorially poking to produce prejudicial purchase, not for people that are looking to love one another. One set makes the world worse, the other better. Neither is alone in their behavior. Both influences will last after any specific unit is dead and in the ground.

 

[mitsho]

I am of course personally affected and offended. I'd like to marry a guy at one point. But what I get from reading MW posts is a different conception or society where everything has an order and a place to be. In order to do what if I may ask? Beat China? Further the survival of humanity? Fulfill God's will?

Farm Boys post just above goes in the same direction. Marriage between two persons of the same gender is okay when they are a social useful unit (paraphrasing). While the battle for queer rights is the opposite, fighting for the right to be different. Which is why some of the older gay activists don't want to marry themselves. They don't want to belong.

So in a way, that discussion actually answers the question of the thread title. American Conservatism stands for an idea of a structured society where individual freedom is secondary to a certain right way to live your life - the details of which changing depending on the person talking.

While I and I guess more and more people increasingly ask: Why don't you just let us be happy? Can you answer that, Mouthwash? What is that principle you want society to be structured by?

 

[Farm Boy]

Nobody forces marriage. If we do, when we do, it is a wrongness. Allowing marriage can be ok anyways. Don't read MW into me because you conflate our usage of terms. They are not similar in nature.

Being different is fine, but like anti-vaccination people or serial impregnate-and-bailers, consuming resources and exporting work to other people is only tolerable within limits. That is not unreasonable.

 

[mitsho]

Sorry in that case, I read a lot of this thread very quickly. Nevertheless, I take that point as an argument often encountered in this world, not your argument specifically.

 

[Farm Boy]

Happy people often do good that miserable people cannot. It provides a level of energy.

I do wonder, however, the more we learn about empathy and depression, about guilt and giving, how much macro social good is actually fueled by the misery of the human condition. The poor and those of modest means frequently give actually more not relatively more to people they encounter than those in the upper echelons of property and privilege. Power and money do correlate with increases in happiness. There might be a breakpoint of self-fullfillment when people actually are inclined to be cruel and indifferent asshats. That is not an insinuation that queers, of all people, are usually the ones in that particular subset of society. That seems relatively unlikely even if the pondering is true.

Maybe you're right in your central thrust. Maybe conservatism actually is a belief in something larger and longer running than self(the conservationists actually fit that mold to a T). I don't think I would lay the absence of that at the feet of people who don't think of themselves as conservatives though. It doesn't seem accurate. They're usually better than that.

 

[mitsho]

You're right, there is a need for the carrot and the stick, for the poor and for the rich! There are no freebies. How you determine that is the question and there I got to retreat to Democracy and Markets in the sense of liberty for personal engagement.

I might explain better my original point with an example. In the Netflix sequel "Tales of the City", there's a couple that was once lesbian and lived it. Now one of the two transitioned to a man and suddenly, they "fit". They're straight passing and they hate it. That is why equal isn't an answer either.

But again, I consider myself an (European) centrist, so I get your points. I don't get Mouthwash.

 

[Mouthwash]

You're going to have to explain to me how monogamous married and socially bonded homosexuals are a force for social dissolution any more than a hetero infertile one, a cloister of nuns, an order of monks, an unmarried member of the clergy, or two brothers/sisters who live together. It's certainly preferable in my conservative view to a womanizer, serial monogamist, or polygamist. Lays down a socially cohesive unit that even if not actively investing in the future, likely maintains a socially useful unit and contributes property and labor to the social endeavor without spreading disease or unmet obligation/work for other people to pick up in their lazy self-gazing fulfillment. A lot of socially useful work is done with things other than genitals.

My ire isn't against homosexuals or their actions, it's against the ideology that wants to create a world without expectations.

I am of course personally affected and offended. I'd like to marry a guy at one point. But what I get from reading MW posts is a different conception or society where everything has an order and a place to be. In order to do what if I may ask? Beat China? Further the survival of humanity? Fulfill God's will?

One doesn't have to have an explicit goal in mind to resist the horrors of liberalism.

While the battle for queer rights is the opposite, fighting for the right to be different. Which is why some of the older gay activists don't want to marry themselves. They don't want to belong.

I don't understand why indulging such people could ever be considered 'humanitarian'. If someone genuinely feels attraction to their own sex, that's a strong reason not to force them to conform. But simply to flip off the rest of society?

So in a way, that discussion actually answers the question of the thread title. American Conservatism stands for an idea of a structured society where individual freedom is secondary to a certain right way to live your life - the details of which changing depending on the person talking.

All societies are structured, for good reason - and relative to the norm, our own society is already way out in left field in terms of individual autonomy. So my question is, when is it enough? At what point can we say "we have enough autonomy now; no need to dissolve any more rules and boundaries"?

EDIT: Also would like to clarify that I am not actually in favor of civil war. That was just a bit of provocative... speculation on my part. I'd expect any genuine resistance to fly completely under the radar and have no presence in politics (after all, no one pays attention to the Amish).

 

[MaryKB]

Translation: "I feel threatened by the erosion of straight-white-male dominance in all facets of society."

 

[bernie14]

A large contingent of Trump's core supporters are qualitatively no different than the contingent of Germans who brought the Nazis to power. It's not an accident.

Dont know how you qualify as "large", but yeah, there are going to be extremist wackos on all sides of specific issues...i think there is as important distinction between current day America and post ww1 Germany, as you said in another thread, we are a rich nation....the slippery slope to wacko ideology is not a steep one.

 

[Cloud_Strife]

Being offended or troubled by LGBT people simply existing and asking to be treated like everyone else is a big red flag and most likely indicative of some sort of bigotry.

Don't believe me? Apply the same standard to Judaism and tell me that's not antisemitism or bigotry.

 

[Cloud_Strife]

Translation: "I feel threatened by the erosion of straight-white-male dominance in all facets of society."

He fears that society may one day treat him as it's treated and continues to treat minorities; with no respect or acknowledgement of their humanity.

 

[MaryKB]

He fears that society may one day treat him as it's treated and continues to treat minorities; with no respect or acknowledgement of their humanity.

For him it goes well beyond that, he envisions a type of social order with a very strict male-dominated hierarchy. You can see a lot of what he's saying, things like "a world with expectations" and such. He's posted before how he thinks it'd be beneficial for society of women basically didn't have rights, he believes we should know our place as subservient to our male masters. I get a very strong sense from him that he's a frustrated young man who looks back at a time when he would've just been allowed to take everything (and everyone) he wanted because of his default place amongst society's most powerful. He's opposed to peoples' freedoms because it takes away his power.

And that's why you see people call modern conservatives fascists.

 

[bernie14]

.... Hey mouthwash, if you're so offended by people being taught that lgbt exist maybe you could move to your favourite country of Iran or Saudi Arabia or even Brunei, they seem sympathetic to your plight of being harassed by the lgbt community everytime they commit the egregious sin of existing

MURICA!!! love it or leave it!