What things can conservatism NOT do without, when boiled down to its core?

Politics & Elections
1

It’s not hard to see what core elements of liberalism cannot be removed - you can’t take LGBT, feminism, abortion, out of the party plank and still be liberal.

It’s a lot harder to pin down conservatism. For instance, I don’t see any reason why a conservative leader or party couldn’t raise taxes on the rich and still be conservative - saying “raising taxes on the rich helps us indirectly reduce our budget deficit” would be totally conservative. No reason why conservatives couldn’t embrace universal healthcare - “It’s a lot more efficient, reduces bloat, and reduces cost” - that’s totally conservative.

No reason why conservatives can’t support Ukraine; indeed, up to as recently as a decade ago, conservatives were the more hawkish, anti-Russia party. No reason why a conservative couldn’t support abortion - they could even come up with a very racist rationale or something, “Abortion largely suppresses black people since black people get the most abortions, so let’s be pro-choice and keep their population squelched!” - something like that.

No reason why conservatives couldn’t take action against climate change - “This is expensive if we don’t fix it quickly - it’s cheaper to address global warming now rather than later; a stitch in time saves nine.”

No reason why conservatives couldn’t cut military spending - “we need to trim governmental spending and we’re doing $800 billion a year for the Pentagon already, time to cut down.”

No reason why conservatives couldn’t support amnesty for illegal immigration or a more pro-immigration stance; again, they could easily come up with some nasty racist rationale; “those low-paid brown-skinned people are who pick the strawberries, just look at what happened to Florida when those migrant workers weren’t there.”

On virtually any policy, you can invent some flexible conservative rationale as to why the right wing could or should support it.

So - when all is said or done, what elements of conservatism can NOT be taken away? What’s the irreducible core of conservatism? Guns?

2

I gather that you mean conservative in the sense the word might be used in the GOP platform. I mention because I just read this:

The Democrats Are Now America’s Conservative Party

And liberal here also appears used in a political sense, I think. Political progressivism can’t give up abortion rights. But if you think a fetus is human when the heartbeat starts, you could be perfectly liberal and oppose abortion rights. There are some quite liberal ministers who fit in there.

As to what GOP-type conservatives can’t give up, right now I would put immigration restriction at the top of the list. Some pro business Republicans may like immigrant labor but can’t say it. I also think that they would be written out of the party for looking with any kind of approval on childhood medical transitioning.

3

The fundamental tenet of conservatism - there must always be a protected class that the law protects but does not bind, and there must always be a class in which the law binds but does not protect.

4

The reason you can’t identify specific core beliefs of conservatism is because conservatism isn’t so much a set of beliefs as a general approach to politics (and other areas of life). Basically conservatives reckon that things have gotten to as they are for reasons. They may be good reasons or they may be bad reasons or (most likely) they may be a combination of good and bad reasons. But until you know why things are as they are and you have worked out the likely consequences of changing them — not just the particular consequences you want or hope for, but all the likely consequences — then you had better not change them. The conservative assumes that reform for reform’s sake will generally tend to make things worse rather than better. Conservatives value tradition and the status quo because they reckon it’s the outcome of experience; it has developed organically in response to the real world, in contrast with political philosophies that reason from abstract principles and values.

Of course, an approach that holds that things are as they are for, on the whole, good reasons, and so should be defended more than they are dismantled tends to serve the interests of those who do well under things as they are. Thus in any society the established, the elite and the secure tend to conservatism, and the underclass, the marginalised and the alienated tend away from it.

But, like all labels (and like political labels in particular) the term can be used by people who are not, in truth, conservative in the sense thus described. In particular people on the radical right who actually favour disrupting things as they are in order to advance values or interests of their own may often self-describe, or be described by others, as conservative. This is especially so where some of their positions align with those of more traditional conservatives.

So, for example, no names, no pack drill, but someone who wishes to overthrow the republic so that their favoured candidate, who lost the election, can nevertheless be installed as president is obviously not very conservative. But if that person also favours the enforcement of traditional gender identities and gender roles and hierarchies, they may self-describe as conservative and perhaps in those respects they are.

5

I’m not sure what ‘conservatism’ means anymore, but the modern GOP can’t exist without appeals to greed, racism and stupidity.

6

ISTR Forbes championing an open immigration policy in the 90s without any “nasty racist rationale.” They simply wanted a bigger labor pool (and hence lower wages) without the red tape of immigration law getting in the way.

7

Basically hate and anger and fear are central to their brand. A complete lack of empathy.

We see it all too often now. Laws passed that do absolutely nothing productive and are only meant to harm some other group. Indeed, they will happily harm themselves in pursuit of harming others.

8

Yes, this is part of what bothers me about these discussions. Certainly, as practiced, particularly in the US today, “conservatism” has racism as a central tenet. But that doesn’t seem essential to me. I used to vote Conservative here in Canada before they started really going down the racism rabbit hole as well, and yet, I supported a lot of “liberal” ideas, on the basis of what I thought were fundamental “conservative” principles such as fiscal responsibility, and personal responsibility.

Immigration is a classic example. First off, there’s the economic issue of free trade and freedom in general. Why should people’s employment choices be so heavily constrained by governments placing limits on movement? If someone in a capitalist society thinks they can improve their life by getting work in a different place, they should be allowed to give it a shot.

Secondly, there’s the personal responsibility issues. Lots of people have remarked on how many immigrants are better workers. Well, that’s to be expected of people who were willing to uproot their whole lives in order to seek to improve their positions in life. That’s the kind of “by their bootstraps” kind of effort that conservatives usually praise.

I could go on.

9

And this is the problem with “branding”. What is “conservative” about a plan to just destroy things? That’s literally the opposite of “conserving”.

10

Hard disagree. Most of the pro-life movement, small though it might be, consists of liberals (in contrast to the much larger anti-choice movement that conservatives have a lock on). And there are still a few folks who are anti-LGBT, or anti- some part of that (most often anti-trans even if pro-gay), but still liberal on other issues. Not very many any more, but a few, especially in sparser or more insular areas where they might not know any out gay and/or transgendered folks.

To the OP, though, the fundamental thing that conservatism cannot do without is an enemy. Sometimes that enemy is black people, or Hispanics, or gays, or trans, or Jews, or Muslims, or unions. And sometimes a conservative might even be a member of one of those groups, and therefore insist that conservatives are OK with that group, but one of the others is evil. But there’s always some enemy.

11

But, see, that’s why branding works. Once you have someone loyal to your brand, they’ll buy anything you offer up under that brand.

I have shoes with “Goodyear” stamped on the sole. That had nothing to do with why I bought the shoes, but I’ll bet there are a few guys out there whose mental association with the tires helped them decide to but those shoes.

12

This makes for a nice philosophical rationalization that conservatives can point to to justify their beliefs but I know of no political movement either current or future that was driven by this philosophy.

The main actual driving force behind conservative movements is that those currently in power want to see their power maintained or increased. White privilege should be maintained or increased, economic inequality should be maintained or increased, and Christianity’s privileged position in our culture should be maintained or increase.

Or in otherwords as iiandyiiii quoted

Now coming out and saying we want to prevent the little guy from clawing his way up to use doesn’t make for a popular movement. So they instead claim that they are just trying to avoid possible negative unforseen consequences of disturbing the status quo.

13

I would say that (pretending to care about) fiscal responsibility is a core tenant of conservatism. That doesn’t mean that they won’t do things like raise taxes and spend on social programs. When they do those things, they are typically just looking at the financial aspect rather than the social aspect. So they may support funding things like public transportation, but their criteria for how much to fund it will be based on how much more money it will bring in through increasing the tax base, property values, etc. Liberal support for something like public transportation is often more concerned about how it will improve the quality of life and whether that is worth the cost.

14

That’s true of any political movement trying to win elections or otherwise gain power.

For the U.S. left of center, there are two words, liberal and progressive. Like with all such words, there are multiple meanings. And at one time they meant almost the same. But I think we are moving towards where the word liberal covers the ideology, and progressive is for the political movement. Progressives need an enemy, to succeed in their project – not that it is hard or unnatural or wrong for them to have found one in conservatism.

Within the right, in the U.S., there seems to me no comparably separate words for the ideology and the political movement. So you can be – thinking of George Conway – a full-bore enemy of the conservative political movement while still being obviously of the conservative ideology. Or maybe there is a word here that exists and I am missing.

15

Recovering conservative here. Classical conservatism, whatever one thinks about that philosophy, is meaningless in today’s politics. From a practical perspective, there’s really one tenet: enrich the donor class (the wealthy and corporations inclusive), maintain that class’s superior social privilege, and ensure that can continue by retaining political power at any costs.

They maintain the base needed to accomplish this by being opposed to anything that progressives prefer. That’s it. Period.

It’s actually perversely admirable, how effective their messaging is. Multitudes of people vote against their own interests in order to make the libs cry. And there are certainly true “we hate them libs” believers in political power.

But if you were a fly on the wall at the “conservative Illuminati” meetings—i.e., the guys who truly decide what gets done—you’d see that almost everything comes down to “make the rich richer and make sure everyone knows their place.” If outlawing guns made them richer and somehow didn’t erode their power (it definitely would alienate their base), they’d do it in a second. If legislating abortions on demand for everyone would make them richer and maintain their power, the same.

They don’t give a shit about all those high-falutin principles. Those are for suckers.

16

Concise and pithy summation. :clap:

( Also recovering )

17

You’re running up against the fact that most conservative policies don’t actually make sense or optimally support their goals. It’s often been written that the core thing being conserved is actually power structures, social hierarchies and things like that. I happen to agree that that’s what conservatism is for even if it might not exactly be what it’s about to the people who call themselves conservatives.

Now here’s the part that might make me unpopular, get me banned, or hurt some feelings: Conservatism to the vast majority of the people who call themselves conservatives is a collection of carefully crafted, highly appealing philosophies about life, economics, and politics that’s propagated via a vast PR campaign. Each one of these philosophies is intended to serve the people at the top of our social and economic hierarchies even if they’re often crafted in a way that totally disguises these goals.

The whole thing is a sham and conservatives are dupes.

18

Every political movement always has some opposing political movement, for the simple reason that anything for which there isn’t an opposing movement isn’t politics. But that’s not the same thing as the sort of enemy that conservatives need. Their political positions start from opposition to the enemy. Liberals can sometimes serve as the enemy for the conservatives, but not in the sense that they oppose liberal policies: Liberals are the enemy in the sense that the conservatives’ goal is liberal tears.

On this board, at least, none of what you said is particularly controversial.

19

Yeah, usually when I see that preamble some sort of right wing craziness follows.

Welcome to the Dope, AntimatterFungus, make yourself at home. You should fit right in. :slightly_smiling_face:

20

It amazes me that republicans still get away with this bullshit. They are not the party of fiscal responsibility or small government. Indeed, they have ballooned the budget and grown the government more than democrats ever have in the last 40+ years.