At least in the US, conservatives tend to oppose egalitarian social policy as well as statist safety nets and wealth redistribution.
However social trends have been moving towards egalitarianism for the last 200+ years with various groups being given more inclusive roles in social, political, economic, legal, academic, cultural, etc spheres. And as wealth increases people (despite what they may say) like safety nets and wealth redistribution. Even among the tea party support of medicare and social security runs 70%+. Most people don’t want to give up wealth redistribution and safety nets once they experience it and once the controversy wears off.
So yeah, they are going to be on the wrong side of history on social issues and economic issues since they are fighting against mass opinion which is constantly moving in a different direction. Universal health care and gay rights will be viewed in the future the way we view womens suffrage and social security today.
I know conservatives who support positions that are being termed liberal, such as a gay marriage. I guess this wouldn’t make them fire-breathing social conservatives, but they still prefer to use federalism to reach their goals, letting social equality for gays happen slowly on a state-by-state basis. Yes, that means there may be some states that never achieve that equality. But in their opinion, that’s the beauty of federalism: the states that do adopt equality will attract businesses that want to capitalize on it, and populations that want to be bigoted effectively punish themselves economically in the long run. Ultimately - hopefully - such self-punishing attitudes lead them to conclude they’re wrong, and the people of the state see the light and adopt equality as well. Such a position is obviously quite different than what is typically defined as a liberal approach, which is to pass a federal law mandating equality.
:rolleyes: If we are going to go that far back and to that extreme, then concentration camps, the Nazi genocide, eugenics, the Inquisition, and so on get credited to the conservative side.
Fanatics tend to be ruthless and brutal regardless of their politics.
It’s similar in that many of the same arguments used against illegal drugs were also used against alcohol. However, those who were in favor of women’s suffrage, child labor laws, or, for that matter, labor laws in general were also in favor of prohibition. Prohibition was the United State’s longest progressive movement. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union was a pretty progressive organization back in the day. Politically speaking, Prohibition brought together some weird groups. The KKK and the Industrial Workers of the World, two groups that hated each other, were both for Prohibition.
To make a long story short without hijacking the thread; alcohol was a much more serious problem in the 19th century than it is today. Which is pretty neat considering that alcohol causes a lot of problems today. Progressives honestly felt as though poverty, crime and other social ills would be greatly reduced or eliminated if demon rum was removed from the picture. Author Jack London, a raging alcoholic, welcomed Prohibition as he thought this was the only way he could ever stop drinking.
As I recall, liberals joined with conservatives to give the President the authority to attack Iraq as a last resort. Instead, the President attacked Iraq as a first resort.
Federalism is in itself not conservative or liberal. For example, liberals want state to allow gay marriage and conservatives want to exempt marriage from the “full faith and credit” provision. For the most part, Federalism is just an excuse to justify general dickishness.
On the one hand, I think you have a good point here, but on the other, it’s a point that, if stretched to its (logical?) conclusion, would mean that it’s silly and futile to resist any change whatsoever, and that all societal change is good or at least inevitable.
Not really, and this is the problem with saying “conservative.” I have desperately clung to the college textbook definitions of “liberalism” and “conservatism” because they actually make sense, but you have no chance in hell of getting anyone else to even consider them.
Generally on the SDMB conservative means “evil.” To a few posters who are more reasonable it means “Moral Majority Jerry Falwell lovers” or “WarForOilChildKillers” or “Absolutely No Government CATO-Society Libertarians.”
The textbook conservative / liberal breakdown is more process oriented: liberals are into societal experimentation to “see what works best.” Conservatives are advocates or gradual changes in society. Note that true conservatives (at least by the textbook definition) are not static-state advocates, and in fact are fully supportive of change over time on various issues.
People often equate conservatives to people that want no change in the status quo, but that’s not really the case. If anything I think the question in your OP is more about “are reactionaries ever on the right side of history?” Reactionaries are individuals who want a return to a “status quo ante.” You saw this a lot in Europe in the 19th century, when some of the landed classes wanted more of a return to the day when they were the sole source of power (as un-titled merchant class individuals had dramatically eaten up much of their power, and even some of the normal peasant class had achieved some power.) Generally I can’t think of many “reactionaries” who have been on the long term side of the direction of history.
Now to address the specific point I’m quoting, no you can’t really equate late 19th/early 20th century prohibition movement with the anti-gay marriage or anti-drugs movements of today. Being “anti” doesn’t mean it’s a conservative force.
In truth, the temperance movement was heavily pushed by feminist social reformers. Many of the biggest women in the temperance movement were also big in the women’s rights movements, were advocates for early birth control techniques (which freed women from being perpetually pregnant) and advocates for women getting the vote. They were intertwined with the temperance movement because in late 19th century/early 20th century America drinking was unlike you could ever imagine it being today. It wasn’t the raw amount of alcohol consumed that was so intense (and per capita it may have not been much more or even less than now), but in that time and place, to simplify a little bit, you had teetotalers and alcoholics. Very few people who drank were social drinkers. The people who drank drank until they were blackout drunk regularly, and most of them were men. They would then stagger home and beat the shit out of their wives.
Women, probably not unreasonably, blamed this horrendous and common spousal abuse on “demon rum” and such. If anything prohibition is rightly seen as a result of the progressive movement in general, and a marriage of the women’s rights movement to some social conservative elements like teetotaling Baptist types. But to say it was just a conservative movement like the war on drugs isn’t really accurate at all, if anything it was a liberal/progressive movement.
But that’s part of the problem with trying to look at things in the past with the lens of the present. To you, you’re seeing any sort of “prohibition on personal behavior” as equating to “Republicans” equating to “conservatives.” In truth in the turn of the century, liberals/progressive could easily support such prohibitions. In fact liberals/progressives supported lots of new rules, regulations, prohibitions and etc. Most of them for very good reason because it lead to things like reasonable workplace laws, reasonable protections of the food supply, regulation of medical compounds (which before any snake oil salesman could sell for any purpose–note the original prohibitions on cocaine/opiates which were totally legal and unregulated for many years probably grew more out of that than any modern style war on drugs.)
Actually, I don’t think the trends toward the widening of rights for historically oppressed groups – women, children, various minorities – are about logic at all. They appear to me to speak to an increasing sense of the desirability of tolerance, social justice, connectedness, empathy, compassion, and understanding, applied to a wider and wider circle of sentient beings. None of those impulses seem primarily logical, although one can make a logical case for them.
Religious beliefs have often been and still are major factors in the advancement of the above. To posit otherwise means ignoring a vast historic record. That religious beliefs have also been instruments of the perpetuation of unfair societal norms does not negate that.
Interestingly, I hadn’t read this thread past the post if Polerius that I was quoting, so I hadn’t realized you all had quite accurately shown how I claim the SDMB views conservatives is exactly how you view them.
But to correct several of you, the definition of conservatism isn’t “refusal to change.”
One of the founders of conservatism as a distinct school of thought, at least in the Anglosphere, is Edmund Burke. Burke’s ideas grew out of the madness of the French Revolution, Burke recognized the follies of sweeping changes implemented with little debate or thought. The worst of the French Revolution show the worst excesses of liberalism (and of course some of the best aspects of the French Revolution show some of the greatest achievements of liberalism.) Burke felt that dramatic, society wide changes shouldn’t be done on the whim of whoever holds power, but should happen organically and over time. Burke, one of the very founders of conservatism, was never opposed to change. Instead he supported a process of organic and “natural” change, and viewed extreme liberalism as basically being “artificial” change. Artificial because it was the result of a government swept into power on whimsy making dramatic and sweeping policy changes with little rigorous debate or consideration of consequences.
Again, I’m not saying that’s what liberalism is today–just saying that is the “worst excess of liberalism.” In a sense perhaps even a perversion of liberalism into true “radicalism.” In that sense, reactionary movements that seek to restore the status quo ante should be viewed as a perversion of actual conservatism and not its standard bearer.
I think it’s always worth repeating that you can’t easily view the past through a modern lens. The GOP of Lincoln can’t easily be classified as conservative or liberal by modern standards. Yes, he freed the slaves. However Lincoln’s real position on slavery was “it’s evil but it needs to be controlled and limited and slowly ended.” That’s an inherently conservative position on the matter.
Lincoln explicitly wanted to avoid the sort of chaos that can ensue from trying sweeping changes like abolition of slavery. Of course, in the middle of the Civil War things were very different. Namely, everything Lincoln feared might happen if you tried to just free the slaves overnight was already ongoing–so there was no longer any point at all to not just do what he felt should be done long term in any case.
Another thing about the mid-19th century political parties, the Democrats were the “agrarian” party. Their support of agriculture and living an agrarian lifestyle aren’t really compatible with modern day liberalism but nor is it truly compatible with modern day conservatism. It’s really just an example of how much times have changed, some people life on working farms now but technology has made them such a small minority of people that “agrarianism” just isn’t really very politically relevant anymore. Both parties support farmers when you’re talking about representatives from farming states, but other than that it’s nothing like it once was.
The Lincoln GOP was very pro-trade, pro-manufacturing, and pro-commerce. In many ways that’s lockstep in line with modern day Republicans as well. Which also tends to suggest Lincoln wouldn’t fit neatly into either a liberal or a conservative “mold” in the year 2012.
To keep pounding in how difficult it is to view history through the modern lens:
Today, religiosity is equated to social conservatism. However, in say, the 1200s religious authorities were almost universally more socially liberal than secular authorities. Secular authorities in the middle ages rarely if ever promoted any form of prot-welfare or etc, and secular authorities were often fine to let peasants starve at the gates. Monasteries and Churches frequently provided food and shelter to people who needed it. (Now I won’t for one second pretend many high ranking church officials essentially were secular princes with all the ills implied.) Additionally, just as an example, in middle age England the death penalty was the punishment for hundreds of petty crimes. However, under the Church’s criminal code typically only serious offenses resulted in execution. Minor crimes like petty theft might just be punished by branding of the thumb or something of that nature. So many fugitives from justice would get to a church and ask for their crime to be judged by the religious laws. At the time, anyone who was able to do this would be punished by the church’s law and the secular law no longer applied to him.
So in fact, back then, people intentionally subjected themselves to religious law because it was far more compassionate in its punishments. (Later Kings with more power eventually ended this practice and relegated religious law to only govern the clergy and members of religious orders.)
Hell, for that matter Islam in the same period was extremely compassionate compared to almost any other thing going at that point in time. Islam at the time tolerate Christians and Jews far better than Christians tolerated Jews or Muslims. But mind up to that point in history it was unusual for conquerors to not forcefully convert people or massacre them wholesale, and by and large Muslims didn’t do that quite as much as was normal at the time.
You’re simultaneously missing something rather OBVIOUS- and making a very flawed assumption,
OBVIOUSLY, the way things are now (politically, socially, economically, culturally, every other way) resulted from all kinds of changes. Some of those changes were planned, some came about haphazardly. Some of those changes were radical and quick, some were gradual. Some were evident at the time they were happening, others sneaked up on people and were faits accomplis by the time anyone realized something important was happening.
ALL of those changes, it goes without saying, had opponents. People who OPPOSED the changes were on the losing side. Inevitably, if you oppose a movement that ends up winning, future peoples may look back on you and shake their heads at your wickedness or stupidity.
Martin Hyde, I don’t know what textbook you got those definitions from, but I can say that it was a suck-ass one. Those definitions are clearly constructed by someone who wishes to make conservatism seem more reasonable than either liberalism or than conservatism really is.
Liberals are just about experimenting to see what works? That sounds really like trial and error, and it sounds like liberals have no core values. If that were true, you’d see liberals advocating for positions across the spectrum, since it’s a matter of whatever works, right?
I admit that I do approach things very empirically myself, but it still does not seem like that definition stands up to much scrutiny.
I don’t think liberalism or conservatism really have core values. I think they are approaches to change. I’ve specifically noted and emphasized the worst excesses of liberalism because it helps to explain why men like Burke developed the political ideologies that they developed. I’ve never said that is “all that liberalism is.”
The problem to me, the moment you go beyond this and start saying things like “liberalism supports human rights” and “conservatism supports big business” you collapse into a definition quagmire. Mainly because I or probably you could name 50 positions in history that might fall into one definition of “liberalism” but which were widely considered “conservative” at the time, or view versa. Further, if you collapse it into the “quagmire of positions” in which the ideologies aren’t defined by more high-level process approaches but are instead defined by policy positions you become hyper-localized. Because one set of policies in one country might put you in the “liberal box” but in another country they put you in the “conservative box” and in some countries they might put you in the “radical” or “reactionary” box. A lot of these policy position definitions are also heavily Western-centric and don’t even equate as well to Eastern cultures.
I’m fine calling a Democrat and a Democrat and a Republican a Republican. Those are political parties and essentially exist to in part coalesce policy positions. But the problem with doing the sort of historical analysis that Polerius seems interested in with the “Americanized” definitions of liberal/conservative is you’re really just trying to compare modern day Democrat and Republican positions to positions in the past.
Just as an example. This simple About.com page tries to define conservatism as:
[ul]
[li]Limited role for Government[/li][li]Strong national defense[/li][li]Sanctity of marriage[/li][li]Pro-Life[/li][/ul]
Okay, I agree that if you’re teaching a High School kid what it means when a pundit says “liberal” or “conservative” policy breakdowns like that are probably your best bet. However higher level political analysis I think the usage of these words and policy definitions falls apart.
Was Edmund Burke a conservative? Was David Hume? Well, none of them supported a limited role for Government and in fact the early British conservatives were strongly Royalist. That’s anathema to say, modern “Tea Party” style conservatives. Burke was very pro-religion though, and believed in emphasizing traditional family values.
So Burke was a pro-strong artistocracy/monarchy guy, who supported religious values, but he also was big on civil rights for Catholics. It is very difficult to say if Burke and the political side he represented in that period in British history is conservative or liberal by modern definitions. Burke himself argued to a more process oriented definition of conservatism, and decried the usage of the term in his time (and he’d probably decry it even more in our time.) So Burke had a set of policy positions that don’t fit any easy mold, which is indicative of him having been a real thinking human and not an ideologue. However his beliefs about how the process of effecting his policy positions should be undertaken was unambiguously conservative.
Abortion of course wasn’t a political issue at all in 18th century England. (Just like “agrarianism” is not one in 21st century America.)
If a revolutionary movement succeeds, those who supported it will be held up as heroes while those who opposed it will be scoffed at or reviled. On the other hand, if a revolutionary movement fails, it will be forgotten. Almost nobody will remember, let alone lionize, the people who stopped that movement.
In THAT sense, it’s almost a truism to say “Conservatives are always wrong.” ONLY the movements that succeed are remembered.
To use one example, a century ago, almost EVERY progressive icon and institution was gung ho for eugenics. Conservatives fought that movement successfully. As a result, the eugenics movement is pretty much forgotten. Oh, a FEW conservative commentators still point out that leading leftists were heartless eugenicists, but they’re usually dismissed as cranks.
WHICHEVER side wins the day, on ANY issue, in the end, most people are going to get used to the way things are. Habit and inertia guide most people’s morals and opinions. If and when gay marriage becomes common and widespread, most people will eventually get used to the idea, and before long, the general attitude will be, “Why was this ever an issue?” Then again, if the eugenicists had prevailed, and retarded children were regularly being either sterilized or euthanized, most people would have gotten used to THAT, and would ask, “Why was this ever a big deal?”
Another point: we tend to use the terms “progressive” and “conservative” as if they had a fixed meaning. But many “liberal” causes are really pretty conservative at the core, and many “conservative” causes can result in radical change.
Is advocating expanded use of nuclear power progressive or conservative? Oh, I KNOW the common perception is that people on the Left oppose nuclear power and people on the Right endorse it, but that’s not what I’m getting at. In, say, 1950, it was wisely believed that nuclear energy was THE wave of the future! So, when hippies and greenies opposed it, weren’t they being… conservative?