A Facebook friend is a tried-and-true conservative to the bone. He supports a strong military defense; he believes that police in this country need to have more military hardware, not less; he believes that Ed Snowden is a traitor and that the NSA is simply protecting the country from Teh Towelheaded Terrorists; that God needs to be brought back into our public schools; yada yada yada.
EXCEPT: He absolutely, positively, does not give one flying shit about what happens in the privacy of your own home. Legalize pot? Fuck that, legalize all drugs and get the police into policing actual crimes. Gay marriage? Whose business is it if Teh Gays want to be as miserable as the rest of us! Obscenity on TV? The TV has an “Off” button, learn to use it!
The knee-jerk reaction is to say he’s a libertarian, but I can tell you confidently that libertarians don’t support the expanding militarized police state, NSA surveillance, or public education in general, let alone introducing religion into public education.
Is there a term that would describe such a Conservative? Is this the textbook definition of a Neocon?
I don’t think he’s a neocon, which would put him with the likes of Bill Kristol. Frankly, I don’t think there is a term for someone like that. Racist-Hawkish-libertarian maybe…
Confusing only if you assume, as the extreme polarization of politics would have it, that political leaning has only one axis. Political orientation makes absolutely no sense unless you divide it at least into social and economic axes, and will make more sense if you add a third axis - call it “civic” or “governmental.”
The OP’s position is quite conservative on the civic axis, quite liberal on the social axis. No data on the economic one.
In the UK the Labour (left wing) party generally is seen as soft on things like immigration. Their main support is from the working classes and especially from those employed directly or indirectly by the government. That is their wages come from taxes.
The same people would, by a large majority, put up a big fence at all the channel crossings and at all international airports to keep immigrants out. They also complain about taxes as bitterly as the rest of us.
Although I agree with the multi-dimensional need for political axes, I’ll wait to disagree with your specific analysis until this thread gets moved out of GQ, which it almost certainly will at some point.
I’d say there’s far too little information to classify, as you’ve not given any of his views on, arguably, the most important area: government intervention in the economy; that is matters like regulation, government-supported healthcare or worker rights, free trade, tax policies, etc.
The Pew Typology is a start to classifying American voters, but it would be good if there were better raw data public; perhaps one could do PCA and develop the Eigenvoters!
He’s not really conservative in that he actually wants radical change from the status quo. Reactionary sounds more appropriate.
What he is … is all over the map. He wants total control of the things he cares about and total freedom of the things he doesn’t. For his personal list of "cares about"s.
Historically the Right in the US did not have nearly the social conservatism it does today. Since the 80s roughly, the Southern wing, sometimes derided as the Southern-fried wing, of the party has been in the ascendant while the Big Business and Foreign Affairs wings have lost clout. At least within the noisy public debate; what goes on behind closed doors seems to be a different balance of power.
Secular neocon, reminds me of William Knowland and Barry Goldwater (not sure how the latter would have stood on civil liberty issues like NSA however) in the past and a good chunk of modern conservative intelligentsia currently-ie people like Niall Ferguson.
I would describe him as normal human being: conservative on some issues, liberal on some issues, apathetic on some issues.
Few liberals in the real world conform to the conservatives’ stereotype of the hippie communist.
Few conservatives in the real world conform to the liberals’ stereotype.
True…but there are some areas of the map that are more densely populated than others. There are “enclaves” – specific zones that are recognizably labeled. If you say you’re a “Hillary Clinton Liberal” or a “Jeb Bush Conservative,” it’s pretty well understood. There are lots of people who are somewhere inside these large, and admittedly fuzzy, sets.
It’s kind of strange to see someone with a “Michigan” position – occupying two distant zones on the map. Not unheard of, by any means. Rand Paul is definitely an example of someone who bridges such areas.
The guy in the OP sounds a little like Rand Paul’s antimatter opposite: he favors government intrusion where Paul opposes it…and opposes it where Paul favors it!
No offense, but I think you are taking the descriptions of conservatives as they are described on the SDMB with too small a grain of salt. I don’t think your friend is particularly unusual.
Despite what some would have you believe, the hive mind in the GOP does tolerate dissent.
I work in a place where the great majority of people are self-described conservatives. I often agree with them on many if not most issues (guns, economics, foreign affairs). Very few of them consider me a conservative. Most consider me liberal. Often, this is because of differing opinions on social issues. I have sometimes heard a note of feeling betrayed from people who had assumed that since we agreed on some issues, we would agree on everything.
I also have lots of liberal friends. I disagree with them on a lot more issues than I do with my conservative colleagues (basically, everything but social issues and religion). But they are less likely to consider me a conservative. They often call me libertarian, or moderate.
IMO, there is more of a “stand together” mentality among conservatives. The modern conservative movement contained several factions (the religious, hawks, laissez-faire capitalists) which were primarily united by their opposition to communism. Although the fall of the Soviets has exposed these divisions, most people alive today who consider themselves conservative grew up believing conservatism was single ideology. Liberal and progressive movements (organized labor, race reformers, gay rights, etc.) have less history of being unified ideologically.
I see no contradiction between being opposed to, say, most gun control measures and being an atheist, but people at work are often amazed when they find that out about me.