The individual is sacred. The community is sacred. The environment is sacred. Life has become cheap and meaningless. Basically what I've intuited in my brand of 'conservatism' is a fusion between the 'spiritual' and the material.
“In a progressive country, change is constant; and the great question is not whether you should resist change, which is inevitable, but whether that change should be carried out in deference to the manners, the customs, the laws and traditions of a people, or whether it should be carried out in deference to abstract principles, and arbitrary and general doctrines.” – Benjamin Disraeli
Give me a break. If that's what counts as a liberal, then I too am a liberal, and the biggest kind of liberal possible. Look at this. If I want to conserve that white post in front of my house is it sufficient to keep it as it is? No - because if I keep it as it is, it will turn black over time. If I want to conserve it, I have to do something to it - I have to change it. And I'm (well really, G.K. Chesterton, whose example I plagiarised, even though he affirmed he was a liberal) not the only one who dispelled with this strawman before. The father of conservatism, Edmund Burke said it much better:I don't think a self-labelled conservative in this or any other era has any business talking about a "new dispensation of history." You are a liberal. — Mongrel
This is again false - especially with regards to social conservatism.The people in the group who are most devoted to preserving those skills and passing them on to the next generation are the conservatives in the group. The guy over there trying to put up a tent in a way nobody's ever done it before.. he's a liberal. He thinks "changing the world" is important. — Mongrel
This isn't true for all conservatives. For reason-skeptical conservatives like Burke yes. For reason-friendly conservatives like myself, certainly not. There is a difference between the two forms of conservatism, which is quite well explained here - http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/conservatism/ - esp. Burkean vs Rational conservatism.Look at general demeanor. Conservatives tend to be somewhat afraid of change. They clearly see the risks in doing things differently. — Mongrel
If the old ways aren't working, it may be possible, that just like the post in front of my house, they have become black due to the passage of time, and so need to be re-painted once again. So again, it's not necessarily true that this makes one a liberal.Liberals come to the foreground of human life when the old ways aren't working. We have to try something new even if it's risky. That's obviously you. — Mongrel
So BC, does the fact that I want to change society make me a conservative or a liberal? :PI agree with Mongrel that your platform makes you much more of a liberal than it does a conservative, at least in the common parlance of the day. And I agree 100% with your education plank and the essential importance of the individual plank. Does that make me a conservative? — Bitter Crank
This is again assuming some liberal biases. Now, there is no such thing as absolute sacredness of the individual. This is always bounded by the community. For example, an individual whose passion is discovering new ways to break into people's homes and stealing from them - or whose passion is discovering new ways to murder people - such an individuality isn't to be prized or respected, and liberals agree. But now when we get to something like adultery - liberals suddenly are like "Oh but we have to respect their individual choices!". Conservatives have a wider sense of what is included in morality and civic life - something that liberals lack. For liberals, it's all about let everyone do as they wish provided they don't harm others - of course we will exclude such harms as committing adultery, etc. These aren't really harms, because everyone is a free individual and should be allowed to make their own choices - that's how the argument goes. So conservatives go a step forward and value community bonds over individual selfish desires. It is important for people to become individuals - but becoming an expert thief or an adulterer - that's not becoming an individual from a conservative point of view, because becoming an individual involves fulfilling certain objective criteria which are demanded by the process of individuation. These criteria are very general - so they allow for example one to find their individuality in painting, and another in leadership, and another in building houses. But - they demand fulfilment of those general standards by everyone for them to be individuals.Privileging the good of the community over the individual conflicts with the sacredness of the individual. — Bitter Crank
But now when we get to something like adultery - liberals suddenly are like "Oh but we have to respect their individual choices!". Conservatives have a wider sense of what is included in morality and civic life - something that liberals lack. For liberals, it's all about let everyone do as they wish provided they don't harm others - of course we will exclude such harms as committing adultery, etc. — Agustino
I don't even know what social conservatism is, myself, let alone who might be social conservative thinkers. If there is such a thing as social conservatism, is there such a thing as social liberalism?I am actually curious - who do liberals view as key intellectual social conservative thinkers both past and present? — Agustino
Yes these folks certainly did have social conservative elements in their philosophies, as did, I might add, MOST of the Ancients.A check of the internet indicates somebody, at least, thinks the man called Confucius in the West was one; also Cato the Elder. Not the the other Cato, Caesar's enemy, but the Cato who wrote a treatise on agriculture--Cato the Censor, who condemned Scipio Africanus, who defeated Hannibal, for having fancy-schmancy Greek philosopher friends. He was, I think, the chairman of the Senate's Committee on Un-Roman Activities. — Ciceronianus the White
How is it missing the point? I'm saying social conservatives should be trusted. This means that these values - namely policies which are generally anti-abortion, pro-family, pro-monogamous, long-term marriage, etc. should be trusted.Missing the point, Agustino. The point is doing politics through the "liberal" or "conservative" label is lazy. It's trying to use a (frequently inaccurate) shorthand to specify who ought to be trusted by name, rather than on the basis of policy and values.
If we bother to check values and policy (as we should), there is no general framework. We know the candidates, we know the values, we know the policies in each case. The "general" is not needed becasue we know who we are talking about and what they stand for. — TheWillowOfDarkness
Well okay, then I will drop the short-form and just say "trust those who are at least somewhat anti-abortion, pro-family, pro life-long monogamous marriage, etc." happy? — Agustino
This isn't exactly true. Social conservative values in Europe (especially Western Europe) are quite a rarity in politics. Sure, you may see issues such as anti-abortion laws (like in Poland recently), but the attitudes and beliefs of those running Christian Democrat parties (for example, look at Merkel's CDU in Germany) are quite liberal and progressive. They pretend to uphold social conservative values, but hypocritically so. Europe is by far more progressive than the US - that's why when folks on this forum say when they are on the political spectrum they go like "far left in US", "left in EU". Progressive biases have infiltrated the European intellect to the point that the Christian Democrats have become just "Christian" Democrats.Christian Democratic — Thorongil
Well yes but this has to do with economic policies - certainly not social conservatism - and Roger Scruton was named by jamalrob as a "social conservative" thinker. As I've said quite often, it is very possible for there to be left-leaning social conservatives. G.K. Chesterton was one - so was Russell Kirk. So is Scruton.For example, he criticises the symbiosis of big business with government because it undermines the sovereignty and allegiance of democratically elected officials - though he admits regrettably that our own conservative party have sold their souls too. He also believes one cannot be a conservative without being so on environmental matters; the planet is a resource like any other which we must preserve and enhance for the benefit of future generations. He thinks this point is entirely lost on American conservatives, due to their pro-business leanings and rejection of climate change. — WhiskeyWhiskers
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