I don’t follow. Are you saying conservative is a binary true or false with no degrees? As in, there’s no such thing as moderately conservative or slightly conservative? If there are gradients, then extreme would simply be a descriptor for the end of the scale that signifies most conservative.
So essentially it’s a matter of having no idea how NPR/PBS/CPB work.
I’ll concede that it’s fuzzy, inasmuch as there is no “scale” that consists of only conservative positions/viewpoints/outlooks; and when extremism comes into the picture, it can no longer be legitimately described as conservative. I’ll further concede that this undermines my point as a prescriptivist, but I’m sticking to my assertion.
There are policies that are adopted by people that label themselves as conservative. Some of those advocate those policies in a moderate way, and some of them demand them in an extreme way.
I get why old school conservatives may not appreciate the co-opting of the term, but it is the Republican party that those objections should be directed towards.
Oh, believe me, I do (as I object to the continued existence of the Republican Party itself). But I also don’t think that the rest of us should just capitulate and let the radical reactionaries co-opt the term without resistance.
Great article on the Taibbi nonsense, demonstrating how dishonest and bad a journalist Taibbi is, and the total bullshit his “Twitter files” were.
I thought conservative meant wanting to maintain the status quo, or even going back to the previous status quo. Is that not correct?
I could envision a racist conservative wanting to go back to the Jim Crow era, compared to an extreme conservative wanting to go all the way back to slavery. Am I not understanding correctly?
I’ll agree it’s a good article, but it’s also rather frustrating.
It’s a lot of words that tell me what I already know, and it’s a lot of words that those who don’t know won’t read.
The damage from the “twitter files” is done, and won’t be fixed by pointing out that those pushing them were a bunch of liars.
I don’t know about not understanding correctly, but my understanding is that “wanting to go back to [a] previous status quo” is where conservative goes away and reactionary enters the picture. I assign them to separate sets. The racists you envision would both be reactionaries.
ETA: And “conservative” doesn’t have to mean demanding to preserve a current status quo. It can encompass a preference for moving forward carefully, in an effort to avoid unforeseen adverse consequences.
Wow. Mehdi eviscerated him, surgically and professionally. Like all communication in our current world, not sure how many minds it will change, but good on Mehdi for fighting the good journalistic fight.
Of course they are. Twitter is now a scammers dream. Open season for harvesting suckers.
Let’s say I’m a middle-aged conservative, and all my life I have been against gay marriage. Then it became legal in the 2000s. My views haven’t changed, I’m still against gay marriage. Would you characterize my consistent lifelong view as having changed from conservative to reactionary?
If yes, fair enough. I would agree to disagree with that but would have a better understanding of what you mean.
(And just for the record, I personally am very much pro gay marriage.)
EDIT: Also if the answer is yes, it occurs to me that if someone now tries to overturn gay marriage, you would characterize those who are pro-gay marriage as the conservatives, and the ones against as reactionaries.
Depends. Are you a) expending time/energy/funds to return to a state of no marriage licenses for same-sex couples, or b) just bitching impotently about it?
If a), I’m calling you reactionary. If b), you may well just be a conservative (and a crotchety asshole one, at that).
As I mentioned above, it’s fuzzy. But, at least on a case-by-case basis, I’m still going to assign a progressive descriptor to any efforts that oppose the reactionary efforts. Personal/individual rights and freedoms, all else being equal, ratchet toward expansion, not contraction.
What if someone tries to overturn Dobbs so that Roe would once again be the law of the land? Reactionary? Conservative?
No. But perhaps you don’t see a difference between overturning incremental progress and overturning a reactionary ruling that instantly destroyed 50 years of progress and set us back to pre-1973.
50 years of being egregiously wrong, that is?
I dearly hope we spend at least fifty more posts debating what “conservative” means, never mind what we all understand it to have meant in context, because that’s super interesting!
If it was so “egregiously wrong”, why did none of the Supreme Court nominees from the lunatic right say so during their confirmation hearings? Why did they instead lie and say or imply that Roe v Wade was “settled law”? Most of the “conservatives” on the court are in fact a bunch of lying ideologues who have as little concern for actual jurisprudence as they have for womens’ fundamental rights and 50 years of *stare decisis".
I’m done with this bickering. This thread is supposed to be about Elmo.
Elmo, in his wisdom, has determined that putting a special badge on certain accounts will help prove that people really are who they say they are.
I can’t believe nobody thought of this before now! 
Agile counsel.
Alternatively: he is setting up an exit strategy, to wit, “I would have reinvented Twitter but then all these government compliance meddlers got in the way, (shrug emoji).”