Conservatism/US

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About

What is called "conservatism" in the United States should not be confused with that which is called "conservatism" in the rest of the world, nor should it be confused with the idea of "being conservative".

True conservatism is essentially a great idea: we should be cautious with our resources, spend them carefully and only when we are pretty sure we will gain more than we lose; we should be cautious about making dramatic changes to society, because society is complicated and we really can't be sure what the effects might be; ...and so on.

American "conservatism" (Americonservatism for short), on the other hand, basically tosses most of that out the window – drill, baby, drill!; build walls rather than welcoming immigrants; disrespect science, and ignore scientific consensus if it means lower short-term profits; throw anyone we don't like in jail; make jails larger, make wars larger, slash public education, slash social spending – while still pretending to represent it.

Since the Bush era, when neoconservatives had the helm for eight years and finished the rewriting of the US Republican Party's platform that began with the Reagan revolution, "Conservatism" in America has come to be synonymous with a sort of candy-coated authoritarianism, a policy of lying to the public (with a smile) in support of the secret agendas of the powerful, and fearmongering for the purpose of weakening public opposition.

Conservapedia definition

Conservapedia definesConservapedia is an unreliable source. (American) Conservatism as having the following attributes:

  • promotes moral and economic values beneficial to all
  • looks to the insights of economics and the logic of the Bible for the benefit of all
  • favors conserving value by not giving handouts to anyone who does not really need them

It then also goes to list a number of specific political positions favored by neoconservatism, neoliberalism, and dominionism.

A conservative typically adheres to principles of personal responsibility, moral values, and limited government,

American Conservative Self-Definition

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] and frequently misattributed to Thomas Jefferson by Americonservatives in order to give it more credibility

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.

Conservative and Fundamentalist Groups

Well-Known Conservative Proponents

pundits

financiers

Commentary

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.

Inlinks

Outlinks

Reference

Filed Links

Related

Video

Projects

Blogs

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

News & Views

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)
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