In other words, you formed your opinions in the ignorance of youth, and yet have the temerity to claim that as people grow older & wiser they will come to agree with your childhood opinions.
I agree with Martin Hyde. BG & SA are both wrong. There is no natural tendency rightward or leftward, no excuse for not doing our best to educate the next generation as best we can.
Before drugs there was booze, before “hippiedom” there were hoods, the breakup of the family unit was always there, just not out in the open, and government encroachment started the day the government did.
Every generation thinks the ones before and after wear “stupid clothes” and I don’t know what “patchouili” is other than insence or perfume, but that’s been around a while too.
In other words, everygeneration has their version of everything you hate, you just don’t approve of the next generation of it.
Hoods? Hoods? You think an overwhelming percentage of America’s teen and early twenties population were hoods prior to the hippie era? I’m not sure whether you’re referring to the Fonzie type of hood or the Chicago gangland era type, but having been there and of that age myself I can tell you that neither ever became more than a tiny percentage of the pre-hippie generation, let alone become so widespread as to define their generation. The idea is laughable.
With regard to families, yes some were breaking up. But it was strongly disapproved of at the time and couples were expected to try very hard to save their relationships before going the route of divorce. The overriding reason for this, of course, was for the sake of their children, who would be growing up in single parent homes otherwise. But with the advent of hippiedom and its associated nonsense, it became popular to adopt the attitude that people didn’t need “a piece of paper” to legitimize their (generally short-lived) relationships, and so young people by the hundreds of thousands if not millions began living together and having kids and then bailing on both each other and their children whenever the mood struck. And of course, the idea took root that the sanctity of marriage was little but establishment bullshit also, and that people should get get divorced willy-nilly as soon as the urge hit. “If it feels good, do it!” was the ridiculous motto of the time, and that sentiment was applied to destroy the cohesiveness of famly life just as it was used to promote drug use, promiscuity and other generally whimsical and irresponsible ways of life. The result is millions of kids raised in single family homes and doomed to lives of crime and deprivation because they received neither the guidance, discipline nor education they needed in order to get ahead in life.
As far as “stupid clothing” goes, I would defy you to point to a time in this country’s history when clothing and fashion was as ugly and idiotic as it was during the hippie era. And it was intended to be that way - a sartorial thumb in the eye of what was regarded at the time as “establishment” America. And yeah, patchouli had been around a while. So what? That doesn’t discount the fact that the use of it had become so widespread enough during the hippie era that it became one of the defining symbols of the time (it’s adoption being primarily to mask the odor of marijuana), and it doesn’t mean that my mention of it in that context is wrong. Same with government encroachment, which has increased tremendously over the last fifty years. What is it with people like you who seem to think that just because something may previously exist in relatively minor form, that discounts entirely criticism of the widespread adoption of it at a later time? You remind me of certain posters around here who, in response to my complaints about the current 25% STD infection rate among female high school students, point out that STDs existed centuries ago…or that high STD rates existed in NYC at the turn of the twentieth century…as if their mere previous existence, no matter how minimal in comparison, completely negates criticism of it on a larger scale at a later date.
And of course none of this addresses the fact that you completely missed the point of my post to begin with, which was to show that I was a conservative even during the hippie era. 
Nope. Not at all. It’s my opinion that some people are born with common sense, and some come to it at a later time in life. 
Educate, or indoctrinate?
The trouble with liberal educational indocrination - as we are beginning to see as the former counter-culture generation gains life and real world experience and its former conservative members become even more conservative - is that it can’t withstand the basic realities of life and loses its hold over its subjects the older they get and the more they learn about the way the world really works, which is why William F. Buckley said, as I quoted in the other thread: “Life is our secret weapon”.
Thomas Jefferson thought something quite similar to what you are imputing to me. But, I am not making any such grandiose claims in positing that the Tea Party movement might be generationally time-limited. I observe that it is based on a set of political-cultural attitudes present in many white Americans now old or middle-aged but conspicuously absent in those younger, and a set of attitudes I do not expect many of the latter to acquire as they age. It’s like white-supremacist racism – once an unquestionable norm in America, and not in the South alone, but now an attitude embraced only by an embittered minority mourning for a lost “way of life.”
Putting this in perspective: I contend that social conservatism very definitely is generationally time-limited, and I defy any Doper to make a colorable argument to the contrary. The cultural attitude that condemns gay marriage, etc., will largely die out in our lifetime, and almost certainly will have no later resurgence. It’s just a matter of society being taken over by people who have grown up after things have changed once and for all. The question is, how far is the Tea Party movement based on social-conservative attitudes of that kind, and how far is it based on what might be considered timeless, essentially American libertarian principles that can reasonably be expected to endure? Most Tea Partiers I’ve seen arguing on the Intertubes hold to the latter position. The visible protesters at the rallies give a . . . very different impression.
See post #16.
And, no, the point that This_Just_In made in post #7 doesn’t count. The attitude “Why can’t things stay like they were when I was young?!” might be timeless and ever-present in humanity – I recall an off-the-cuff theory by Robert Anton Wilson that humanity is naturally divided into “neophiles” and “neophobes” (stressing that the neophobes are not always the bad guys) – but the specific character of contemporary American social conservatism is based on a particular cultural complex of moral and religious attitudes which visibly are dying out at long last. Note again that the Social Conservative group in the Pew Political Typology is the most elderly of the nine groups identified. In fact, I doubt very much that 50 years from now, anyone will think of abortion as a moral issue or as a political issue. Not even Catholics. Not even bishops.
Not really. I was using you as a stereotypical example of someone who is old and grumpy, rather than of someone who became old and grumpy. 
The former is bang on, and the latter is a silly thing to point out. Everyone thinks their political views are right on a fundamental level; that’s why they hold them.
Going back to the former, Western civilization has always moved to the left over time. From monarchy to democracy, from mercantilism to self determination, and from wherever conservatives want to keep us to where liberals want us to go.
The pendulum swings back from time to time - the failure of communism, for example - but the clock itself is gradually falling to the left.
ETA: BG, I’ll have to look at that study more closely than I have time to right now, because it shows the opposite of what most of the other studies of the subject have.
On almost any other current “social issue”, I’d agree with you, but the support for the various sides of the abortion issue is staying remarkably constant with time. I doubt that we’ll see a resolution of that one way or the other any time this century.
Never mind the hippies. What about all those horrible beatniks?! :eek:
Don’t have time to go into it right now but that article looks like pretty weak sauce to me. And wrong sauce, at that.
Well, actually, I’m neither. It’s just that it suits your purposes to try to portray me that way because you think it’s marginalizing and because it’s easier than arguing about the issues. You know, like this…
SA: The trouble with liberalism is a., b., c., and because it caused d., e., f. 'n g.
RNATB: Bwahahaha…what an old fart!
What about 'em? They were mostly figures of ridicule…and rightly so.
I have linked to Haidt’s research on how the two sides of the spectrum use different foundations in their decision making.
http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html
That would seem to give the Democrats all the advantages of the comparison. They base their thinking on the things that actually make sense. (Going by the names given those things, that is – don’t have time just now to read the article to see if they mean something different than the names suggest.)
You might enjoy it. Haidt himself comes from the left side of the spectrum, and lectures Democrats that part of their challenge in swaying the undecided is understanding HOW people view the world. He doesn’t make it a measurement of one side is better than the other, but rather that people look at the world differently and you need to understand that if you are going to sway them to your cause.
Skim the info at some point, I would be interested in your take.
Please… every generation has their version of “these crazy kids today” and the fact that you were against them while you were that age makes no difference.
Every generation also has kids that agree with the last as well. Big deal. But you keep hating the “hippies”. We all need our common enemies as well.
“Life” does not make everyone “more conservative”.
As an outside observer, this is the political dynamic I see happening in the US:
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There is a group of about 20% of the country that is quite liberal and politically engaged. They are mostly young, they watch John Stewart and Stephen Colbert. They’re generally college educated.
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There is a group of about 20% of the country that is socially and culturally conservative. They oppose abortion, gay marriage, and are animated by cultural issues. This group leans towards small government fiscal conservatism, but they don’t feel strongly about it unless it impacts them. They were perfectly happy with the Bush Administration spending money like crazy, because it was tied to ‘values’.
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There’s a group of about 20% of the country that are fiscally conservative. They’re made up of libertarians, business-class conservatives and moderates who simply oppose big debts and deficits and high taxes.
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There’s 40% of the country that is not particularly political, but they have special interests. These are the ‘swing’ voters.
Now, all these groups are somewhat fluid, and there’s overlap between them, often because government benefits are spread across all those groups. Hence you get a ‘fiscal conservative’ incensed by the thought of losing some medicare coverage, and a liberal businessman who becomes conservative when his own business is targeted by liberal policy.
The Democrats and Republicans try to shape their messages so they can build coalitions out of these groups. The candidate who gets elected is the one who can span the most number of people across these groups. Unfortunately, the winning party always misreads what happened as a ‘mandate’ to move hard to the left or right, and their coalition cracks up.
The biggest Republican coalition happened under Reagan, who managed to collect up the fiscal and social conservatives and half of the swing voters (such as blue-collar working class folks). Part of the reason for that was in the 80’s there was another group - the ‘cold war hawks’ made up of both Democrats and Republicans, but who swung to the Republicans because the anti-vietnam protests , the liberal ‘peace movement’, and the campaign of George McGovern convinced them that Democrats couldn’t be trusted with natiional security.
Note that the ‘cold war hawks’ were truly bipartisan, and it’s my belief that they are what kept partisanship from getting too out of control during the cold war. The peace movement on the left drove security minded Democrats to cooperate with Republicans even though they were liberal on every other issue. The amount of overlap between left and right on security issues kept the two sides talking and cooperating. Once the cold war ended, that coalition vanished, leaving almost no overlap between then. So we got two decades of increasing polarization and partisanship.
Obama’s brilliance during the campaign was that he managed to be all things to all people. He gave speeches about the breakdown of the family and the importance of churches in the community. He talked about changing the tone in Washington to one of mutual respect. He talked about failing schools and was willing to blame the establishment, including the teacher’s unions. He supported vouchers. People thought that electing a black man to the White House would help heal the ever-gaping maw of bad race relations that constantly hangs over America.
All of this attracted the social conservatives enough to split off the more liberal members of that group.
Then he talked about ending the culture of greed and earmarks. He said he was going to go through the budget line by line and cut out unnecessary spending. He promised a net spending cut. That attracted some of the fiscal conservatives.
To his base, which he had all along, he made very vague promises - “We’re the change we’ve been waiting for.” “Hope and Change”. “A new era of responsibility.” “Fundamental reform of the country.” This stuff was basically code words. The left believed they knew the guy, that he was one of them, and so this rhetoric was seen as him saying, “Don’t worry, we’re going hard to the left when I’m elected, but understand I can’t really come out and say that and get elected.”
So come the election and the last two years, and Obama has completely lost all the fiscal and social conservatives, and dispirited his liberal base by not following through on any kind of fundamental ‘change’ - because as he started to attempt the ‘change’ he discovered that his mandate was really a very shaky coalition that evaporated as soon as real decisions had to be made. That happens to every president.
But none of this has anything to do with Republicans. They’ve been spectators. Their approval ratings are as low as the Democrats. So what’s happened is that this great mass of disaffected people has finally disconnected itself from the parties and have created a movement called the ‘Tea Party’. It holds together because the fiscal crisis facing the country, and the fiscal policies of the democrats, combined with Obama making a few gaffes that destroyed the illusion of his being a uniter, have created so much distaste among social conservatives that they’re willing to drop the social part and focus on fiscal priorities. That has allowed them to align with libertarians.
In addition, the big chunk of people in the middle who don’t really care about politics in normal times just want the pain to go away. They’re impatient. They’re not seeing things get better, so they’re connecting with the Tea Party even though they don’t care about the deep politics of it all. They’re not socially conservative or even necessarily fiscally conservative - if the economy was doing great they woudn’t care about deficits or big spending. But since it’s not, they’re still looking for ‘change’, and the Tea Party is about the only group in town.
What that means for the future is that the Tea Party is very fragile. If it gets enough fiscally conservative Republicans elected, the Republicans will take control of the movement, then they’ll start their usual infighting between the social conservatives and the fiscal conservatives. The swing voters are fickle anyway. If the Republicans take control of the house and/or Senate and the economy doesn’t improve, they’ll be seen as part of the problem and the swing voters will move back to the Democrats or look for another third party. If the economy improves, the temporary fiscal hawks will once again be more worried about getting on the gravy train, and the coalition will collapse.
And there’s a huge gaping contradiction right over the horizon - the entitlement crisis. It’s what’s really driving the fiscal collapse of the country. Medicare and Social Security are under water, and that will get worse every year. And it’s clear that Medicare is still the third rail of American politics - the Tea Party sure isn’t talking about it. But whoever governs is going to have to deal with it in one way or another. If you put Republicans in power, and they come out for cutting retirement benefits, they’ll lose half their coalition. If they don’t reform entitlement benefits, the deficits will continue to get worse and this time they’ll take the blame.
For all those reasons, I don’t see the Tea Party as a movement lasting through more than one or maybe two more election cycles. It’ll probably survive and even thrive until 2012, but after that all bets are off. But even more importantly, I don’t think the future is very bright for the Republicans unless they become very different from who they’ve been since the late 1980’s. Mind you, the future’s not bright for the Democrats either.
Maybe what you’re heading for is a very politically unstable time where neither party can hold power for more than an election cycle or two, because the fundamental problems are too big and the structural political problems in the parties will keep them from being able to do much about it.
So over enough time everyone will be “left?” What does that even mean? What do you mean when you say liberal? What do you mean when you Conservative? I think when you’re talking in a historical manner you need to be very, very specific about what you are saying.
Theodore Roosevelt (and others) argued that conservatism isn’t strictly ideological, it is functional. Meaning it is a methodology for implementing political decisions, not an ideology. Namely that it advocates change be arrived at slowly and gradually, after long deliberation and consensus.
Left means…what? More social welfare? Or a move to a command economy? On both fronts I’ve not seen any solid historical evidence that suggests society is moving in that direction. If anything, many countries that are moving slowly away from extreme welfare states. Command economies are by and large considered a failure by everyone. And they always will be, it’s simple fact that a centralized bureaucracy can’t make decisions as well as an entire society via the process of making individual choices over and over again every day.
Also, you call the move from “monarchy” to “self-determination” to be left?
That’s weird, I don’t view leftism as being strictly died to political systems. There could be a leftist absolute monarchy in which the monarch deemed the entire state bureaucracy implement leftist policies. If anything monarchy has a lot in come with extreme leftism at least as exhibited by Soviet style communism. In an absolute monarchy the monarch knows everything and knows best and tells you what to do, just like living in a Stalinist style communist dictatorship.
The tea party movement is definitely “intelligence” limited. Check the heroes. Palin? O’Donnell?
Really?
How about now?