Errr? This is Great Debates, not GQ.
It wasn’t progressives or Democrats who nominated and elected him, was it?
A desire to dissociate oneself from the fruits of conservatism and Republicanism, now that they’re apparent and mashed in everyone’s faces, is certainly understandable, but that desire is not compatible with a claim to believe in personal responsibility.
Conservatives are generally very pro-business. They believe in low corporate taxes, deregulation, copyright defense, weak unions, and government subsidies.
While I don’t think all of these are sound economic ideas, I don’t believe any of them are based on racism.
Racism isn’t the only type of bigotry. Classism is also bigotry, and deregulation, weak unions, low corporate taxes all harm the lower classes by weakening the social safety net.
Free Speech, when a certain minority football player criticized the government, the President (a supposed conservative) himself demanded that he be punished by his employer, and fuck all if the NFL owners didn’t do exactly what the government wanted. Seriously, if you want to protect the ability of people to criticize the government, tell your President to quit demanding punishments for people who criticize the government. Until that’s done, you don’t get to own this as a “conservative value”
Freedom of religion - conservative support of this is bigoted against the non-religious.
Taxation - I think you’re on more solid ground here. I don’t think stretching the concept of bigotry to Rich vs. Poor is useful.
2nd amendment, national defense and oil, I’d say are all bigotry free ideas.
Yes, but this was arguably an un-conservative thing done by Trump. Not everything Trump does is conservative; in fact, he is arguably the most un-conservative Republican there has been in a long while.
This would be like someone pointing to Barack Obama’s $600 billion defense budgets and saying, “What is so liberal and progressive about spending hundreds of billions of dollars on the military?” Well, not everything Obama did was liberal.
Please point out all of the conservative politicians that criticized that? Or that have criticized any of the “non-conservative” things Trump has done or said?
You are trying to let conservatives have it both ways. Is that personal responsibility? Like it or not Trump and conservatism are currently a venn diagram that looks like a circle until someone, or anyone, on that side opposes him.
Conservatism, like liberalism, needs to be operationalized and contextualized.
Steve King
First of all, Trump represents everyone in America, even those that didn’t vote for him or who actively oppose him. But what does that have to do with conservatism? Conservatism didn’t poof into existence when Trump took office, nor will it poof away when he is gone.
Second - What does responsibility have to do with the question in the OP? The question posed is regarding conservative values that aren’t based on bigotry. Instead of people who hold conservative views responding, we have several people who do not hold conservative views saying how bad Trump is and how bigoted conservatism is. That’s why I think it’s a poisoned well.
Still in office. An open white supremacist and he’s still in office.
How is that holding him responsible?
One of the first things listed in this thread as a conservative value was personal responsibility, and since then we’ve had several people denying that conservatism is responsible for Trump. Awfully convenient and goes exactly against the concept of personal responsibility as a value of conservatism. It’s not being responsible if you only take responsibility for the things you want to.
Even he doesn’t think so. Both he and the most vociferous of his supporters have been pretty open about who they consider a “real American” etc., and that does *not *include “everyone”.
That’s who fucking *elected *him, that’s what.
Given that it is not on display from any of the conservatives we have heard from, either here or elsewhere, apparently it has nothing to do with the question.
You’re equivocating on the word responsibility. Personal responsibility is not the same thing as responsibility for Trump or his policies. But here you go again, continuing to equate Trump with conservatism. If you can’t get past that then I’ll disregard the thread as another TDS bashing fest.
You consider lower corporate taxes is bigotry? And deregulation too? Well okay then. If this is the usage you’re employing I find the term meaningless.
- Do you consider personal responsibility a conservative value?
- Do you think conservatives are responsible for Trump?
If you answer yes and no, then how do you square that?
Yeah I don’t feel that strongly about that, but slashing the safety net is always the other side of the low taxes thing, and that does always harm the lower class at the benefit of the higher classes. But that’s not a hill I’m going to come close to dying on.
I answer yes and yes. But I also think you are responsible for Trump, at least as much as I am.
Voting for president is a binary choice, and if both candidates are not to your liking, but one is a demon in a human skin suit most people would go for the actual human. Doesn’t mean they agree with all or any of their policies or actions.
Personal responsibility in the context of conservatism has more to do with being responsible for the rewards and penalties of actions that are under your own control. It contrasts with luck, or deterministic views on actions. Here’s an article that talks about it.It’s not perfect, but it could be a primer. See nothing there has to do with Trump. An interesting discussion can be had about the balance between personal responsibility and how much is out of one’s control, and how conservative views tend to balance those things out. But no, it’s all Trump is the suxors all the way down. Like I said, poisoned well.
Let’s make it simple: Did *you *vote for Trump? Then *you *are personally responsible for the results. No more of this blame-deflection nonsense, please.
I’m a conservative and I didn’t vote for the buffoon. How am I responsible?
If you are still a conservative now, and your team has been and is currently enabling the buffoon 100%, and will continue to, then how are you not? You either stand with the actions of your team or you don’t. This is the “having it both ways” thing. Like it or not Trump is the leader of the conservative movement and if you are on that team you share responsibility for what the movement is doing under his leadership. How is this controversial?
I did everything in my power to stop him from being elected because I knew how this was going to go if he won. In no way am I responsible for his words or deeds. Your team embraced him, used him, and continues to use him and enable him, so now trying to claim that its not the teams fault is pretty ridiculous to say the least.