What does the American Conservative stand for anymore?

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Traitorfish said:
I don't think that this necessarily represents any particular dissonance in conservative thinking. When they benefit from these programs, it is so they can maintain the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed, so that their rightful place in the social order is maintained. Despite the viciousness of free market street-preachers, most conservative have maintained a sympathy for the deserving unfortunate; this is what they call "compassionate conservatism". What confuses this is their readiness to attribute misfortune to people who do not look and sound like them to moral degradation, their tendency to reserve deserving-ness to people with whom they can readily identify. Ultimately, it comes down to their unwillingness or inability to conceptualise poverty as a structural problem, which permits them to regard short-term financial distress as misfortune, but forces them to regard long-term or permanent poverty as essentially voluntary.

If you listen to conservative politicians, they rarely declare that they are going to abolish widely-used programs outright. Some do, but they are usually both insane, and occupy extremely safe constituencies. What they say they are going to do is to restrict access to those programs, with the accompanying promise that service for the deserving unfortunate will, in fact, improve without the dead weight of the undeserving indolent. I wouldn't say that they are secretly socialists so far as they and those like them are concerned, because they retain a certain terror of becoming dependent on the state and thus socially reduced, but dishing out dollars to the deserving is entirely within the acceptable and proper function of the state, as imagined by the majority of conservatives.
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Yeah, the last actual "compassionate conservative" I remember in the States was Jack Kemp. That was quite a while ago, it's almost nonexistent today. Recently, when they controlled the House they needed a lot of pushing just to fund the CHIP program. Things Trump and other conservatives say about Muslims are things GW Bush warned may happen and we should guard against. When the tax cut passed Paul Ryan claimed The way to balance this was "entitlement reform" and voters would have to be pretty foolish to not know what that means. The ACA "hurt" red states because Republican governors turned down The optional Medicaid expansion. Compassionate conservatism died with the advent of the Tea Party and The Freedom Caucus.

The actual voters may have compassion but they continue to vote for politicians with none. That just comes back to my point that the voters often have a single issue, maybe a couple, that draws them in and gets them to vote against programs they personally benefit from.
 
The original Buffy the Vampire Slayer Kristy Swanson is mad because a teacher at her son's school doesn't recite the Pledge of Allegiance and tells the children they can skip it too. Thats conservatism in a nutshell, scream bloody murder about Marxist cultural indoctrination while demanding other people's children stand and pledge allegiance to the state.
 
Farm Boy said:
We have a resident English professor who semi-regularly opines that I don't speak intelligibly. It's why I mentioned he might be happy to translate. Seems to get a kick out of it sometimes.
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1) I've never opined that you don't speak intelligibly. I've commiserated with others who have found you opaque and shared my one heuristic for comprehending Farm Boy posts.
2) I've never actually translated you, just expressed my earnest hope that some day I will be able to. I want to write a "How to Decipher a Farm Boy Post" guide. I'm studying.
3) not as an English professor, but more like that grey-haired woman on "Airplane!" who speaks jive, I will endeavor this one time to translate.
4) nothing good will come of my attempt:

Cloud Strife, Farm Boy has had a life experience that would incline him to prefer "impending" to your "hypothetical." You may at some point have that same experience, and it may have an impact on your favored nomenclature and where on the line you place your X.
 
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That people on here are incapable of even discussing the issue the OP brings up in favor of castigating all conservatives as market theocrats says everything that can be said about the possibility of "dialogue" with the left.

As for my thoughts on the subject, I would welcome a civil war/secession at this point if conservatives were serious about carving out a space for a better society, much less reviving America. Unfortunately those like French and his allies - conservatives who continue to benefit from a free-market society - will probably put a halt to any meaningful action. The best thing to do is probably a Benedict Option-style retreat from mainstream society until birthrates do the work for us (which will take about a century, but it's coming).

Hopefully it'll at least purify conservatives of all the corrupting baggage that comes with being dominant in a society, such as support for corporations, involvement in foolish foreign policy crusades, etc.
 
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Mouthwash said:
That people on here are incapable of even discussing the issue the OP brings up in favor of castigating all conservatives as market theocrats says everything that can be said about the possibility of "dialogue" with the left.
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No you sharing what you stand for is actually what I'm asking for in the question. You are another type of conservative that does not fit in well with conventional ideas of conservative for the last 40 years (mind you I am in the US and the point of the thread is that the label is so widespread and in many cases diametrically opposed with itself (especially in principles)). I mean from my reading of your posts I take you to be a more socially minded reactionary conservative type with a strong desire to see Israel be dominant over its neighbors.
 
Estebonrober said:
No you sharing what you stand for is actually what I'm asking for in the question. You are another type of conservative that does not fit in well with conventional ideas of conservative for the last 40 years. I mean from my reading of your posts I take you to be a more socially minded reactionary conservative type with a strong desire to see Israel be dominant over its neighbors.
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I mean, I have more pressing policy issues on my mind than that, but yeah. You didn't intend for the Ahmari-French thing to be the topic of discussion?
 
Mouthwash said:
I mean, I have more pressing policy issues on my mind than that, but yeah. You didn't intend for the Ahmari-French thing to be the topic of discussion?
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Sure I did, it seems to me that two very big parts of conservatism especially in the US only have nationalism left in common anymore. Otherwise their thoughts on things and their mannerisms about things are shifting away from each other pretty quickly.
 
Mouthwash said:
That people on here are incapable of even discussing the issue the OP brings up in favor of castigating all conservatives as market theocrats says everything that can be said about the possibility of "dialogue" with the left.

As for my thoughts on the subject, I would welcome a civil war/secession at this point if conservatives were serious about carving out a space for a better society, much less reviving America. Unfortunately those like French and his allies - conservatives who continue to benefit from a free-market society - will probably put a halt to any meaningful action. The best thing to do is probably a Benedict Option-style retreat from mainstream society until birthrates do the work for us (which will take about a century, but it's coming).
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"Liberals portray conservatives as fanatics! Anyway, we should start a civil war to purge the unworthy."
 
The colonized have a right to self-defense, do they not?
 
Hygro said:
We've been living under conservative rule for 40 years so you tell me dude.
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The left has held absolute cultural power for fifteen years and absolute judicial power for ten. At the moment they're taking away conservative economic power at a breakneck pace. We still have the advantage in the executive and legislature, but those are hardly under our thumb.
 
Mouthwash said:
The left has held absolute cultural power for fifteen years and absolute judicial power for ten. At the moment they're taking away conservative economic power at a breakneck pace. We still have the advantage in the executive and legislature, but those are hardly under our thumb.
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Conservative political power and judicial power haven't been this strong in 100 years in the US. They are at their absolute peak.
 
You're a true debate virtuoso, Cutlass.
 
Mouthwash said:
The left has held absolute cultural power for fifteen years and absolute judicial power for ten. At the moment they're taking away conservative economic power at a breakneck pace. We still have the advantage in the executive and legislature, but those are hardly under our thumb.
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That article says nothing about taking away conservative economic power.
The Republican Party's Congressional power delivered a Republican supreme court against who was supposed to appoint justices, something Democrats never do.
Yes the majority of Americans are mildly political, progressive American exceptionalists, so the news and media sell to that. Hardly a meaningful "absolute cultural power."

How you think civil war is superior to economic revitalization and a science driven healthcare regime (there's no opiate crisis in California...) when conservative policies drove this reality is some kind of dark and twisted fantasy. We've lived in a thriving America before and it was the most politically leftwing time in America. Not coincidentally I suspect, also the time when the majority were the most personally conservative.
 
Mouthwash said:
That people on here are incapable of even discussing the issue the OP brings up in favor of castigating all conservatives as market theocrats says everything that can be said about the possibility of "dialogue" with the left.

As for my thoughts on the subject, I would welcome a civil war/secession at this point if conservatives were serious about carving out a space for a better society, much less reviving America. Unfortunately those like French and his allies - conservatives who continue to benefit from a free-market society - will probably put a halt to any meaningful action. The best thing to do is probably a Benedict Option-style retreat from mainstream society until birthrates do the work for us (which will take about a century, but it's coming).

Hopefully it'll at least purify conservatives of all the corrupting baggage that comes with being dominant in a society, such as support for corporations, involvement in foolish foreign policy crusades, etc.
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Free market? The party that favors oil subsidies, awards no bid contracts and is led by "Tariff Man" is for the free market? Sounds pretty delusional to me.
 
There's that concept in fascism where the enemy is simultaneously strong and overpowering whilst also weak and ready to be beaten, which can be clearly seen in mouthwashes posts.

Also lol, literally advocating for a "conservative" state via civil war, I'm totally sure that said state wouldn't be riddled with racial, sexual and religious intolerance
 
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