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>But the right has always been working to address prejudiced attitudes Are conservatives not by definition trying to conserve the status quo?

tablespoon 5y ago
> Are conservatives not by definition trying to conserve the status quo? IIRC, in the American context there are very, very few conservatives like that. Everyone has some revolutionary project they're working towards, they're just very different and incompatible.
- germinalphrase 5y ago
  This does not resonate at all with my experience growing up in a conservative region of the upper Midwest.
  - dwater 5y ago
    I imagine in this context conservative refers to members of the conservative political class and not conservative-voting citizens, who are mostly irrelevant to the goals of the conservative political class.
    - brimble 5y ago
      It is very important, in some contexts, to distinguish between Republican voters and Republican politicians. What you hear if you talk to the former can be wildly different from what the latter deliver and even what they make planks of their party platform. Notably, the voters tend not to like neoliberalism and globalization and to be big fans of "why don't they just..." solutions for various problems—say, "why don't they just build a wall at the border?" Sound like any recent, prominent R politicians? Yep—he seems to have noticed the large gap between the Republican Party platform and what the average Republican voter you talk to at a diner says they want, then exploited that gap, which worked because the gap is very real and pretty large. This occasionally got a bit weird, like in some of his speeches about how he'd provide "beautiful" healthcare to everyone, which seemed strangely close to some kind of (very vague) messaging about adding a public option of some kind of universal coverage and was met with cheering by his audience. This is because left- and right-wing populism in the US share a surprising amount in common, but those issues and commonalities are often ignored or deliberately sidelined by party elites. This is related to how laws that get passed and policies that are enacted are disturbingly disconnected from public sentiment generally. (none of this should be taken as an endorsement of the former president, I'm just observing the lay of the electoral landscape and how he exploited that. I am also not claiming that a similar difference between typical voters and party leaders/platform doesn't exist for the Democrats—it absolutely does. This is all probably a result of our really shitty FPTP elections.)
- zozbot234 5y ago
  You might be right. The few people that do try to align with that tend to call themselves "reactionaries", or even "neo-reactionaries". Their broad ideological stance makes for an interesting Western counterpart to Neo-Confucianism on the Chinese internet.
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > You might be right. The few people that do try to align with that tend to call themselves "reactionaries", or even "neo-reactionaries". I disagree. The "neo-reactionaries" I'm familiar seems ridiculously, over-the-top radical. It's like libartarianism taken so far it had an integer overflow and wrapped around to monarchism. It's not conservative to want to blow up society an replace it with a mockery of an old one that rejects what everyone across the political spectrum actually believes now.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- nicholasnorris 5y ago
  Part of the problem with the distinction is what's being conserved and how different groups in the movement define this. From one perspective, A lot of rank-and-file "conservatives" are probably more likely to take the social conservative stances in earnest, while being open to progressive economic policy, while the majority of their leadership absolutely prioritizes economic conservatism over the social element. The leadership merely uses the social aspects as a carrot to motivate what voting-base they can get, co-opting social conservative leadership into their own ranks, while obscuring the United States Chamber of Commerce lobby agenda. Rank-and-file conservatives are given reinforcement by their leadership to disapprove of progressive economic policy aesthetically, but are not ultimately able to fully overcome the pull of some of the material benefits that could be politically had without wrapping specific progressive political agenda into one big package with cultural divisions. And that's not to deny that their aren't small business/contract work types that are both socially conservative and economically conservative through-and-through, but they aren't numerous enough to fill out the vast voting ranks need. You could probably make the case that the Democratic Party are the real economic conservatives in a sense; Wanting to maintain the 30 or 40 year globalizing economic status quo, whereas "conservatives" that identify with the Republican party want to roll back to an idealized past, with a more nationally focused, but still liberal economy. Then there is also the problem of popular US politics and their terms being too narrowly scoped when considering political movements from a fuller perspective. "Conservatives" call Democrats leftist as a pejorative, when neither Democrats or most self-identifying leftist would really consider the Democratic party far from center on economics, and probably conservative from a global perspective.
TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
Conservatives by definition are about hierarchy, privilege, and institutionalised bias in favour of some groups at the expense of other groups. https://kottke.org/21/02/conservatism-and-who-the-law-protects https://kottke.org/21/02/conservatism-and-who-the-law-protec... You could argue that progressive mechanisms like affirmative action are just the same in reverse, and it's true that progressive politics in the US still has a conservative tinge. But there are differences. AA is seen as a temporary rebalancing measure, while conservative privilege is seen as the natural and divinely ordained order of things, for all eternity. It's essentially personal monarchy, as against anti-conservatism which is more layered and complex.
smm11 5y ago
[flagged]
DarylZero 5y ago
They're not trying to conserve the status quo as such, just conserve the status of the powerful (which may require changing with the times).

tablespoon 5y ago

> Are conservatives not by definition trying to conserve the status quo? IIRC, in the American context there are very, very few conservatives like that. Everyone has some revolutionary project they're working towards, they're just very different and incompatible.

germinalphrase 5y ago
This does not resonate at all with my experience growing up in a conservative region of the upper Midwest.
- dwater 5y ago
  I imagine in this context conservative refers to members of the conservative political class and not conservative-voting citizens, who are mostly irrelevant to the goals of the conservative political class.
  - brimble 5y ago
    It is very important, in some contexts, to distinguish between Republican voters and Republican politicians. What you hear if you talk to the former can be wildly different from what the latter deliver and even what they make planks of their party platform. Notably, the voters tend not to like neoliberalism and globalization and to be big fans of "why don't they just..." solutions for various problems—say, "why don't they just build a wall at the border?" Sound like any recent, prominent R politicians? Yep—he seems to have noticed the large gap between the Republican Party platform and what the average Republican voter you talk to at a diner says they want, then exploited that gap, which worked because the gap is very real and pretty large. This occasionally got a bit weird, like in some of his speeches about how he'd provide "beautiful" healthcare to everyone, which seemed strangely close to some kind of (very vague) messaging about adding a public option of some kind of universal coverage and was met with cheering by his audience. This is because left- and right-wing populism in the US share a surprising amount in common, but those issues and commonalities are often ignored or deliberately sidelined by party elites. This is related to how laws that get passed and policies that are enacted are disturbingly disconnected from public sentiment generally. (none of this should be taken as an endorsement of the former president, I'm just observing the lay of the electoral landscape and how he exploited that. I am also not claiming that a similar difference between typical voters and party leaders/platform doesn't exist for the Democrats—it absolutely does. This is all probably a result of our really shitty FPTP elections.)
zozbot234 5y ago
You might be right. The few people that do try to align with that tend to call themselves "reactionaries", or even "neo-reactionaries". Their broad ideological stance makes for an interesting Western counterpart to Neo-Confucianism on the Chinese internet.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > You might be right. The few people that do try to align with that tend to call themselves "reactionaries", or even "neo-reactionaries". I disagree. The "neo-reactionaries" I'm familiar seems ridiculously, over-the-top radical. It's like libartarianism taken so far it had an integer overflow and wrapped around to monarchism. It's not conservative to want to blow up society an replace it with a mockery of an old one that rejects what everyone across the political spectrum actually believes now.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
nicholasnorris 5y ago
Part of the problem with the distinction is what's being conserved and how different groups in the movement define this. From one perspective, A lot of rank-and-file "conservatives" are probably more likely to take the social conservative stances in earnest, while being open to progressive economic policy, while the majority of their leadership absolutely prioritizes economic conservatism over the social element. The leadership merely uses the social aspects as a carrot to motivate what voting-base they can get, co-opting social conservative leadership into their own ranks, while obscuring the United States Chamber of Commerce lobby agenda. Rank-and-file conservatives are given reinforcement by their leadership to disapprove of progressive economic policy aesthetically, but are not ultimately able to fully overcome the pull of some of the material benefits that could be politically had without wrapping specific progressive political agenda into one big package with cultural divisions. And that's not to deny that their aren't small business/contract work types that are both socially conservative and economically conservative through-and-through, but they aren't numerous enough to fill out the vast voting ranks need. You could probably make the case that the Democratic Party are the real economic conservatives in a sense; Wanting to maintain the 30 or 40 year globalizing economic status quo, whereas "conservatives" that identify with the Republican party want to roll back to an idealized past, with a more nationally focused, but still liberal economy. Then there is also the problem of popular US politics and their terms being too narrowly scoped when considering political movements from a fuller perspective. "Conservatives" call Democrats leftist as a pejorative, when neither Democrats or most self-identifying leftist would really consider the Democratic party far from center on economics, and probably conservative from a global perspective.

TheOtherHobbes 5y ago

Conservatives by definition are about hierarchy, privilege, and institutionalised bias in favour of some groups at the expense of other groups. https://kottke.org/21/02/conservatism-and-who-the-law-protects https://kottke.org/21/02/conservatism-and-who-the-law-protec... You could argue that progressive mechanisms like affirmative action are just the same in reverse, and it's true that progressive politics in the US still has a conservative tinge. But there are differences. AA is seen as a temporary rebalancing measure, while conservative privilege is seen as the natural and divinely ordained order of things, for all eternity. It's essentially personal monarchy, as against anti-conservatism which is more layered and complex.

smm11 5y ago

[flagged]

DarylZero 5y ago

They're not trying to conserve the status quo as such, just conserve the status of the powerful (which may require changing with the times).