rolling explaining conservatism

scroll back up to where I suggested this has a lot to do with resenting the smart kids in school

don't forget "coal rolling"

I dont think it has been mentioned yet so I wanted to say that along with the "prostestant" idea I think another related idea that comes from Weber, that of asceticism or self-control, is also really important. Conservatives tend to see liberals as hedonistic, as unable to govern their desires, etc. so for conservatives--who see themselves as disciplined, as governing themselves and their desires in a way that's not intended to optimize their gratification but to benefit society as a whole--any kind of "downward mobility" is attributable to a lack of self-discipline.

I think this is related to what ogmor was saying - I will come back to this.

I read Ronald Dworkin's "Liberalism" yesterday, which I found to be good and helped clear some things up for me. (It's came from the coursepack of an undergrad course my fiancée TAd so I'm sure this is familiar reading to a lot of people who studied something other than music. Gonna work through it anyway.) His basic thesis seems to be that what distinguishes liberalism (of any variety from the 18th century onwards) from other ideologies, including conservatism but also e.g. more radical kinds of socialism, has to do with the way in which liberals believe that the government should treat all citizens as equals. While both liberals and conservatives (and many socialists) think the government should treat all citizens with equal dignity and respect, what this means for the liberal is that the government needs to be as neutral as possible on the question of what 'the good life' is, in order to accommodate the diversity of citizens' values and preferences. The alternative, non-liberal, view is that the government needs to hold some view as to what a good life is in order to treat citizens as equals: citizens should be treated as a good person would want to be treated and the government should promote virtue. According to Dworkin, both conservatives and many socialists would hold the non-liberal view but they differ in their conceptions of what a good life is.

Liberal vs conservative positions on social and civil liberties are fairly easy to deduce from this. This also explains, though, that liberals would also favour a market economy insofar as it enables individuals to pursue their conceptions of a good life with relative equality of choice, with prices indicating the costs of their choices to the community. Since, however, not all people are equal with regards to morally neutral (in the liberal's view) qualities such as inherited affluence, ability, racial privilege, etc., intervention in the market is required; similarly, certain valid conceptions of a good life may have less market value but still be worth preserving or promoting. A conservative, who believes the values of his or her own tradition and community to be generally virtuous or good, would also favour a market economy but for different reasons: success in the market rewards virtues of hard work, talent, thrift, self-discipline, etc., as they are applied towards doing work that is valued by the community, while market failure indicates a lack of virtue. Intervention in the market is only justified insofar as it allows citizens equal access to demonstrate their virtue (although, honestly, I'm not really sure that American conservatism even does this).

Where I think our confusion lies tbh, ogmor, is that Gandhi was definitely not a liberal. He had a very clear conception of what the good life is (simplicity, non-violence, community, social equality, ...) and wanted to reorganize society in accordance with this. However, I think his conception was a radical one, far from what would usually be called a conservative one (even by Indian standards of the time, cf. his assassin).

rolling coal is kind of hilarious in it's not prevalent enough to be an environmental problem on its own. the only people who are really going to be affected by it are those who are driving around a poorly-combusting machine. probably at least one of these dudes has driven around his bigass truck enough time to get blackened diesel lung or something

better to reason with the selfish, the ignorant, and the sociopathic who vote to throw people off healthcare, and deny that catastrophic climate change is occurring -- who wants to come off strident and 'impractical'? trying trying again to kick lucy's football is more 'professional' than appealing to (declasse) non-voters :)

xpost great post Sund4r

A conservative, who believes the values of his or her own tradition and community to be generally virtuous or good, would also favour a market economy but for different reasons: success in the market rewards virtues of hard work, talent, thrift, self-discipline, etc., as they are applied towards doing work that is valued by the community, while market failure indicates a lack of virtue. Intervention in the market is only justified insofar as it allows citizens equal access to demonstrate their virtue (although, honestly, I'm not really sure that American conservatism even does this).

Understandably, since it's an article on liberalism, I wonder if Dworkin explained liberalism better than it explained conservatism tbh: it seems clear enough to me that the free market has often worked against the interests of the moral values that conservatives profess, and in the era of globalization, there is no reason to believe that market success would even approximate an appeal to the ('good') values of one's own people. This might explain Trumpxit and the new nationalism idk?

xp Oh, thanks!

yes dworkin is using it as a foil for liberalism but I would identify conservatism as an older and deeper trend bc of the similarities between the ways conservatives function in different arenas through space & time (& under/outside of a wide variety of economic systems). conservatism will arise around pretty much any institution or ideology that tries to define/protect an in-group, it's the prizing of fidelity & preservation over broader more egalitarian concerns. I wld identify a lot of religious thinking as exhibiting conservatism of a kind, so gandhi's reformist impulse to maintain but defang the caste system seems essentially conservative to me when ambedkar was ready to scrap it. most people contain a mixture of impulses and totally pure fanatics are quite rare, but I would absolutely say that a lot of radical extremists are types of ultra-orthodox conservatives

Fwiw, afaict, his views on caste did change over time, in part because of Ambedkar. In historical context, I feel like a "reformist impulse" was left of centre for a Hindu at the time but we might be mostly arguing about semantics at this point.

non-fake news!

http://nypost.com/2017/06/27/trumps-travel-ban-triumph-hollywood-liberals-failure-and-other-notable-commentary/

ryan: I think when you get right down to it they see repression as a vital societal necessity. That there is, pace Freud, perhaps an element of truth to this is what makes it all the more persistent as a mindset that will stay with us.

repression as a political touchstone is an interesting problem to bring up, and probably a little more complicated even with freud - isn't this pessimistic "truth" one of the key points of civilization and its discontents? (e.g. lacan: "freud was not a progressive"). i've never bothered much with deleuze+guattari but their movement seems like it fits right into this question too, maybe as the point when freud died to the left. but anyway, wouldn't a more obvious reading of the state of current politics be that it's the left, not the right, that's the stronghold of repression - at least in the popular take on trump as a crude child (certainly in his opposition to clinton)?

There are probably different types of repression, and different schemes for the dispensation of repression

Like I'm both very much for and very much against sexual repression

well yeah, i don't mean to suggest that it's either one side or the other. (the ideal of society without ANY repression probably died with the utopian communes, right? i doubt anyone seriously holds onto that hope anymore, no matter how far left you look.) just that ryan's characterization, which sounds basically correct to me, also sounds a little old-fashioned when lately the left (already the regime of stuffy political correctness) has been scrambling to compromise effectively with the trump-style populism that's in the spotlight.

The Short, Unhappy Life of a Libertarian Paradise: This Politico story about Colorado Springs probably belongs here. An interesting read regardless.

https://www.thenation.com/article/the-trump-administration-is-planning-an-unprecedented-attack-on-voting-rights/

Skepticism/fear of democracy is def a conservative trope.

if scientists were as smart as they think they are they'd be in business, making fortunes, where the real quality is employed :)

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/science-division-of-white-house-office-now-empty-as-last-staffers-depart/

Well yeah, why would you ever talk to a smart kid unless you needed their lunch money

the only reason they have time to do their homework is because they're too weak and uncoordinated to play sports and too ugly and awkward to hang out with the opposite sex. science is a consolation prize profession alphas would never consider

so much of american life is subtext. what you're avoiding thinking about speeding to work after waking up late from drinking too much the night before because you hate your life. so much of american life is totally phony. mr. trump understands this as well mr. mcmahon does. i asked to see your birth certificate because i wouldn't hire you even to hide my tax returns or build my wall. mr. trump speaks for me when mr. mcmahon's and mr. limbaugh's programs aren't on and i don't want to think about what will happen if i get in an accident speeding home, thirsty for the first drink of the night. mr. trump is who i want to be, in a helicopter

fuck a helicopter I'm holding out for a jetpack

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/liberal-fever-swamps/530736/

I dont think it has been mentioned yet so I wanted to say that along with the "prostestant" idea I think another related idea that comes from Weber, that of asceticism or self-control, is also really important. Conservatives tend to see liberals as hedonistic, as unable to govern their desires, etc. so for conservatives--who see themselves as disciplined, as governing themselves and their desires in a way that's not intended to optimize their gratification but to benefit society as a whole--any kind of "downward mobility" is attributable to a lack of self-discipline.

otm ime

How in god's name is a Democratic senator considered "left"? Or any of what they're talking about in that article.

... You do know where the left-right distinction comes from, right? It's who sits where in parliament.

If you want to be pedantic, we don't have a parliament, you Nordic nitwit.

Wow rude

Sorry, I couldn't resist, I watched too much Lost in Space when I was a kid.

I didn't say you did. The distinction wasn't invented in the US, you self-obsessed idiot.

'Nordic nitwit' is fairly good, though.

liberals are just jealous. rich people are always the ultimate bad guys. i know who the real bad guys are - liberals and takers!

i'm a liberal and i'm going to change my name to snoozer d. moochman.

if i invented a liberal mooching claw that could steal drug money from the pockets of Makers, would that make me a Heroic Entrepreneur?

it depends on how much money/property you've already or will inherit

i love to snooze, i love to mooch, i love to take, from those who make. i'm the moochman. check out my moves, you racist hicks.

http://www.dltk-teach.com/fables/grasshopper/grasshopper.gif

I have a theory about global warming and why people think it's real. Go back, 30, 40 years when there was much less air conditioning in the country. When you didn't have air conditioning and you left the house, it may have in fact gotten a little cooler out there because sometimes houses become hot boxes. Especially if you are on the second or third floor of a house in the summer time, and all you've got is open windows and window fan, or a servant fanning you with a piece of paper. When you walked outside no big deal still hot as hell, now 30, 40 years later all this air conditioning, and it's a huge difference when you go outside. When you go outside now, my golly is it hot, global warming. It's all about the baseline you're using for comparison.

Good Storify thread.

Aside from 'sociopathy' being misspelled in the title, very solid thread, this one.

God damn twitter threads make me so mad.

be angry at other things

i'm tellin ya, poor people have a screw loose..

Angry at plenty of things, but I don't understand trying to write an essay as a series of tweets.

Jesus once said, "Help the poor"
But he doesn't believe that any more

People -- before birth, God rates them
If they are born poor, it means God hates them

And destitute children are no longer worthy of our pity
Although grudgingly, Christ allows an orphanage in the worst part of the city

"Blessed is the richest guy in town"
He says, "For his wealth shall trickle down"

LYSOL DOUCHE

Angry at plenty of things, but I don't understand trying to write an essay as a series of tweets.

― DJI, Friday, July 7, 2017 11:42 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

twitter only lets u write 140 characters per tweets (1/)

sometimes you have more than that to say, but want people to be able to read(2/)

it inside twitter rather than click out to something else.(3/)

if ppl have to click another link, they will probably skip it.(4/)

if u dont want to read tweet threads, skip them. (5/5)

guys, conservatives just love to poop their pants. that's it. psychoanalyse them all you want, that's all there is to it.

Lol @m bison, esp the part where even one goddamn sentence doesn't fit into a tweet and has to be split into two tweets.

I think I found the image that sums it up:

https://tpc.googlesyndication.com/simgad/16612822897549419215

All I see here is a bunch of know-it-all's giving their opinion without having read a lick of Republican literature.

Go on and smash with your baseball bats the lowest hanging fruit of the conservative tree while the rest of us try to live our lives the best we can.