What does the American Conservative stand for anymore?

[Estebonrober]

What is their platform? Do they have any ideas to fix any ills perceived or otherwise? We all know their immigration stance these days. Their moral stances are all over the place now though. Their trade and economic stance is troubled and murky now. Their cohesion on topics as basic as the rule of law are troubled.

What does the American Conservative believe in and is it splitting down libertarian/religious lines?

This article reminded that there really aren't any policies coming from the right on much of anything. They can't even agree on what ills actually exist in society which is why all they could pass last cycle was the most unpopular tax cut of all time.

Anyways it is an interesting read.

https://www.vox.com/2019/6/5/18637391/david-french-sohrab-ahmari-conservatism-libertarians-divide

During the Cold War, conservatism defined itself in its opposition to communism, and in the era of Trump, many conservatives appear to have defined themselves by their opposition to “the left” or liberalism more broadly, a phenomenon I’ve termed “reflexible anti-leftism.” But right now, many conservatives are talking and debating among themselves about what conservatism should be promoting, not just opposing, or, in the words of National Review founder William F. Buckley in 1955, “standing athwart, yelling stop.”

Should conservatism support a limited government, even if that puts nuclear families at risk? Should conservatism support free markets, even if that means people can readily buy pornography that saps their moral virtue? What would conservative victory, real, true victory, look like? Who would lose if Ahmarian conservatism or Carlsonian conservatism or any of the conservatisms won? What kind of moral compromises should conservatives make to win a cultural or political battle? Should conservatism aim to persuade liberals or inoculate conservatives against liberalism? Should conservatism care what private citizens do in their bedrooms or boardrooms or places of worship?

The debate over libertarianism and conservatism, and over Ahmari and French, isn’t just about what conservatives believe. It’s about what conservatism is.

 

[Berzerker]

There are factions that dont agree about some things, eg free traders, fair traders, and protectionists all claiming to be conservative.

 

[Farm Boy]

There have always been lots of types. I like the conservationists generally. I like the guys that tolerate but generally personally detest the fine people with inflatable rats. I usually like a lot of the non evangelicals. There are types I think suck. Sort of like "liberals." Some of them are awesome. Some of them are likewise selfish monsters.

 

[Lexicus]

the fine people with inflatable rats.

I literally am one of these people, lol

 

[Lexicus]

What did conservatism ever stand for? In the old world conservatism stood for the defense of monarchies and aristocracies and the church and patriarchy. In the US it has always stood for rationalizing the pretensions of whatever would-be aristocrats are currently trying to destroy democracy, and that's still what it stands for.

 

[Patine]

and is it splitting down libertarian/religious lines?

What religion do you believe they're honestly espousing? Which religion are they properly adhering to, even remotely, in any way, shape, or form?

 

[Hygro]

Institutional hierarchy.

 

[Patine]

Institutional hierarchy.

Just like Papa Jozef, Uncle Adolf, and Great Uncle Benito...

 

[Farm Boy]

And rule of law. And the Shriners, the Lions, etc. Though they got liberals in them too. Lots of accreditation and professionals, though that gets confused with party when economic circles get muddy.

 

[Cutlass]

Conservatism stands for Wall St.

 

[Ajidica]

We can hear the spectacle of cruel laughter throughout the Trump era. There were the border-patrol agents cracking up at the crying immigrant children separated from their families, and the Trump adviser who delighted white supremacists when he mocked a child with Down syndrome who was separated from her mother. There were the police who laughed uproariously when the president encouraged them to abuse suspects, and the Fox News hosts mocking a survivor of the Pulse Nightclub massacre (and in the process inundating him with threats), the survivors of sexual assault protesting to Senator Jeff Flake, the women who said the president had sexually assaulted them, and the teen survivors of the Parkland school shooting. There was the president mocking Puerto Rican accents shortly after thousands were killed and tens of thousands displaced by Hurricane Maria, the black athletes protesting unjustified killings by the police, the women of the #MeToo movement who have come forward with stories of sexual abuse, and the disabled reporter whose crime was reporting on Trump truthfully. It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump.

Taking joy in that suffering is more human than most would like to admit. Somewhere on the wide spectrum between adolescent teasing and the smiling white men in the lynching photographs are the Trump supporters whose community is built by rejoicing in the anguish of those they see as unlike them, who have found in their shared cruelty an answer to the loneliness and atomization of modern life.

The laughter undergirds the daily spectacle of insincerity, as the president and his aides pledge fealty to bedrock democratic principles they have no intention of respecting. The president who demanded the execution of five black and Latino teenagers for a crime they didn’t commit decrying “false accusations,” when his Supreme Court nominee stands accused; his supporters who fancy themselves champions of free speech meet references to Hillary Clinton or a woman whose only crime was coming forward to offer her own story of abuse with screams of “Lock her up!” The political movement that elected a president who wanted to ban immigration by adherents of an entire religion, who encourages police to brutalize suspects, and who has destroyed thousands of immigrant families for violations of the law less serious than those of which he and his coterie stand accused, now laments the state of due process.

This isn’t incoherent. It reflects a clear principle: Only the president and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process.

Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, black voters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright. The president’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/the-cruelty-is-the-point/572104/

 

[Patine]

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/the-cruelty-is-the-point/572104/

Dante believed certain parts of Hell were places of mirth - at least for a while, while the engines of torture fired up as gradually as the water boiling lobsters in a seafood restaurant kitchen...

 

[Estebonrober]

There are factions that dont agree about some things, eg free traders, fair traders, and protectionists all claiming to be conservative.

Yea this is my point, with their possible policy situations for those things being fundamentally opposed it is not a tenable situation. Liberals are a hot mess of things too, but I'm not familiar off the top of my head things that are in opposition to this degree.

Lots of infighting on the right these days especially around the social conservative movement who still sound crazy to me, but they are powerful on the right. Their long persecution complex finally seems to be getting mobilized into a semblance of action points. I guess first of these seem to be to stop talking nice. I'd expect a lot more push back against lgbt topics.

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2019/05/against-david-french-ism

Here French and others fall back on religious liberty. French has done yeoman’s work in defense of Christians and other people of faith persecuted in America. But in the long term, religious-liberty absolutism will put Christians and other traditional believers in a bind. If the moral law is merely a matter of ancient, if sincere, conviction, then of course it must give way to the demands for autonomy of people in the here and now.

Archbishop Charles Chaput made this point in his 2017 book, Strangers in a Strange Land. If traditional moral precepts are “purely religious beliefs,” he wrote, then “they can’t be rationally defended. And because they’re rationally indefensible, they should be treated as a form of prejudice. Thus two thousand years of moral truth and religious principle become, by sleight of hand, a species of bias.”

Again and again, French insists on the sincerity of the believers whose causes he takes up, as if asserting sincerity of belief can move the heart of an enemy who finds you and your beliefs repulsive: “The biblical sexual ethic is based on a sincere conviction. . . .” “Evidence of devout faith is frequently evidence of a sincere commitment to fairness, compassion, and the faithful discharge of one’s constitutional duties. . . .”

But they won’t listen. Tub-thump long enough about your sincere but irrational (in the eyes of the reigning ideology) views, and soon opposition to abortion, same-sex marriage, polyamory, kids in drag, and much else of the same kind will come to resemble the wrongheaded and indeed irrational opposition to vaccination mounted by ultra-Orthodox Jews in New York. Sorry, Pastor French, but your superstition will have to give way to public health and the smooth functioning of the autonomy-maximizing society.

 

[Patine]

Here French and others fall back on religious liberty. French has done yeoman’s work in defense of Christians and other people of faith persecuted in America. But in the long term, religious-liberty absolutism will put Christians and other traditional believers in a bind. If the moral law is merely a matter of ancient, if sincere, conviction, then of course it must give way to the demands for autonomy of people in the here and now.

Archbishop Charles Chaput made this point in his 2017 book, Strangers in a Strange Land. If traditional moral precepts are “purely religious beliefs,” he wrote, then “they can’t be rationally defended. And because they’re rationally indefensible, they should be treated as a form of prejudice. Thus two thousand years of moral truth and religious principle become, by sleight of hand, a species of bias.”

Again and again, French insists on the sincerity of the believers whose causes he takes up, as if asserting sincerity of belief can move the heart of an enemy who finds you and your beliefs repulsive: “The biblical sexual ethic is based on a sincere conviction. . . .” “Evidence of devout faith is frequently evidence of a sincere commitment to fairness, compassion, and the faithful discharge of one’s constitutional duties. . . .”

But they won’t listen. Tub-thump long enough about your sincere but irrational (in the eyes of the reigning ideology) views, and soon opposition to abortion, same-sex marriage, polyamory, kids in drag, and much else of the same kind will come to resemble the wrongheaded and indeed irrational opposition to vaccination mounted by ultra-Orthodox Jews in New York. Sorry, Pastor French, but your superstition will have to give way to public health and the smooth functioning of the autonomy-maximizing society.

But these aren't Christians here. At all. They don't follow the Ministry of Christ or of the Apostles remotely. In fact, a lot of what they believe and promote is completely antithetical to Christ's teachings. And calling them Christian, especially in criticism or chastening, only helps legitimize the Great Apostacy and the Usurper Cult as being believed to be what they definitely are not.

 

[Estebonrober]

Conservatism stands for Wall St.

There is clearly a part that doesn't anymore. . . just watch the way J or old hippy talk

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/the-cruelty-is-the-point/572104/

This rings true about all of them, maybe like the anti-communism they can unify around ??? liberal tears?

.

 

[Estebonrober]

But these aren't Christians here. At all. They don't follow the Ministry of Christ or of the Apostles remotely. In fact, a lot of what they believe and promote is completely antithetical to Christ's teachings. And calling them Christian, especially in criticism or chastening, only helps legitimize the Great Apostacy and the Usurper Cult as being believed to be what they definitely are not.

I understand the point you are trying to make, but this is how they define themselves. I agree they need to reread the New part of the Bible and ignore the Old part more. I'm not sure how to take this position back from them.

 

[Old Hippy]

There is clearly a part that doesn't anymore. . . just watch the way J or old hippy talk

do you mean how they pay attention to what is going on?...

 

[Estebonrober]

do you mean how they pay attention to what is going on...

Can I ask a personal question here hippy? Why the snark in this comment? I wasn't denigrating you or J, heck its the one common thing the majority of people on this forum have in common, a disdain for Wall St and its financiers. I think I can say almost everyone posting here is "paying attention". You and I just think the other lives in a fantasy world.

 

[Old Hippy]

Can I ask a personal question here hippy? Why the snark in this comment? I wasn't denigrating you or J, heck its the one common thing the majority of people on this forum have in common, a disdain for Wall St and its financiers. I think I can say almost everyone posting here is "paying attention". You and I just think the other lives in a fantasy world.

the mischief?... ''You and I just think the other lives in a fantasy world'' why the snark in your comment?...

 

[Birdjaguar]

Conservatives are a coalition of folks that believe in these things:

• Cut taxes for the rich
• Raise military spending
• Cut social spending
• Evangelical Christian views should stand above all others
• Old, white men should lead the country to the exclusion of all others
• Enemies and wars are good things
• Change should be avoided or suppressed
• The role of non white people in government should be minimized
• Women cannot make decisions for themselves
• More guns will make this a better country
• Libruls are the enemy

And since 2016 they have added these:

• Lying by a president is an OK thing
• Ideology is more important than everything else including law and the constitution