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The Death of the American Idea (pg. 2)
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| Fir3start3r |
| quote: | Originally posted by Capitalizt
Arbiter did indeed nail it. "Conservatives" today are not conservatives. They are radicals. They lost because they did not offer a vision of limited government and more personal freedom and personal responsibility. They offered "democrat-lite" on economic policy, heavy authoritarianism on social policy, and radical "we gotta reshape the world with force" neoconservatism on foreign policy.
The classic idea of non-interventionist conservatism is dead within the republican party. Once they revive that wing, they might have a chance. Until then they deserve to keep losing. |
I'd blame mutant Republican policies before blaming 'Conservatives'.
It's the party itself that has (for whatever reason) changed so radically that has left the Conservatives looking 'radical'.
Conservatives really haven't changed that much... |
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| DrUg_Tit0 |
| quote: | Originally posted by The17sss
Here you go again, trying to instruct a conservative on conservative perspectives. It's like in Cosmopolitan Magazine how they have women telling other women how to satisfy a man... why don't they ask the men to get the truth? Anyway, I'm not matching Palin with "true" conservatism, I'm saying she represents that ideal a lot more than McCain does, and that's what it took for actual conservatives to get on board with McCain. |
Palin is conservative only in her social views. Politically, she is nowhere simply because she has no idea about how government works and what she should do about it to make it work better. Sure, she might have some romantic ideas about small town America and conservative values, but that makes her as capable of organizing a government in an efficient manner as watching F1 races makes a jobless bum capable of designing a Daytona racer. If a conservative means being an evangelical christian who wants to bomb Russia, then yeah, she's a conservative. But equating conservatives with religious wacks with no clue about foreign policy, although unfortunately applicable to many, is really not doing them a big favor. |
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| diesel_tron3000 |
excellent article brah. sport on point. chock full of true grit
the best part about the traditional conservative political iodeology is that the government is supposed to stay out of the personal life. the real conservative wouldn't give two s about gay marriage or illegal drugs unless it brought negative material affect to his life in some. the federal government's main goals are to protect the nation's interests internationally. that's one reason conservatives tend to favor conflicts
new deal democrats like FDR changed what was generally our conservative and jingoistic nation, opinions which began to erode circa 1870s onward as our immigrant great great grandparents started to pour into the old USA. from the great depression until the end of world war II, politics was a non factor really. then there were the dark and trippy cold war years of the 50s 60s and 70s and all the social movements; a true leftist movement, that got started in the early 1900s but was thrown off by the interwar years and the depression and world war dos.
then everything changed with reagan and bill clinton, in a faily short time span. family values? big government spending? defeating communism? say what you will but the 1980s through the 90s were a good time for america (and most of the free world) even though there were financal crises and recessions and all sorts of e. but really this time period was our entry as the globe's only hegemony since the british empire. the defeat of communism in the form of the fall of the USSR was the moment. liberal financial markets and open economies became the sole way for a country to run itself and the US dollar was (and still will be for some time) the world's currency. financial and political hegemony, more so than ever before.
gulf war. bill clinton. tech boom. cell phones. computers. 9/11. terrorism. enemies. political opposition. gulf war II. free markets. big money. hedge funds. Brazil, Russia, India, China. oil futures. open economics. open politics. the EU. africa. south america. polar ice caps and new land to fight over
this is very arguable, but, globalization has finally caught up with us, just as it caught up with every other world power since the Romans, albeit globalization per se was not a reality until the 1700s(call it, pluralization for older empires). it just so happened that we got a smaller time period of this "pax (country name)", blame it on computers, because the last time there was a real world power there was no hi-technology.
and now, after the realities of economic and political globalization have sunk in over, like huge health care costs, a declining manufacturing base, consolidation of companies and the need to import resources to keep up production, we as americans have turned to the government to help us deal with it and perhaps move into a time of limited but real socialism (but no one dares call it that). which sucks because our country was founded by men who saw self improvement/reliance, hard work, strong ethics embodied in a free people and an elected and accountable government as highly valuable.
i'm fairly confident our new pres elect believes in these things too and won't let our government go too far, and we'll make it out of all this economic e eventually and the world will keep on globalizing and becoming more integrated than it is now and perhaps china will become the next hegemony, but once those entitlement programs are put into law, they are haaaaard as hell to get rid of.
money money money dolla bills greeenbacks print more of them
:gsmile: :gsmile: :gsmile: |
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| pkcRAISTLIN |
| quote: | Originally posted by diesel_tron3000
the best part about the traditional conservative political iodeology is that the government is supposed to stay out of the personal life. |
wrong! that's part of traditional liberalism. conservative ideology has always had a nosey opinion re people's personal lives.
edit: and anyone that thinks that article was "excellent" is an assclown. |
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| diesel_tron3000 |
| no you're wrong you must be smoking crack pipes |
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| pkcRAISTLIN |
who has the honours degree in political theory and who doesn't champ?
half of the ideological battle-ground that conservatives try to claim for themselves is actually traditional liberal theory. indeed, the historical differences between the two often revolve around conservatism's nanny-state mentality when it comes to various aspects of a citizen's private life. |
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| Magnetonium |
| quote: | Originally posted by Arbiter
I think this guy describes himself pretty well. There are no bigger dunces in politics than the supposedly "freedom-loving" conservatives, who have stood by their republican leaders despite more than a quarter century of the republicans ting on small government and ting on individual liberty at very nearly every opportunity.
When I hear someone describing themselves as a "conservative" tell me they support freedom, I immediately know that they are one of two things: a fool, or a liar. Mark Steyn here is probably the former; you could call him "well meaning but without understanding."
If there was any question before Dubya -- and I don't think there was -- that the vast majority of "conservatives" entirely disagreed with the idea "live free or die," there certainly isn't any longer. In case Mr. Steyn forgot, after all, we just spent the last seven years eroding civil liberties while expanding government at an unprecedented pace. Why? Oh yes, because the cowards among us were afraid that the terrorist boogeyman might kill a few Americans. In 2004 -- after the first three years of this systematic attack on freedom -- I didn't hear many clarion calls from Mr. Steyn's conservative buddies to bring back "live free or die." Quite the contrary: they overwhelmingly called for an encore. And they got exactly what they asked for: more big government, more erosion of freedom. Enter John McCain, in 2008, promising to continue the same erosion of freedom, and proposing programs that would undoubtedly continue the rapid expansion of government. "Conservatives" enthusiastically supported him. Freedom-loving? I think not.
And that brings us back to the topic of "well meaning but without understanding" . . . .
Mr. Steyn has a lot of good ideas; but if he thinks conservatism remotely represents those ideas, he's been living in a dream world for a long, long time. And if he -- and people who think like him -- don't wake up from that dream, they will continue to be the pawns of the enemies of freedom; and they will continue to be the kind of people who support "live free or die" with their mouths, but who vote "i don't care about freedom; protect me big government" with their ballots; and who preach "individual responsibility" with their mouths, but support big spending government officials who couldn't balance the budget if their life depended on it with their ballots.
For that matter, well meaning though he may be, it appears he does not understand the issues that he bases his opinions on. The "wealth-spreading" straw man is a good example: I don't agree with all aspects Obama's tax plan (raising capital gains taxes is a particularly bad idea); even so, tweaking tax rates a few percentage points is hardly cataclysmic. What would have been cataclysmic, on the other hand, is what Mr. Steyn appears to think we ought to have done about the economic crisis, which is, apparently, nothing. That would have more or less been rolling out the red carpet for Great Depression v 2.0, and Mr. Steyn might want to take a look at a history textbook and see what the likely political consequences of that would have been, then consider whether they comport with this philosophy.
The Democrats are hardly an ideal substitute, and there is indeed good reason to expect that they will continue the expansion of government, but for anyone who genuinely supports freedom the Republicans -- populists masquerading as conservatives -- are simply not an option; at least, not for those with understanding. |
Dam. You should post this as editorial somewhere, this is gold. |
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| diesel_tron3000 |
| quote: | Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN
who has the honours degree in political theory and who doesn't champ?
half of the ideological battle-ground that conservatives try to claim for themselves is actually traditional liberal theory. indeed, the historical differences between the two often revolve around conservatism's nanny-state mentality when it comes to various aspects of a citizen's private life. |
i'd love to get into a degree cage match fight but it would be a TKO first round...
really it's arguable. what type of conservatism are you thinking of? i tend to think of things more from the position of federalists versus anti-federalists, at least with regards to US politics. but this is really irrelevant because most people don't actually examine their political beliefs with regards to say a question like, are my my political leanings my own, or am i generalizing that i am a conservative or a liberal based on how the media and public perception over the decades has characterized republicans and democrats |
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| pkcRAISTLIN |
| quote: | Originally posted by diesel_tron3000
i'd love to get into a degree cage match fight but it would be a TKO first round...
really it's arguable. what type of conservatism are you thinking of? i tend to think of things more from the position of federalists versus anti-federalists, at least with regards to US politics. but this is really irrelevant because most people don't actually examine their political beliefs with regards to say a question like, are my my political leanings my own, or am i generalizing that i am a conservative or a liberal based on how the media and public perception over the decades has characterized republicans and democrats |
well, you must think outside your narrow US definitions or at least label 'conservatism' as 'US conservatism' if that's what you're talking about. i resent the tendency for americans to bastardise the use of such terms, simply because it may suit their own narrowly-defined society.
low taxation, small government, free markets, limitation of government in the private sphere etc, are all components of liberalism, as espoused by LIBERALS such as smith or locke. |
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| diesel_tron3000 |
| quote: | Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN
well, you must think outside your narrow US definitions or at least label 'conservatism' as 'US conservatism' if that's what you're talking about. i resent the tendency for americans to bastardise the use of such terms, simply because it may suit their own narrowly-defined society.
low taxation, small government, free markets, limitation of government in the private sphere etc, are all components of liberalism, as espoused by LIBERALS such as smith or locke. |
if i recall correctly locke and the bunch were called liberal thinkers because their ideas on mankind, society, the role of the government in a person's life, and other subjects, were relatively new for the political-economic philosophy of that time...not because they were "liberal" in the sense we know today
i assunmed we were talking about the
| quote: |
"narrow US definitions or at least label 'conservatism' as 'US conservatism'"
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because this thread is titled "the death of the American idea":toothless :toothless :toothless
i still stand by my original post in that globalization caught up with us and our economic/political hegemony. have anyone read Fukuyama's "The ENd of History?"
http://www.wesjones.com/eoh.htm |
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| pkcRAISTLIN |
| quote: | Originally posted by diesel_tron3000
if i recall correctly locke and the bunch were called liberal thinkers because their ideas on mankind, society, the role of the government in a person's life, and other subjects, were relatively new for the political-economic philosophy of that time...not because they were "liberal" in the sense we know today |
no, only americans use the term 'liberal' the way you (or this thread) is trying to use it today. just because the term has been hijacked by one country doesn't mean its meaning has changed.
the principle differences between liberalism and conservatism is the conservative belief that government should intervene in the private sphere to prevent citizens from being immoral. economically speaking, conservatism is just traditional liberalism dressed up. the conservatives hate to admit as much, but that's why i like to remind them ;)
in any case, arbiter's original post is far more compelling than the tripe in the OP.
| quote: | Originally posted by diesel_tron3000
because this thread is titled "the death of the American idea":toothless :toothless :toothless |
but its NOT an american idea. its european, and it annoys me that americans tend to think they created everything.
| quote: | Originally posted by diesel_tron3000
i still stand by my original post in that globalization caught up with us and our economic/political hegemony. have anyone read Fukuyama's "The ENd of History?"
http://www.wesjones.com/eoh.htm |
bits and pieces, but a long time ago. |
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| DrUg_Tit0 |
To be a conservative would primarily mean you're opposed to change, i.e. want to conserve the status quo. Therefore an American conservative would actually be a liberal, since that's the original idea upon which the country was formed and the only one that can therefore be considered conservable.
The term liberal, however, is often used incorrectly in the US because there it generally means a socialist/god damn hippie/feminist/moral relativist/affirmative action/greenpeace kind of guy. |
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