What is a “conservative”, anyway? If you search around, you’ll find a variety of definitions, most of which seem to be incoherent ideological laundry lists.
The problem with having an ideological laundry list as a political agenda is that you don’t necessarily have some kind of unifying belief system that motivates that laundry list. Let me give you an example, from one definition of “conservative”: [google]
Holding to traditional attitudes and values and cautious about change or innovation, typically in relation to politics or religion.
That’s a huge dodge because it implies there is an underlying ideology but there isn’t: the ideology is whatever the past’s ideology was. So if you’ve got a nazi conservative talking to a conservative Jew, you have two conservatives, right? The implication of fitting them both under the same umbrella-term is that they agree – but I suspect that if you put those two conservatives in the the same room together for a few hours, they would discover deeper disagreements than the “conservative” label might lead one to expect.
We encounter them regularly, though: “conservatives.” My general response when I encounter a conservative is to start immediately interrogating them about the parameters of their conservatism, while slowly segueing toward Emo Philips’ delivery in his famous “golden gate bridge” joke.
The point is that eventually you get to scream “heretic!” at them. But if they are thinking people, they realize that you’re walking them into an inescapable corner and they’ll start trying to squirrel out – a tacit admission that they don’t actually believe that they can defend their views against the truckload of mockery and analysis that is bearing down on them. For example, when talking to a “fiscal conservative” you will almost certainly get them to opine that small government is good, and government spending should be reduced and more efficient, etc. Which all sounds well and good, so you ask them “what about entitlements?” well, they’re definitely in favor of cutting back some of those ridiculous entitlements. “What about defense?” well, obviously we need a military to defend ourselves. Then switch lines of attack and ask them about government regulation. Generally, they will blather something about not being in favor of much regulation. And perhaps they’ll hand you a hole card by saying something about how centrally planned economies never work (if they think you’re what they understand to be a socialist) – then you get to sit back in your chair and say:
“I need you to square the circle here for me, because you just said small government is good, but you appear to favor enlarging the military, which is –exactly– the antithesis of small government. You favor reduction in expenditures but you implicitly support our massive military which, since it’s a huge chunk of our economy, amounts to a centralized government-controlled economy – you’re not in favor of “entitlements” but you’re in favor of shovelling 20% of the US’ tax revenues into the maw of The Pentagon, which sure as hell sounds like a great big government ‘make work’ program for the military/industrial sector of the economy. How can you hold such an incoherent and contradictory set of beliefs in your head at once? Could it be that you simply think you have a set of beliefs and, instead, are just an authoritarian who wants whatever they want and justifies it by pointing to some imaginary past where things were different?”
I’ve even encountered “fiscal conservatives, not social conservatives.” Usually, when I encounter those I ask them something like: “does that mean you’re delusional about economics, regulation, and defense spending while studiously ignoring racism and inequality?” After all, if a ‘conservative’ is trying to hark back to a time when the government was more careful about how it spent its money, are they referring to pre-Hamiltonian government, or pre-Roosevelt government, or pre-Bush government? You’ll probably never find them hearkening back to the days of Bush, though I have encountered a few who hearkened back to the days when Reagan tried to bankrupt the US by bankrupting the USSR.
The decisive point you can make against conservatism it to describe the US as always being a corrupt near-totalitarian pseudo-democracy that is basically an out-of-control imperial military with a tax-base – and ask them “what about that do you want to hearken back to?” Then you can conclude with, “are you just afraid to say that you liked the good old days when the southern economy ran on slavery while the northern economy ran on brutal exploitation of immigrant labor by robber barons?”
What’s odd, to me, is that a truly “fiscally conservative” policy would entail placing the means of production under control of labor, getting money out of politics, and reducing collusion and corruption between the political class and the moneyed class. I say that’s odd because, instead, conservatives seem to be worried about a person on welfare being able to enjoy a luxury now and again, or a waiter to make a living wage – but they don’t care about the F-35 program.
In fact, I have seldom even encountered a conservative who can hold an informed discussion about the F-35 program, or the littoral fighting ship, or the FBI’s Virtual Case File – massive taxpayer-financed disasters that are a result of “big government.” They’re worried that unions might be corrupt, but they don’t care about pentagon contractors being corrupt. They are conservative, in other words, only where it aligns with a military/totalitarian/statist/elitist agenda. If you’re a mean person, you can ask a conservative about unions, and watch them go on and on about how corrupt unions are, and how they make it impossible to keep a market efficient, etc – then say “I was referring to police unions. So, you favor breaking those up?”
Even that aspect of conservatism is incoherent, because policing is now more efficient and militarized than ever – it is the quintessential “run away government program.” Try to find a conservative who’s not in favor of lots of police. You can amuse yourself by pointing out that we have a lot more police now than we used to, and have even added new federal agencies with policing power – where is the conservative dissent?
The way to know you’ve won your argument with a conservative is when they start throwing the “no true scotsman” card on every play. Because that’s when you stop them and say, “well, you keep saying ‘no true conservative’ because I keep getting ‘what is a conservative?’ wrong. Maybe it’s time we step back and you tell me again what a ‘conservative’ is. Because I’m getting the idea that you haven’t got any better idea what a conservative is than I do, I think you’re just making stuff up as you go along.”
That’s why I find this sort of thing to be exceptionally funny: [guard]
Conservatives call for constitutional intervention last seen 230 years ago
Lawmakers push for ‘constitutional convention’ to restrict federal government – and it’s not as far fetched as it sounds
I know you know what I’m thinking “restrict federal government from what?” You cannot run an abstract platform of ‘restrict the federal government’ without thinking about what restrictions you want. I, for one, would like to restrict the federal government from asset forfeiture, searching and seizing without a warrant, detaining anyone without an arrest warrant signed by a judge and a speedy trial by a jury of peers guaranteed. Oh, maybe that’s not conservative enough.
“I think we’re three or four years away,” said the former Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn on Friday, speaking at the annual convention for American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec) – a powerful rightwing organization that links corporate lobbyists with state lawmakers from across the country.
Coburn, a veteran Republican lawmaker, now works as a senior adviser for the advocacy group Convention of States, which seeks to use a little known clause in article V of the US constitution to call a constitutional convention for new amendments to dramatically restrict the power of the federal government.
This is a lobbyist? Who wants a return to the good old days before lobbyists and SuperPACs?
I know he’s just a lying pseudo-conservative authoritarian, but it’s fun to contemplate what might happen if he got what he wanted. These conservatives imagine a constitutional convention would put the US back to the footing it had prior to federalist expansion. I’m not sure exactly what they are dreaming about but it has to involve apartheid or slavery because those were inescapable parts of the American political landscape since European colonists decided to build a nation on slave labor. What original federal powers does he imagine we would put back in place?
What about dueling? Can I call him out and kill him legally? Like you used to be able to, back in the good old days?
Convention of States, with Alec’s support, is one of three prominent conservative groups pushing for a new constitutional convention. Under article V, if two-thirds of state legislatures so choose, they can force congress to convene such a meeting. On the agenda for Convention of States: an amendment to require a balanced budget, term limits for congress, repealing the federal income tax and giving states the power to veto any federal law, supreme court decision or executive order with a three-fifths vote from the states.
The “states rights” thing has always and ever only been about slavery. From a standpoint of world politics, the world would probably a better place if the US returned to being a squabbling set of colonies and politically and economically dismantled itself, like this pseudo-conservative jackass is fantasizing about.
“Once you call a convention literally anybody can bring up anything,” said Jay Riestenberg, a spokesperson for the non-partisan watchdog group Common Cause. “We can bring up an amendment to overturn Roe v Wade or the Civil Rights Act,” Riestenberg added.
This is political naivete speaking. Once “anything is on the table” what happens if there is a sudden push for direct democracy, a social safety net, and demilitarization? What if, instead of “no taxes” The People impose a flat tax breakdown that limits the military to a defense budget no larger than Sweden’s, and allocate 20% for education, 20% for medical care, 20% for infrastructure, and make being a lobbyist a crime punishable by being exported to Texas? Oh, and since we’re talking about rolling back the hands of political time, let’s give Texas back to Mexico. Sorry, California. Sorry Puerto Rico. It’s the conservative thing to do!
Conservatism is just a con-game where authoritarians cherry-pick things from the past (or imagined past) and say “let’s do that” – using the fact that they happened in the past as justification for why we should do them in the future. What they don’t understand is that those things in the past amounted to structural mistakes that caused the US to fragment into civil war, insurrection, and imperialism. You can’t point at history and say “we want the good parts of this outcome, without any of the consequences” – perhaps, there, you’ve got a definition of a ‘conservative’; they’re ignorant liars who want to pretend they have a justification in the past for their beliefs, but they probably never understood that past well enough to begin with.
By the way, if conservatism is anti-change and anti-innovation, it ought to be against the change and innovation that would result from a constitutional convention. These wingnuts want George III back.
Well calling the Estates General in 1789 certainly worked well for Louis XVII.
The USA probably does need a decent constitutional monarch. I don’t think George is still available but there are probably a few monarchies who would be happy to get rid of a prince or princess.
I think I mean Louis XVI.
Yes. If you’ve got a petri dish containing Ebola and HIV, you have two viruses. Not ALL of their symptoms would be alike.
While it’s true that conservatism is not a logically consistent ideology, I don’t see that as a problem. Just because a set of ideas is logically consistent doesn’t mean that it would actually work well, and just because a set of ideas is inconsistent and ad hoc doesn’t mean that it won’t work well.
I’m a pragmatist, so I think that the real problem with conservatism has nothing to do with how logical or consistent it is, but rather the harmful policies that it is used to justify.
The whole “conservatives” label gets even more amusing once you compare their preferred policies among different countries. For example, in Latvia gun ownership is a non-issue for conservatives. Guns are banned, and neither conservatives nor liberals ask for them to be legalized. But it gets even more fun than this. Small government, low taxes, no government regulations for businesses, no welfare, etc. are generally not policies supported by Latvian conservatives.
Latvian conservatives seem to care about the following topics:
– eradicate gays and transsexuals;
– keep women in kitchens (aka “traditional family values”);
– promote marriage between heterosexual people (in a country where majority of children are born out of wedlock);
– promote Christianity;
– promote patriotism, nationalism (people who talk about patriotism often also favor increasing military spending).
When it comes to economic policies, Latvian conservatives are actually leaning more towards a welfare state and social benefits for the poor. This one depends, though, because among Latvians who call themselves “conservative” there are plenty of disagreements. In general, in Latvia it is “liberals” who want a small government and low taxes and a deregulated economy in which banks are free to do whatever the hell they want. Here, when it comes to party programs, “low taxes, no social welfare, no regulations or state intervention in the economy” generally goes together with “let’s legalize gay marriage and promote secularism.”
Also, here police and police unions aren’t a political issue either. As long as cops don’t kill people, they don’t make newspaper headlines, thus nobody cares to talk about them.
My political opinions seem to be all over the place (when the election day comes, there is no political party that would have a list of policies I could agree with, instead each party has some policies I can support and some other policies I disapprove of). This is why I never use any labels for myself. Instead I prefer to explain what I think about each political issue.
I’d like to think that my set of beliefs is coherent and non contradictory, but I’m not sure about this one though—occasionally it gets pretty hard to spot contradictions in your own beliefs.
I like this one. You are really good at this.
sonofrojblake@#3:
If you’ve got a petri dish containing Ebola and HIV, you have two viruses. Not ALL of their symptoms would be alike.
Yes. I hope it didn’t seem as if I was trying to equivocate between the two. I was looking for an illustration of the perils of mutually longing for “the good old days” and that was definitely not the best way I could have framed it.
jrkrideau@#1:
The USA probably does need a decent constitutional monarch. I don’t think George is still available but there are probably a few monarchies who would be happy to get rid of a prince or princess.
The Triumphant Return of Meagan Markle to take her seat on the throne of America would make for great bread and circuses, wouldn’t it?
springa73@#4:
I think that the real problem with conservatism has nothing to do with how logical or consistent it is, but rather the harmful policies that it is used to justify.
You should have written this sermon, not I – your version is much more succinct.
If one has inconsistent and contradictory beliefs, it doesn’t usually work very well when you try to put them into practice. That’s sort of what I meant in my example of the nazi and the conservative Jew – they might both call themselves “conservative” but when the time came to establish a workable public policy, they probably would struggle to find common ground. To put it mildly.
Ieva Skrebele@#5:
When it comes to economic policies, Latvian conservatives are actually leaning more towards a welfare state and social benefits for the poor.
You hit upon something that completely eluded me: “conservative” attitudes are going to be quite different in a post-totalitarian state than in a pre-totalitarian state. In a sense, American conservatives probably want a society that resembles the USSR (with a different hood ornament) whereas post-Soviet conservatives probably want something resembling a labor republic. It’s “the good old days” mean very different things, when the “good old days” weren’t so hot.
For that matter, I wonder if there are any black American “conservatives” and how they square the circle regarding “the good old days.” Outside of the Dave Chapelle show, I am skeptical such people exist (unless they are utterly naive politically, as I tried to imply earlier).
This is why I never use any labels for myself. Instead I prefer to explain what I think about each political issue.
Avoiding labels is one of the recommendations of Argument Clinic! But I know you enough to suspect you’ve always been that way. (which is good!)
Yes. Common Cause is afraid that any change would diminish their very weak influence.
By the way, Congress has already noted that there are many more state calls for a national Constitutional convention, but no such convention has been called, because they have to be calls regarding the same issue, and no single issue has enough yet.
Secondly, it can be presumed that the delegates to such a convention would be selected by the legislatures of each state, in response to a convention being called on one specific issue,and that the delegates would often be instructed to vote only on the relevant issue or specified issues.
Thirdly, even if a convention proposed many amendments, these would never become law unless a given single amendment earned the support of three-fourths of state legislatures. So in each state, just part of one half of their legislature could veto their state’s support, and 13 states who don’t act would block any ratification.
So really, it’s still very hard for anything to happen without genuine broad consensus support.
Finally, what has often happened in the past is that if a convention ever looks close to happening, then Congress proposes an amendment to deal with the topic and sends it to the states, just as they did for the women’s equal rights amendment that had broad support, but not strong enough to ever get ratified.
Bruce@#10:
You are correct – nothing can/will happen because the establishment, once it ratified its establishment, pulled the ladder up behind it. They’re willing to show people the ladder and say “jump! you might reach the bottom rung!” but even that’s mostly play-acting; the ladder’s actually sawn through a couple rungs up.
What these people imagine is that a “constitutional convention” would be like the one during the establishment of the country – where everything is on the table and a whole new constitution is assembled. They forget that that damn near didn’t happen, except for as a result of some pretty intense back-stage smoky room wrangling, once it became clear that the south would not be part of a nation unless it was a slave nation. If I recall my subsequent history, there have been a number of referendums about that topic, some of them quite passionate. These sorry asses who think they’re going to re-litigate that point probably don’t understand that, if they do, it ends up with them against a wall – or a Syria-style collapse. They will never sip mint juleps on the porches of their plantations ever again.
A conservative is simply someone who desires the system to be rigged to favour only them and their kind, just like it was in the good old days.
Former sheriff David Clarke and talking head Jesse Lee Peterson would be examples of black conservatives who come pretty close to advocating the return of slavery.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Clarke_(sheriff)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Lee_Peterson
I think that this sort of attitude used to be much more common in the US than it is today. If you agree with one of the parties on A, B, and C but not on D, you will come under an enormous amount of pressure from your allies in the party to fall into line on D or be ostracized. Also, it’s likely that your news media of choice will be hammering on the preferred position on D as well. The current climate seems to favor orthodoxy.
Example: in the last election, I was generally a free-trade liberal. But so many people whose opinion I highly respected in other areas were attacking the Pacific Trade agreement and NAFTA, that I began to doubt my previous convictions.
The problem with a Constitutional Convention is the last one we had. Back around 1787, when it was apparent that the US’s original founding document, the Articles of Confederation, just weren’t working. So we held a Constitutional Convention, to fix the flaws… and what ended up happening was, the Articles of Confederation were completely scrapped and replaced with the Constitution we now have.
Applying this precedent to the present-day political landscape is left as an exercise for the reader.
I, for one, would like to restrict the federal government from asset forfeiture, searching and seizing without a warrant, detaining anyone without an arrest warrant signed by a judge …
Almost all such abuses happen at the hands of municipal (city/county) law enforcement anyway.
Pierce R. Butler@#16:
Almost all such abuses happen at the hands of municipal (city/county) law enforcement anyway.
Yeah, and about those “states rights…” issues…
My rather limited historical knowledge of early US federalism left me with the indelible impression of a bunch of squabbling between slavers and non-slavers, using every trick in the book (nullification, etc.) – it certainly doesn’t make Adams or Jefferson look very good. My impression was that the US should be two nations, sharing a huge common border, which they fight endlessly over. And good riddance.
(Of course the south would have lost, as they do/did. The slavers can’t seem to get it into their heads that apartheid cultures have a big problem producing the manpower and industrial capacity needed to fight less oppressive regimes)
Yesterday night I couldn’t fall asleep, so I ended up thinking about logical consistency, coherence and contradictions in political views. As usually, the moment I start thinking about some question, it turns out to be more complicated than it seemed at first.
How do I check whether my own political views are consistent? Well, the underlying premise for me is that I want policies, which offer the best possible living conditions for the people. At this point you should already spot a problem—what are “the best possible living conditions”? That’s already a matter of opinion. Anyway, one of the things I believe necessary for good living conditions is individual freedom. Thus, in general, I tend to prefer policies that increase rather than decrease citizens’ personal freedom. However, “just allow people do whatever they want” is not a viable rule when it comes to deciding what policies I prefer. When one person does whatever they want, it’s possible to hurt somebody else as a result. Thus my rule is “allow people to do whatever they want as long as their actions do not harm others.” But what constitutes harm? And how do I tell whether some harm is significant enough to warrant banning something? After all, for every policy or law there are always both benefits and drawbacks (or at least imaginary benefits or drawbacks). For example, when thinking about euthanasia, I can conclude that allowing it poses no significant harm for the society. When thinking about smoking in public, I can conclude that it poses significant harm for non-smokers. Thus “let’s allow euthanasia and let’s ban smoking in public” can be a logically consistent political position for somebody whose underlying premise is “let’s allow people to do whatever they want as long as their actions do not harm others.” But wait, when thinking about each individual question, it might be possible to conclude that legalizing euthanasia harms the society while smoking in public poses only a minor harm that does not warrant banning smoking. That’s another logically consistent position, which would require advocating the exact opposite positions. Assuming somebody values individual freedom, it’s not necessary for them to say “let’s allow both euthanasia and smoking in public places.” With the right presuppositions, any combination of policies can be logically consistent and non contradictory.
Now I’ll try to be generous towards the conservatives (actually, this isn’t so easy, I perceive a significant portion of them as misogynistic and racist jerks). If your goal (“premise,” “presupposition,” whatever you call it) is “let’s reduce taxes and government spending as much as possible,” then it really is illogical to support high military spending. But wait, it’s perfectly possible to slightly change the goal of our hypothetical conservative person, let’s make the goal into “let’s reduce taxes and government spending as much as possible, and finance only things that are absolutely essential and cannot be taken care of by private businesses.” Things like education and healthcare can be taken care of by private businesses. However, you cannot have a privately owned army just like you already have privately owned universities and hospitals. If a person believes that having a strong army is essential for the survival of the country (or else all those evil [insert a nationality of choice] will invade the USA and kill all Americans), then it can be logically consistent for them to support military spending while being against the government funding healthcare or education. Depending on what presuppositions you have, “let’s cut all government spending except for the military” can be a logically consistent political position.
It can be possible to pick a set of premises that allow reconciling various policies that might seem contradictory at first. Although, frankly, I suspect that people who simply want things to be the way how they were in the past do not even bother to think about this problem and they don’t attempt to somehow reconcile and justify their weird amalgamation of political ideas.
brucegee1962 @#14
It’s different where I live. We have several dozens of active political parties. There are currently six parties elected in the parliament. Moreover, majority of the parties aren’t old. A party that has survived for over 10 years is considered very old by our standards, and there are only a few such parties. Usually it goes like this: Some celebrity decides to make their own party right before the elections, and they get a few seats in the parliament. After getting elected, they manage to do something that annoys the voters. Four years later they don’t get reelected, and the party dissolves. Among the party members a few want to stay in the politics, so they either join some other party or make a new one.
The result is that orthodoxy is near impossible. With so many parties most of which survive only a few years, nobody even expects any orthodoxy. Even party members aren’t expected to completely agree with the party’s policies. Among voters very few have some party that they can completely agree with. Many news media do have their own preferences when it comes to what viewpoints they advocate, but those rarely align with one specific party’s policies.
Ieva Skrebele@#18:
That’s already a matter of opinion. Anyway, one of the things I believe necessary for good living conditions is individual freedom. Thus, in general, I tend to prefer policies that increase rather than decrease citizens’ personal freedom. However, “just allow people do whatever they want” is not a viable rule when it comes to deciding what policies I prefer. When one person does whatever they want, it’s possible to hurt somebody else as a result. Thus my rule is “allow people to do whatever they want as long as their actions do not harm others.” But what constitutes harm?
There’s another problem (I think of it as “the anarchist’s dilemma”) which is that you want government policies to be based on the consent and agreement of the governed, but it’s undeniable that the whole system is held in place with the threat of force. Even ‘libertarian’ (small ‘l’ libertarian not capital ‘L’ Libertarian) politics amount to enforcing liberty. If you want to have a mini-meltdown from a liberal, ask them if they’re violating their principles by forcing people to be free. What if someone prefers to be ruled? (it’s easy and convenient!) “Let’s have a vote about whether our vote has legitimacy” fail.
leva Shrebele@#18
Then there are things like vaccinations for common diseases, where it is in the interests of the community for as many people as possible to be vaccinated against as many diseases as possible as children, but as children they are not capable of expressing their opinion on the subject, so at present that is delegated to their parents with all the problems that entails.
I am reminded of something I recently saw: World’s shortest explanation of Gödel’s theorem
My opinion is that parents shouldn’t be allowed to make medical decisions about their children. Doctors know better than uninformed parents who know nothing yet assume that they are so well educated. Children shouldn’t suffer because of dumb parents.
That, and then there’s also the whole issue of parents messing with their babies’ bodies–boys getting circumcised (how is this even legal?), intersex babies having their genitals altered in accordance with what sex their parents want them to be. If an adult man wants to get himself circumcised, great, people should be free to do with their bodies whatever they want. But they shouldn’t be allowed to mess up their children’s bodies. Same goes for intersex people–they should be able to decide how they want their bodies to look like, their parents or doctors shouldn’t just assign them some sex and perform surgeries without the child’s consent.
leva Skrebele@#22
I don’t disagree, although there would need to be a robust system for getting second opinions for more contenious treatments.