En Tequila Es Verdad/progressive conservatism/post/2009/01/13/0755

January 13, 2009 7:55 AM - Woozle

Woozle said...

Mike: I'm willing to give it a shot, though my time is limited so I may not be able to respond to every point.

What would be useful, to start with, is if you could define the essence of what you mean by "conservatism". This is important if we are to understand which elements of conservatism are compatible with progressivism and which are not.

One of my main beefs about conservatives is that they seem to focus most of their energy on belittling other people's ideas while never putting forth any ideas of their own. It's almost impossible to defend against this sort of pot-shot debate tactic, because the best defense against nonspecific criticism is to show how the idea in question is better than the alternatives -- and if a critic won't come out and say which alternatives they actually prefer, then they're safe from any return criticism (regardless of whether their ideas actually have any merit).

Perhaps you can do something to start counteracting this trend.