There's no such thing as a conservative intellectual — only apologists for right-wing power
3 years ago by HLMenckenFan to c/politics
You won't get an honest answer, because an honest answer is about how they want to go back to 1950s American, where straight white men were the only demographic that mattered.
Even better when you talk them through that and watch them realize we will never go back to that post war economy because America can’t compete with a global stage that wasn’t bombed into oblivion by the Nazis.
Most conservatives are woefully ignorant of actual policy or what conservatives do. I have a friend who leans conservative, and asked him what he thought Trump did well. His first point was Trump helped to reduce the deficit, despite Trump massively increasing the deficit
And they can't be honest about that because they know it's a bad opinion. At least if they outright said the honest answer, I could understand it a little. If they're a straight, white male and have zero empathy for anyone else, it would probably benefit them (at the cost of everyone else).
But even if they have zero empathy, they still know that anyone who does have empathy (or isn't a straight, white male and has the slightest bit of understanding for what's going on) will never agree with them. So they have to come up with all sorts of bullshit. Hence how we get stuff like comparisons to lobsters, unsupported claims that LGBT whatever is harming kids, and general turning a blind eye to any blatantly harmful stuff that progresses their goals.
And don't forget that the corporate tax rate was "insane" compared to current times. Something like 80%+.
While I don’t disagree in principle – corporations need to be paying taxes, and in fact, so do wealthy individuals – the effective tax rate on wealth since the 50s has changed very little. Those extreme tax rates you see from the era – 91%, 80%, etc., often only applied to a literal handful of households or businesses.
And, again, because our tax system is progressive, those extreme rates only applied to income above extreme (for the era) thresholds.
The biggest issue is not the tax rate, but that corporations (and rich individuals) have so many different ways to avoid paying any tax at all. To the point that, in 2020, it was literally newsworthy that Amazon had to pay more than $0.
"Insane" for the rich too. The top tax bracket was taxed at 91%. But they don't want to go back to that 1950s.
Apparently I won’t receive any answer, which further highlights the issue. “Someone curious about beneficial conservative legislation? Gotta be a trap, go around.” The hoop is entirely open and a yet they refuse to dunk, because they lack the ability.
I mean, I think I’ve noticed that there is a much lower presence of right wing ideas on lemmy in general. My conspiracy is that is because a large amount of right wing sentiments are coming from fake to try and make it look like the sentiment is there. There is clear evidence this has happened with Russia in the 2016 election and the Rand Paul sentiment that preceded it.
I think you don’t see that on lemmy because it’s not a popular platform ATM so opinions tend to be a little more genuine.
4chan is probably the counter example to my belief.
My comment was caught in the outage, so forgive me for paraphrasing. 4chan used to be just as progressive as we are here, before they poe's law'd themselves into a nazi haven. Upside, their fall created a broad online understanding of radicalization methods, which I've found several people consistently using here, like disillusionment and appeals to open information sharing. No, telling nazis to leave isn't censorship, rando 1 through 8. Anyway, that's all to say that they're probing for opportunities to do the same thing here, and, like you, I can only wonder if it's actual bigots or state actors.
Straight white men weren't even particularly well off as a whole. Yes, The upper middle and upper class were almost exclusively white men but that was a small portion of their entire demographic. What they really want is to be able to go back to a time when they could beat their wives, divorce was not available, black people had to call them 'sir' or get strung up, and all the gay people were 'where they belonged', i.e. France, dead, or in the closet.
Go ahead and answer the question, then.
They're excited to force women to have babies against their will.
So I would consider myself at least reasonably inclined to thinking and somewhat conservative. Note, however, that does NOT mean Republican. When I use conservative, it's in a different context than the modern "conservative movement". The modern movement seems to be more regressive than conservative. Conservative in my way of thinking is about calm, measured progress. Don't upend everything in massive sweeping changes... but don't reject change either, change is necessary and inevitable. The more moderate Biden-y neoliberal wing of the Democrats is probably the closest to that these days - the more progressive Democrats with wanting massive social upheaval type changes and the Republicans favoring the repeal-and-replace burn it down and maybe fix the ashes approach to undoing those changes, neither of which appeals to me.
The chances you are neoliberal isn't zero.
Given the amount of time I spent over on r/neoliberal, it could fit, although I do tend to fall a bit on the libertarian side of it.
Ooh, libertarian neoliberalism is like catshit wrapped in dogshit
There is a 99% chance you are a huge Destiny fan.
The answer for people here is probably no republican policies, ever.
The onus is on Republicans or so-called conservatives to name one, just one time they have been on the right side of history in the last 100 years.
The title is pretty bad. All the conservatives I know are monarchists. Not republicans.
I know plenty of conservative intellectuals, they are not Republicans though. Look up topics on individual freedom, limited government, or the rule of law to find thousands of examples.
Most would call themselves moderates as conservative is a poisoned title, but they exist.
So ask yourself, what perspective have conservatives been groomed view the United States? Roger Kimball describes it as, “A damsel (America) is locked in a dark castle, which was once a glorious palace in years gone by.” But now “liberal elites, the bureaucracy, academia” have sapped “her vitality,” turning her “weak and infirm” due to a dastardly belief system in “left-wing ideology, political correctness, egalitarianism. Using this metaphorical trope, Kimball continued to describe citizens as having turned into weaklings who secretly long for a return to national greatness. This view of decline and decadence, so core to the conservative intellectual tradition, is prone to eventual faith in a strong, authoritarian leader. And thus, Donald Trump becomes, for Kimball, the only one ready to rescue the country from its demise.
Their perspective is so vastly different due to indoctrination from years of talk radio, right wing news, and sites like facebook, reddit and 4chan where echo chambers reinforced the indoctrination.
The aspect free minds are missing us that, to quote Kimball again, "Trumpism represent[s] conservatism at its essential core, a kind of return to its roots in monarchism". This “monarchism” is now being nurtured by a populist faith—a combined belief in the supposed goodness of the masses, led by the sort of paternalistic authoritarian leader that conservative intellectuals can get behind.
A free mind can obviously see through the deception has it is full of holes. If you don't believe Steve Bannon is the next Pluto than you've already come to the conclusion that these buffoons are actually fascists attempting to strip American citizens of their rights and to gain power through the courts, through the power of the mob, and to gain power through forced religion, just as the Nazis did in the 1930s. The difference is they have absolute imbeciles in charge who have mucked up the process and exposed what they are doing. The mirror was broken for the vast majority of the American people to see. Thus this movement stalled, but it isn't dead yet.
... individual freedom, limited government, or the rule of law...
There is nothing inherently conservative about any of those values. Depending on the ruling government at the time, those concepts were often considered decidedly progressive. In fact, it could be both at the same time depending on which freedoms, which limits, and which laws you're discussing.
Conservatives at every point in history redefine conservativism to encompass the values that most benefit themselves at the time. If conservatives own businesses and do not control the government, they support limited government and deregulation. If conservatives face competition and can capture regulatory bodies, then strict guidelines and requirements are absolute.
I'm changing careers to become an engineer so I have been keeping an ear to the ground in those industries.
When COVID rolled around, there were engineers on reddit complaining about thier peers buying into the vaccine and anti-mask bullshit.
How could someone who needs to be versed in the difficult subject of physics be hoodwinked by con men?
Stupid people are truly everywhere.
DUDE.... I don't even work in the medical field. But I have such a similar experience. I grew up going to private schools and had lots of friends as doctors.... so many of them were dumb as rocks outside of their area of expertise.... Especially socially. To this day I constantly meet doctors that have no "social" or "street smarts" and are dumb as hell at technology, etc etc etc. I know that becoming a doctor takes a lot of effort, and focus, and specific knowledge.... But... There's a certain intuitiveness that comes with being generally "smart". And for whatever reason, doctors don't have that. I don't think all doctors are "stupid". But it seems like a profession you send someone who is stupid into, to do well..... I really hate saying that but I relate so much to your comment its crazy lol.
I only disagree on one thing:
- I don't think they mainly "want to hurt". I think what they want is to control: force others to follow their own moral beliefs or even to just do what they think will be good for that doing the forcing.
What we think as Evil is not done by charicatural evil people with who enjoy hurting others, rather it's done by people who see themselves as good people and have massive excuses to hurt and even do harm to others, and sometimes that's to such a level that they believing they're actually helping those other people their forcing to comply with their own morals.
So a lot of that stuff is Moralism, practiced by people who actually see themselves as good people, which is why you'll also find people who believe themselves to be lefties trying to force others to comply with their own beliefs (rather than, you know, trying to convince them). That said, this kind of leveraging social systems to stroke their inner authoritarianism seems to be a lot more common in the rightwing.
PS: By the way, I think it's because of this paradox of people who see themselves as good people forcing their moral compass on others all they while telling themselves they're "doing the right thing" that is so difficult to stop this kind of thing. Such righteous autoritarians are extremelly defensive when confronted with what they're doing because they genuinelly think they're good people doing what's-right/needs-to-be-done/some-other-excuse.
A lot of you people haven't read this, and it shows.
https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/...
Ps. You can literally just ask yourself what it is conservatives want to conserve...
This is a great essay and an insightful read, thanks.
Paragraph after paragraph of head canon without any sources. Lovely. And conservatives are delusional.
I regretfully did. It was quite painful. And as bad as it is, I try to listen to progressive "intellectuals."
I'm sorry every time I do. I should really stop.
I guess your reading comprehension is not so great then.
There are tons of references to other works peppered throughout. He then criticizes them. Maybe you're not familiar with this style of writing? You're allowed to have original thoughts and even write them down and argue for them without simply regurgitating what others say you know.
So essentially the half of the country that doesn't agree with you.
Regressivisim is a disordered way of political thinking that has gone global. There's plenty of historical evidence of political thinking that is downright terrible and has been shown to be so. Many people supported these systems at the times too. It never made them right.
It's also much less in the US. ~65% of people don't support regressive policies. Who turns out to vote, the electoral college, lack of actual proportional allocation of the House of Representatives, and many other things present problems where regressivism can succeed despite the large majority of people not wanting it.
There is not such thing as "there's no such thing"
The party openly doesn’t publish policy documents any more.
There absolutely are conservative intellectuals, they just don't tend to endorse MAGA.
Here's a great example: https://scholars-stage.org/ Knocks it out of the park all the time. Then again, he rarely spends his time talking directly about culture war topics.
It regretfully doesn't matter how intellectual they are if the two-party system forces them to let their anti-intellectual minorities run the party. Once a governing body decides that keeping power away from "the other team" is more important than their principles, they cease to have the merit of those principles. Middle of the road negotiation simply ceases to exist. Either you have an overwhelming majority and don't need the other party's consent, or you have a narrow majority and policy making gets held hostage by the most belligerent minority faction within the party. When that belligerent faction is anti-intellectual, the result is the current shitshow.
Since American politics are right-leaning on the Overton window, that makes both parties more susceptible to getting kneecapped by their most right-leaning belligerents when they hold a narrow majority. A narrow Republican majority gets kneecapped by the Freedom Caucus, and a narrow Democrat majority gets kneecapped by the likes of Sinema and Manchin.
You… know it's possible to be a conservative without being a Republican, right?
If you want to say there are no politically relevant conservative intellectuals, that I would agree with. the Republican party is currently dominated by grifters, so anyone involved is going to be doing a lot of shoddy post-hoc justifications. But to say that being conservative of any stripe bars one from actually thinking deeply and critically is narrow minded.
You… know it's possible to be a conservative without being a Republican, right?
If you want to say there are no politically relevant conservative intellectuals, that I would agree with.
Agreed on both counts, yes.
Gab is actually a Mastodon instance, so you can directly see what people in the Fediverse can/will do to fringe content ... defederate
The problem is that outside of tankies, the far left basically wants people taken care of and treated like people and the far right wants certain types of people to not exist (how they want the not exist part to happen is up for some debate amongst the right, but, they still need to be gone and gone quickly)
In a practical sense, you cannot really compare the two.
Yes, there are whackjobs on the left too, but they're not taken seriously by anyone and not getting prime time TV coverage of their runs for office.
If we get away from practicalities and talk pure theory, then I guess other arguments can be made, but if we're restricting ourselves to the things as they are now with labels as they're typically used, the far right is barren as far as intellectualism goes.
I don't know if I agree that they can be equally right and incompatible. I think there can be shreds of truth scattered throughout different ideas and that you can pick them out and use that to construct an actual truth, though, so I guess I agree with your overall sentiment. I also agree with the fact that open conversation and an exchange of ideas is for the best, but I haven't found many conservative ideas to hold water under scrutiny even if the conversation is ultimately helpful.
I think there are times when your values dictate your opinion rather than the facts.
There’s a reason logic isn’t what sells cars, skin care and fashion.
We’re emotional creatures.
A strong opposition should help reign in excesses of either side, and we should crave it.
There are ideas that originate on the right and are embraced in the left - universal basic income comes to mind.
There’s a reason logic isn’t what sells cars, skin care and fashion.
Two things:
- Yes it does. It sells a lot of cars, skin care, and fashion. Just look at the sales numbers for off-brand, never-advertised cosmetics (e.g. Walmart's Equate), generic clothes (which outsell brands by enormous amounts every year), and why it's incredibly difficult to actually buy a new electric car right now (they're sold out everywhere; enormous waiting lists).
- Those things aren't government! Running a government based on feelings is likely the worst possible way for a democracy to govern itself. It's also the worst possible way to select a candidate! Look at they're policies and their history and especially the outcomes of their policies. Both the likely outcomes (researched by fact-based organizations that study such things) and the historic outcomes. Then select a candidate.
Aside: To this day it still baffles me that conservatives are still pushing abstinence-only education when study after study has shown conclusively that such programs increase teen pregnancy rates, STD transmission rates, and are overall very bad for society at large. Like, I get that you think your daughter will be fine without comprehensive sex ed but do you think the same of the kids down the street?
If you're trying to say that liberals are trying to sell government based on science and reason while conservatives are trying to sell government based on feelings and faith, I'd agree with you.
Maybe I’m too cynical from working in marketing?
- Yes, logic sells somethings, but it’s not the majority, or really a remarkable percentage in most categories.
I’d argue that generics are really a substitute purchase for a brand category that has been developed and promoted by brands. If logic was the basis of purchasing then brands probably wouldn’t exist - esp for commodities like flour and sugar. But they do. Like it or not the brands create demand by emotionally manipulating consumers into feeling incomplete, then offering their brand as a way to fill that hole.
Electric cars do have logical benefits, as do a lot of other products, but I’d argue that they’re also a status symbol. It means something to be a person that drives an electric car - it says something about who you are, and your values. There’s a reason Tesla launched as a luxury brand first.
- Agree with you that reason should drive government. However politics is the art of persuasion, as is marketing, and as such there are three key factors: logos, pathos and ethos.
Like it or not your favourite candidate needs to be likeable, believable, and share your convictions to succeed. Or just slightly more so than the alternative.
I’ve always wished that instead of selecting a person or party, that when it came to vote the key campaign policies were what people voted for or against, and the candidate/party who’s positions gained the most support took government with a clear mandate on those policies.
Feel like this would go some way towards infusing more logic-based campaigning, and avoid the cut and thrust of, in the US context, having things like “swift boats” “47% of people” etc become the thing that crashed campaigns, and instead be substantive debates on ideas.
I’ve had multiple conversations with very smart traditional conservatives who argue for personal freedom and often libertarian economic foundations (although I think they are very wrong). However none of the ones I respect identify with the right wing movements in the US and UK (and other countries) over the recent years.
So while I agree with you, I think this post is trying to say “the current popular right wing movement”.
What a horrendous take
Reality is definitely something the conserved brain cannot handle. Cracking open that tin can is sure to relieve some of that debilitating pressure bearing down on the logic of basically any situation. In my exerience not one conservative has a good argument about their viewpoints, as their viewpoints are grandfathered in and pasted over their ability for compassion, logic and critical thinking. If the world weren't in the hands of people using dumb conservatives to rob and maintain wealth, it would be classified as a mental illness akin to schizophrenia.
Well not every intellectual was born in the past century. Virtually all of these would be conservative based on our modern values. Virtually no one 100 or 200 years ago would have been in favor of gay marriage. There were plenty intellectuals 100 and 200years ago.
So, no.
what do you mean?
ah, there's the victimhood the article spoke of
So what's one good conservative position?
I agree with some conservative positions like Americans have an individual right of freedom. I can and should be able to live my life in manner that I want to without the government forcing me to live it another way. I view things like LGBTQ rights fall under this surprising core conservative belief. Now most conservatives would view it as individual freedom mean they can be a racist bigot and discriminate, but that isn't individual freedom.
I also agree with the concept of limited government, but from the view that government even in its best state is a necessary evil. It should not govern our everyday lives but it must serve the people. Government isn't a power, it is a service that ultimately serves the people.
Bro, that's exactly what liberals want.
The government is a tool to ensure the good will, safety, and prosperity of the people. What we can't achieve on our own gets done through the collective power of the government.
Liberals aren't trying to force government on people, they're trying to ensure that the rights of everyone take precedent over someone's perceived "right" to discriminate.
some conservative positions like Americans have an individual right of freedom.
That's not a conservative position. Proof: Conservatives don't want women to have the freedom to end their pregnancies (or just get basic prenatal care in general apparently). They also don't want universities to have the freedom to choose who they admit based on race (trying to undo historical racism or to prevent a single race from taking over).
In Florida the conservative government removed the freedom of local government to decide how they handle a great many things from elections (can't have them using ranked choice voting) to what they teach in schools (e.g. teaching about historical racism).
In other states with conservative governments they are banning books, limiting citizens right to sue for damages, making it harder for minorities to vote, and generally reducing the people's power to change how their government is run. They're very anti-democracy lately (it was talked about in the article).
What individual freedoms are liberals trying to take away? The historical record here is vastly in liberals favor.
This is silly analysis. They're religious nuts and that supercedes their views on human rights. People refuse to use a consistent or sane definition of conservative. If you're just gonna say "proof: thing that violates the very premise of their presumed identity" then fucking give up. You're not criticizing any coherent model of thought, you're engaged in shit slinging.
You know people can actually see conservatives actions when it comes to these positions and know you are lying?
You didn't justify any of those positions. I wouldn't call most of them good and the only good one of them, "people should be treated equally," is not at all a value conservatives have. Just ask one about giving trans people basic human dignity.
I'm of the belief police should be disarmed and laws put in place that gun violence of any kind is a minimum 50 year sentence. Select police can be armed, but not everyday peace officers.
I'm of the belief that the act itself should be what's considered. If you murder someone, it should be because you murdered someone, not because of what you used to murder someone with, whether that be a car, knife, or gun.
If you want a right-leaning platform then go find one with a small, toxic community, heavy censorship and immature leadership.
Find a place of freedom and somehow the majority ends up being considerate and liberal. You can come to your own conclusions about why that is but it seems pretty obvious to me.
Back in 2016, Hillary had both of those in which people were paid to go online and argue with people who said negative things about her. For example, someone could say “Hillary did X” and people who worked for either CTR or ShareBlue were paid to go and explain how the allegation was incorrect.
Pointing out stupidity is now hateful? News to me, we used to just tell those people to shove it not give them a platform
You have to remember that the people you are replying to are literally delusional.
Conservatives love to convince themselves that everyone else secretly think just like them. Any time someone doesn't agree with them or they get pushback, they start blaming far-left minority groups. The funniest part is the "Correct the Record" idiocy(It was super pac that existed in 2015-2016 and they think it's still secretly operating and influencing social media), which is such obvious projection that it's literally funny. But they're so stupid they think they're being subtle...
Pointing out stupidity is now hateful?
Sounds like the "are statistics hateful" rethoric
I don't hate republicans because I do know some in real life unfortunately and do tolerate their existence. However republicans definitely tend to have less capacity for critical thought. The only intelligent republicans I have known personally have been rich business owners, and I attribute their affiliation with greed/malice instead of stupidity.
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Man this rings true for my experience growing up in a conservative area
save