In my last thread, I asked for people to give me any reason to think that society wouldn’t be better off without the teabaggers. Some people huffed and puffed at that, but nobody could actually give me any reason those people have net value to society, so I think my point there is proved.
Several people in that thread, including some who I suppose fancy themselves progressive, offered up that while teabaggers are useless dregs, society needs conservatives. I’ve heard this before, that we need “good” conservatives, and I don’t buy it. Don’t sell me shit like “some people have a principled stand for limited government” or some theoretical shit. If you are a republican in 2010, it means you hate people different from you (race, class, gender, sexual orientation) and think they deserve to be second-class citizens, it means you are a anti-woman, it means you are a religious freak, and it means you want poor people to stay poor. Let’s drop the pussyfooting. These are the people that are trying to hinder us, who are trying to take us back to the stone age.
So why should we have any of them around? And before someone gets their panties in a knot, no, I’m not calling for all conservatives to be killed. I know there’s no practical way of making it come true, this is just hypothetical here. If every conservative disappeared tomorrow, in a puff of smoke, why wouldn’t that be a good thing?
(Yes, I know some people would be sad for their family or whatever … I’m asking about society as a whole.) Serious debate only.
When the conservatives are gone, the moderates will be conservatives. What happens to them?
Even theoretically speaking, the optimal point on the political continuum is probably not “as far to the left as you can possibly get”. However if the only people around are those at the optimal point, and those to the left of the optimal point, then the resulting direction things go in will be too far to the left. So we need at least some too-far-conservative people, just to balance out the flaming wingnuts on the outlier end of liberalism.
Which is not to say that the current crop of most-vocal conservatives and conservative politicians are in any way functional as a voice of reasoned and counterbalancing discourse, but you’re explicitly not limiting yourself to them.
Teabaggers and the modern American version of conservatives are not needed at all. We do need conservatives, but most mainstream elected Democrats are conservative to moderate. These idiots filibustering everything are no more conservatives than than Democratic Senators are necessarily liberals. There are some, but not a working plurality. We need both, but both are readily available in the Democratic Party.
Why do we need real conservatives? So that every idea for reform from liberals does not get enacted. Civilizations require some stability, and constant change of the social foundations will kill stability.
Because a society consisting of radicals alone devolves to utter chaos?
Talking about people who are conservatives… not necessarily just politically. To simplify it brutally; old people like things to stay the same, young people want them to change. One group provides stability, continuity, the other innovation and progress. It’s sort a basic function of a culture.
And that conservatives are basically Dick Cheney, W Bush and Dan Quayle cowards who leave actual going to Vietnam to guys like liberal Al Gore and moderate John Kerry. (And nutjobs like McCain who change their mind on the evils of immigrants every election cycle.)
Well played, sir. Seriously, though, we do need conservatives. Several of my fellow liberals- on these very boards, no less- have been talking about open immigration to the US recently.
While I am rather more tolerant of illegal immigration than, say, your average Arizonan, I don’t want to wake up tomorrow with thirty Guatemalans* sleeping on my front lawn in tents.
*or Belgians, Swedes, Congolese, Mongolians, Lithuanians, Bangladeshis, Argentines, or even Americans, for that matter.
“bump in the night” = Sieg Heil, Banzai!, Viva La Revolucion!, Allah Akbar, or anybody else that needs killing. We’re the big nasty dogs that sleep on the porch and guard the house against all intruders. You don’t like us, to some extent you fear us, you will never understand us, but you will always need us. A society with no warriors won’t be a free society for very long.
Well we don’t really need conservatives or liberals. The planet could even do without moderates for that matter. The thing is we’re all here. You may not like the conservatives but this country is still mostly a democracy. Everyone gets their vote and their say.
Saying they’re poo poo heads isn’t constructive or meaningful. Debating their value isn’t really meaningful either.
They are here, we vote on stuff. Convince them to vote your way if you can’t do that convince enough people other then them your way is better to overcome their numbers.
Interesting viewpoint. I’m pretty liberal… yet I am the thing that goes bump in the night… well, technically it’s the other people that make the sound. Used to be a triple volunteer me… bumping people is what I was trained to do. How about you? How nasty of a dog are you exactly?
Yes, but conservatives are generally cowards. Pants shitting “let’s sell weapons while you and him fight” cowards. Conservatives wanted to avoid war at all costs with “Sieg Heil” and “Banzai” it was liberal hero in a wheelchair FDR who cheated, lied and stole us into that war over the objections of candy-assed Republican conservatives. How soon conservatives forget who whumped Hitler and Tojo while they were sniveling about isolationism.
We need people who are actually conservative on some issues. Political “conservatives” are usually anything but.
For example, if Earl Butz, “conservative” (scare quotes), had been a little more conservative (no scare quotes), we might not be facing the environment and public health crises that industrialized farming has now brought us.
Used to be a triple volunteer me… bumping people is what I was trained to do. How about you? How nasty of a dog are you exactly?