Conservatism/US

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.

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

• 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"
  • Sovereignty Colorado "The State and Nation are under incredible pressure to continue on the path to communist socialist rule..."
• 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.

Inlinks

• 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.

Outlinks

Reference

• Wikipedia (Conservatism in the United States)
  • see also Conservatism in North America
• Conservapedia (Conservative) (Conservapedia is US-oriented)

Related

• 2020/09/28 [L..T] How A Conservative 6-3 Majority Would Reshape The Supreme Court «...Supreme Court experts [..] stress that we’re likely to see the legal conservative movement seize this moment, and as such, we should brace for a wave of rulings that move the law fundamentally to the right – on everything from hot-button cultural issues like gun rights and abortion to more legalistic, but nevertheless important, topics like the power of the executive branch.»
• 2014/04/24 [L..T] In 2014, it's like deja vu all over again «Bill Kristol, the Republican National Committee, and conservatives everywhere instead dug into the internals to declare the poll is... skewed. It's as if 2012 has already escaped their memories.»
• 2014/04/19 [L..T] Conservative heavyweights have solar industry in their sights "The Koch brothers, anti-tax activist Grover Norquist and some of the nation's largest power companies have backed efforts in recent months to roll back state policies that favor green energy. The conservative luminaries have pushed campaigns in Kansas, North Carolina and Arizona, with the battle rapidly spreading to other states."
• 2014/04/10 [L..T] Rush Limbaugh Freaks Out About Stephen Colbert Getting 'Late Show' According to Rush Limbaugh, "Colbert's new job is nothing less than a grave political, constitutional, and moral crisis in American television."
• 2014/02/21 [L..T] From the fringe to the Hill It's alarmingly common to hear congressional Republicans repeat some deeply odd conspiracy theories. But more often than not, the theories didn't start on Capitol Hill; they just ended up there.
• 2013/12/10 [L..T] Give Me Amendments or Give Me Death "Inside the secretive campaign by state legislators to pass conservative amendments in 34 states and rewrite the Constitution."
• 2012/07/15 [L..T] Deconstructing Conservative Myths About Socialism, Capitalism, and Who The "Job Creators" Are "Conservatives have taken to a new spin on truth, by refashioning definitions of words and terms in order to provoke new connotations. Socialism is now defined as a government take over, Capitalism is now defined as patriotic, and the wealthy are now defined as job creators. But simply redefining these words will not change their true meaning, it is only myth making."
• 2012/04/13 [L..T] 12 Ways To Use Saul Alinsky's Rules For Radicals Against Liberals All liberals are using rules set forth by Saul Alinsky; conservatives should use them too, because they work.
• 2009/05/31 [L..T] Why do people persist in voting Republican? “I happened to read University of Virginia Psychologist Jonathan Haidt's thoughtful essay on what makes people vote Republican ... Read the whole thing. You might even conclude, as I suspect Haidt does, that Republican voters tend to be more nuanced and sophisticated than Democratic voters.”
• 2009/03/07 [L..T] "Bipartisan DEFINED !" : RUSH LIMBAUGH : CPAC Convention 2009 “To us, bipartisanship is them being forced to agree with us after we have politically cleaned their clocks and beaten them.”
• 2008/09/19 [L..T] Scientists Explain Why People Vote For Republicans a collection of scientific investigations into why people vote Republican

Video

• 2014/04/10 [L..T] Rush Limbaugh Freaks Out About Stephen Colbert Getting 'Late Show' According to Rush Limbaugh, "Colbert's new job is nothing less than a grave political, constitutional, and moral crisis in American television."

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)