Defining U.S. Conservatism Down

[JustARandomPanda]

Found this article rather interesting. Also it made me grin as apparently I'm one of a very tiny handful of people the author talks about who've consistently voted for a long time (decades in my case) against both political parties.

 

 

 

Defining Conservative Down

 

Today's parties are neither Jeffersonians nor Hamiltonians, but social democrats

 

 

In what for me illustrates the use of confusing labels, George Will recently complained about attacks of “cognitive dissonance” in trying to understand our political terms. Although Americans identify overwhelmingly as “conservatives,” many of them vote differently from the way they describe themselves. They lean theoretically toward Thomas Jefferson, who advocated very limited government, but vote like Hamiltonians, that is, like disciples of Alexander Hamilton, our first secretary of the Treasury, who favored a strong federal state. Will quotes his favorite “conservative” senator, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who noted a dramatic disconnect between how Americans think and how they vote. According to Moynihan, who usually gave his vote to the left despite his undeserved reputation as a man of the right, Americans are happy to violate their “conservative civil religion” as soon as they enter a voting booth.

 

Will’s observations about political labels are highly questionable. He stretches the term “conservative” so far that it means whatever he (and presumably the “conservative” press) wants it to mean. Judging by polls, the majority of Americans stand well to the left on social issues of where the American left and even the European far left used to be positioned. European Communist Parties well into the post-World War II era were strikingly traditional about gender roles, immigration, and gay rights — certainly in comparison to where most American voters currently stand. Our corporate income tax rates are the highest in developed world, and the percentage of our population that does not pay federal income tax seems to be higher than what one finds in most “progressive” European countries. And lest I forget, those who were ranting at the GOP convention about our duty to spread human rights globally did not sound even vaguely “conservative.” They seemed to be imitating the zealots of the French Revolution who sought to carry their “Rights of Man” at bayonet point to the entire human race. No one has ever explained to me how this radical revolutionary foreign policy is in any sense conservative.

 

It is equally ridiculous to treat American Democrats as “Hamiltonians.” In the late 18th century, favoring a strong nation state was not a leftist position. It was identified with mercantile power and in Hamilton’s case with distrust of mass democracy and the internationalism of the French Revolution. Not all advocates of state power should be equated with Obama partisans, any more than Jefferson and his partisans should be seen as “conservatives” in their time. In the late 18th century, the political struggle in the U.S. was between nationalists and regionalists, and it is impossible to make that struggle correspond to our present situation. Our polity is too multicultural to be compared to the early American nation state, which was relatively homogeneous culturally and religiously, and we live with a highly centralized welfare state that two national parties are trying to get hold of to accommodate their bases. It is therefore misleading to paste worn political labels onto a political present to which they have no significant relation. What we now see is a ritualized battle between two party blocs centered on the fruits of an expanding administrative state. And from what I can tell, most voters seem delighted with this arrangement and would be furious if we tried to change it.

 

Since the terms “conservative” and “liberal” are now mostly empty rhetorical phrases, it is not surprising that Obama voters are being classified as inconsistent “conservatives.” Why not call them Martians? The operative terms exist in order to differentiate mostly similar products. To me this overlap is far more obvious than those distinctions the media would like us to emphasize. According to Will, Americans consider themselves to be conservative rather than liberal by a ratio of two to one. But this matters about as much as the fact that some voters have black hair and others brown hair. The real difference is between those who seek to dismantle our centralized administrative state, with its apparatus of behavioral control, and those who support its continuation and inevitable growth. On one side we have the authorized but often indistinguishable “conservatives” and “liberals,” and on the other side, a small percentage of the adult population standing alone and voting for a third party that is not likely to get anywhere. [note: the latter is what I've done and still do. It's a hopeless stand but a stand nonetheless]

 

I’d be happy if we changed our current terminology to something as descriptively useful as “social democrats A” and “social democrats B.” And I make this suggestion not as a libertarian (which I am not) but as someone who favors accurate labeling. It would be nice never again to have to gaze at anything like Will’s remarks about his “cognitive dissonance” in noticing that some “conservatives” vote for the Dems. His labeling problem is certainly not mine.

 

Paul Gottfried is the author, most recently, of Leo Strauss and the Conservative Movement in America: A Critical Appraisal.

 

 

 

[JustARandomPanda]

Mercantilist power - aka "the bankers" / "the financiers"

 

In other words...not unlike what we have today in the NWO of Non-Prosecutable TBTF bankers / Shadow Bankers and Speculators

[ralis]

Mercantilist power - aka "the bankers" / "the financiers"

 

In other words...not unlike what we have today in the NWO of Non-Prosecutable TBTF bankers / Shadow Bankers and Speculators

 

The Fed loans money to Wall Street banks at close to 0% interest which keeps Wall Street in an artificial bubble.

 

Profit before people is the conservative corporate meme. This in the news today. This incident was from a contractor that provides schools lunches. Disgusting!

 

 

School forces 25 students to throw away lunches when they couldn’t pay..kids cried, went home hungry

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/04/04/school-forces-25-hungry-students-to-throw-away-lunches-when-they-couldnt-pay/

Edited April 4, 2013 by ralis

[Vanir Thunder Dojo Tan]

pop the bubbles, pop all the artificial bubbles. pop 'em all and watch 'em fall, giants from: the skies; stolen from our eyes.

[joeblast]

 

Profit before people is the conservative corporate meme.

so what of the progressives that run corporations in this way? cmon dude, you know L-R is a false dichotomy, why do you continue pushing it at even the slightest chance? when concerned with the up-down scale (or anarchy-totalitarianism,) how descriptive is left to right? its getting to the point where like in kaluza's lineland, left to right is practically undefined.

[voidisyinyang]

 

Mass slave wages U.S. corporate genocide culture.

[ralis]

so what of the progressives that run corporations in this way? cmon dude, you know L-R is a false dichotomy, why do you continue pushing it at even the slightest chance? when concerned with the up-down scale (or anarchy-totalitarianism,) how descriptive is left to right? its getting to the point where like in kaluza's lineland, left to right is practically undefined.

 

You are in the right wing authoritarian camp. Kaluza lineland is irrelevant and is useless information in the context of this discussion. You probably thought no one would understand.

 

The problem with your post is that the political camps are sharply divided and defined by politicians that are interested in absolute power. This is the real world where political groups operate and not an exercise in formal logic. The right wing authoritarians in Congress are holding this country hostage and are hurting poor people with the sequester. More budget cuts are wanted and tax breaks for the 1%. What does the sequester actually prove? A small minority party i.e, Tea Baggers are exerting control and not taking care of the people's business. This presents a clear danger to the welfare of the U.S. We have discussed fascism extensively on this forum and now the people of this country are seeing it in reality.

 

Seniors may have funding for 'Meals On Wheels Cut' while money is more important to right wing fanatics than the care of others who are in need. To list just one result of these cuts in many.

 

http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/03/21/3298534/meals-on-wheels-in-bradenton-flor.html

 

I submit that the U.S. will not escape but repeat history as all civilizations and empires have. Human behavior remains unevolved, i.e, socialized primates.

 

I will also include the incessant filibustering by the right wing Republicans in the Senate which has obstructed the business of this country. The U.S. has never seen this level of obstruction and division in the Senate ever! The Senate traditionally has been a forum for debate and not the childish antics as can be seen with the right wing extremists.

Edited April 7, 2013 by ralis

[JustARandomPanda]

Another article that was first published in 1953. Spooky how it still sounds relevant for today

 

 

 

Where are the American Conservatives

Conservatives endure social reform with a conservative spirit.

They don't systematically oppose it.

 

August Heckscher (1913-1997) was an American intellectual, historian, and administrator. This essay appeared in Confluence in 1953. We’re grateful to The Imaginative Conservative for first making the text available online.

 

Conservatism is rarely a program and certainly never a dogma. It is not an ideology. At its best conservatism is a way of thinking and acting in the midst of a social order which is too overlaid with history and too steeped in values, too complex and diverse, to lend itself to simple reforms. It is a way of thought which not only recognizes different classes, orders, and interests in the social order but actually values these differences and is not afraid to cultivate them.

 

In the older societies of Europe conservatism is made definite and understandable by being embodied in particular classes of society. Usually such classes have been in a numerical minority. They have sensed intuitively that only by a carefully preserved balance of power in the state, combined with deep habits of sufferance and mutual respect, could their own existence be safeguarded. Very often, again, these conservative classes were close to the land, and so learned the lessons of slow growth and the significance of ceremonies and traditions which form the instinctive wisdom of rural people.

 

This kind of conservatism could become, of course, merely the defenses which these minorities threw up around their privileges. Or it could degenerate into an attempt to impose on everyone the specific standards and habits of a landowning class. But at its best the spirit of conservatism transcended the particular circumstances which gave it birth. What men had learned from their particular way of life became a pervasive force, stimulating an attitude of tentativeness and of tolerance.

 

In the United States, political conservatism has had no such fertile ground to grow in. There was no landholding aristocracy (except before the Civil War in the South), no court or church or other visible and dramatic order of society in which it could take hold.

 

The business community has liked to think of itself as being the seedbed of conservatism; occasionally, indeed, as during Webster’s advocacy of the New England commercial classes, business interests did associate themselves with a doctrine of rooted orders balanced and checked under the Constitution. But for the most part American capitalism has been far too dynamic, too restless and destructive, to foster a conservative approach. It has been too absorbed in its imme­diate quest to attain an essential detachment, and too bent on novelty—new markets, new products, new men—to appreciate the tradi­tional aspects of society.

 

The compulsion to exploit natural resources has made American capitalism the enemy of settled ways. Indeed it is a curious but readily explained paradox that in this country conservation (mean­ing conservation of natural resources) has never been identified with the so-called conservatism of the business classes. Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt were alike considered dangerously radical when they moved to protect certain irreplaceable portions of the national wealth and heritage.

 

Many of the habits and techniques of centralization and modern liberalism are derived specifically from American business. Com­mercialism and advertising have pointed the way to the kind of government propaganda which makes Washington increasingly the center of gravity of the country. Without the mechanical methods invented by business for simplifying masses of paper work, many of our federal bureaus would immediately collapse. To take one other example, mass production applied to the automobile has done more than a thousand radical philosophers to encourage a rootless existence in America.

 

The conservative spirit, therefore, has had to be fostered among us by a much more subtle process than in older countries. No nursery child or hothouse plant, it has had to be drawn by perceptive indi­viduals from a wide experience of life. It has not been preached vehemently by a small group; all the citizens have had to learn it quietly from within. They have had to master it as one of the conditions of meeting sagely the practical dilemmas of living in a de­mocracy.

 

Education in conservatism can come, I suggest, in part from a schooling that makes men aware of the values in a community, and tolerant of their differences. It can come in part, also, from the common everyday discipline of living in an environment where multitudinous groups think in their own ways and set a varying hierarchy of values upon the goods of life. In such a community the doctrinaire approach is impossible. Rationalism cuts athwart the basic understandings which hold all together; and the search for a unique solution would drive men to distraction were it not aban­doned for a spirit of practical accommodation and acceptable com­promise. The diversity with which the citizen learns to live sanely comes by degrees to seem a virtue; and the climax of the wise man’s education is when lie turns about and begins consciously to preserve and nourish the institutions in which diversity has been bred. That is the moment, too, in which he becomes a conservative.

 

The outstanding fact about conservatism in America is that as a force it was hideously distorted in the bitter fires of the past twenty years. A whole generation has been brought up to suppose that conservatism is essentially negative and sterile, and that it is represented by the kind of groups which fought to the death against the New Deal and the Fair Deal. The New Deal, and the Fair Deal after it, were wildly attacked by men who called them­selves conservatives. But in truth these were mainly the advocates of a purer and more orthodox brand of liberalism. They objected to the government’s program in the name of laissez faire. They attacked centralization, government by decree, excessive bureaucracy and the rest—not as a Burke or a Disraeli would have attacked them, because they chilled an inner spirit of growth and develop­ment, but almost precisely in the terms of the nineteenth-century Manchester economists. The result was that crowds of young men left our colleges with the idea that conservatism offered no useful insights to any of the modern dilemmas.

 

The point was almost never made that the rapid and revolution­ary developments in Washington were, in their total impact, a blow against the free, independent, varied, and self-governing life of the American community. This was the true basis for a conservative critique. Bureaucracy may have been expensive, but that was not the real trouble with it. The real trouble was that it tended to substitute for the principle of inner action and decentralized leadership the method of direction from above and—equally bad—direction from a distance. Within the broad movement of the New Deal, amid the many individuals it drew into its service, there was admittedly some stress on what might be accomplished by the localities. The Depart­ment of Agriculture, for example, was fertile with experiments to enlist the support and understanding of the scattered farmers. But in the main it was the central government which undertook with a fierce energy to reform everything, to renovate everything, and to save everything. The conservatives, however, did not attack the cen­tralization as being at odds with the independent, varied, and self-governing life which is the genius of America. Moreover they did not defend and explain what was being done in accord with their basic philosophy. They merely responded with a violent and irra­tional outcry.

 

The New Deal experiments were hostile to the deeply pluralistic nature of the American social order, not alone because they often crushed initiative, but in a much more subtle way because they cor­rupted initiative. The New Deal capitalized for political purposes on the group life of the country. It made men conscious of their special loyalties and attachments, not so much to develop their intrinsic energies as to give them what they wanted—in order to cultivate blocs of voters. Thus the New Deal made us all aware of the impor­tance of group interests in our national life. Class ties, as well as pro­fessional and regional ties, were deliberately cultivated. Separate in­dustries were encouraged to make their own codes in return for freedom from persecution under the anti-trust laws. But the result was not so much to develop a sense of energy in all the parts of the social order; rather it was to cultivate an extreme dependence on the central government.

 

Each group was encouraged to express its claims in a most extreme form. The farmers, the laborers, the aged—as well as particular in­dustries—were given to understand that if each pressed its claims to the utmost the whole country would somehow be benefited. This was a form of the eighteenth-century doctrine of a harmony of inter­ests; but it encouraged the selfishness of groups rather than intrinsic morality of individuals.

 

The conservatives might have discerned and expounded these dangerous tendencies. They could have said: “The effects of this sort of deformation may be imperceptible at first; yet in the long run it is the most difficult of all to obliterate. For one can repeal laws and disestablish agencies; but to re-educate the multitudinous private agencies that make up the national existence, to give them a realiza­tion that they exist for some other aim than to clamor at the gates of Washington, is a process of years and can only be accomplished through a saving instinct for liberty within the people themselves.” The conservatives, however, did not say this or anything like it. They merely said that bureaucracy was bad and that centralization upset the balance of the Federal budget.

While the conservatives were thus failing to criticize the New Deal on meaningful grounds they were also falling into a major heresy in regard to the content of their own program.

 

In a word, they took the very un-conservative position of suggesting they would undo and overturn the great reforms which had become part of American life. They became desperately afraid of seeming “me too”—even though the genius of free government (and of a true conservatism) is precisely to bring as many people as possible, with their different interests and outlooks, into a common course of action. They rang all the changes on the theme “It’s time for a change,” sometimes merely suggesting that new forces in office would be an asset but more frequently hinting at those deeper changes and reverses which democracy instinctively abhors. These conservatives really wanted to view everything as if nothing had ever been settled. From Landon to Eisenhower the standard-bearers chosen at successive national con­ventions of the Republican party had the good sense to avoid this heresy; but they did not always avoid it completely, or convince the electorate that they would resist the urge to go about uprooting and upheaving in a very drastic (and actually a very radical) manner.

 

Thus the American conservatives seemed to think that there existed a coherent and logical body of conservative doctrine, a pro­gram the opposite in all its details and all its major outlines of what the Liberals had been putting into action. Any point of resemblance with existing practice was, in their minds, pure coincidence; or else it was treason to the Republican party. They never discovered what this program of theirs was; but they were convinced that it existed. As a substitute, pending its discovery and unfolding, they were will­ing to settle on a point-by-point negation to everything the Demo­crats had upheld.

 

The concept of a pure conservatism, its pattern “laid up in heaven,” was an illusion; it was in fact the same illusion that had possessed the Liberals and the Utopian democrats through the nine­teenth century. That the conservatives should have fallen under its spell was particularly strange, for traditionally the conservatives mis­trust an excessive rationalism—they know that the world moves by habit, by values, by inherited faith, quite as much as it moves by get­ting new ideas. The conservatives, when they are in their right mind, avoid tearing up the roots of something they do not like almost as instinctively as they avoid tearing up the roots of institutions and procedures of which they approve. The fact that American conserva­tives to so large a measure forgot, or never learned, this healthy prudence and this basic tolerance, I can only attribute to the fact that they had grown so uncontrollably angry. In attacking the New Deal they became inflexible in their thinking, unresponsive to the settled expectations and tacit consents of the great public; and they wanted instead to impose a doctrinaire program of their own.

 

Because it is a spirit rather than a dogma, and because in a de­mocracy it pervades the whole community rather than inhabiting a particular class, American conservatism has been particularly diffi­cult to embody in political forms. Both major parties have been instinctively conservative in their best period; but as soon as one party, or one group within a party, vaunts its conservatism, it seems to depart from the very principles which ought to guide it. It falls back upon blind reaction or else wants to make everything over in accord­ance with some doctrinaire pattern. The conservative individual in England can be a man like Churchill, manifold, complex, overlaid with layers of prejudice, memory, and conviction. In America, the avowed conservative is usually a young man, proverbed (like Romeo) with “grandsire phrases.” Or else he is a middle-aged man or woman with a dour expression and a resolve to overturn everything that has developed since the flood.

 

The Republican party, against its best traditions, has run the danger of being identified with these professional conservatives. The long exile from power (1932-1952) was as bad for these Republicans as the long tenure of power was bad for the Democrats. Outright negativism and obstruction seemed to offer the natural way of win­ning an election. Yet within this party there remained a group which continually rescued it from its apparent fate. This group had walked out of the Chicago convention with Theodore Roosevelt in 1912. It walked back in again with Willkie at Philadelphia in 1940. And at Chicago in 1952, where General Eisenhower was nominated, it strode triumphantly through the convention hall.

 

This element of Republicanism traced its ancestry to at least three historical sources. Madison had seen the necessity of balancing groups under a constitution whose rules of procedure all accepted. The Whigs had discerned the possibility of harmonizing divergent na­tional interests through large public works such as roads and canals. Finally there had been deliberate use of public grants in the Home­stead law to strengthen enterprising and independent citizens on the land. The Republicanism descended from these origins had a strong respect for federal power, wielded responsibly for a good end. It up­held the states, not as a means of thwarting national action, but as viable communities where citizens could be cultivated and loyalties engaged. It saw the states, too, as laboratories where social legislation could be tested.

 

Meanwhile, the Democratic party has had its full share of dis­torted conservatism. The strategy of simple obstruction—nullification, veto, threats of secession—was continually advocated in the slaveholding period. It persists today in the repeated use of the fili­buster to thwart civil rights reforms. Under the New Deal, as I have suggested, the reaction within the Democrat party was toward the other extreme—excessive centralization based on the assumption that a numerical majority was free to act pretty much as it wanted. So persistent have been the reverberations of this period that many people saw Adlai Stevenson as something close to a radical because he bore the Democratic banner. They failed to discern that he was by all odds the most consistent and philosophically mature conserva­tive to have arisen in this century in either party. Stevenson had to a unique degree a sense of the diversity of which American society is composed. He had a feeling for the way separate groups could be brought into the service of the whole.

 

The failure to understand the true nature of conservatism has made political campaigns in the United States signally barren of in­tellectual content. In debate it is difficult at best to admit that you would do the same thing as the opposition, but in a different way. Yet the spirit in which things are done really does make a differ­ence, and can distinguish a sound policy from an unsound one. Social reforms can be undertaken with the effect of draining away local energies, reducing the citizenry to an undifferentiated mass, and binding it to the shackles of the all-powerful state. Or they can be undertaken with the effect of strengthening the free citizen’s stake in society. The ends are different. The means will be also, if men have the wit to distinguish between legislation which encourages voluntary participation and legislation which involves reckless spending and enlargement of the federal bureaucracy.

 

It is easy to say that such distinctions arc not important. A con­servative intellectual like Peter Viereck is constantly challenged, for example, because in a book like The Shame and Glory of the In­tellectuals he supports a political program not dissimilar in its out­lines from that which was achieved during twenty years of social renovation under the Democrats. But the way reforms are under­taken is actually crucial. Concern for the individual, reluctance to have the central government perform what can be done as well by the state or to have the public perform what can be done as well by private enterprise—these priorities involve values. And such values (upheld by writers like Mr. Viereck) are at the heart of modern conservatism.

 

The length to which American conservatives can go in their folly is illustrated by the fact that the term “welfare state” was invented by them as a term of opprobrium. Not only is welfare—the welfare of all the citizens—a supreme end of the government; it is a concept made familiar by the authors of the constitution and basic to every sound conservatism. When Edmund Burke sketched the character of the historic Christian states standing opposed to French radicalism in the eighteenth century, he particularly stressed the social progress achieved by free government. “Every state,” he said, “has pursued not only every sort of social advantage, but it has cultivated the welfare of every individual. His wants, his wishes, even his tastes have been consulted.” As for Britain, it was the state, “without question . . . which pursues the greatest variety of ends. . . It aims at raking the entire circle of human desires, and securing for them their fair enjoyment.” In contrast to this Burke placed the new French despotism: the design “is spirited and daring; it is systematic; it is simple in its principle; it has unity and consistency in perfec­tion.” In that country, “to cut off entirely a branch of commerce, to extinguish a manufacture, to destroy the circulation of money, to suspend the course of agriculture, even to burn a city or to lay waste a province of their own, docs not cost them a moment’s anxiety. . . The state is all in all.”

 

The contrast today should be precisely here. It should be between the state that “cultivates the welfare of every individual,” and that which in its search for doctrinaire unity and efficiency “cuts off a branch of commerce or extinguishes a manufacture.” Churchill, as a true conservative, has made this his case, and he has used it not only against distorted liberalism at home but against the false lure of Communism. Our own so-called conservatives treated welfare as an epithet of abuse, and then wondered why radicalism was making giant strides in the country.

 

The ideal of security may have been overdone as a political slogan. But are the conservatives the ones who can afford to denounce security as the legitimate and indeed the overriding aim of govern­ment? Everything which they value in the public sphere—sound growth and steady development, the spirit that avoids violent change and finds utility and promise in established things—depends upon a fundamental feeling of security in the social order. Individuals must know that preventable catastrophes will not needlessly be let fall upon them, that the worst of fortune’s ills will be alleviated out of the common store, and that some floor will be placed under the normal and predictable hazards of a lifetime. It is in such a frame­work that true enterprise flourishes and that opportunity is more than a word.

 

Every strong and well-founded society has fulfilled, in one form or another, this basic need for security. It was for this, indeed, that men first came together out of the old, wild state of nature and sub­mitted themselves to the inevitable yoke of government. In rare circumstances and usually for brief periods of time—as when our own frontier was moving ceaselessly westward and the seas were still firm barriers against attack—security has pretty much taken care of itself. But the normal thing is that government should concern itself directly, avowedly, and boldly in this field—that it should concern itself not with the security of the nation only, but the security (as Burke put it) of every individual.

 

During the past twenty years American conservatives saw, or be­lieved they saw, the objective of social security twisted so as to be­come one more means of enlarging the apparatus of the state. They cried out against the abuse; unfortunately they too often cried out against the legitimate concern of government in this field. Many of them really persuaded themselves that the assurance of a pittance in a man’s old age, combined with a guaranty against the shock of unemployment or catastrophic illness, would remove from life the whole spirit of adventure. As if a thousand vexations and disappoint­ments did not remain as a spur at every corner of this world’s existence, with untold terrors and challenges—even for the commuter bringing up his family in a five-room house! As if children did not still cry out in the night, and pain and loss and unrequited love stand brutally at the door! The scorn poured out by many so-called con­servatives upon the objective of social security was not merely in­expedient politics; it was a shocking revelation of their own cir­cumscribed and narrow view of human fate.

 

The conservatives could well have begun by admitting the plain need for a social security program, and gone on to insist at every turn that it be conceived as a means of strengthening local ties, strengthening the family, and strengthening the true spirit of inde­pendence in the citizens. Here was a new instrument for the achieve­ment of the basic conservative goals. A program conceived and ad­ministered in this spirit might not have cost less—it might actually have cost more—but a dollar saving is only one of the important criteria which must be weighed in the making of policy. The assump­tion has been current that decentralized administration costs society less than administration concentrated in the federal government. In the long run it may prove to be quite the contrary. A centralized bureaucracy can develop a machine-like, mass production efficiency; but decentralization involves a “custom job.” Even if this added cost were established, the everlasting human advantages secured by decentralized power should, I believe, be cultivated and willingly paid for. (Of course that must sound like heresy to the kind of conservative who makes “government economy” the highest, and sometimes indeed the sole, article of his faith.)

 

If it accepted welfare as its goal, the Republican party could find in this conservatism a new focus. It could campaign vigorously and creatively, without seeming to adopt the presuppositions of the much-abused Democratic regime. Even so, it seems questionable to me whether conservatism in America should ever become the exclusive characteristic of one major party. Because it is a spirit, and because it is widely diffused, it must ultimately inform all our politics. In this country there is no single class, no section, which embodies a sense of local values and the imbedded qualities of balance and detachment. Such values and qualities, I believe, the wise citi­zen is compelled to adopt by the fact that he lives in a democracy. They arc the conditions of practical compromise and adjustment. So conservatism at best remains deeper and more pervasive than any party; and a party that does claim it exclusively is likely to deform and exploit it for its own purposes.

 

 

[ralis]

Another article that was first published in 1953. Spooky how it still sounds relevant for today

 

 

 

 

August Heckscher (1913-1997) was an American intellectual, historian, and administrator. This essay appeared in Confluence in 1953. We’re grateful to The Imaginative Conservative for first making the text available online.

 

 

Probably a response to Russell Kirk's 'The Conservative Mind'. http://www.amazon.com/Conservative-Mind-Burke-Eliot/dp/0895261715/ref=la_B000APEV2I_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1365350917&sr=1-1

 

What demands to be responded to now is the agenda of so called conservatives.

 

1. Restricting women's reproductive rights.

 

2. Cutting earned benefits i.e, SS, Medicare etc. Right wing has reframed 'earned benefits' to entitlement programs. See Frank Luntz. Paranoia of a social 'nanny state'.

 

3. Refusal to reduce military spending.

 

4. Clinging to outdated social norms; anti-gay, DOMA etc.

 

5. Neo-liberalism; unregulated speculation, TBTF. Tax breaks for companies relocating abroad.

 

6. Pandering to big business and using that meme to promote individual freedom.

 

7. Sequester.

 

8. Neglect of the commons; bridge repair, road repair and underground utility maintenance.

 

9. Gutting of the educational system; 'no child left behind', poor math and science skills etc.

 

10. The right wing's distaste for PBS by reducing funding. Reducing funding for the arts.

 

11. Their ideology is one of authoritarianism. http://members.shaw.ca/jeanaltemeyer/drbob/TheAuthoritarians.pdf

 

And so forth. All in the name of 'freedom'.

 

Real wealth is in social support and advanced education for all. Not gutting all support structures!

Edited April 7, 2013 by ralis

[joeblast]

haha, the ralis comedy hour! that progressivism has rotted your brain into thinking there's only one side of the political story. I'd love to see you write about the progressive movement and how it has affected US politics, I think we might read about a unicorn crapping gold nuggets

[ralis]

haha, the ralis comedy hour! that progressivism has rotted your brain into thinking there's only one side of the political story. I'd love to see you write about the progressive movement and how it has affected US politics, I think we might read about a unicorn crapping gold nuggets

 

 

The OP is about defining conservatism. As usual, you are OT and changing the subject. Instead of discussing the OP, you crack jokes which is what I would expect of the authoritarian brain. You can't deal with one's who expose right wing abusive conservatism that you hold so dear. Why not acknowledge how your right wing party is hurting poor people by the sequester. I am not convinced that you care.

 

 

http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/truth-telling_is_offensive_20130406/

 

 

 

Paul Craig Roberts was an assistant secretary of the Treasury under Ronald Reagan. Like many Americans, he has been wounded by the government he helped create, and he’s tired of being called offensive and depressing for talking about it.

“In America truth is offensive,” he writesin his latest column at CounterPunch. “If you tell the truth, you are offensive.”

Roberts lists the names of others who offend establishment notions of decency by telling the unadorned truth. They are economists Michael Hudson and Ellen Brown, political critic Noam Chomsky and Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges, among others.

“If you tell readers what is really going on,” he writes, just as these figures do, “they want to know why you can’t be positive. Why are you telling us that there are bad happenings that can’t be remedied? Don’t you know that God gave Americans the power to fix all wrongs? What are you? Some kind of idiot, an anti-American, a pinko-liberal-commie? If you hate America so much, why don’t you move to Cuba, Iran or China (or to wherever the current bogyman is located)?”

“In America and everywhere in the Western world or the entire world, telling the truth is unpopular,” he continues. “Indeed, in the USA telling the truth has been criminalized. Look for example at Bradley Manning, held for two years in prison without bail and without a trial in violation of the US Constitution, tortured for one year of his illegal confinement in violation of US and international law, and now put on trial by corrupt prosecutors for aiding ‘enemies of the US’ by revealing the truth, as required of him by the US military code. … When Bradley Manning’s superiors showed themselves to be indifferent to war crimes, Manning reported the crimes via WikiLeaks. What else does a soldier with a sense of duty and a moral conscience do when the chain of command is corrupt?”

Julian Assange is another example cited by Roberts. In the last few years, WikiLeaks assumed the reporting responsibilities that The New York Times and The Washington Post abandoned in the decades after the publication of the Pentagon Papers, which “undermined the lies Washington told” to justify the Vietnam War. “But today no newspaper or TV channel any longer accepts the responsibility to truthfully inform the public.”

Assange was swiftly demonized by governments worldwide and by a jealous and resentful corporate media. Without his efforts and the efforts of those like him, the journalistic spins hatched in Washington and in boardrooms across the country would attach themselves to the minds of Americans without opposition. For 10 months now Assange has been trapped inside the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, severely restricted in his ability to cast light on official wrongdoing.

Meanwhile: “Insouciant Americans are undisturbed that alleged terrorists are tortured, held indefinitely in prison without due process, and executed on the whim of some executive branch official without due process of law,” Roberts bemoans. “Most Americans go along with unaccountable murder, torture, and detention without evidence, which proclaims their gullibility to the entire world. There has never in history been a population as unaware as Americans. The world is amazed that [a casually indifferent] people became, if only for a short time, a superpower.”

“The world needs intelligence and leadership in order to avoid catastrophe, but America can provide neither intelligence nor leadership” Roberts warns. “America is a lost land where nuclear weapons are in the hands of those who are concerned only with their own power. Washington is the enemy of the entire world and encompasses the largest concentration of evil on the planet.”

“Where is the good to rise up against the evil?” he asks.

—Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.

Edited April 8, 2013 by ralis

[Vmarco]

Although some may take offense, let's be honest,...political conservativism is a mental illness.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Society/Conservatives_Deconstruct.html

 

Characteristics of a Conservative include:

 

Rigid and closed-minded
see the world as a dangerous place
Low complexity of complex thought
Impulsively aggressive
Intolerant of ambiguity
Afraid of loss
Haunted by death

 

Just looking at some of the synonyms used for Conservatism, should give an idea of this mental ailment:

 

illiberal
reactionary
bigoted
closed-minded
obstructionist
rightwinger
reversionary
intolerant
prevarcator
discommodity
chickenhawk
anti-progress
iniquitous
arrogant
atrocious
arrant
perfidious
faith-driven
McCarthyite
loutish
anti-Constitution
bellicose
diabolic
anti-ACLU
peccant
easily media-ted
republican
belligerent
Fear and aggression

 

IMO, conservativism should have been included as a mental illness in the DSM years ago,...unfortunately, some members of the DSM board are themselves inflicted with the disease of conservativism, and thus have kept it out.

 

IMO, no conservative, or likewise mentally ill person, should be allowed to run for public office, or be allowed to engage in any creditable public news capacity. And, it is of the upmost importance to limit any certified conservative from possessing firearms,....like conservative, Tea Partier's Adam and Nancy Lanza of Sandy Hook.

 

My personal view is that it is likely impossible to curb the mental illness of conservativism by way of reparative therapy,...thus, until a brain operation can be perfected to correct their cerebral wiring, drug therapy may be the best hope.

 

The survival of humanity depends on immediate action regarding the mental illness of Conservativism,...they are the largest threat to the world,....greater than, Global Warming, Nuclear Proliferation, Poverty, the War on Women and LGBT's, and all cancers combined.

Edited April 8, 2013 by Vmarco

[Vmarco]

Signs of psychopathology can also be seen among conservative Republicans, especially when you consider a wide range of illness indicators. In his award-winning 2005 book Dr. James Whitney Hicks discusses 50 signs of mental illness including denial, delusion, hallucination, disordered thinking, anger, anti-social behavior, sexual preoccupation, grandiosity, general oddness, and paranoia. Now I'm no clinician, but it seems that prominent Republicans have evidenced each of these ten telltale signs of mental illness over the past year:

 

　

1) Denial: humans did not evolve; Obama is not a native-born American Christian

2) Delusion: climate is not changing

3) Hallucination: God ordained me to be President

4) Disordered Thinking: being for small government that's huge in the bedroom; being anti-contraception and anti-abortion

5) Anger:

6) Anti-social Behavior: toward women, gays, minorities, anyone without an umbilical cord or trust fund

7) Sexual Preoccupation: a fervent compulsion to control when we can mate, with whom we can mate, and precisely how we are allowed to mate (which I lampoon in Why Do Politicians Want to Police Dick and Jane's Private Parts?)

8) Grandiosity: even Rick Santorum recognizes Gingrich’s "over the moon" grandiosity

9) General Oddness: Ron Paul

10) Paranoia: pretty much all of them, all of the time

[Vmarco]

 

Psychologists say conservatism is a mental illness

 

A study funded by the US government has concluded that conservatism can be explained psychologically as a set of neuroses rooted in "fear and aggression, dogmatism and the intolerance of ambiguity".

 

As if that was not enough to get Republican blood boiling, the report's four authors linked Hitler, Mussolini, Ronald Reagan and the rightwing talkshow host, Rush Limbaugh, arguing they all suffered from the same affliction.

 

All of them "preached a return to an idealised past and condoned inequality".

 

Republicans are demanding to know why the psychologists behind the report, Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition, received $1.2m in public funds for their research from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

 

The authors also peer into the psyche of President George Bush, who turns out to be a textbook case. The telltale signs are his preference for moral certainty and frequently expressed dislike of nuance.

 

"This intolerance of ambiguity can lead people to cling to the familiar, to arrive at premature conclusions, and to impose simplistic cliches and stereotypes," the authors argue in the Psychological Bulletin.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/aug/13/usa.redbox

 

It should be called Bushitis and found in the DSM-IV

[Vmarco]

http://detroit.craigslist.org/okl/rnr/3710150911.html

 

Conservatism is based on paranoic hate, fear, greed and sociopathic selfishness. Conservatives lack a normal level of compassion are are truly antisocial individuals. There is a very fine line between violent criminals and conservatives which is why conservatives are such warmongering, murderous and racist scumbags. Don't forget Hitler and the nazis were conservatives, NATIONAL socialist party is Fascism and Hitler wanted rule by the corporate bosses. The first people he imprisoned were the trade unionists and he railed against communists and his opponents were the social democratic party of germany. This is why Bush's presidency with it wars of aggression remorseless nationalism (flagwaving like swastika waving) looked most like fascism. This is why despite their destroying our economy Republicans support corporate rule and used tax payer dollars to bail out the bankers with trillions of our dollars yet did nothing to help out Americans.

 

What you conservatives do not understand is it is basic divide and conquer. The Belgians did this in Rwanda. They separated one group of Rwandans from another group. Told one group they were superior and the other group they were inferior. Then decades after the Belgians left the Hutus and Tutsis were massacreing each other. When a nation is divided the people are pitted against one another, to fight against one another, that way the true enemies, the bankers, military industrial complex and the war racketeers can sit back while you destroy yourselves. Now snap out of it and wake the hell up. You idiots are destroying our nation as much as the bankers and the government is. Stop playing to their game. Become a rational thinker.

 

Study: Conservatives have larger "fear center"

University College London researchers say brains of the right-leaning have big amygdala, small anterior cingulate

http://www.salon.com/2010/12/29/conservative_brains/

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/aug/13/usa.redbox

A study funded by the US government has concluded that conservatism can be explained psychologically as a set of neuroses rooted in "fear and aggression, dogmatism and the intolerance of ambiguity". As if that was not enough to get Republican blood boiling, the report's four authors linked Hitler, Mussolini, Ronald Reagan and the rightwing talkshow host, Rush Limbaugh, arguing they all suffered from the same affliction.

All of them "preached a return to an idealised past and condoned inequality".

[Vmarco]

Conservatism is a mental illness, but can it be treated?

 

http://nh.craigslist.org/pol/3698694583.html

[Vanir Thunder Dojo Tan]

if it can, i do hope it will be.

[Vmarco]

to offer a difference,...what is a liberal?

 

On September 14, 1960, John F Kennedy said, "a Liberal is someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, that is what a ‘Liberal’ means, and I’m proud to say I’m a ‘Liberal.’" John F Kennedy September 14, 1960

 

if you're not Liberal, you're Illiberal.

[joeblast]

The OP is about defining conservatism. As usual, you are OT and changing the subject. Instead of discussing the OP, you crack jokes which is what I would expect of the authoritarian brain. You can't deal with one's who expose right wing abusive conservatism that you hold so dear. Why not acknowledge how your right wing party is hurting poor people by the sequester. I am not convinced that you care.

bah, I asked a very pertinent question, and as usual you dont want to answer questions about your ideology, you want to disparage what you view as the opposite of your ideology. I showed you an example of your double standard and you dismissed it as unworthy of even being answered - pretty much like you dismiss any argument that goes against anything you believe - your only response is "I'm not going to dignify that with a response" - or basically "I dont believe your argument therefore I treat it as false without even an iota of consideration - I know its false, therefore it needs no consideration, I'm not being inconsiderate"

 

I'll reply again when you have taken the log from your eye. or at least got the branches and dead leaves out, that first one may be asking a little much. or perhaps even just come up with some semblance of an argument instead of poo poo on you, now leave me be to make fun of people that believe the government shouldnt be spending 60% more than it collects in taxes.

 

Although some may take offense, let's be honest,...political conservativism is a mental illness.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Society/Conservatives_Deconstruct.html

 

Characteristics of a Conservative include:

 

Rigid and closed-minded

see the world as a dangerous place

Low complexity of complex thought

Impulsively aggressive

Intolerant of ambiguity

Afraid of loss

Haunted by death

 

Just looking at some of the synonyms used for Conservatism, should give an idea of this mental ailment:

 

illiberal

reactionary

bigoted

closed-minded

obstructionist

rightwinger

reversionary

intolerant

prevarcator

discommodity

chickenhawk

anti-progress

iniquitous

arrogant

atrocious

arrant

perfidious

faith-driven

McCarthyite

loutish

anti-Constitution

bellicose

diabolic

anti-ACLU

peccant

easily media-ted

republican

belligerent

Fear and aggression

 

IMO, conservativism should have been included as a mental illness in the DSM years ago,...unfortunately, some members of the DSM board are themselves inflicted with the disease of conservativism, and thus have kept it out.

 

IMO, no conservative, or likewise mentally ill person, should be allowed to run for public office, or be allowed to engage in any creditable public news capacity. And, it is of the upmost importance to limit any certified conservative from possessing firearms,....like conservative, Tea Partier's Adam and Nancy Lanza of Sandy Hook.

 

My personal view is that it is likely impossible to curb the mental illness of conservativism by way of reparative therapy,...thus, until a brain operation can be perfected to correct their cerebral wiring, drug therapy may be the best hope.

 

The survival of humanity depends on immediate action regarding the mental illness of Conservativism,...they are the largest threat to the world,....greater than, Global Warming, Nuclear Proliferation, Poverty, the War on Women and LGBT's, and all cancers combined.

 

and so long as other kool-aid drinkers feel it necessary to tell tales about the boogey man, they will never uncover the truths underneath, obscured by their blinders.

 

kinda reminds me of that bigfoot movie with john lithgow where he drew an accurate representation of bigfoot, but then his boss came along and said no, no, no, you've got it all wrong, this is a bloodthirsty man eating beast - and took out a sharpie and drew fangs on the thing.

 

uhh...you guys DO realize we can see that sharpie has been added (and poorly, no less) when the rest of it was drawn in pencil, right?

 

its curious to me that you guys think it is no big deal to invent "facts" - yeah, Lanza was a conservative! yeah, Loughner bypassed and got around background checks! those were fully automatic weapons btw! even the one that was invented out of thin air in sandy hook, by the time FOIA makes these photos available, its not going to matter the small difference in bullet holes 223 vs 9mm, riiiiiight? didnt you know that hitler was conservative, matter of loosefact?

 

ends justifying the means, gentleman. I suppose when the ends are that important to you, you can just overlook those shady means taken to get there. if that sits ok with your conscience...well, I dont have to experience your karma

[voidisyinyang]

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/04/07/a-lesson-in-futilty-for-the-pentagon/a-wretched-record-of-military-cooperation

 

 

Politicians, indigenous farmers, labor leaders, lawyers, students and human rights activists were considered equally legitimate targets by U.S. military allies. The death tolls were staggering. In El Salvador, the army killed an estimated 75,000 unarmed civilians during its 12-year civil war. Guatemala’s security forces were responsible for 93 percent of more than 200,000 civilians murdered between 1960 and 1996, according to a United Nations truth commission.

[joeblast]

heh, isnt guatemala the place where obama and hilary were advocating the country disregard their constitution when the president did extrajudicial things and was unseated by the judiciary a couple years ago, what, 2010, after they threw the iranian people under the bus after the fudged elections there? as if removing a misbehaving tyrant by a constitutionally prescribed method was somehow....against the law

[joeblast]

haha

 

[ralis]

bah, I asked a very pertinent question, and as usual you dont want to answer questions about your ideology, you want to disparage what you view as the opposite of your ideology. I showed you an example of your double standard and you dismissed it as unworthy of even being answered - pretty much like you dismiss any argument that goes against anything you believe - your only response is "I'm not going to dignify that with a response" - or basically "I dont believe your argument therefore I treat it as false without even an iota of consideration - I know its false, therefore it needs no consideration, I'm not being inconsiderate"

 

I'll reply again when you have taken the log from your eye. or at least got the branches and dead leaves out, that first one may be asking a little much. or perhaps even just come up with some semblance of an argument instead of poo poo on you, now leave me be to make fun of people that believe the government shouldnt be spending 60% more than it collects in taxes.

 

and so long as other kool-aid drinkers feel it necessary to tell tales about the boogey man, they will never uncover the truths underneath, obscured by their blinders.

 

kinda reminds me of that bigfoot movie with john lithgow where he drew an accurate representation of bigfoot, but then his boss came along and said no, no, no, you've got it all wrong, this is a bloodthirsty man eating beast - and took out a sharpie and drew fangs on the thing.

 

uhh...you guys DO realize we can see that sharpie has been added (and poorly, no less) when the rest of it was drawn in pencil, right?

 

its curious to me that you guys think it is no big deal to invent "facts" - yeah, Lanza was a conservative! yeah, Loughner bypassed and got around background checks! those were fully automatic weapons btw! even the one that was invented out of thin air in sandy hook, by the time FOIA makes these photos available, its not going to matter the small difference in bullet holes 223 vs 9mm, riiiiiight? didnt you know that hitler was conservative, matter of loosefact?

 

ends justifying the means, gentleman. I suppose when the ends are that important to you, you can just overlook those shady means taken to get there. if that sits ok with your conscience...well, I dont have to experience your karma

 

Your question was not pertinent to the OP and does not apply. The OP is in regards to defining conservatism. Furthermore, PFL is further defining right wing conservatism and the military abuse against sovereign nations.

Edited April 8, 2013 by ralis

[voidisyinyang]

heh, isnt guatemala the place where obama and hilary were advocating the country disregard their constitution when the president did extrajudicial things and was unseated by the judiciary a couple years ago, what, 2010, after they threw the iranian people under the bus after the fudged elections there? as if removing a misbehaving tyrant by a constitutionally prescribed method was somehow....against the law

 

Dude -- you really are mind-controlled! You are supporting fascism!

 

 

we were going to have a referendum, public referendum, throughout the whole nation. It was only an opinion poll, basically, and it was not legally binding — 14,000 polls placed all over the country.

 

 

First of all you're referring to Honduras. Secondly - you have swallowed the corporate lies -- as the ... hold on...

 

 

Again, President Zelaya, ousted in a military coup in Honduras, the leaders of that coup trained at the School of the Americas, will return tomorrow.

 

 

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/7/1/whats_behind_the_honduras_coup_tracing

 

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/5/31/exclusive_interview_with_manuel_zelaya_on

 

 

 

 

In other words, after the coup d’état in this country, the U.S. has increased its military support to Honduras.

AMY GOODMAN:

Do you support the call of the Congress members?

>>

MANUEL ZELAYA:

[translated] All who defend human rights and who are against the armaments and war making, they have my support.

AMY GOODMAN:

You say that the coup was a conspiracy. And you talked about the right wing in the United States. Explain exactly what you understand. Who fomented this coup against you?

MANUEL ZELAYA:

[translated] The conspiracy began when I started to join what is ALBA, the Latin American nations with Bolivarian Alternative. So, a dirty war at the psychological level was carried out against me. Otto Reich started this. The ex-Under Secretary of State Roger Noriega, Robert Carmona, and the Arcadia Foundation, created by the CIA, they associated themselves with the right wing, with military groups, and they formed a conspiracy. They argued that I was a communist and that I was attacking the security of the hemisphere, because I’m a friend of Fidel, I’m a friend of Chávez, and I had declared my government as a government which is progressive.

AMY GOODMAN:

And yet, WikiLeaks released that trove of U.S. government cables, and in it was a cable from then-U.S. ambassador — the then-U.S. ambassador to Honduras to the State Department, saying that — I think it was titled "Open and Shut: The Case of the Honduran Coup," and it was saying it was illegal, it was unconstitutional. It was written by U.S. Ambassador Hugo Llorens.

MANUEL ZELAYA: [translated] Hugo Llorens cooperated in order to avoid the coup d’état. He knew everything that was happening in Honduras. And I am a witness to the effort that he made to stop the coup. But when he perceived that he could no longer stop it, then he withdrew

Edited April 8, 2013 by pythagoreanfulllotus

[ralis]

haha

 

 

You created the dispute by wanting to exert control over the OP and not participating within the confines of the topic.