rolling explaining conservatism

She’s won more elections than I have

Ye mad puffin otm. There is a principled conservatism that can be explained and even engaged/reasoned with; unfortunately unprincipled (selfish/heartless/amoral & immoral) conservatism, once a mere parasite, has outgrown and consumed its host, in the political class and the media, on both sides of the Atlantlic, and though it can be explained there is no reasoning with it.

I'm kinda asking why ilx is pretending- pantomime, showtrial or whatever you call the performative aspect at play here- to either be able or to even want to describe anything other than strawman oppositional stances itt

partly because the history of politics as a separate practice in Enlightenment polities and there offspring is precisely that - the functions of democratic governments have always been largely performative, the idea of free debate between inquiring rational minds who influence one another with the force of their oratory and reason has always been a flaky veneer over the mechanics of where and how political power operates.

so that

There is a principled conservatism that can be explained and even engaged/reasoned with

is only true to the extent that it is true of "principled liberalism" or whatever other flavour of ideology you want to apply it to, i.e. not much. the left and the right have got no monopoly on the absence of reason in the sphere of the clash of ideas.

really the only conservative principle is 'i don't have to give a shit about you and you can't force me'... which is otm

otm and maybe a bit showboaty but true in very broad strokes. there is no rational disproof of this belief, any more than you can rationally disprove any belief contrary to it. in the end, there's just some version of struggle between the belief systems.

with the opposite poles of the struggle being something like armed conflict vs blathering in circles on the internet/talk radio/in the pub/in yr head

i do, unfortunately, broadly agree with that; i still think I'd rather struggle with principled conservatism than with flat out psychopathic self interest.

 the left and the right have got no monopoly on the absence of reason in the sphere of the clash of ideas.

i think the failure of political debate is due to a fundamental misunderstanding of the limits of reason. "Reason is the slave of the passions" and yes, largely speaking you cannot reason someone out of their cherished core beliefs. But this is never explicitly acknowledged and the failure of the other person (on either side) to change their mind in the face of apparently faultless logic and evidence leads to accusations of stupidity, the idea that the other side is beyond reason and beyond help. Once you've reached that conclusion, any further progress is impossible.

However this is still a counsel of at worst, despair, at best, centrism. Progress is only possible if there are shared values. Otherwise, *shrugs* revolution.

it's just Socrates vs. Callicles all the way down, only everyone thinks they're Socrates rather than Callicles

conservatism isn't the absence of caring - it's the presence of other virtues in addition to caring which, when looked at by someone who only takes caring as a virtue, appears to be anti-caring.

i think it's maybe more socrates v. euthyphro, and euthyphro would rather turn his father in for impiety than raise taxes

lol mordy defining by fiat all conservative values as 'virtues'.

+ the one person who said that conservatism is the absence of caring is a conservative who was celebrating that position.

xp mordy: i think jonathan haidt's moral foundations idea is misleading bc it suggests both that the values are the same regardless of which other values they exist alongside and in relation to (when the way values interact is crucial and defines them) and it also sounds like conservatives have other virtues and a greater, more refined sense of morality, when in practice those virtues often (primarily?) have a negative effect restricting other virtues. I think trying to quantify/establish morality like this is folly but w/e

virtue is in the eye of the beholder dumbnuts xxp

really the only conservative principle is 'i don't have to give a shit about you and you can't force me'... which is otm

― sleepingbag, Saturday, December 16, 2017 11:34 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is otm in the same way that 'I don't have to do routine maintenance on my car and you can't force me' is otm. Things just take care of themselves as long as you don't consider anything beyond the end of my nose or the end of the day.

Like, that's literally how a toddler views the world. But yeah, conservatism = toddlervision, basically.

one of the dumbest things about conservatism is if you let smart poor kids languish in favor of dumb rich kids, squandering significant intellect so the advantaged can continue to lord it over the rest of us, then it'll probably take us longer to cure death. how's that for enlightened self-interest?

this thread is so embarrassing why not just rename it "rolling vent about conservatism" thread and have some honesty about its purpose

Idk, the irony of the title seemed clear enough from the OP.

was gonna say I think tbf, not that there's any need tbf but still, the thread title's intent is set out in the opening post

I kind of like how it veers back and forth between actually trying to explain and discuss conservatism as a philosophy and venting/lulz. xp

mordy i think you should post in every other thread a demand each justifies its existence / title

it is pretty embarrassing though, for the most part

to the extent that there is value to be had and the possibility of good faith discussion it might be better off in the political philosophy thread if that could be kept contamination free or, and I'm only joking a little bit, create a safe space thread for non-posturing discussions of ethics and politics

Black comedians make fun of white people all the time, so that makes blackface not just A-okay but also hilarious

embarrassing to whom? a bunch of mostly anonymous posters? i think someone should start a thread explaining why this thread should be held to higher than shits and giggles standards. in the meantime, conservatives are bullies

https://www.salon.com/2017/12/17/how-americas-militaristic-capitalist-culture-led-to-trump/

if you let smart poor kids languish in favor of dumb rich kids

At least some conservatives might acknowledge the generally good intentions / noble motives of liberal or progressive social policies. But they then go on to say that top-down government intervention is the worse way to achieve even the noblest goals. Government always fucks things up (Ark vs. Titanic, blah blah blah).

One ostensibly conservative principle - respect for long-established institutions - is shown here in conflict with another "conservative" principle - distrusting government.

Did “government cannot be trusted with important things” exist as a conservative principle before government outlawed slavery and started enforcing civil rights laws?

No.

seems to me that in the British tradition at least the first 150+ years of "representative" government - let's say from 1689 to the early Victorian era - were regarded by conservatives as a hedge against mob rule. "democracy" tends to be used as a pejorative and "Government" connotes with paternalism and stability.

In a spirit of holiday-season charity I will try to pass the venting/lulz/mocking through a Mordyfilter. Try to see from other points of view in good faith and whatnot. So:

the presence of other virtues in addition to caring

Perhaps then I will rephrase "distrusting government" as "trusting government LESS than other superseding institutions - the family, the church, a commonly held vision of civil society, natural hierarchies of merit."

So, less a matter of conflict than of one set of norms being superseded by older and more venerable norms.

Still comes out lookin' hella racist tho

Did “government cannot be trusted with important things” exist as a conservative principle before government outlawed slavery and started enforcing civil rights laws?

just curious, at what point did the government start enforcing civil rights laws?

Thanks NV for the alternate perspective. If it wasn't already clear I am speaking in terms of American "conservatives," who tend overwhelmingly to present themselves as anti-government.

(That is, unless you're specifically referring to government actions they like, such as invading Normandy, paying old white people for being alive, and spraying black people with firehoses.)

Whoops, the snark popped out again unbidden

no wonder richard spencer had to drop out of duke

https://history.duke.edu/book/democracy-chains

seems to me that in the British tradition at least the first 150+ years of "representative" government - let's say from 1689 to the early Victorian era - were regarded by conservatives as a hedge against mob rule. "democracy" tends to be used as a pejorative and "Government" connotes with paternalism and stability.

Yeah, the Red Tory/High Tory thing, right? We still have elements of it, esp in Tory parties in the Maritimes. Afaict, even US conservatives are only anti-government when it comes to regulating corporations or paying for redistributive social programmes. They absolutely trust government with things that are important to them: aggressive military action to ensure a global order where their own government is a superpower, restricting the movement of peoples in and out of the country, severe enforcement of law and order, etc. Anyone who would give the government the power to execute its own citizens has no claim to the label "anti-government": this is a far greater exercise of state power than e.g. raising marginal tax rates.

I think there's a thread running thru most conservatisms - because obviously duh conservatism is not one ahistorical monolithic philosophy - that goes back to at least, in the modern era, Hobbes and the state of nature and the war of all against all. Humans are inherently sinful, or weak, or self-interested, and government is necessary to maintain peace and to protect individuals' natural rights. since property is a natural right, then as soon as government interferes in this natural right it's exceeding its authority. government is not an expression of morality, which can only be expressed by individuals. it exists, perhaps, to protect individual morality which may include a more or less aggressive foreign policy.

these aren't complex ideas, this is 101 or whatever they call it in the US.

Totally.

yeah i was going to say "anti-government" here is reductionist mostly for the reasons NV just gave

Did “government cannot be trusted with important things” exist as a conservative principle before government outlawed slavery and started enforcing civil rights laws?

― El Tomboto, Monday, December 18, 2017 11:07 AM (thirty-nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

when did they "start" enforcing civil rights laws? one could argue all of hierarchical history has been long march towards civil rights.

"gov't cannot be trusted" started at least during the Revolutionary War. the origin story of the US is a key part of conservative mythos and they love to go on about imagining themselves carrying the torch of the Founding Fathers. at the time the gov't was over-taxing and abusive, the justice system far more corrupt than it is now (and yes it is still plenty), etc. the gov't could station soldiers in your house and give them your food without any legal recourse. this country was started by people thinking the gov't cannot be trusted.

i think the thread exercise is not without its merits but there is obv a ton of posturing and performance going on too. in the end these are ideologies that are abstract generalizations and not the Objective Truth of a person's interpersonal experience and social behavior.
if they control our actions it is largely through our own consent. furthermore the symbols and the meanings are constantly shifting and being re-contextualized. as our lives change and progress we have different needs, different priorities. there is a tendency to obsess over labels but it really does't matter as they can always be changed as life is not a static system.

on a very simplistic level perhaps you could say conservatism = morality can only reside in the individual and not-conservatism = morality only exists as an expression of some sort of social structure; or even for the conservative good actions are those that allow morality to be expressed and for the non-conservative morality is conformity to The Good, but The Good is contingent and to some extent negotiable

Yeah, I really think the Dworkin piece I linked and discussed here in the summer provides the most convincing breakdown of it that I've come across.

the most simple connecting idea I can find between the conservatives I know in real life, friends, family and colleagues, is that each individual is ultimately responsible for the quality of their own life and how that life works out.

fwiw most liberals i know believe that as well. when it comes to other ppl they entertain structural analyses but for themselves they act as tho the choices they make have an impact on the results they produce. it's hard not to feel that way when phenomenologically we experience free choice as a real thing. it's also probably more useful for an individual to act as-if they were the sole determining factor on their results (because ceding control - even if epistemologically appropriate - leads to inaction). i think there's also a paradox here re structural critiques of society in that ultimately they lead to adornoism where you can't even fix the structure that dominates your results bc you're yourself a product of the structure etc. so even among the left a pretense of "each individual is ultimately responsible for the quality of their life," even if that responsibility is the responsibility to change the superstructure [as individuals working in concert] and thereby improve quality of life, etc.

presumably this is why you need dialectics so that you can fix the system without requiring individuals to do it. the internal contradictions of capitalism will undermine itself - it's folly to believe that free choice has anything to do w/ the kind of society we produce, etc. (i think this is folly fwiw but i understand why it's needed for coherence.)

it's hard not to feel that way when phenomenologically we experience free choice as a real thing. check your privilege. people who grow up disadvantaged would beg to differ, experiencing "free choice" more as 'coping with the invisible american class system'. "conservatives" act like dunning-kruger effect victims in their aspberger-y detachment from significant unfairness most americans endure from infancy

every human being experiences the phenomenology of free choice in the minute to minute moments of their lives. they experience making decisions and taking them. i have yet to meet someone who actually experiences life in a determinist context (as opposed to believing it). you're an idiot.

that's true, yeah. as soon as we start thinking about the social or about any structure beyond ourselves we get caught in doublings of perspective, self-contradictions.

tho i could believe that maybe you've totally shut your brain off and literally do not experience any choice at all like you just posted that but had nothing to do with it it was just generated by your participation in society.

my last post was kind of an xp but it applied across the board, the contradiction happens at the moment we think of ourselves as objects

if it wasn't clear NV my last post wasn't directed to you

no Mordy i know

i think the macro/micro spheres are fascinating and maybe insoluble: of course we act like we have free will but of course "society" however you want to define it is the product of trillions of individual acts of free will but of course we can examine societies and describe what happens in them, just like history, but these analyses come apart the further you go from the most macro possible statements