What does "good conservatism" look like?

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81

The phrase “closet racist” implies that racism is some kind of rare, extreme condition that has to be carefully diagnosed. It’s not. We live in a fundamentally racist society made up of people full to the brim of, at the very least, implicit racism as a part of their societal instilling.

To even try to be something else requires active monitoring your own attitudes, thoughts, statements, and decisions, and being rigorously self-examining and diligent effort to counteract racist tendencies. Anyone who lives life with the self assurance that E isn’t a racist is almost certainly a racist.

Perhaps not “advocating” but certainly an accessory to.

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That’s what “disagree with them on topics like LGBT, feminism, or other social issues, or support Trump,” means in practice. Of course conservatives don’t outright say that they want to torture and kill people, they will generally couch it in all kinds of weasel words and euphemism, and claim that you’re not being ‘civil’ if you point out what they’re really advocating, voting for, or otherwise supporting.

For example, on LGBT issues:

“Gay conversion therapy” sounds benign, but the actual practice simply involves torturing gay people until they act straight to get it to stop. “Trans Panic” laws and doctrines allow someone to use “I found out this person was trans, and was so enraged that I assaulted or killed them” as a defense to murder or assault charges. Conservatives consistently oppose attempts to ban/remove such practices, and in many cases actively support and encourage them (Mike Pence is noted for his like of conversion therapy). “Religious Freedom” laws are specifically about protecting medical providers from being sued if they refuse to provide lifesaving medical care to someone they are bigoted against as long as they claim a religious justification. Such laws would prevent Tyra Hunter’s family from being able to sue after:

83

I’ll use an example of what I think good conservatism and good posting would look like.

On the topic of the poor conditions in camps where asylum seekers were housed, and the policy of family separation, there are a few different arguments that could be made in support.

  1. I’d like to house them in better conditions, but there are practical reasons why we can’t (cost, lack of facilities, etc.).
  2. We need to discourage asylum seekers because our economy can’t support it, so making things as miserable as possible for the individuals and families is a good thing.
  3. We need to discourage asylum seekers because they threaten the purity of white culture in the U.S.
  4. I don’t believe the reports that conditions are bad. It’s all fine in the camps.

#1 is “good” conservatism in that it discusses the costs and benefits of both sides. Liberals can argue that the cruelty, intentional or not, doesn’t justify the means, but that’s a discussion that has value here. I will disagree vehemently with anyone who uses cost to justify the camps, but I will also disagree vehemently with anyone who says such opinions should be banned here.

#2 is bad conservatism in that it ignores the humans involved. Considering innocent people as mere collateral damage and advocating cruelty makes you a bad person, IMO. I don’t think these views should be banned from the board, but people espousing them should be subject to harsh criticism without whining that they are poor persecuted conservatives.

#3 is despicable behavior. These posters should be banned, this is not a discussion worth having here.

#4 is poor posting behavior. It is impossible to have discussions with posters who ignore evidence and simply dismiss anything that might contradict their entrenched views. This kind of behavior should be warned, and if posters are unable to post in good faith, they should be banned.

84

And “good liberals” as well.

And – semi-related – are the Frequent Flyers actually all the emotional about it? I get the feeling sometimes that its a cross between a standard schtick <sic?> for them and more a desire just to piss people off. Liberal, fellow conservative, whoever. Don’t get me wrong; I feel the same about some of the folks on our side. And more than any emotion disingenuousness can be the ultimate debate stopper.

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I’d say pretty much the same as the good responses there were in this thread - I think a good liberal poster is simply someone who argues in good faith, doesn’t stereotype his/her opponents, is able to see what things look like from the other side, etc. I’ve myself been persuaded over to the liberal side on many views (went from anti-marijuana legalization to in favor of it, from arguing for toughness on crime to prison/justice reform, from low taxes to high taxation of the rich, etc.)

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I don’t want to go too far down this rabbit hole, but the popularity of something doesn’t really relate to its acceptability. I just saw a poll the other day that at the time, 61% of Americans disapproved of the Freedom Riders of the civil rights era, whereas now I think an even greater percentage of Americans would view them as unquestioned heroes for the risks they took and the righteousness of their cause. I would hate to think that people who supported civil rights in the 1960s ought to have felt an obligation to mince their words around the racists who opposed them, solely on the basis that the racism happened to be quite popular.

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It’s worth exactly zilch.

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Like.

What is the worst is when somebody claims 1 or 2 as a thinly veiled excuse to mean 3.

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Acsenray, when I said closet racist, I meant more of an explicit racist who is trying to hide that. I agree there is plenty of intrinsic and unself-examined racism.

Thank you for the examples to illuminate what you mean. Because otherwise it sounds like empty rhetoric.

Good post over all. I worry, though, with this last one with differentiating bad faith posters from legitimate disbelief. For example, if a conservative days their source for something is Breitbart and Fox news pundits, a liberal would be justified in saying they don’t believe it.

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To give you some more examples of torture and assault, the ‘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, another tasering a woman who is complying with orders, or a police officer wrestling a kid with no limbs to the ground. People who disagree that black lives matter like to wrap their support of such abuses in euphemisms and ‘law and order’ rhetoric, but the stark reality of what they support is quite apparent.

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More examples of the bad posting behaviors that poison GD, whichever side they come from.

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Excellent post, TroutMan. The mods might consider making this a sticky (or part of an existing sticky), if they agree hy consensus that it’s good board policy. Perhaps they could replace the example with something similar, but invented and politically neutral.

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I think someone like William F. Buckley, Jr, represents “good conservatism”. He was an intellectual and supported the principles of conservative politics without pandering to racists, misogynists, and religious fanatics. Trump represents the latter, which is what the Right has become. He is an anti-intellectual who thrives politically on lies and rabble rousing, not facts and sound ideas.

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Such an important point. At the time, the majority of white Americans disapproved of MLK Jr. and the Civil Rights movement. That some big chunk of America approves of deliberately separating kids from their families to harm and deter migrants gives zero indication about whether it’s right or wrong (or whether it’s “good conservatism”… it’s not).

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The best thing about Buckley is that he could change his mind, as he did on the topic of civil rights. He had a lot about it worth changing, going from being an out-and-out White Supremacist in 1957 to being someone looking forwards to a Black President in 1969. Part of this was his moral outrage at what his fellow Southern White Supremacists were willing to do to maintain Jim Crow, but another part was a bit darker: He saw that racism was being used by demagogues to whip up Populist fervor, and he, like a number of philosophical Conservatives, was anti-Populist because he saw “too much” Democracy as being a road to tyranny. This ties in with another aspect of traditional Conservative thought, the idea that some are naturally born to rise and others to fall, a natural aristocracy which will self-sort unless a government prevents the best from rising to their level. This ideology can be used to justify any kind of bigotry and institutional oppression.*

The other side of Buckley was his homophobia and AIDS idiocy, something he apparently never redeemed himself of. He called AIDS the “special curse” of the gay community and advocated that everyone with AIDS should get tattoos. This is the bad side of injecting morality into politics: The religious groups have been able to convince otherwise intelligent people that morality extends to purity laws, and that some things which have no moral component are immoral. This disfigures the whole notion of morality, which in its pure form is founded on the Golden Rule, and turns morality into something nonsensical and obscene. Thinking homosexuality is immoral is just as nonsensical as thinking a lemon is a piece of steel.

The best work of Buckley was how he tried to drive the anti-semites and the racists out of the Conservative movement of his era. Didn’t take, but at least he helped marginalize the John Birch Society.

*(The other extreme of this is the dogma that there is no natural variation between individuals, that differences in outcome must necessarily be due to oppression, and that, therefore, social programs can achieve absolute equality of attainment. Take this to its extreme form and you end up thinking innate intelligence is bunk, that everyone can be brought up to the same intellectual level, and you end up with doomed programs such as Project 100,000.)

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“Good Conservatism” is a nice theory but the reality is that in the United States, given its history and the current state of affairs, conservatism is based on a core set of indefensible ideas and values. There’s no escaping that. It’s just become much more apparently these past few years.

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Sure. I’m not claiming that my opinion is the right one just because it’s common. I was merely rebutting the claim that my ‘opinion of what is “decent” may not line up with others’. It DOES line up with lots of “others”, they just happen to mostly not post here.

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Pantastic, I do appreciate you adding examples to show your point. I agree the incidents you mention are terrible. I do not, however, agree that opponents of “Black Lives Matter” necessarily support those behaviors from the police. I think there are other motivations at play, including misunderstanding. And there are levels of “I don’t support this action by BLM but don’t accept that action of the cops.”

However, this isn’t the thread to get into that topic. What’s relevant to this thread is that you have provided an example of assuming your opponents position and projecting intent.

It’s a similar process to conservatives and “the War on Christmas”. “Liberals are anti-christianity and want to get rid of Jesus.”

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I live in Wyoming. About as red as red gets.

When I first truly began to become politically aware, 20 years ago, I was quite obviously very much to the left of nearly everybody that I knew. My employers (small, family business) were VERY conservative, massive Rush Limbaugh fans, Reagan-worshippers, Clinton-haters, and all that. I was very much NOT.

They believed that minimal government interference and low taxes would drive economic strength, resulting in that “rising tide that lifts all boats”, and that the increase in productivity from the extra money available to “jobs creators” will ultimately benefit all of society, even those at the bottom.

I believe that graduated taxation (higher taxes) to be spent for the public good (more government, redistribution gasp! of some wealth for the benefit of the least among us) is a more effective engine for generating that metaphorical rising tide. I believe that the other approach does little more than concentrate wealth into a smaller and smaller subset of the people, while generally doing harm to those with the least amount of wealth.

This is one example of what I would consider “good conservatism”. We both had the same GOAL (growing the economy to benefit society). We disagreed about the best way to get there.

Today, it seems that we on the liberal side are stilling doing our level best to improve the lot in life for ALL of us, but especially those that are the most disadvantaged. The conservative goal seems to be just to STOP the liberals from doing ANYTHING. Not to implement their own goals; not to win in the “marketplace of ideas” by presenting a reasoned and well-though-out policy directive to improve America in the way they think best; but just to stymie “the libs” in any way they can.

So even without getting into the disgusting rise in White Nationalism that also seems to be cropping up (with very, very little pushback) in “conservatism” today, I think this is what makes for “bad conservatism”.

This is compounded by the fact that not only do we no longer have the same (or any) end goals to debate the best way to move forward on, but more and more we no longer even have the same starting point. It used to be said that both sides were entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. That has changed… somehow. “Bad conservatives” are no longer necessarily tethered to reality. Adam Savage’s quip of “I reject your reality, and substitute my own” has become nearly a lynchpin in their platform, even on this message board. And not acknowledging reality as a basis to start a debate means that no debate can be had.

100

This is pretty much it. To be a good conservative, you’d have to be a kind of conservative that doesn’t really exist in modern America.