Conservatism/US

Overview

Conservatism in the United States takes on particular causes and priorities which are not necessarily aligned with conservatism in other parts of the world.

The Heritage Foundation, an American conservative think-tank, states a belief "in individual liberty, free enterprise, limited government, a strong national defense, and traditional American values. We want an America that is safe and secure; where choices (in education, health care and retirement) abound; where taxes are fair, flat, and comprehensible; where everybody has the opportunity to go as far as their talents will take them; where government concentrates on its core functions, recognizes its limits and shows favor to none. ... we believe the values and ideas that motivated our Founding Fathers are worth conserving." This would seem to be a reasonable definition of the best attributes of American conservatism.

A cornerstone of American Conservative philosophy is personal responsibility – the idea that each individual is solely responsible for his/her own well-being; government exists solely to ensure that the rules are enforced, which includes protection from hostile external forces.

American Conservatives seem to be generally against "big government": "The government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have." -- attributed to Gerald Ford [1]

Neoconservatism

In the late 1900s and early 2000s, the neoconservative movement in the United States captured the loyalty of much of the conservative population, outwardly supporting conservative causes (especially on wedge issues) but actually supporting aims which were in many ways very anti-conservative – e.g. spending unprecedented amounts of taxpayer money on a foreign "nation-building" venture and imposing government rules on the lives of private citizens to an extent never before seen in the US.

Politics

The majority of conservatives in the United States are aligned with the Republican Party, although a significant minority adhere more to the positions of the Libertarian Party.

Related Articles

• US Republican Party: the political organization
• American republicanism: the worldview
• Neoconservatism: if real conservatives are sheep, neocons are wolves in sheep's clothing
• Many US conservatives, especially those tending to the extreme (e.g. DiPippo and Horowitz), seem to have a grudge against The New York Times going back to at least mid-2006.

Conservative and Fundamentalist Groups

• Conservative
  • Conservapedia: "pro-American, pro-Christian" alternative to Wikipedia
  • Free Republic
  • The Heritage Foundation
  • John Locke Foundation (North Carolina)
    • Interestingly, the writings of John Locke [W] himself "had an enormous influence on the development of liberalism", notably the idea of "religious toleration", according to Wikipedia
  • Patriot Post "The Conservative Journal of Record"
  • American Conservative: skeptical Conservatism
  • Redstate: "conservative news and community"
• Conservative Christian
  • Bob Jones University (Greenville, SC)
  • Council of Conservative Citizens (MO) (Wikipedia)
  • Liberty University - e.g. Dress Code for Women
  • American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property
  • Patriarchy.org (VA): "addressing the issues and legalism of patriarchy with the liberating truth of Jesus Christ"; apparently started in reaction against an excessively conservative/legalistic "patriarchy movement"
• Parody Sites
  • Landover Baptist Church "Where the Worthwhile Worship"
  • Betty Bowers "America's Best Christian"

Well-Known Conservative Proponents

pundits

• Ann Coulter
• Barry Goldwater (1909-1998): (former?) conservative icon; would be considered a moderate today
• Bill O'Reilly, Fox News commentator
• David Horowitz: neocon writer, activist and commentator
• Dinesh D'Souza: argues "that conservatives here and traditional moderate Muslims are up against the same far-left enemy."
• George F. Will [W]
• Jerry Pournelle "slightly to the right of Genghis Khan"... but doesn't seem to be rabid, unlike many others
• Michelle Malkin [W]
• Rush Limbaugh
• Russell Kirk [W]: "the father of modern conservatism"
• William F. Buckley, Jr. [W] "the godfather of modern American conservatism"

financiers

• Richard Mellon Scaife

Commentary

• A Reactionary’s Shorter Catechism by Paul J Cella

David Brin writes about this [2]:

This fellow is another species. One that would prefer to stay feudal, terrified, and only half sapient forever -- though with confident expectation that God’s reality is a cramped, short term exercise, and so it does not matter. He praises elitism, mythology, romanticism, nostalgia, mysticism, exceptionalism, ritualistic-dogmatic traditionalism, and prejudice in the purest meaning of the word - pre-judice - judging others and all thoughts based upon comfortable, self-serving assumptions and eliminating all processes that test those subjective assumptions against the genuine holiness of the Creator’s greatest work, a thing called objective reality. Indeed, denial of objective reality or its relevance is the underlying commonality that this fellow howls in perfect synchrony with romantics of the far left, whose praise of ancient mysticism and tribal ways converge eerily on the extreme, with "reactionaries" like this guy. (Naturally, my own theology, that we were meant to be apprentices and knowingly (through science) begin sharing and completing the art/craft of Creation, would send both types shrieking.) If you have not seen it, do. And know the full range of human personality that makes our task so dauntingly difficult. Trogs who know that 6,000 years of trying their way never got humanity anything but pain, nevertheless bitterly resent us our turn, trying something new and blatantly better. No wonder they are fighting back so hard, as we speak. They must re-establish the old way fast, or lose their chance forever, as humanity finally steps into the light.

A responding poster on the same thread says:

I don't have a link handy but there's been some research [indicating that far-right partisans] don't use their cerebral cortex much when evaluating political statements. Instead another part of their brain associated with emotional rewards lights up whenever they affirm the "correct" side or disagree with the "incorrect" side. I'm sure such a pack mentality came in handy back in the day but it's ill suited to a democracy. I think this is also why we see such an overlap between creationists and people who vehemently object to global warming. The global warming hypothesis requires them to believe in a moral cause of a nature that they find unpalatable (there's no foreign enemy to blame it on and they're not necessarily the good guys). Deconstructing the far right is easy. Just turn their accusations around, most of them in fact apply to them: global warming is a religion (they're creationists and/or heavily influenced by christian dominionism), liberals are arrogant and ignorant, etc. etc. But in fairness we should be deconstructing the loonies on the other side of the political spectrum too. Unfortunately this is a lot harder to do since they're a lot more diversified and neurotic, a Baskin Robbins of ideological weirdness (although a lot of them them tend to have issues with daddy). The end result is basically the same nature of thinking, just with different packaging.

• 2005-09-27 J.E.R. Staddon writes: "...there are acres written on conservatism, but one of the best definitions I've seen is that it is a disbelief in utopia, i.e., a disbelief in the "progressive" idea that human beings, and human society, are infinitely perfectible. The problem with belief in utopia is that if you believe it is possible, then you are obliged to take active steps tio bring it about, which usually leads to the death and misery of large numbers of human beings (see Stalin, Mao, the Islamists, etc.)."

Links

Reference

• Wikipedia (Conservatism in North America)
• Conservapedia (Conservative) (Conservapedia is US-oriented)

Filed Links

1. redirect template:links/smw

Projects

• Conservative Thinking
• Free Republic: "the premier online gathering place for independent, grass-roots conservatism on the web"

Blogs

• The Autonomist: by Rocco diPippo of Warren, RI
• Cathy's World: Cathy Seipp is a columnist for National Review Online and the Independent Women's Forum
• Right Side of the Rainbow: "News and commentary on law and politics by a right- of-center, gun-owning, gay Texan"
• Say Anything Blog: not explicitly conservative, but seems to lean that way
• Stop the ACLU
  • 2006-07-03 Jewish Family “Forced to Move” Over School Lawsuit: "'Stop the ACLU Coalition' Publicised Home Address, Phone Number

News Sites

• NewsMax: "America's News Page" (see also Wikipedia)
• townhall.com is generally described as conservative, but according to Wikipedia their mission is specifically to aid in "the fight against those who would sacrifice the individual and freedom for political gain and big government."

Publications

• National Review

News & Views

• 2006-07-06 The thug and intimidation tactics of the Far Right go mainstream by Glenn Greenwald
• 2005-12-05 'I Didn't Like Nixon Until Watergate': The Conservative Movement Now by Rick Perlstein
• 2004-08-18: Moral Politics in the Context of History of Marriage suggests, in the context of a book review (of Moral Politics by George Lakoff and What Is Marriage For? by E.J. Graff), a brief definition of key conservative values, and then states that they are contradicted by scientific findings, which explains why conservatives tend to be anti-science. (To be investigated: do the given values accurately reflect the conservative worldview? Does science contradict them?)

Books

• The Marketing of Evil by David Kupelian (Amazon): "Americans have come to tolerate, embrace and even champion many things that would have horrified their parents' generation – from easy divorce and unrestricted abortion-on-demand to extreme body piercing and teaching homosexuality to grade-schoolers."
  • Comments:
    • Easy divorce has been shown to reduce suicide rates; nobody gets unrestricted abortion-on-demand, though I could argue that it would be a good idea, at least in the first trimester; and you can't "teach homosexuality" – is anyone actually trying to do this? Unless it means "teaching about homosexuality", which would be an important part of any decent sex education curriculum (otherwise kids are likely to grow up hating and fearing gay people, which would probably make this book's author happy – or, if the student in question is gay, hating and fearing her/himself, which would probably also make the book's author happy). What's wrong with body-piercing? --Woozle 11:07, 12 January 2007 (EST)