Conservatism Isn't Evil... People Who Think They're Conservative On the Other Hand...
And while I'm at it, Matthew Yglesias also says
Ezra says conservatives aren't out of ideas they're out of solutions:
There's something to that, but I think the problem is actually much worse -- the problem with the conservative movement is that it's fundamentally malign.
...
The trouble is that no sensible person believes that electing conservative politicians will actually improve the situation... the conservative movement is correct to say that more stable family structure would be a boon to America's children, but its operational commitment to family values just consists of the political exploitation of anti-gay sentiment. The ideas have some merit, it's the actual moral character of the people able to move the levers of power that are the problem -- they're not fundamentally interested in the merits of ideas, even their own ideas, they're interested in power and greed.
One of the reasons I happen to really appreciate Senator Obama's position on, say, foreign policy is that he doesn't just say what almost all other Democratic candidates have said over the last few decades, that "Democrats can too be just as tough as conservatives." Instead he's getting out there and saying conservatives don't just not know what they're talking about, they're simplistic, unrealistic, and morally bankrupt too. In other words, they're fundamentally malign.
That's an issue we sort of tiptoe around on matters of, say, choice: for all their talk about being pro-life conservatives rather obviously don't care about life, they've probably never cared about life, and they never will care about life. Instead they have a malevolent attitude towards sex in general and women in particular. Therefore, rather than put forward life-saving proposals that are actually politically or socially conservative in good standing** they instead propose punitive, sometimes *murderously* punative measures such as withholding life-saving care from pregnant women even if their fetus is nonviable, putting pregnant women and their unborn children at risk by cutting pre-natal care, keeping WIC payments egregiously low so that poor mothers are punished by watching their children suffer, and knowingly making specious arguments against sex education, and ordinary and emergency contraception. Nothing about that is particularly *conservative,* it's plain old fucking up other people's lives.
[** Example: mandating that indigent parents use contraception -- an idea we probably wouldn't like but that would be perfectly *consistent* with conservatism's paternalistic attitudes towards the poor. --fl]
My daughter's grandmother is the president of a child support organization. She used to meet with GWBush when he was governor out here.
He told her he thought that any single mom with two kids already should have Norplant put in her arm.
So...I guess some people already think that way, about the birth control I mean.
[Actually that's one of there reasons folks didn't think it would be such a *complete* disaster if he got in -- because yeah, that's a *conservative* suggestion but not a right-wing kook one. I think a lot of people sprung for Nader that year because they didn't think "sending a message" to Al Gore would have that many consequences. Oh, as they say, well. Thanks, Stealth. --fl]
Politically, at least, conservatives are supposed to be about preserving the past - some of the old ways of doing things work for a reason, and even if there's better ways, slowing things down helps prevent culture shock - or disaster if the new ways turn out not to be better after all. Progressives supposed to be about moving forward and making things better to fit the changing times. Comparing it to a car, conservatives are the brakes and progressives are the gas pedal. A car with no brakes is dangerous, and a car with no gas pedal is useless.
I don't know about other countries, but here in the US we have the republicans and democrats, who aren't particularly either of those things. With a small number of individual exceptions, the republicans are about finding ways (both new and old) to make certain elements of the status quo even more extreme (based on ideology that is independent of reality), while the democrats help them to self-destruct either by going along with them or trying to block them, whichever seems to work better. Of course they do pander to conservatives and progressives, but their actions virtually never match their rhetoric - above the local level, anyway. At least that's been my observation and opinion.
To use another car metaphor (though this one is really stretching it) in the US the "conservatives" are driving the car forwards while in reverse gear, and the "progressives" are screwing around with the gas and brakes. That's not very safe at all.
[Yup. The funny thing is that after 1994 the Republicans *really were* the revolutionaries and Democrats really were using technically-conservative, reactionary-against-revolutionary strategies to try and hold themselves together. As with many other revolutions, though, the Republicans degenerated into ideological extremism and corruption. And, I might add, a totally out of control 60's radical "smash the state" mentality that was just *nothing* like actual political *conservatism* at all. Thanks, Nightfall. --fl]
You'd make more sense if you actually had conversations with conservatives instead of raving whenever you hear one make a sound.
[Hi Ecclesiastes. I grew up with *real* conservatives and this current crop -- the George Bush / Tom DeLay / Newt Gingrich crowd -- seems like a bunch of the crap kind of "if it feels good do it" types that gave a bad name to the 1960s in general and the hippies in particular. Sort of like the neo-cons who were all the worst kind of turn-coat Stalinist and Leninist communists back in the 1950s. I listen to them, I just don't think they're good for America. Which is just one more reason I prefer Progressives. --fl]