What does "good conservatism" look like?

[Velocity]

We seem to be in a season of “examining ourselves” of late with many threads in ATMB. With **Bone’s **recent departure and also **TubaDiva’s **thread, I’ve had something on mind lately:
What does good conservatism look like, on this message board?

I generally hold conservative political views, although there are a few issues on which I am very liberal, such as prison/criminal-justice reform, taxes, gun control, etc. (but that’s a topic for another day.) We have had numerous polls done here before on the Dope that indicate a consistent split of roughly 80% liberals and 20% conservatives. As a conservative, I/we know that we’re in a minority here - and that’s okay, we are all fine with it - fact is, I think most of us relish it. Furthermore, the admins and mods here have always been very fair and evenhanded, so that isn’t a problem either.

In the past, numerous conservatives such as Starving Artist, adaher, ClothaHump, LinusK, WillFarnaby, Scumpup, etc. have been banned for breaking forum rules. Numerous conservatives have also been Pitted - HurricaneDitka, octopus, Shodan, Steophan - and, of course, I myself as well. Now, all of those bannings were justified, so I’m not saying “woe is us” or anything like that - not at all. But at the same time, most of the liberals here on this Dope have said that they ***do ***want a conservative presence to continue here, they just don’t like the ***current ***conservative presence. In other words, conservatism ought to stay, but needs to reform.

@wolfpup

Come back and be the intelligent conservative that is definitely an endangered species on this message board.

@ASL_v2.0

I know from experience on other boards that as more conservative posters leave, the threshold will eventually shift to where I’m the token conservative. And when that happens, I know it’s grueling. Before the snopes board collapsed, I nearly left it for good (and I did take a few months hiatus after the last presidential election) over that feeling of being, somehow, “the token conservative.”…And I’ve been the “raving liberal” on other forums (but I don’t think I’m in danger of becoming that here).

So what I am asking is, what does the 80% want from the 20%? What do you want us to change, or amend, or modify the way we go about our posting? I am not saying this as any sort of rhetorical question or “gotcha”, it is a completely sincere question. Shenanigans such as trollery, harassment, sock-puppetry, flaming/baiting or whatnot are obviously unacceptable - and plenty of liberals have been warned for such behavior as well, so it’s not like there’s a double standard. (I don’t think I have ever received a warning yet.) In addition, arguing with bad sources or no sources, or arguing with bigotry/racism, etc., isn’t a good way of going about things either.

But…conservatism, by its very nature, is fundamentally at odds with liberalism (after all, if conservatives agreed with liberals, they wouldn’t be conservatives.) The 20% of conservatives here will, by and large, espouse views that fly contrary to the majority opinion here on LGBT, abortion, same-sex marriage, taxes, social justice, feminism, Black Lives Matter, religious freedom, freedom of speech, healthcare reform, guns, affirmative action, and so forth.

As I understand it, the Dope’s gripe with conservatives has usually been about style rather than substance - that it is okay to hold conservative views, but that one needs to abide by forum rules, argue in good faith, provide sources, use logic, etc. If so, I totally agree - I think that’s the very essence of the Dope and its culture - be as conservative or liberal as you want, but follow the rules. But recently, it seems that some liberal Dopers object to conservatism’s substance itself, period - as alluded to in TubaDiva’s thread, there is this attitude by some of late, that if you disagree with them on topics like LGBT, feminism, or other social issues, or support Trump, you are a bad person, period, regardless of how civilly or calmly you may go about it. In other words, in their eyes, there can be no such thing as civil disagreement.

What does “intelligent conservatism” look like, as **wolfpup **mentioned above? What do you want us to change or do? Again, I’m completely serious. I want to hear what people have to say about this. Any feedback is welcome.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

The James Baldwin quote is central, I think:

@James Baldwin

We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.

To the extent that conservatism involves denying basic rights to someone, I am not there for that.

But I have conservative/libertarian friends who genuinely believe that a smaller government is better at protecting the rights of everyone, that cooperative voluntary associations are better at improving general welfare, and who muscularly oppose discrimination and dehumanization of all sorts. I strongly disagree with their approaches, but I can respect their beliefs nonetheless.

Bricker and Bone are two conservatives that I have a high level of respect for on these boards, even though I’ve disagreed repeatedly and loudly with both.

[GreysonCarlisle]

@Velocity

there is this attitude by some of late, that if you disagree with them on topics like LGBT, feminism, or other social issues, or support Trump, you are a bad person, period, regardless of how civilly or calmly you may go about it.

Kinda depends on what you mean by “disagree with them.”

If a conservative believes that gays, women, blacks, or the poor are worth less than straights, men, whites, or the rich, then that conservative is, in fact, a bad person. Civility doesn’t really matter. You can polish a rotten apple all you want, but it’s still rotten. As the saying goes, One bad apple spoils the bunch, so in this case a good conservative is one who shouts down the rotten apples.

If, on the other hand, a conservative holds to solutions for the problems faced by gays, women, blacks, and the poor that are different than the solutions I believe in, then we can talk like reasonable adults, as long as we can both support our ideas with actual facts. That’s a good conservative. We may each learn something or think of something new.

Anybody who supports Trump is supporting a bad person, period, and while they may not, themselves, be bad people, their judgment, values, and autonomy are questionable.

[Atamasama]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

But I have conservative/libertarian friends who genuinely believe that a smaller government is better at protecting the rights of everyone, that cooperative voluntary associations are better at improving general welfare, and who muscularly oppose discrimination and dehumanization of all sorts. I strongly disagree with their approaches, but I can respect their beliefs nonetheless.

I think that right there is the core of conservatism. The issue is that it often contains baggage attributed to conservatism but not essential to it. You don’t have to be against abortion rights, deny climate change, dismiss environmental concerns, oppose immigration, and so on even though the loudest conservative voices typically do. And when you find yourself in agreement with conservative values and seek other people and media that openly share those values, those voices push those ideas on you as well, to the extent where you doubt your conservatism or embrace those tangential beliefs.

I speak from experience as someone who grew up with conservative parents, listening to conservative media, and believing in conservative ideals. In time I found that a lot of the “baggage” was incompatible with my values and could no longer embrace that ideology.

Anyway, I’m not trying to talk about myself here, but just to support what you’re saying. There are legitimate philosophies from the right that aren’t just selfish or dehumanizing. Civil discussion is possible.

[Defensive_Indifference]

I’m a minor poster, but FWIW, I want conservatives to bring data – verifiable facts – to back up their claims. I want them to inhabit the reality of climate change and systemic racism, not the fantasy world of Pizzagate and Ukrainian Crowdstrike servers. But conservative leaders have been claiming for 50 years that academia and the media are not trustworthy. So we’re in a bit of a pickle, ain’t we?

[kopek]

Calmness? IRL I spend most of my hours around conservatives; some of whom would make the usual crew here look like members of the Kennedy family. The difference is that they don’t reach the excitement level or defensiveness levels some of our crowd do. They are a minority and far from silent about it but they also tend to be somewhat civil. At least to me, that makes them good or at least worthwhile to talk with.

[Miller]

@Velocity

In the past, numerous conservatives such as … **adaher **… etc. have been banned for breaking forum rules.

adaher hasn’t been banned.

[RTFirefly]

It’s pretty obvious to me that American conservatism has changed a great deal just over the life of this board. Even though, by the 1990s, it had already adopted many of today’s tactics, there was still what certainly appeared to be a consistent set of political principles served by those abhorrent tactics. And of course we largely agreed on the facts.

Now we’re in the era of Crowdstrike Conservatism[sup]tm[/sup] where, for no reason other than partisan conflict, Republican Senators spout conspiracy theories originating from Russian intelligence that have been thoroughly debunked by U.S. intelligence, and where yesterday’s principles (support the military!) are abandoned if they get in the way of owning the libs.

To the (overwhelming) extent that conservatism has become synonymous with Trumpism, it’s not intellectually defensible anymore. It’s been headed this way for a while - conservative disbelief in climate change, for instance, didn’t happen overnight - but we’ve reached a point where any inconvenient facts are “fake news” and even the most authoritative government sources are brushed off as the “deep state” which is regarded as a fifth column. It’s a conservatism that believes it IS entitled to its own facts.

Out in the larger world where propaganda has power, we’re still a pretty closely divided country. But we are the Dope, and bullshit can only take you so far here. So Bone’s farewell plaint that the balance between conservative and liberal posters on the Dope has come to overwhelmingly favor the latter struck me as being oblivious to what’s happened to conservatism over the life of the board, but particularly during the past four years. It’s just not possible to intellectually defend the indefensible very well, and while there may be a few areas of left-right debate that haven’t been transformed by the era of the Mango Mussolini, it’s really just a few.

IOW, I just don’t think there’s a good answer to this. There would need to be a new conservatism that repudiated Trumpism and all that led up to it, but there’s hardly anywhere for such a movement to exist anymore where it could lay out a coherent set of principles for conservative Dopers to sign on to. But that’s really what would be necessary.

[Derleth]

We need to separate Conservatism from GOPism, and by GOPism I mean support of the modern GOP.

Conservatism is a political ideology. GOPism is partisanship in favor of an organization run by criminals.

GOPism has been GOPism since the Southern Strategy of Richard Nixon and the origins of the Religious Right in the defense of tax breaks for segregation academies, along with allied idiocies such as the Lost Cause Mythology of the Civil War, which purely exists to deny the fact the CSA started the Civil War to preserve slavery. None of those things are Conservative. Conservatism ought to be morally opposed to those things. It is only yoked to them in this country through accidents of history. Very old history, sure, but still accidents of history.

Modern GOPism, which is nothing more than the defense of Donald Trump and his criminal enterprise, has no coherent ideology beyond “FUCK YOU, LIBTARDS!” and doesn’t even have the rudiments of what a Presidential administration needs to have, such as a foreign policy, as the President has defined such things as being whatever his blackmailers find convenient. It’s indefensible and the people who are on its side don’t even try, preferring instead to use logical fallacies (tu quoque, the “BU BU BU BUT YOU DO BAD THINGS TOO!” of the duller children on the playground) and outright lies and, often, simple insults, when they don’t dodge questions and raise irrelevant emotional appeals.

This shouldn’t need to be said, but an ideology requires logical arguments in its favor, not whining, lies, and threats of force.

Conservatism, on the other hand, is a non-teleological ideology favoring measured progress which shows respect for existing cultural institutions.

Taking that one at a time:

[ul]
[li]Non-teleological means it doesn’t purport to have a set goal in mind. Contrast this with Marxism or, on the other side, Dominionism, both of which are built on plans to achieve a definite paradise, be it a Dictatorship of the Proletariat or Theocratic Domination of all levels of government.[/li][li]Measured progress as in not going backwards, and not stagnating, but being willing to make change.[/li][li]Respect for existing cultural institutions meaning that it isn’t looking to destroy what exists, but to, at most, reform it, and allow people to keep what currently works.[/li][/ul]

That is a principled Conservatism.

[kaylasdad99]

What Derleth said.

What drives me nuts is when people lay an unchallenged claim to the title of “conservative,” when what they really espouse are reactionary outlooks/worldviews. And especially when their views are egregiously radical (which, I feel depressed to have to point out, is the EXACT OPPOSITE of conservative). This describes at least half of the people name-checked in the OP.

[Budget_Player_Cadet]

@Velocity

But recently, it seems that some liberal Dopers object to conservatism’s substance itself, period - as alluded to in TubaDiva’s thread, there is this attitude by some of late, that if you disagree with them on topics like LGBT, feminism, or other social issues, or support Trump, you are a bad person, period, regardless of how civilly or calmly you may go about it. In other words, in their eyes, there can be no such thing as civil disagreement.

When the disagreement is about my rights, it is not civil. Full stop. If you oppose LGBT rights, you’re a bad person. There is no amount of “civility” that will make demands for gay people to go back into the closet or trans people to live as their birth gender not a horribly bigoted, offensive statement.

If you support Trump… I mean, what do you expect? To me, this reads a lot like saying, “Those darn libs, they think that if you support Augusto Pinochet, you must be a bad person!” Yes! If you support a president who lies the way most of us breathe, takes immigration advice from neo-nazis, runs concentration camps with the explicit goal of cruelty as deterrent for migrants and asylum-seekers, constantly uses the government to enrich himself… You are a bad person. This isn’t hard. If I told you I enjoy shoving children in cages and torturing them with hot pokers, you’d be right to call me a goddamn fucking monster even if that was the favorite pastime of a significant portion of the country. :mad:

But that’s not even necessarily the problem.

To the degree that there are reasonable debates to be had on issues, they are, more often than not, had. We’ve had spirited debates about tax policy, the effects of various issues, and to the degree that it is debatable, those usually aren’t huge wastes of time. I may think your ideology is noxious and dangerous, but I’ll put that aside if there’s a real argument on the table, and debate it on its merit.

Y’know what the problem is?

This. This is the problem.

@HurricaneDitka

I’m aware of some of the reports of conditions in the “camps”. I don’t generally find those sources terribly credible. I think they, like you, have an agenda they’re propagandizing for and pushing, and they’ll pick a couple of anecdotes and try to pretend / imply that those exceptions represent conditions generally.

This is the problem.

@octopus

@running_coach

Was Heather Heyer wearing a mask?

Mob violence can result in serious injuries or death. I don’t advocate for political violence. Unlike many of you. I believe in the rule of law and democratic engagement following orderly and established procedures not mob rule. Unlike many of you.

This is the problem.

@HurricaneDitka

Probably not. Dr. Blasey Ford and her allies exposed Justice Kavanaugh’s family to death threats because they thought it might help their side in a political squabble. I don’t recall many Democrats saying that was “a pretty shitty thing to do”, so the complaint now rings hollow to me. Sorry.

This is the problem.

@Little_Nemo

Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) was being interviewed by Chris Wallace on Fox News.

Wallace: “Senator Kennedy, who do you believe was responsible for hacking the DNC and Clinton campaign computers - their emails? Was it Russia or Ukraine?”

Kennedy: “I don’t know. Nor do you. Nor do any of us.”

Wallace: “Let me just interrupt to say that the entire intelligence community says it was Russia.”

Kennedy: “Right, but it could also be Ukraine. I’m not saying that I know one way or the other.”

Here you have a top Republican seemingly proud of his ignorance. Sure, you can - with enough effort - put facts into his head. But you will never be able to force him to learn anything from those facts.

This is the problem.

@Vox

Tribal epistemology happens when tribal interests subsume transpartisan epistemological principles, like standards of evidence, internal coherence, and defeasibility. “Good for our tribe” becomes the primary determinant of what is true; “part of our tribe” becomes the primary determinant of who to trust.

A circular logic, which has become quite familiar in the impeachment affair, emerges: Anyone who says anything contrary to the tribe marks themselves as an enemy of the tribe (cough deep state cough); enemies of the tribe cannot be trusted, so their testimony or evidence can be ignored. Thus, by definition, nothing that questions the tribal narrative can be trusted.

A decades-long effort on the right has resulted in a parallel set of institutions meant to encourage tribal epistemology. They mimic the form of mainstream media, think tanks, and the academy, but without the restraint of transpartisan principles. They are designed to advance the interests of the right, to tell stories and produce facts that support the tribe. That is the ultimate goal; the rhetoric and formalisms of critical thinking are retrofit around it.

As the republican position becomes increasingly unhinged and disjointed from reality, the things republicans need to say become more and more insane, and you end up with posts like the above. Conservatives who feel the need to play stupid games around an activist murdered by neo-nazis. Conservatives who respond to well-documented abuse by saying “fake news”. Conservatives who, to bring up the latest kerfluffle in ATMB, accuse someone who came forward about rape allegations of doing it for political points.

Apart from all of these things being viscerally disgusting and incredibly immoral (seriously, blaming an activist protesting neo-nazis for being in a “politically charged environment” when she gets murdered, that’s pretty fucked up!), they make discussion virtually impossible. How should we have discourse, then, if one side gets to basically make up the facts as they see fit? If they have as much dedication to being honest in debate as their president does, but we also cannot call them liars? If their views are not worthy of debate, but rather of mockery, scorn, and shunning? That’s kind of where we’re at with quite a few people - and the only reason we’re not there with more is because this is the kind of person who bans the guy who posts nothing but racist Trump memes.

What does “intelligent conservatism” look like, as **wolfpup **mentioned above? What do you want us to change or do? Again, I’m completely serious. I want to hear what people have to say about this. Any feedback is welcome.

Let’s try a slightly different question. What does an intelligent Trump supporter look like? I don’t have an answer for that, to be perfectly honest.

[Defensive_Indifference]

Thanks for that Vox piece,** Budget Player Cadet**. That was really powerful.

[Budget_Player_Cadet]

@Defensive_Indifference

Thanks for that Vox piece,** Budget Player Cadet**. That was really powerful.

It’s the world we live in.

[spoiler]I realize this is off topic from the thread, but boy did that particular quote ever get some great confirmation recently.

Jeanine Pirro Calls Trump Inaugural Donor Sondland A 'Deep State Bureaucrat'

But speaking on her show Justice with Judge Jeanine on Saturday, Pirro claimed that Sondland, who was appointed to the ambassador role by President Donald Trump, is a “deep state bureaucrat.”

Yeah - the guy Trump appointed a year ago after a massive donation to Trump’s campaign is a member of the “deep state”. And some people take this seriously!

[/spoiler]

[ftg]

I don’t mind honest, reality-based viewpoints different from my own.

But the lies and denials of basic facts is maddening. All too many Conservatives have no respect for the truth.

I don’t mind quality arguments put forth with respectable reasoning.

But the horrible methods to put forth claims are disgusting. The methods are all over the place: Ad Hominem, assuming the conclusion, proof by anecdote and hundreds of other logical fallacies and such. All too many Conservatives have no respect for reasoning.

And anything, absolutely anything that results in discrimination of an individual to to real or perceived notions about the group they belong to even if there is no reason to believe that this particular person meets this notion is beyond vile. All too many Conservatives not only do not condemn such actions but actively encourage it.

I am not saying that all Conservatives have these faults nor that no non-Conservative doesn’t have them. But at least most Liberals acknowledge problems and respond.

E.g., Al Franken was accused of some inappropriate behavior. He was decried by people in his own party. He resigned. Trump has been accused of far, far worse things. His party praises him and he is still in office.

If you want to be a good Conservative, rejecting Trump and all his evils is a must.

[BeepKillBeep]

A lot of what I would say has already covered. I think there’s plenty of room for debate on a number of policy issues, and the conservative side can have some fair, factual points on these issues. Although I’ve drifted to the left a little bit over time, for a Canadian, I’m still somewhat conservative, and I present my views on Facebook with my much more leftist friends all the time on a variety of issues such as the following. What should be the tax rate? How big should be the social safety net? What is a good minimum wage (if any at all)? How do we balance addressing climate change and the economy? How much immigration is the right amount? What should be done about illegal immigration? How can illegal immigration best be addressed? Etc. Note, of course, my slightly Canadian conservative view would be considered pretty left-leaning to an American reader.

The problem is that the right-wing has gone completely off the rails when it comes to facts. The stuff that comes out of right-wing media is madness, and it shows up here. Also, and I hope any Republicans supporter are really reading and understanding this, I’m about as non-partisan is you can get from the point-of-view of American politics. I couldn’t give a flying fig about Democrats and Republicans, and I’m telling you the Republican party has gone insane, and only YOU can fix it because they are certainly not going to listen to Democrats and their supporters. So, to answer the OP, to be a “good” conservative, you need to argue from a factual, well-reasoned position.

[JRDelirious]

I will refer to Derleth’s and kaylasdad99’s posts and endorse them.

[FlikTheBlue]

Since the OP asked specifically about this board, I think it’s not helpful to bring in Trump or other GOP politicians, unless they post here on the board. The discussions that frustrate me tend to be the ones about why liberals don’t understand the conservative mindset. I think it would be helpful, for the posters on both sides of such discussions, to interact more calmly. IMHO liberal posters should refrain from immediately disagreeing, and the conservative posters should at least attempt a thorough explanation with the expectation that they will be asked to elaborate on areas of misunderstanding or disagreement rather than attacked. As a liberal, I do find myself not understanding (at least on an emotional level) what I think of as the conservative mindset. I think if the conservatives who post here would help us liberals understand where they are coming from, that would be helpful, and as liberals it would be helpful if we listened rather than started attacking right away.

[bump]

@FlikTheBlue

Since the OP asked specifically about this board, I think it’s not helpful to bring in Trump or other GOP politicians, unless they post here on the board. The discussions that frustrate me tend to be the ones about why liberals don’t understand the conservative mindset. I think it would be helpful, for the posters on both sides of such discussions, to interact more calmly. IMHO liberal posters should refrain from immediately disagreeing, and the conservative posters should at least attempt a thorough explanation with the expectation that they will be asked to elaborate on areas of misunderstanding or disagreement rather than attacked. As a liberal, I do find myself not understanding (at least on an emotional level) what I think of as the conservative mindset. I think if the conservatives who post here would help us liberals understand where they are coming from, that would be helpful, and as liberals it would be helpful if we listened rather than started attacking right away.

I think it’s helpful to bring Trump and the present-day GOP into it, if only to contrast what they say/believe/do with actual conservatism.

For example, most liberals would look at the presence of a relatively small (compared to the national population) of uninsured people and/or bad outcomes and decide that it means that we absolutely must have dramatic change, ideally some sort of UHC, in order to provide that service for those who don’t have it.

Real conservatives would view it a little differently- they’d contend that on the whole, the current system works for the majority of the population, but needs revision/regulation to make it better serve the population, instead of being thrown out wholesale and replaced entirely. The ACA/Obamacare was just this sort of legislation when enacted by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts.

Meanwhile, Trump and the present-day GOP look at the current system, notice that the underserved people tend to be minorities and/or poor, and decide that they don’t want to help them out of sheer hatefulness and spite, and want to walk back existing legislation.

That’s what I’m talking about when I say that it’s worthwhile to bring the current GOP and/or Trump into it. They’re a radioactive mix of hatefulness, scientific ignorance, racism and reactionary ideas all rolled into one glowing turd.

[RTFirefly]

@JRDelirious

I will refer to Derleth’s and kaylasdad99’s posts and endorse them.

I disagree.

Like it or not, any -ism is defined, not by some abstract set of principles, but by the people who identify with that -ism.

For instance, no matter what somebody at Christianity Today might say, evangelicalism isn’t defined by the Bebbington Quadrilateral but by the words and actions of those who identify as evangelicals.

And it’s the same with conservatism. The people who identify as conservatives - they’re what conservatism is. Maybe at some point in the distant past, the people who identified as conservatives had a core set of beliefs that matched up fairly closely with the bullet points in Derleth’s post. But the conservatism that actual people have been breathing life into for many decades now, that’s the living thing, and it doesn’t resemble the textbook definition much at all.

I suppose one could say that the definition represents true conservatism, and those millions of people are the heretics. But when the church is almost entirely made up of heretics, then heresy has become the orthodoxy.

[HurricaneDitka]

The OP wrote:

@Velocity

… As I understand it, the Dope’s gripe with conservatives has usually been about style rather than substance - that it is okay to hold conservative views…

It sounds like some of you are saying that it’s not really okay, that supporting President Trump or the current elected Republicans is the issue, not the way people are posting about that support.