What have we ever gained from conservatism?

[Enrico]

I posted a short article on my website if you want to see it here: http://fightingcricket.com/Articles/2004/092004/2-Conserving.htm

My question is, what have we gained from "conservativism"? Not that Republicans today really conserve anything anyways...

[karlrschneider]

1. Quite a bit actually, in a far away time, but conservatism mutated into

reactionism a few decades ago. Nowadays the only thing they care to "conserve" is their own portfolios and power. I guess Barry Goldwater was probably the last true conservative...:eyes:

[Enrico]

2. You're dead on...

What do you mean by reactionism exactly? But you're right they only conserve the top 10% financial interests...

[K-W]

5. Reactionism is basing your political beliefs

around reacting to others. The Republican Party isnt so much conservative now as it is the anti-liberal party. Their policy isnt based on conserving anything it is based on winning a war against liberalism. That is ideologically bankrupt because they have no vision for the future, they just want to win, destroy all controls on corporations, destroy the constititution, anything to remove the horrible plague of liberalism.

[karlrschneider]

6. I'm not sure it's a word, but I used to say they are reactionary,

in the sense of wanting to devolve society back to some obscure point when things were "better", (the "good old days", as it were) It's a bogus nostalgia but they fear what they perceive as a path toward an egalitarian world and that's something that threatens their implanted
views, mostly the religious ones.

[K-W]

10. I disagree.

If they truely were trying to move society backwards, they wouldnt be reactionary. That would just be another view of the future of the country. The problem is that the republican party no longer wants to return us to 50's anymore. It wants to bring us to a very new, very different 2020.

They want to replicate certain factors from our glory days, but thier overall view is very different. They want a different government and a very different economy.

But people who were old fashioned conservatism have been sucked in. People who just want to return to a simpler time that gels with the way they were raised to look at the world end up supporting an extremely activist admnistration because it scares them into thinking that the liberals are the ones who want to destroy thier way of life, because liberals have been freaking out those people for a long time. The current Republican Party is run by people who have taken advantage of that fear of change and fear of liberalism to get conservatives to support thier decididly non-conservative agenda.

They are reactionary because their desire for a return to a better time has been manipulated beyond any real relationship with the good old days.

[fugue]

13. "Reactionary"

http://www.yourdictionary.com/ahd/r/r0066800.html

According to this, moving society backward would be reactionary, yes?

[K-W]

16. No.

"Characterized by reaction, especially opposition to progress or liberalism; extremely conservative."

Opposing progress is NOT the same as supporting regression. And that is exactly the problem with being reactionary. All you have to do is shift the status quo covertly and revise history a little and a reactionary will gladly be your foot soldier. You just have to keep convincing them that your enemies are the ones that want to change things, not you. For many of these people it is a personal policy to never really even think about what the ideal structure of our society is. It isnt about getting back to the 1950's it is simply about stopping progress.

[Zen Democrat]

12. Conservatism is not "conservative" it's radical and dangerous. ...

The terms liberal and conservative that we currently identify with came into being during the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Conservatives opposed involvement in the war against Hitler. They were pacifists and non-interventionists. They were laissez-faire, status quo people who were afraid of giving power to the government -- even to provide jobs for the desperate and food for the poor.

The New Deal split Americans into these two new divisions. In the early 1950's William F. Buckley, Irving Kristol and a few others began the modern conservative movement in an effort to end social security and to fight national healthcare and other programs that would help the poor at the expense of the rich man's taxes. They did this by adopting a strongly militaristic rhetoric to appeal to WWII vets and raised the alarm about Communists in the government (Hoover, McCarthy and Nixon were the footsoldiers in this campaign.) And it is this conservative movement that is seeing fruition with the current administration. Make no mistake, their efforts are to end taxation of the rich at the expense of the safety net for the underprivileged. It's all about their money. Wars? More money.

[K-W]

3. There is nothing wrong with being conservative, however

there is something very wrong with conservatism. Any political organization or philosophy that bases itself around conservatism is in a whole lot of trouble. Because conservatism lacks any ideology. It is 100% reactionary. Once you have placed yourself in that frame of mind you are very easy to manipulate. All someone must do is effect what it is that you react to, and they can control your opinions.

That is how conservatism occurrs. People with ideologies control the conservatives by convincing them that things are so outrageous and out of control that they must react strongly and wage war on the political opponants of thos that have gotten control over them.

The end result are conservatives who conserve nothing. Who are sending the nation down the path of destruction because they dont think about where the nation is going, they just react to the information they are fed like pigs by the right wing power structure.

[Enrico]

4. Good synopsis...

I'm going to post that on my website...

[karlrschneider]

8. You put it better than I did, I focused on the "back to good times" too

much and failed to address the actual "reacting" part. Nice job.

[StClone]

9. What's wrong with Conservatism?

"//1 The Main Arguments of Conservatism

From the pharaohs of ancient Egypt to the self-regarding thugs of ancient Rome to the glorified warlords of medieval and absolutist Europe, in nearly every urbanized society throughout human history, there have been people who have tried to constitute themselves as an aristocracy. These people and their allies are the conservatives.

The tactics of conservatism vary widely by place and time. But the most central feature of conservatism is deference: a psychologically internalized attitude on the part of the common people that the aristocracy are better people than they are. Modern-day liberals often theorize that conservatives use "social issues" as a way to mask economic objectives, but this is almost backward: the true goal of conservatism is to establish an aristocracy, which is a social and psychological condition of inequality. Economic inequality and regressive taxation, while certainly welcomed by the aristocracy, are best understood as a means to their actual goal, which is simply to be aristocrats. "

...more at...

http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/conservatism.html

[readmylips]

7. Heard a guy say he's not a republican but a ...

conservative who wants good government and responsible leaders, and that was his reason for voting for bush. (No facts).

I said, I'm a liberal and I want a good government that works for all its citizens and responsible leaders who don't declare war on the wrong country based on lies, is respected in the world, and does not bankrupt our country. (With Facts)

[welshTerrier2]

11. spinning the label

there was a time that conservatives believed in a minimalist foreign policy, balanced budgets and the preservation of our national parks ...

now, the essence of "conservatism" is to sell out everyone and everything to big business and their wealthiest stockholders ... conservatives today push for no regulation of commerce (no taxes, no product safety, no worker protections, no environmental safeguards) at the expense of the interests of the American people ... and they push an interventionist foreign policy to create global structures favorable to their corporate friends ...

today's conservative has nothing but disdain for our American government ... they want less government for only one reason ... less government means weaker government ... and weaker government lacks the clout to regulate big business ... and it lacks the clout to develop programs to benefit "the little people" ...

so conservatives were not always as they are now ... i suspect many "real" conservatives are very pained by what is now being done in their names ...

[K-W]

14. So what do we do about all these people who think they are conservative?

Who's idea of conservatism is always voting republican and nothing more

During the 60's and 70's. People who just could or did not want to bring themselves to accept that the system wasnt working right. These people donned the cloak of conservatism, not because they were conservative, but to give credence to thier hatred of the left.

These people and thier children are the heart of the republican party now.

[welshTerrier2]

17. education is the only way

liberals got lazy ... for too many years, Democrats controlled the House and Senate ...

the right was able to build a coalition of Southerners, pro military types and even "Reagan Democrats" ... and now they've added the "anti-government bureacrats" and the anti-tax crowd ... it's a neat, tidy little package of propaganda ...

the left shouts the rich get richer mantra but fails to make their case effectively ... it's more than past the time that Democrats need to steal the "conservative" label away from the radical Republicans ... there's nothing conservative about the budget deficits bush has run up ... there's nothing conservative about the out-of-control spending bush has done ...

the Republicans control the House, Senate and White House and look what's happened ... out of control spending ... an interesting note is that bush has never, never ever ever, vetoed even a single spending bill sent to him by the Congress ... not even one ... so who gets the blame for being big spenders??? why the Democrats do, of course ...

my two cents is that we have failed to educate the voters ... and it's not just about Kerry or this year's election ... we need a long-term, all the time, education program ... we know the truth here on DU ... most voters do not ...

[readmylips]

15. Conservatives use to claim that they were...

conservatives because the blacks and minorities were taking their jobs. How soon we forget how conservatives used to spread such hate, and they still have a Lilly white party.

In many of those conservative religious towns, the 20th century never made it to their towns. Now in the 21st century, blacks and minorities don't have to take their jobs, bush himself is allowing their jobs to be shipped to China, India, etc. Small town Conservatives will never reach middle class. They'll be praying day and night for miracle food to drop from the sky.

[K-W]

18. Well, this explores something a little different than conservatives.

They are semi-conservatives. Economically they want change. They dont like what is happening, but they have been convinced that it is the fault of liberals trying to change the social order. To them it is the liberal attempt at progress that has triggered an economic problem. They lack the historical and modern knowledge neccessary to see past the scapegoating. They arent losing thier jobs because corporations get better profit margins when laborers have to compete for positions, they are losing thier jobs because democrats let minorities take thier jobs because democrats are too soft.

So they react and become strongly socially conservative. At the same time they remain economically non-conservative, they are simply convinced that they have to fight harder to overcome the liberals before things can actually be made better. The conservatives lie to them and use dubious measures like stock indexes to represent the economy and convince them that if they can just get conservatives in office and keep the liberals out, then they could finally get people jobs. Some of them are so convinced that they will sit through 4 years of republican job loss, and still believe that republicans are in the end better for the economy.

[Lefty48197]

19. My unborn great grandchildren gained one helluva big national debt

due to conservatives.

[kodi]

20. all conservatism does is slow the inevitable course of progress

Why I Am Not a Conservative - F. A. Hayek

"Let me now state what seems to me the decisive objection to any conservatism which deserves to be called such. It is that by its very nature it cannot offer an alternative to the direction in which we are moving. It may succeed by its resistance to current tendencies in slowing down undesirable developments, but, since it does not indicate another direction, it cannot prevent their continuance. It has, for this reason, invariably been the fate of conservatism to be dragged along a path not of its own choosing. The tug of war between conservatives and progressives can only affect the speed, not the direction, of contemporary developments."

http://www.geocities.com/ecocorner/intelarea/fah1.html

[Cartooner]

21. WE DEMS gained a helluva lotta motivation ... :-)