# What does "good conservatism" look like? **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [November 25, 2019, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-good-conservatism-look-like/843985 "2019-11-25T21:39:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-good-conservatism-look-like/843985/121 "2019-12-04T03:53:12Z")
**DSeid** , This will probably make you cringe, and almost certainly tarnish your leftist credentials, but I agree with your last few posts, and I think you’re going to find it more than a little frustrating trying to convince them that their ‘then you support murder and torture’ angle is bad posting / wrong / unhelpful to reasonable discussion. ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-good-conservatism-look-like/843985/122 "2019-12-04T04:25:15Z")
People can read an article like this… > **[Politically fueled cop hatred has taken another innocent officer’s life](https://nypost.com/2017/07/06/politically-fueled-cop-hatred-has-taken-another-innocent-officers-life/)** > > Politically fueled cop hatred has taken another victim. Convicted felon Alexander Bonds, who had already assaulted an officer with brass knuckles, wrote on Facebook last September, “Police is fR… …and be opposed to BLM, and that has nothing to do with wanting Black people tortured and killed. I personally read that article and don’t see a direct line between BLM and that violence. I think blaming the movement is wrong and I doubt that more than a tiny portion of people in the movement truly hate all cops. But regardless, it does at times come across as spreading the narrative that cops in general are bad, or at least is portrayed that way by its detractors. Stating that any opposition to BLM is literally wanting the death of Black people is as simplistic and wrong as saying anyone who is pro choice is in favor of the wanton murder of babies. No, that’s not true, and if you insist it’s true then you come across as ill-informed and incapable of understanding even simple nuance. I personally believe that statistics show huge racial disparities in the way people of color are treated by law enforcement, and disparities in the way that minority victims of bad policing are treated by the media and the public. I think there is a solid purpose for the movement borne out by facts and that it’s shining a light on problems in society that need to be fixed, so I am sympathetic to the movement. But declaring that anyone who opposes it is, well, evil, is a childish statement. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-good-conservatism-look-like/843985/123 "2019-12-04T04:29:15Z")
> [@snfaulkner](#): > > That’s assuming he gives a single shit about any of the other points. I was giving him the benefit of the doubt. ---
**Author:** ![snfaulkner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snfaulkner/32/433_2.png) [@snfaulkner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snfaulkner)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-good-conservatism-look-like/843985/124 "2019-12-04T04:44:40Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > I was giving him the benefit of the doubt. Fair enough. Let’s remove the doubt. Ditka, in order to fully answer your inquiry on how to answer if you support BLM, how do you feel about Racial Injustice Police Brutality Criminal Justice Reform Black Immigration Economic Injustice LGBTQIA+ and Human Rights Environmental Conditions Voting Rights & Suppression Healthcare Government Corruption Education? Please rate them in # of shits given for each compared to the number of shits you give for commen sense gun control. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-good-conservatism-look-like/843985/125 "2019-12-04T04:52:02Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > What are people doing when they defend the cops when this happens, argue against their being held accountable, and come up with reasons that the shooting must have been justified? They are justifying murder by cops. 1. Quite the moving of the goalposts from saying that “… ‘We disagree on Black Lives Matter’ actually means that they’re in favor of things like a police officer strangling a man to death during an arrest …” to this statement. 2. BUT even that - no. What one sees and what one believes is primed by what one’s own personal past experiences are. Many of the individual episodes have at the times been left to who one believes. For those whose pre-existing default is that cops are generally good people working a dangerous job having to make life and death decisions at the moment, a bias to believe the cop version exists. For those whose lived experience is cops functioning according to racial bias and abusing their power, a bias to disbelieve the cop exists. (And of course both pre-existing biases have some reality basis.) Sometimes even after the evidence is clear that a specific instance is a cold blooded murder, it is hard for people to release the conception they are anchored to. They are very very wrong to do that, but I doubt even many of them are actually pro-cops murdering Blacks, even as they deny the clear evidence of such having occurred. > [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > **DSeid** , > > This will probably make you cringe, and almost certainly tarnish your leftist credentials, but I agree with your last few posts, and I think you’re going to find it more than a little frustrating trying to convince them that their ‘then you support murder and torture’ angle is bad posting / wrong / unhelpful to reasonable discussion. To some degree I am just venting. To no degree do I expect to convince the bad posters to alter their ways. But I do think that there are others here. And no it does not make me cringe. I disagree with you on almost everything. I suspect our values have very little overlap. But I appreciate that in this thread at least you are making an apparent effort to post well and actually explain what your values are and how they lead you to the conclusions you have. As far as BLM I understand you to hold gun rights as more important than the other issues. Do you recognize that Blacks are profiled by police and that biases that police have, perhaps even implicitly, result in some trigger happy behaviors with people dying as a result? For quite a few cases the evidence of such is overwhelming and the evidence that it is a _systemic_ issue is extremely solid. (This does not mean that every case of alleged police abuse is accepted as true, nor that every is false.) Can you understand how society’s tolerating that circumstance sends a message that Black lives do NOT matter? Can you endorse the idea that tolerating such abuses of power and misapplication of power due to even _implicit_ biases, is unacceptable unjust and must be addressed, that addressing such injustice is important for those who suffer from it and also for the good of society as a whole? If only it wasn’t yoked to any other issues that you might not agree with? ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 7:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-good-conservatism-look-like/843985/126 "2019-12-04T07:40:37Z")
Okay, to try to get the thread back on track (and not be another BLM debate): There seems to be mostly consensus that to be a good conservative (or liberal) Doper: 1. Be factual, cite sources, operate on facts-first policy 2. Don’t deliberately assume or project malicious intent onto one’s opponents 3. Don’t assume you know what your opponents are thinking better than they themselves 4. If one’s own side is evil, recognize that ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 8:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-good-conservatism-look-like/843985/127 "2019-12-04T08:17:00Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > 1. If one’s own side is evil, recognize that I assume by this you mean, recognize when your side does or says something evil. The way you worded it, it sounds like you’re suggesting that a poster admit that those they politically align with are evil. I doubt anyone would ever do that, otherwise they’re willfully embracing evil. Even people who are fully corrupt tend to try to rationalize away such things. Now it’s fair to suggest that a poster should be mature enough to admit when they don’t agree with what their side has done, and not be so insecure that they have to defend every little thing. On the flip side, if someone admits that their side has done something wrong, it’s equally appropriate for the other side to not pounce on that admission and try to use that as ammo. For example, someone might say, “I’m a Republican because I believe it is the lesser of two evils for conservatives, and I don’t want all my guns taken away, I don’t want an overbearing government, I want to be able to pass what I’ve earned to my children, and I don’t want excessive corporate taxation to cripple the economy. But even I think that the Trump administration went too far in separating children from their families at the border. That’s not something the party of family values should be doing.” You should not say, “So you admit that the Republicans are acting like Nazis putting kids in concentration camps? If you care about kids at all you must vote Democrat or you hate children.” I do see that sort of thing often. (From all sides, this isn’t conservatives being victimized or anything.) ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 10:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-good-conservatism-look-like/843985/128 "2019-12-04T10:42:58Z")
Well put. You speak of another sort of “unnecessary bundling,” which BwanaBob discussed in post 106. ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 11:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-good-conservatism-look-like/843985/129 "2019-12-04T11:03:57Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > There seems to be mostly consensus that to be a good conservative (or liberal) Doper: > > 1. Be factual, cite sources, operate on facts-first policy > 2. Don’t deliberately assume or project malicious intent onto one’s opponents > 3. Don’t assume you know what your opponents are thinking better than they themselves > 4. If one’s own side is evil, recognize that I’d add: 5: Keep a sense of humor. We’re here to enjoy ourselves, after all. ---
**Author:** ![WreckingCrew](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wreckingcrew/32/4080_2.png) [@WreckingCrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WreckingCrew)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-good-conservatism-look-like/843985/130 "2019-12-04T12:42:50Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > This was very cool. Tha is for sharing. If I ever get out to R.I. I’ll have to visit the park. Come on by anytime. In many ways Roger was looking to set up the ultimate Straight Dope forum: ideas welcome. When he was 70 a couple of Quakers showed up in Newport. He rowed an open boat down from Providence, about 25 miles down Narragansett Bay, and spent three days debating them, explaining in minute detail just how wrong they were. But he also said they could stay in RI, and worship any way that they wanted to. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-good-conservatism-look-like/843985/131 "2019-12-04T14:51:14Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > What are people doing when they defend the cops when this happens, argue against their being held accountable, and come up with reasons that the shooting must have been justified? They are justifying murder by cops. Is it good conservatism to point out the reasons why a police shooting is justified even if BLM is protesting it? Or to point out, even, that the large majority of police shootings of black people happened under circumstances that, if the shootee were white, BLM wouldn’t utter a peep? Because conservatism - at least my conservatism - doesn’t accept that (for instance, in the case that got BLM going) Michael Brown didn’t attack Darren Wilson, punch him in the face, and try to grab his gun, because of implicit bias or white supremacy. He attacked him because he didn’t want to get arrested for robbing a convenience store. Is it good conservatism to make that argument? These are the positions that BLM allegedly holds, and how I feel about them. Racial Injustice _- I am against it. If BLM comes up with some actual instances, I will support them._ Police Brutality _- Same answer._ Criminal Justice Reform _- It depends on what they mean - I would need something specific._ Black Immigration _See above._ Economic Injustice _- I am against it. Also, see above._ LGBTQIA+ and Human Rights _- It depends on what they mean - I would need something specific._ Environmental Conditions _- I’m not even sure what they mean. Is BLM in favor of environmental conditions, or not?_ Voting Rights & Suppression _- If they mean voter ID, then finally I understand them. I am in favor of voter ID laws._ Healthcare _- Healthcare is a good thing. So is motherhood, and apple pie._ Government Corruption _- I’m against it._ Education _- Another area of agreement - I am in favor of education._ So, cool - it is possible to be a conservative, and agree on some issues while disagreeing or asking ‘what the heck do you mean specifically?’ on others. Is that good conservatism? Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-good-conservatism-look-like/843985/132 "2019-12-04T15:15:12Z")
> [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > I’d add: > > 5: Keep a sense of humor. We’re here to enjoy ourselves, after all. I disagree. GD is not a particularly humorous forum. We’re not really cracking jokes over there. We’re talking about extremely serious subjects. That’s kinda the point of the forum. There’s never an issue where the problem with a conservative poster is that they couldn’t take a joke. Sure, those who argue do enjoy it to some extent. But that enjoyment isn’t really about humor. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-good-conservatism-look-like/843985/133 "2019-12-04T15:24:28Z")
Note that I assumed GD since that’s the forum where being a conservative is relevant. I implicitly include Elections, as it is basically a spinoff forum. I can see where a sense of humor is relevant to the site at large, but not to the topic of being a good conservative that we actually want to debate. ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-good-conservatism-look-like/843985/134 "2019-12-04T15:38:52Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Okay, to try to get the thread back on track (and not be another BLM debate): > > There seems to be mostly consensus that to be a good conservative (or liberal) Doper: > > 1. Be factual, cite sources, operate on facts-first policy > 2. Don’t deliberately assume or project malicious intent onto one’s opponents > 3. Don’t assume you know what your opponents are thinking better than they themselves > 4. If one’s own side is evil, recognize that IMHO, the BLM discussion is very instructive in illustrating how useless your “mostly consensus” list is. Several liberal posters have supported the claim that anyone who opposes BLM can be assumed to be in favor of police torturing and killing black people. Do you think those posters disagree with your list? I think it’s highly likely that they would oppose “_deliberately assum[ing] or project[ing] malicious intent onto one’s opponents_”, or “_assum[ing] you know what your opponents are thinking better than they themselves_”. But they simply don’t think that’s what they’re doing; in their view it’s manifestly obvious that these are the motivators and thoughts of BLM opponents. It would similarly follow that conservatives who act comparably to these liberal posters also do not see themselves as assuming/projecting etc. So holding these as principles has very little practical application. Even if people agree as to the abstract principles, the application is too subjective. This point has a broader application. People tend to find arguments made by people who they are opposed to or at least whose positions they disagree with as being logically flawed in all sorts of ways. Saying that what you require from your opponents is rational discourse - or the like - is not a meaningful standard, since the notion that you can objectively judge the rationality and logic of the approach of your debate or ideological opponents is a delusion. And here’s the real point, in the context of this thread. On an individual level there will obviously be some people who are better than others at separating their own biases from their assessments of others’ logic. But it’s virtually impossible to eliminate it entirely, and - more to the point - in aggregate it will always be a huge huge factor. So the collective wisdom of a left-leaning crowd about a conservative poster will always be heavily weighted to the negative side even about such ostensibly neutral matters as logical process, intellectual honesty etc etc. Saying “we could tolerate conservative posters as long as they argued rationally and in good faith” or the like makes people feel like the tolerant version of themselves that they’d like to be, but isn’t worth much more than that. All of which means that as a practical matter, the search for “good conservatism” on a liberal MB is a fool’s errand. (IME, the only “good conservatives” on this MB are those who are being used by people to bolster their supposed impartiality when in the course of attacking other conservative posters. :)) ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-good-conservatism-look-like/843985/135 "2019-12-04T18:00:07Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Police Brutality _- Same answer._ You can’t come up with one instance of police brutality yourself? > [@](#): > > LGBTQIA+ and Human Rights _- It depends on what they mean - I would need something specific._ The Republican Party platform specifically says marriage is one man and one woman. Are you for or against that? ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-good-conservatism-look-like/843985/136 "2019-12-04T18:24:42Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > … As far as BLM I understand you to hold gun rights as more important than the other issues. Do you recognize that Blacks are profiled by police and that biases that police have, perhaps even implicitly, result in some trigger happy behaviors with people dying as a result? For quite a few cases the evidence of such is overwhelming and the evidence that it is a _systemic_ issue is extremely solid. (This does not mean that every case of alleged police abuse is accepted as true, nor that every is false.) Can you understand how society’s tolerating that circumstance sends a message that Black lives do NOT matter? Can you endorse the idea that tolerating such abuses of power and misapplication of power due to even _implicit_ biases, is unacceptable unjust and must be addressed, that addressing such injustice is important for those who suffer from it and also for the good of society as a whole? If only it wasn’t yoked to any other issues that you might not agree with? I think I can comfortably answer “Yes” to all of those questions. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-good-conservatism-look-like/843985/137 "2019-12-04T18:34:59Z")
> [@snfaulkner](#): > > Fair enough. Let’s remove the doubt. > > Ditka, in order to fully answer your inquiry on how to answer if you support BLM, how do you feel about > > Racial Injustice > Police Brutality > Criminal Justice Reform > Black Immigration > Economic Injustice > LGBTQIA+ and Human Rights > Environmental Conditions > Voting Rights & Suppression > Healthcare > Government Corruption > Education? > > Please rate them in # of shits given for each compared to the number of shits you give for commen sense gun control. I don’t think I understand the rating scale you’d like to see, but if it offers any insight, I doubt that my views of how we should address, for example, “healthcare” or “education” align with #BLM’s, even though I probably give more than a shit or two about both of those things. And here’s the thing: probably my biggest break with conservative orthodoxy is on matters of law enforcement and policing. I _HATE_ the “blue wall of silence” and general lack of accountability police face for uses of force. I’m the sort of conservative that should be a natural ally with #BLM on issues of police mistreatment of citizens, but they’ve totally turned me off to their movement by including this litany of liberal priorities in their agenda. WTF do “Environmental Conditions” or “LGBTQIA+ and Human Rights” have to do with Sean Groubert shooting Levar Jones? ---
**Author:** ![GreysonCarlisle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a87d85/32.png) [@GreysonCarlisle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreysonCarlisle)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2019, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-good-conservatism-look-like/843985/138 "2019-12-04T19:03:37Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > WTF do “Environmental Conditions” or “LGBTQIA+ and Human Rights” have to do with Sean Groubert shooting Levar Jones? Call me cynical, but every movement that attains any level of public consciousness spreads like a weed, sending up little green shoots in an attempt to stay relevant. But I haven’t heard of BLM in a while now. For their original incarnation, I backed them 100%, and the opposing _all lives matter_ bullshit was a patently transparent move by white conservatives to dilute that simple message. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2019, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-good-conservatism-look-like/843985/139 "2019-12-05T00:35:57Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > I think I can comfortably answer “Yes” to all of those questions. Thank you for the response and the further exposition that followed. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2019, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-good-conservatism-look-like/843985/140 "2019-12-05T01:45:20Z")
Guys, can we really not make this a BLM debate? We have dozens of threads about that in GD; this is ATMB. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-good-conservatism-look-like/843985.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-good-conservatism-look-like/843985.md?page=8)