3 ms·

Given that free speech is a bedrock American principle, "conservative" really isn't the right label.

by mindslight 4y ago

roundandround 4y ago
Social conservatives have nothing to do with the republic they just gradually inherited a party with that name.
- rayiner 4y ago
  Uh, who do you think the Puritans were? The founding Americans were people who got kicked out of Europe for being religious nuts. Then wave after wave of socially conservative poor people came to the country: Germans, Italians, Irish, etc. As to the Republican Party—it’s been a coalition of religious conservatives and big business since literally Lincoln’s era.
  - roundandround 4y ago
    The puritans did not build a republic, the masons did, a bunch of radicals that met with other republic forming radicals in Europe. Social conservatives of their time were deeply concerned about losing the feudal rule that kept society together. The Republican party was religious radicals who either requested or demanded a new way and fought the status quo slavery loving (social conservative) democrats. People in current seats have nothing to do with the history of the organizations they are in and if transported to the past would often more welcome in opponent organizations. This is also true of the revolutionary founding fathers and their very different views and make up than the puritans. All indications are that the puritans could neither write not respect a constitution. Rhode Island was made up of people who wanted freedoms not stifled by that bunch.
    - rayiner 4y ago
      Puritans, Pilgrims, Quakers, etc., had huge impacts on the founding of the republic. The fact they opposed feudalism doesn't mean they weren't socially conservative, or align them with the humanist radicals of continental Europe. It's not uncommon for religious fundamentalist movements to be politically radical because they oppose secular power. The Islamists who overthrew the Shah were nonetheless social conservatives. The masons thing is historical revisionism. Masons included people of different political stripes, including members of the British Monarchy. Edmund Burke was a freemason. Among the founders, some of the most socially radical folks like Jefferson weren't masons. > The Republican party was religious radicals who either requested or demanded a new way and fought the status quo slavery loving (social conservative) democrats. It's very odd to acknowledge that people were "religious radicals" but then deny that they were social conservatives. The Confederates certainly saw Republicans that way. They attacked Republicans as religious "zeal[ots]" and portrayed themselves as being on the side of "science": https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornerstone-speech https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornersto....
      - roundandround 4y ago
        I don't think we are agreeing on terminology.. AFAIK radicals and social conservatives are opposites. One wants changes to match new ideas the other a freeze or return. The masons and quakers are examples of groups with tolerance that make them compatible with other ideas, mixes, radicalism and a republic. Other groups may coexist in a republic because the republic was designed for compatibility but they are really social conservatives and a super majority of them makes them persecutors instead of persecuted. I.e. people who would impose Sharia law as soon as they got 2/3rds are perfectly fine as a minority in a tolerant republic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_Republicans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_Republicans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Masonic_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Masonic_Party
        rayiner 4y ago
        > I don't think we are agreeing on terminology.. AFAIK radicals and social conservatives are opposites. One wants changes to match new ideas the other a freeze or return. That’s not a sensible definition of “social conservative” because by that logic radical islamists aren’t also social conservatives. > The masons and quakers are examples of groups with tolerance that make them compatible with other ideas, mixes, radicalism and a republic Social conservatism doesn’t necessarily preclude pluralism. Quakers and Puritans may have been fine living in adjacent colonies, but that doesn’t mean they were “tolerant” of departures from behavioral norms within their own communities: https://worldspirituality.org/quaker-discipline-html/ https://worldspirituality.org/quaker-discipline-html/ That’s a good analogy to what America was like at the founding. American pluralism arose from multiple socially conservative and religious groups agreeing to share a country while leaving each other alone.
        roundandround 4y ago
        Yeah.. I would put the Islamic fundamentalists under social conservative they want to resume a system from ~820 AD. AFAIK these kinds of uses of radical are poor metaphors and certainly weren't relevant in the 18th or 19th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_radicalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_radicalism I generally view most of that explanation of the US as propaganda. The founders of the republic were 2nd generation+ congregationalists who were more going through the motions than puritans like their socially conservative forefathers. Shay's rebellion really highlights more about the nature of the actual inhabitants of the young nation, the way they influenced the republic and the fact that they were entirely foreign to Washington. I also don't think many of them could vote until Jackson.
badwolf 4y ago
They're fascists. But it apparently hurts peoples feelings to say that outloud.
krapp 4y ago
It is, because the governments attempting to pass these bills and the people who support them universally self-identify as "conservatives." But then that horse fled the barn when they argued that social media platforms deplatforming white supremacists were attacking "conservative speech."
olliej 4y ago
No, it is exactly the correct label. The states doing this are conservative, and the politicians passing this legislation are conservative, and they will all state this explicitly. What you are trying is "no true scotsman". But more to the point: if the "conservative" party, "conservative" politicians, and "conservative" voters are all saying "ban speech we don't like", "ban books we don't like", "ban history we don't like", "ban medical procedures we don't like", "criminalize and ban LGBT people we don't like", "ban criticizing conservative politicians", then that is what "conservative" means.
- mindslight 4y ago
  No, I'm really not trying to do "no true scotsman". I'm pointing out that they're getting a pass by being labeled "conservative", as if they're merely trying to resist or slow down change. What they're actually trying to do is create drastic changes. Moldbug spelled this out, calling conservatism a doomed strategy and separating himself from it with his own label of "Reaction". I voted for Biden in 2020 (my first time voting for a major party candidate in a national election), and consider this a solidly conservative choice - in the true sense of the word. The misleading labeling has a fall out effect of screwing up the whole zeitgeist. For starters, the mainstream media (that they endlessly shout the label "leftist" about) is actually (still) conservative, as it (still) fundamentally serves the entrenched pools of capital its owned by or plays golf with.
  - olliej 4y ago
    No, what defines "conservative" politics is the policies of conservative parties, politicians, and voters _now_ not what you think it meant 50 or 100 years ago.
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  This is a really dumb reasoning. If the "Pro Apples" party voted to ban apples, would that be the metric by which we defined Pro Apples?
  - krapp 4y ago
creatonez 4y ago
No, conservatism is about preserving the so-called "natural social hierarchies", including patriarchy, as well as economic hierarchies such as land ownership -- it is primarily about obedience, not freedom. It's not about the past, or generally resisting change, other than it sometimes coinciding with these principles. This is not a new definition forced onto it, it's the same definition that the founders of the conservative movement in the 1700s used and it remains the primary philosophy of the conservative movement.
rayiner 4y ago
The idea that the government can’t ban speech and actions harmful to the moral fiber of society is a 1960s liberal invention. It peaked with the ACLU convincing a bunch of liberal justices that strip clubs were protected speech. Who do you think were on the other side of those cases? Conservatives aren’t libertarians and they don’t claim to be.
- mindslight 4y ago
  Sure, if it was the 1960's it might be appropriate to call this topic a conservative position. That doesn't mean it's conservative two generations later. Your comment basically demonstrates my larger point - if you tie your positions to how things were at some fixed time in the past, then as time moves forward you have less and less claim to being called "conservative" as what you want becomes ever more of a drastic departure from current society.
  - rayiner 4y ago
    “Conservatism” isn’t defined (except maybe by liberals) in temporal terms. That’s like saying that liberalism is about change, without qualification. For example, conservatives don’t like the administrative state, even though it’s pushing a century old at this point. That’s because conservatives are generally skeptical of the ability of reason to organize society. The fact that we’ve been doing that a long time doesn’t make it any more palatable. Jacobin actually has a pretty good article on Edmund Burke: https://jacobin.com/2021/02/edmund-burke-conservatism-tradition-hierarchy https://jacobin.com/2021/02/edmund-burke-conservatism-tradit....
    - mindslight 4y ago
      It's interesting that you're putting out that Jacobin article as a good description of conservatism. It is describing a bunch of characterizations that are often invoked by liberals, but would seem to be convenient straw men. (I'll circle back and read it again to see if I can pull anything else out of it, but that's what I've gotten so far) Running with what I've gotten from it - if we're not supposed to question power structures and just let them be, then why all the criticism and hate for the Cathedral? Isn't it just another power structure that actually came out of the Church and has existed for a few hundred years in its own right - pretty much all of modernity? And similarly with the bureaucratic state - it is what it is. Furthermore - trying to invoke a "better" power structure from some arbitrary time in the past as the way things should be - isn't this solidly venturing into the territory of trying to use reason to organize and change society? How else can you judge that a previous power structure was better? It would seem that starting with that article's description of conservatism's foundations, it's a quick leap to get back to my working definition of resisting change rather than trying to go backwards. --- For my perspective, reading Unqualified Reservations has informed my own thinking. The "alt right" seems to have descended from it and its contemporaries, so I don't think it's particularly wrong to reference it. For example, https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2009/01/gentle-introduction-to-unqualified/ https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2009/01/gentle-intr... has what I thought was a good mostly-above-the-fray attempt at describing left vs right, if you can stomach the hyperbole and overstatement. FWIW that post was part of my switching from seeing myself as an unaligned libertarian back to being liberal (thanks Yarvin!). I don't necessarily like the Cathedral, nor the direction it and the blue team tend to pull in. But I certainly don't want to go backwards and try to shoehorn society into more prescriptive hierarchies!

Given that free speech is a bedrock American principle, "conservative" really isn't the right label.

roundandround 4y ago

Social conservatives have nothing to do with the republic they just gradually inherited a party with that name.

rayiner 4y ago
Uh, who do you think the Puritans were? The founding Americans were people who got kicked out of Europe for being religious nuts. Then wave after wave of socially conservative poor people came to the country: Germans, Italians, Irish, etc. As to the Republican Party—it’s been a coalition of religious conservatives and big business since literally Lincoln’s era.
- roundandround 4y ago
  The puritans did not build a republic, the masons did, a bunch of radicals that met with other republic forming radicals in Europe. Social conservatives of their time were deeply concerned about losing the feudal rule that kept society together. The Republican party was religious radicals who either requested or demanded a new way and fought the status quo slavery loving (social conservative) democrats. People in current seats have nothing to do with the history of the organizations they are in and if transported to the past would often more welcome in opponent organizations. This is also true of the revolutionary founding fathers and their very different views and make up than the puritans. All indications are that the puritans could neither write not respect a constitution. Rhode Island was made up of people who wanted freedoms not stifled by that bunch.
  - rayiner 4y ago
    Puritans, Pilgrims, Quakers, etc., had huge impacts on the founding of the republic. The fact they opposed feudalism doesn't mean they weren't socially conservative, or align them with the humanist radicals of continental Europe. It's not uncommon for religious fundamentalist movements to be politically radical because they oppose secular power. The Islamists who overthrew the Shah were nonetheless social conservatives. The masons thing is historical revisionism. Masons included people of different political stripes, including members of the British Monarchy. Edmund Burke was a freemason. Among the founders, some of the most socially radical folks like Jefferson weren't masons. > The Republican party was religious radicals who either requested or demanded a new way and fought the status quo slavery loving (social conservative) democrats. It's very odd to acknowledge that people were "religious radicals" but then deny that they were social conservatives. The Confederates certainly saw Republicans that way. They attacked Republicans as religious "zeal[ots]" and portrayed themselves as being on the side of "science": https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornerstone-speech https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornersto....
    - roundandround 4y ago
      I don't think we are agreeing on terminology.. AFAIK radicals and social conservatives are opposites. One wants changes to match new ideas the other a freeze or return. The masons and quakers are examples of groups with tolerance that make them compatible with other ideas, mixes, radicalism and a republic. Other groups may coexist in a republic because the republic was designed for compatibility but they are really social conservatives and a super majority of them makes them persecutors instead of persecuted. I.e. people who would impose Sharia law as soon as they got 2/3rds are perfectly fine as a minority in a tolerant republic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_Republicans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_Republicans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Masonic_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Masonic_Party
      - rayiner 4y ago
        > I don't think we are agreeing on terminology.. AFAIK radicals and social conservatives are opposites. One wants changes to match new ideas the other a freeze or return. That’s not a sensible definition of “social conservative” because by that logic radical islamists aren’t also social conservatives. > The masons and quakers are examples of groups with tolerance that make them compatible with other ideas, mixes, radicalism and a republic Social conservatism doesn’t necessarily preclude pluralism. Quakers and Puritans may have been fine living in adjacent colonies, but that doesn’t mean they were “tolerant” of departures from behavioral norms within their own communities: https://worldspirituality.org/quaker-discipline-html/ https://worldspirituality.org/quaker-discipline-html/ That’s a good analogy to what America was like at the founding. American pluralism arose from multiple socially conservative and religious groups agreeing to share a country while leaving each other alone.
        roundandround 4y ago
        Yeah.. I would put the Islamic fundamentalists under social conservative they want to resume a system from ~820 AD. AFAIK these kinds of uses of radical are poor metaphors and certainly weren't relevant in the 18th or 19th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_radicalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_radicalism I generally view most of that explanation of the US as propaganda. The founders of the republic were 2nd generation+ congregationalists who were more going through the motions than puritans like their socially conservative forefathers. Shay's rebellion really highlights more about the nature of the actual inhabitants of the young nation, the way they influenced the republic and the fact that they were entirely foreign to Washington. I also don't think many of them could vote until Jackson.

badwolf 4y ago

They're fascists. But it apparently hurts peoples feelings to say that outloud.

krapp 4y ago

It is, because the governments attempting to pass these bills and the people who support them universally self-identify as "conservatives." But then that horse fled the barn when they argued that social media platforms deplatforming white supremacists were attacking "conservative speech."

olliej 4y ago

No, it is exactly the correct label. The states doing this are conservative, and the politicians passing this legislation are conservative, and they will all state this explicitly. What you are trying is "no true scotsman". But more to the point: if the "conservative" party, "conservative" politicians, and "conservative" voters are all saying "ban speech we don't like", "ban books we don't like", "ban history we don't like", "ban medical procedures we don't like", "criminalize and ban LGBT people we don't like", "ban criticizing conservative politicians", then that is what "conservative" means.

mindslight 4y ago
No, I'm really not trying to do "no true scotsman". I'm pointing out that they're getting a pass by being labeled "conservative", as if they're merely trying to resist or slow down change. What they're actually trying to do is create drastic changes. Moldbug spelled this out, calling conservatism a doomed strategy and separating himself from it with his own label of "Reaction". I voted for Biden in 2020 (my first time voting for a major party candidate in a national election), and consider this a solidly conservative choice - in the true sense of the word. The misleading labeling has a fall out effect of screwing up the whole zeitgeist. For starters, the mainstream media (that they endlessly shout the label "leftist" about) is actually (still) conservative, as it (still) fundamentally serves the entrenched pools of capital its owned by or plays golf with.
- olliej 4y ago
  No, what defines "conservative" politics is the policies of conservative parties, politicians, and voters _now_ not what you think it meant 50 or 100 years ago.
spywaregorilla 4y ago
This is a really dumb reasoning. If the "Pro Apples" party voted to ban apples, would that be the metric by which we defined Pro Apples?
- krapp 4y ago

creatonez 4y ago

No, conservatism is about preserving the so-called "natural social hierarchies", including patriarchy, as well as economic hierarchies such as land ownership -- it is primarily about obedience, not freedom. It's not about the past, or generally resisting change, other than it sometimes coinciding with these principles. This is not a new definition forced onto it, it's the same definition that the founders of the conservative movement in the 1700s used and it remains the primary philosophy of the conservative movement.

rayiner 4y ago

The idea that the government can’t ban speech and actions harmful to the moral fiber of society is a 1960s liberal invention. It peaked with the ACLU convincing a bunch of liberal justices that strip clubs were protected speech. Who do you think were on the other side of those cases? Conservatives aren’t libertarians and they don’t claim to be.

mindslight 4y ago
Sure, if it was the 1960's it might be appropriate to call this topic a conservative position. That doesn't mean it's conservative two generations later. Your comment basically demonstrates my larger point - if you tie your positions to how things were at some fixed time in the past, then as time moves forward you have less and less claim to being called "conservative" as what you want becomes ever more of a drastic departure from current society.
- rayiner 4y ago
  “Conservatism” isn’t defined (except maybe by liberals) in temporal terms. That’s like saying that liberalism is about change, without qualification. For example, conservatives don’t like the administrative state, even though it’s pushing a century old at this point. That’s because conservatives are generally skeptical of the ability of reason to organize society. The fact that we’ve been doing that a long time doesn’t make it any more palatable. Jacobin actually has a pretty good article on Edmund Burke: https://jacobin.com/2021/02/edmund-burke-conservatism-tradition-hierarchy https://jacobin.com/2021/02/edmund-burke-conservatism-tradit....
  - mindslight 4y ago
    It's interesting that you're putting out that Jacobin article as a good description of conservatism. It is describing a bunch of characterizations that are often invoked by liberals, but would seem to be convenient straw men. (I'll circle back and read it again to see if I can pull anything else out of it, but that's what I've gotten so far) Running with what I've gotten from it - if we're not supposed to question power structures and just let them be, then why all the criticism and hate for the Cathedral? Isn't it just another power structure that actually came out of the Church and has existed for a few hundred years in its own right - pretty much all of modernity? And similarly with the bureaucratic state - it is what it is. Furthermore - trying to invoke a "better" power structure from some arbitrary time in the past as the way things should be - isn't this solidly venturing into the territory of trying to use reason to organize and change society? How else can you judge that a previous power structure was better? It would seem that starting with that article's description of conservatism's foundations, it's a quick leap to get back to my working definition of resisting change rather than trying to go backwards. --- For my perspective, reading Unqualified Reservations has informed my own thinking. The "alt right" seems to have descended from it and its contemporaries, so I don't think it's particularly wrong to reference it. For example, https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2009/01/gentle-introduction-to-unqualified/ https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2009/01/gentle-intr... has what I thought was a good mostly-above-the-fray attempt at describing left vs right, if you can stomach the hyperbole and overstatement. FWIW that post was part of my switching from seeing myself as an unaligned libertarian back to being liberal (thanks Yarvin!). I don't necessarily like the Cathedral, nor the direction it and the blue team tend to pull in. But I certainly don't want to go backwards and try to shoehorn society into more prescriptive hierarchies!