Political instances where conservatives were/are right...

Don Imus was right about the nappy-headed hos.

Reagan cutting the maximum taxation from 70% to 35%, as 70% is too much to pay for anyone.

but isn't 35% too low?

lol curtis

cutting the maximum taxation from 70% to 35%

he cut it to 28%

stalin was a douche

I suspect Oxycontin might actually be as enjoyable as Rush Limbaugh would claim it to be (off record, of course).

Serious answer: Nixon opening trade with China.

Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.

(most) citizens should be able to own (some types of) guns.

i guess that's more philosophy. clinton bombing sudan was fucked up.

but then liberals thought so too. drawing a blank.

"Drugs policy shouldn't be about what educated middle class people did at university".

It should be about jailing poor people instead?

My Tory MP when I was a kid gassed himself.

That was very decent of him and was that an instance where a conservative was right?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsinki_Accords

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tear_down_this_wall

really though most of the things I can think of all boil down to what slocki posted

xxpost

You knows it, right?

Eisenhower was hardly a conservative.

(most) citizens should be able to own (some types of) guns.

-- tremendoid, Friday, February 8, 2008 7:49 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Link

hahaha A++

guns with a flag that pops out and says BANG!

I don't think 70% is too much for anyone to pay.

Also 27% is too little on very high earning. So overall no I don;t afree thet Reagan was right. Think of something else.

Maggie Thatcher taking away our rotten warm milk was OTM.

John Major referring to his Cabinet as bastards was OTM.

yeah i kind of think adopting the eu constitution is some bullshit but i guess the nu-tories support it!

Eisenhower's speech warning of the dangers of the military industrial complex is one of the great examples of any politician (conservative or liberal) being totally completely OTFM.

I think a better question though is what mainline conservative opinions are right (for example there are quite a few examples of oh let's say John McCain being right--and more of him being wrong--but he's pilloried at every turn by his party for any "right" beliefs he holds.)

The Reagan machine's cold war military spending.

"I'll start small by mentioning Reagan cutting the maximum taxation from 70% to 35%, as 70% is too much to pay for anyone."

No it's not.

Also, this may be obvious to point out, but their entire income wasn't taxed at 70%, just that bit that placed them in the top tax bracket.

best I can think of is yeah Mao and Stalin were really fucked up and were enemies to be loathed and feared. Conservatives went kinda overboard with the anti-communism thing tho.

tinkering with taxation and spending often produces strange outcomes that don't help anyone much

I can't see how Ike was a "conservative".

wicca, spiritualism, and other new age religions are excellent fodder for mockery

vegetarianism is a meaningless, arbitrary choice that has more to do with identity & self-congratulation than morality

alternative medicine is horseshit

modern culture has raised a generation of narcissists by telling every child how special they are regardless of accomplishment

those are the big four i can usually bro down with republicans about

libertarians of course theres a lot more

but.... those are all kidn of cultural attitudes and not at all related to public policy per se

neither nixon or lincoln were conservatives

even though it comes from a really fucked up racist core i have thought the post 9/11 anti-muslim movement has led to some interesting shit, like christian conservatives investigating authorship and validity of religion and aligning with atheists like chris hitchens or ayaan hirsi ali

but.... those are all kidn of cultural attitudes and not at all related to public policy per se

-- Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, February 8, 2008 2:29 PM (37 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

well, yeah... conservative policy is universally bad unless you include social libertarianism

Murphy Brown was a pretty shitty mom

the plural of potato doesn't look right to me either

jellybeans are yummy

Eisenhower was the first new President of what we think of as Post-War America (not counting the economic earthquakes that Truman got to deal with)-- by today's standards of conservative, there's no way he could have been anything but a little bit "liberal." He was managing a vastly different country than the one that went into WWII. No choice but to shake it up and try some new stuff. Like... I dunno... hating Russia!

I like this sentence from wiki:

"As President, he oversaw the cease-fire of the Korean War, kept up the pressure on the Soviet Union during the Cold War, made nuclear weapons a higher defense priority, launched the Space Race, enlarged the Social Security program, and began the Interstate Highway System."

Busy man.

I like Ike.

term limits

The Reagan machine's cold war military spending.

-- Catsupppppppppppppp dude 茄蕃, Friday, February 8, 2008 6:03 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

you really think so?

Shock & Awe

term limits and shock & awe are both terrible ideas!

artdamages, I think the massive military spending forced the Soviet Union to overextend its economy and crumble.

yeah i've heard that one before!

^^^ this is provably false

whats the downside to term limits?

it might be nice if we had the balanced budget amendment right now so bush would be forced to try and raise taxes to pay for the war

By 1980, the Soviet Union was trying to cut its own defense spending. Reagan made it harder for them to do so. In fact, Reagan increased the possibility of a nuclear war because he was -- frankly, and sadly -- senile. He thought we could actually recall submarine-launched nuclear missiles (talk about a Reagan myth), and bullied the Soviets to highest alert several times.

Critically, Reagan never even tried to bring down the Soviet Union.

Wasteful overspending on defense didn't end the Soviet Union. In fact, it played into the hands of authoritarian "Communist" hard-liners in the Kremlin. Reagan thought the Soviet Union was more powerful than we were. He was trying to close what he called "the window of vulnerability."

This was sheer idiocy.

No general in our military would trade our armed forces for theirs. If it were to happen, none of the Soviet military command would turn down that deal. We had better systems, better troops, and better morale.

Here's the truth: we'd already won the Cold War before Reagan took office. All Reagan needed to do was continue the tried-and-true containment policies Harry S. Truman began and all subsequent presidents employed. The Soviet Union was Collapsing from within. The CIA actually told this to Reagan as he took office.

Here's an example: the Soviet Union military couldn't deal with a weak state on its own border, the poor, undermanned Afghanistan. Most of the Soviets' military might had to make sure its "allies" in the Warsaw Pact and subjects along the South Asian front didn't revolt. Even Richard Nixon told Reagan he could balance the budget with big defense cuts.

Reagan ignored this, and wrecked our budget.

We didn't have to increase weapons spending, but Reagan didn't care. He ran away from summits with the dying old-guard Soviets, and the new-style "glasnost" leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev baffled the witless Reagan and his closed-minded extremist advisors.

Maggie Thatcher finally cajoled the Gipper into meeting Gorby, and Gorby cleaned Reagan's clock. Reagan's hard-right "handlers" nearly had to drag Reagan out of the room before he signed away our entire nuclear deterrent. Reagan -- and the planet -- was lucky Gorbachev sought genuine and stable peace. Had Yuri Andropov's health held, Reagan's "jokes" and gaffes might have caused World War III.

Eventually Reagan even gave Gorbachev his seal of approval. Visiting Moscow before the August Coup, Reagan said the Soviet Union was no longer the "Evil Empire." He predicted his friend Gorbachev would lead the Soviet Union for many years to come.

As usual, Reagan was wrong. A few months later, disgruntled military officers kidnapped Gorbachev, throwing him out of power forever. Reagan remained disengaged: nothing he did caused the coup, and nothing he did made the Soviet military support Boris Yeltsin over their superiors.

We're all fortunate things happened as they did -- but once again, Reagan did nothing to make this fluke more likely.

jon wtf, turn off the a.m. radio. The soviet union collapsed because it was managed like enron.

xpost

term limits are fucked up and completely unnecessary - if someone's not doing a good job, they can be voted out of office, why is an additional restriction required?

What ends up happening is that elected officials spend an inordinate amount of time campaigning and raising money to make sure they don't get voted out of office, and legislators don't build up any meaningful relationships or experience. You end up with an inexperienced and inept body of elected officials who spend most of their time trying to collect money.

term limits attempt to mimic the more responsive turnover of a parliamentary system in the most undemocratic way -- instead of having the opportunity to get rid of unpopular officials every 2/4/6 years, we have the choice taken away and we're forced to do so, no matter how they are performing. i understand the rationale at the presidential level, since so much power accrues to one individual, but even then, the incumbent party can win.

xp

Term limits are a pretty bad idea in counties where there are like 3,000 people and only one has any experience as county sheriff but can't get re-elected after 8 years.

I think they are important for the position of president.

like, rather than having incumbents who can accumulate money over time and not necessarily worry about being booted out of office as long as they do a good job, you have a bunch of perennial newbies who have to raise cash in a hurry or else they're out at the end of their first term.

(x-post)

Dude, I'm sorry I have an UNPOPULAR OPINION

that's not really an opinion, more like a misconception

I am always looking out for the small counties, JW.

jon, why or how could the USSR even care how much we spent on our military when they were having trouble fucking EATING? There's a hierarchy of needs.

By the early 1980s, Moscow had built up a military that had surpassed that of the United States. Previously, the United States had relied on the qualitative superiority of its weapons to essentially frighten the Soviets, but with Soviet technological advances in the 1980s, the gap between the two nations was narrowed., With the Soviet military buildup came large budget deficits; as a result, Gorbachev offered major concessions to the United States on the levels of conventional forces, nuclear weapons, and policy in Eastern Europe.

YOU HAVE LIBERAL FARTS DEGREES

In modern colleges and universities, the liberal arts include the study of theology, literature, languages, philosophy, history, mathematics, and science.

is jon williams one of those vice magazine/kill whitie "hipublicans" ive heard so much about?

i'm a high school drop-out, but i have read actual books about the soviet union in the 80s

Here's an example: the Soviet Union military couldn't deal with a weak state on its own border, the poor, undermanned Afghanistan.

^ lol @ this

xpost

i admit i haven't thought about term limits much and don't feel that strongly about the issue, but i hardly see them as 'undemocratic'. how can you represent the people of your state or district if you've been in washington for 20 or 30 years? i suspect that w/term limits senators would have to be more responsive to voters/their party rather than relying on incumbency and special interests. and they might run on doing something concrete rather than on platitudes.

What ends up happening is that elected officials spend an inordinate amount of time campaigning and raising money to make sure they don't get voted out of office

uh, this is happening right now.

If I'm not mistaken almost every member on this message board is very liberal

Nope.

yeah Russia's invasion of Afghanistan was a massive success wasn't it

x-post

Neither was ours!

how can you represent the people of your state or district if you've been in washington for 20 or 30 years?

maybe we should let the voters decide this, instead of arbitrarily forcing new candidates on them every 2/4/6 years?

http://www.counterpunch.org/blum06072004.html

http://www.hnn.us/articles/5569.html

think a better question though is what mainline conservative opinions are right

Taliban-esque clumps of Islamic extremism who would kill me in a soccer field for buggery should be expunged – I agree with conservatives on this. I'm also intrinsically uncomfortable with putting my faith in government, but it's a long way from this to a certain sentence in Reagan's first inaugural address.

You're also quoting left wing nutjob sources.

how can you represent the people of your state or district if you've been in washington for 20 or 30 years?

because over that time you've accumulated knowledge about how the system works and what relationships you need to get things done...? How could your represent your people by NOT being in Washington?

i suspect that w/term limits senators would have to be more responsive to voters/their party rather than relying on incumbency and special interests. and they might run on doing something concrete rather than on platitudes.

All I can do is point you to internal California politics, where we have term limits and neither of these things have come to pass. (see Schwarzenegger "I will clean up this wasteful gov't" lolz platitudes)

uh, this is happening right now.

Yes it does - but trust me, its worse in terms of local CA politics than it is on the national stage. WAY WORSE.

i love counterpunch

bush looks like a monkey lol

When Thatcher hooked up Reagan with Gorbachev.

I don't think catsupdde is totally wrong. I think our policy towards the Soviets played a part in its crumbling, but it was only one of many factors. their misadventures in the middle east and some of the rumblings in eastern europe (esp. Poland) were probably more important to their demise.

this is like an xxxxxxxxxxxxxxpost

Neither was ours!

to be fair, ours is at least working out better than theirs did (if only because ours didn't have another enormous superpower funding the opposition and giving them boffo gear and stuff)

When Thatcher hooked up Reagan with Gorbachev.

It's forgotten now, but the likes of Richard Perle and Charles Krauthammer excoriated Reagan for kowtowing to the pragmatists in his administration for meeting with Gorby in Geneva. Reagan deserves some credit for ignoring them.

THIS IS A MAN WE CAN DO BUSINESS WITH

I think that was depicted in the "Land of Confusion" video.

Thatcher was sort of right on the Falklands but it was a waste of fucking life

All I can do is point you to internal California politics, where we have term limits and neither of these things have come to pass. (see Schwarzenegger "I will clean up this wasteful gov't" lolz platitudes)

that may be shakey like i said i haven't thought much about it. just sounds good intuitively to me, but there are probably better means than term limits to make legislators more responsive to citizens.

that and i was kinda scratching my head to think of an instance to add to the thread!

Let's email Jonah Goldberg and ask him to run a similar thread about liberalism.

let's email jonah goldberg the 'awesome cougars' pic but rename it michelle_bachman_nude001.jpg

am i basically right that jonah goldberg's relationship with his mom is like buster from arrested development?

query for alfred: are you comfortable self-identifying as conservative?

"Lucianne" is a better name though.

query for alfred: are you comfortable self-identifying as conservative?

I'm not a conservative – I just don't identify as liberal.

oh, just checking. you can be cagey.

I thought Americans had to choose one or the other by law.

running elections with the message that you will protect them but simultaneously leave them alone is a good way to win

What was the 'conservative' position on Vietnam?

(Term limits always seemed bizarre to me.)

and if you choose the wrong one, the terrorists win!

(xxpost)

What was the 'conservative' position on Vietnam?

Bomb'em back to the Stone Age. There were still remnants of Robert Taft-style isolationism, but no one took them seriously anymore as a force.

I guess the GST wasn't a bad idea but more right-wing conservatives are rolling it back now.

Hang on, so LBJ was moderate on Vietnam? Or is it just that the two parties were united on this?

i hate the idea that people can be moderates on war.

"well just kill them a little"

haha, I think I agree.

whats the downside to term limits?

"Stop me from being too stupid to judge candidates on the merits."

LBJ was, to quote Bodie in Point Break, "a radical son of a bitch."

wait, what's the "awesome cougars" picture?

but morbs if someone was for term limits they'd say it was an empowering 'throw the bums out' thing.

matt check the lol thread on noize

you throw the good guys out with the bums with term limits

haha oh THAT pic! yikes.

Murphy Brown was a pretty shitty mom

-- Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, February 8, 2008 7:31 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

rofl

If someone was really cynical and for term limits, they might say that our entire system of electing leaders -- from the very first local caucus to the last recount, lawsuit, and bass-ackwards Supreme Court decision -- is Jolly Well Fucked, and the very least we can do is make our national government change its skid-marked underwear every so often.

But you'd have to be pretty cynical to say something like that.

not that they'd get any love around here, but i think greens support term limits

well, the Founders supposedly believed in "citizen legislators" of short duration, but as you need to pony up $60 million to start to run for president that ship has sailed.

hey wait, kenan i get the feeling that YOU'RE really the hypothetical cynical person you're talking about! sneaky

income based affirmative action > race based affirmative action
(not really sure that qualifies as conservative.)

i don't know any conservatives who support that, bnw!

i hate the idea that people can be moderates on war.

but isn't everything that isn't hiroshima/nagasaki pretty moderate, in comparison to hiroshima/nagasaki?

Lincoln might not have been conservative, but he was obviously Republican.

hey wait, kenan i get the feeling that YOU'RE really the hypothetical cynical person you're talking about! sneaky

Honestly, no. I have my moments, but it usually means I just need some juice and a few minutes for my blood sugar to level out. That's kind of an ugly and unproductive place to be.

I thought Americans had to choose one or the other by law.
No, our presidential elections hinge on the millions of people in the middle, who somehow haven't picked a side yet.

vegetarianism is a meaningless, arbitrary choice that has more to do with identity & self-congratulation than morality

alternative medicine is horseshit

we're off the topic now, but come on. and i'm not a vegetarian, and i don't practice or use alternative medicine, but these are both ridiculously soft targets, and, in their own way, manipulative, enormously value-loaded statements.

posting to ilx is a meaningless, arbitrary choice that has more to do with identity & self-congratulation than morality

that's better

i was gonna say something about the vegetarian thing, but i would just be congratulating myself

yezir

i like lattes.

I suppose that in Quebec, federalism tends to be associated with 'conservatives' or at the least separatism is highly favoured by the left (and esp the whackjob hard left - the ISO is gung-ho about separatism IIRC)?

I believe that, at least on paper, conservatives have tended to be more in favour of streaming and stricter standards about some things in schools. (At the very least, destreaming has been a Liberal/NDP policy.)

(I disagree w/ the original poster obv. Taxes = classic!)

(You could of course make a terrible pun that conservatives are always 'right'.)

full circle lols:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0312261470/ref=sib_dp_pt/102-9954845-1822542#reader-link
http://www.amazon.com/Dominion-Power-Suffering-Animals-Mercy/dp/0312261470
This is one of the best books ever written on the subject of animal welfare. Scully, a journalist and former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, chooses to fight on his own ground, and he rightly argues that the important thing is not insisting upon equal "rights" for animals but in treating them with a modicum of respect and dignity. His book is as close as a philosophy can come to representing "animal rights" goals while not proclaiming animals to be equal in status to humans, as do classic works like Peter Singer's Animal Liberation.

oops http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41NWJAGCGHL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_OU01_AA240_SH20_.jpg

The argument about whether Reagan's defense spending brought down the Soviet Union (it didn't) should be secondary to the effect of the deficit spending itself.

Are we better off with a nine trillion-dollar debt and Putin than we would be with a trillion dollar debt and Gorby's successor?

we couldn't have let the communists win

i think the concept of 'fiscal responsibility' is not inherently ridiculous and there are some legit reasons why conservatives rule the world of economics ... ayn rand philosophy is wacky as its own statement of purpose but of a critique of big (as in soviet-sized) govt it has some seriously credible points

*but AS a critique

in other words, the conservative philosophy of HANDS OFF THE FREE MARKETS! is wack but the conservative critique of heavy-handed govt can easily be RIGHT ON ...

i think the concept of 'fiscal responsibility' is not inherently ridiculous and there are some legit reasons why conservatives rule the world of economics

otm. When i try to define myself as a non-liberal, I try to think about this, and the consequences of such a belief. For all the blame I've heaped on Bill Clinton here and other places, one the ways in which he was a clever little chap was understanding that one can be a Democrat and balance the budget too.

yeah but the thread is about actual instances, not times when a conservative just said some shit that sounded correct and then did exactly the opposite, re: "fiscal conservatism"

Calvin Coolidge to thread.

understanding that one can be a Democrat and balance the budget too

that you think this makes clinton a "clever little chap" is some misguided hooey

whatever. Clinton can put it in his "win" column.

Coolidge was the last prez until Clinton to leave a surplus.

one of the ways in which conservatives have NEVER been right is when they consistently label liberals as being irresponsible with money as if they're frugal or something. I can't stand that argument, it's like saying people who live paycheck to paycheck are stupider than people who pay their rent with a credit card

I agree, which is why you have to go as far back as Coolidge to find a conservative who really believed in starving the Fed (not that it was a GOOD thing, in light of what happened 18 mths after he left office).

He vetoed the proposed McNary-Haugen Farm Relief Bill of 1926, designed to allow the federal government to purchase agricultural surpluses and sell them abroad at lowered prices. Coolidge declared that agriculture must stand "on an independent business basis," and said that "government control cannot be divorced from political control."[109] He favored Herbert Hoover's proposal to modernize agriculture to create profits, instead of manipulating prices. When Congress re-passed the McNary-Haugen bill in 1927, Coolidge vetoed it again.[110] "Farmers never have made much money," said Coolidge, the Vermont farmer's son, "I do not believe we can do much about it."[111]

^^^^ shitbag

i dont believe in economic conservatism either btw ... i hate when people are all 'lol im a social liberal economic conservative' cuz thats kinda bullshit. conservative economics in practice NOW are very pro-big business in a way i find repulsive BUT there are ways in which excessive regulation really does end up crippling the well-being of a country's infrastructure ... i guess im just not convinced that egalitarian socialism is an inherently better model when taken to its extreme than competition ... i think believing in either to the end is basically religion.

this country could use a tilt to the left and im not all 'the slippery slope/road to serfdom' but government regulation has to be held in check to some degree ...look at how powerful seemingly minor gov't interference can be in things like the creation of the internet, and suddenly you level the music and movie industries ... but increased regulation NOW is wrong, cats out of the bag etc

thats kinda bullshit.

primarily cuz economic conservatism has profound conservative social implications in areas like welfare etc.

FWIW Tommy Douglas, who led the 1st social democratic govt in the continent, was also a big advocate of balanced budgets (partly on the grounds that it gives the people's money to capitalist investors and speculators). I don't think of balancing the budget as an inherently conservative policy, depending on how the budget is balanced.

a balanced budget has never been a philosophy restricted to either end of the political spectrum. saying you're for a balanced budget is the fucking beauty queen wish for world peace

I wouldn't read his response to the Mississippi floods, Tombot, if I were you.

im just not convinced that egalitarian socialism is an inherently better model when taken to its extreme than competition

How extreme are you talking though? Like, outright communism? Most people, and certainly most 'liberals', would probably agree with that.

or "bipartisanship."

(xxpost)

"I support pie, hot running water, and balanced budgets! I am against cancer!"

(TD DID actually reduce the deficit significantly FWIW.)

yeah, the conservative mantle of 'fiscal responsibility' is just result of a hugely successful frame that progressives/liberals have been oddly skittish about tackling head-on since like, the New Deal (i suppose democratic dominance of the legislature had something to do with the complacency). So 'C'onservatives have had the luxury of having their strategies, however wasteful/unproven they might be, swept under the rubric of 'fiscal responsibility' and even when that illusion starts to crack (under, say, Bush's bog-obvious profligacy) all that's necessary is to call the failed policies 'unconservative' and voila, hands are washed.

was also a big advocate of balanced budgets (partly on the grounds that it gives the people's money to capitalist investors and speculators)

"partly on the grounds that deficits give the people's money..." obv

deficit spending pays my rent!

Deficit spending is our protection. Deficit spending keeps us safe and warm. Deficit spending is why you and I are prancing around in here instead of fighting over scraps of meat out in the streets. Deficit spending is why we win.

"Deficits, ladies and gentlemen, are good."

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/images/michaeldouglaswallstreetcolor.JPG

How extreme are you talking though? Like, outright communism? Most people, and certainly most 'liberals', would probably agree with that.

-- Sundar, Friday, February 8, 2008 5:32 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

yeah but most conservatives arent drown-the-govt-in-the-tub folks either ... its a big tent. most conservatives probably think ron paul is nuts for wanting to get rid of the dept of ed

and communism DID exist in a major way back when the current conservative movement was really being built ... anti-communism was one of its major tenets.

RE: US national debt and balanced budgets...

Didn't Clinton make a speech during his term where he said America was on course (under his policies of course) to clearing its national debt by 2010? Was there any truth in that at all? (Obvs out the window with the reps' spending now.)

even when that illusion starts to crack (under, say, Bush's bog-obvious profligacy) all that's necessary is to call the failed policies 'unconservative' and voila, hands are washed.

oh didn't you hear? Conservatism can never fail; it can only be failed.

yeah but you can say the same thing about liberalism. and we often do

in other words, the conservative philosophy of HANDS OFF THE FREE MARKETS! is wack but the conservative critique of heavy-handed govt can easily be RIGHT ON ...

well sure. but of course the idea that liberal = government and conservative = economic freedom is just conservative propaganda. liberals don't love government, and are plenty supportive of dynamic capitalism. (which any black bloc kid at a rally will tell you.) of course liberalism has fostered and foisted its share of bad ideas, but no matter what distinction someone like bill kristol might try to draw between classical liberalism and modern liberalism, liberalism has always been basically pro-free-market. the debate is just over how free, and what even constitutes a free market.

but anyway i think conservative institutional critiques often have a lot of value. they're not wrong in a lot of what they say about public schools, e.g., and they weren't wrong about the perverse incentives under the old welfare regulations. but their solutions are almost always ideologically hidebound and involve a lot of magical thinking about "markets" and "privatization" (and are often carrying water for specific corporate interests of one kind or another). the school issue is a good example: conservatives support competition in the realm of public education, and i think that's a good idea. conservatives like charter schools, which have had real mixed results, but so do all the other public schools and at least having a strong charter law (which not that many states really have) allows for the possibility of a range of approaches. BUT conservative support for charter schools is really just a stalking horse for school vouchers, which are a TERRIBLE idea that fundamentally misunderstands the actual problems with public schools and promises to enact yet another private-sector raid on the public treasury.

since i kind of think of public and private sectors as areas that need to balance each other to some degree, i'm happy to have people critiquing the excesses and inefficiencies of the public sector. god knows there are plenty of them. but the private sector needs at least as much scrutiny and accountability, and conservatives are usually m.i.a. there.

is there the same disconnect btw. american-style "liberal" and british-style "liberal" as there is between american liberalism and continental european liberalism? or are american libs and british libs the same thing?

like are labour supporters "liberals" in britain?

like are labour supporters "liberals" in britain?

Comparatively, I suppose, so same as here. But neither Democrats in America nor Labour in Britian are terrifically liberal in the largest since, since they are both perfectly comfortable with a good dollop of corporate oligarchy. My understanding is -- and correct me, I don't live there -- while Clinton and Blair were both in office, they were pretty much the same guy. Deregulation, privatization, money makes the world do something something and that's also good enough social policy. That's the kind of "liberalism" that makes "conservatives" to this day angrily rue the Clinton years.

What's are the defining features of continental european liberalism, as opposed to our way?

my impression is that it's more like what we could call "libertarianism"--that is, its "classical liberalism." but i dont really know. thats more what i was asking, not like "are the brits more left/socialist than us (ans: YES)" but "do the brits have three broad political positions or just two (classical left/liberal/right vs "liberal"/"conservative")"

also, "charter schools" is another trojan horse thing for funneling public resources into RWA training grounds; the kinda "schools" that go on and on about how evolution is just a theory and ultimately work to attack the idea that there's such a thing as empiric testing/reality or any sense of authoritative knowledge at all.

and, yeah, "big government"/"small government" interests is a bullshit frame pushed aroudn for the last 30 years. Teh fuckheads who were cryin' about "increasing the size of government" usually had no problem dumping monies into the military/police/etc i.e. the authoritarian reinforcement of power.

"Increasing the size of gov't" has been code for "we don't like spending on anything considered public services as it coddles the poor and undisciplined" for quite a long time. I mean, this is obvious for many ilxors and has been for years, but, these idiots bought fully into the narcissistic bullshit of "rugged individualism" and thanks to their mindsets not being too strong in the whole "self-awareness/self-reflection" area, lacked the introspective tools to properly diagnose what was up.

Of course, this is the kinda shit that guys like George Lakoff or even Dr. Bob Altermeyer have been writing about for 10+ years.

i hope that's coherent. Beer has addled my grammar and spelling skills this evening.

could have fooled me. otm.

like are labour supporters "liberals" in britain?

Well, Labour got support from a wide range of people to win 3 elections. I would identify myself as a socialist (which incidentally I once heard Blair call himself...ahhh, it all seems so long ago...in fact it was only 2002)and vote Labour most of the time.

I would identify myself as a socialist

It seems like such a small difference, because surely self-identified liberals over here hold similar beliefs to self-identified socialists over there, but no American EVER says this. (Not one without a rant-filled pamphlet in his hand, anyway.) It's just a word we don't use, not even to slander each other.

Not to go too far off base here, but yo E.P. why would political conservatives actually care what I eat or why, or whether I drink a wheatgrass shake or some bullshit like that? Please don't confuse "hilarious" Denis Leary monologues with actual conservatism.

I mean, I guess I understand, because "conservative values" have become more personally invasive than any "nanny-state liberal" initiatives ever were.

It seems like such a small difference, because surely self-identified liberals over here hold similar beliefs to self-identified socialists over there

Would you consider any non-Kucinich presidential candidates liberals?

also, "charter schools" is another trojan horse thing for funneling public resources into RWA training grounds

not quite. the charter school idea was kicking around liberal reform circles for years. liberal reformers have their own long history of dissatisfaction with public schools. (my parents and some friends tried to start something like a charter elementary school in the 1970s in upstate new york, but at the time there was no state law that would have made it possible.) the idea is to allow semi-autonomous schools under the public umbrella, to let teachers, parents, etc., have a hand in the structure and the curriculum. (they were also called schools of choice for a while, the idea being that people would be more committed to a school they chose to attend rather than one they were just assigned to.)

but politically liberal education reformers don't have much clout, because of the strength of the teachers' union. yes i know that's right-wing rhetoric; it's also pretty much true. i covered public education for several years. one place, i got to be good friends with the teachers' union head, and i have a ton of sympathy for teachers and their need for strong job protection. but institutionally, at the state and national levels, the nea really can be a pretty reactionary and paranoid group. they have a total siege mentality. they'll say nice things about the idea of charter schools, but on the ground they tend to fight most serious attempts at institutional reform. a political instance where conservatives are right, in other words. (expecting some nea member -- must be one on ilx -- to come in and give a laundry list of all the reforms they've supported. and it's true. they're not evil or anything. but they are obstructionists. some of the least reasonable, most paranoid people i've ever talked to were teachers' union people.)

so that leaves conservatives as the loudest, best-funded champions of school reform. as such, they took up the charter school mantle, and they have done some good work in pushing for strong charter laws in some states. but of course, they're not really committed to charters as an end result. what they really want is privatization and vouchers. so in the public mind -- and to some degree in political reality -- charters and vouchers have all gotten rolled together. which is a real shame, because the american public school system has a lot of problems and it's being victimized by this ideological warfare. not that charter schools are any kind of panacea, but they at least open up possibilities for rethinking the structure, content, approach, philosophy and accountability of public education. and there are different kinds of charter laws, some that allow for-profit schools and some that don't, for example. for-profit schools funded with public money are a terrible idea, imo, and one that has already basically failed (see the edison schools).

anyway, the most serious and substantive critiques of public education for the last few decades has come from the right, so i give them credit for that. unfortunately their criticism is a prelude to wanting to dismantle it. it's like having a doctor who's pretty good at diagnosis but whose only treatment plan is to shoot you.

(sorry for going on like that, i spent years of my life dealing with this stuff daily.)

So deej, all you're saying is "Conservatives were right that communism sucks"? I can get behind that, no problem.

great post tipsy. i was going to say something along those lines, but am not as informed as you. also worth noting that both liberals/hippies and conservatives/fundamentalists started homeschool movements starting in the 70s.

tipsy mothra otm

but institutionally, at the state and national levels, the nea really can be a pretty reactionary and paranoid group.

Reporter friends have admitted as much whenever they've had to interview local union reps. A couple of years one told me (and his mom is a third-grade teacher), "Why are they so defensive? Politically we're on the same side."

charter schools are just one step further than the magnet schools which exist in big, liberal cities all over

actually conservatives are right about a lot of things, they just have bad solutions. viz a viz:

a lot of unions are indeed corrupt and bullying and the structure of unions is arguably undemocratic (but the answer is not "let bosses do whatever they want and if you don't like it quit")
public schools do indeed suck (but the answer is not "get rid of public schools and replace them with privately-owned ones")
communism is indeed a bad idea (but that doesn't mean any form of public service/works/welfare is "communism")

etc etc.

nicely put.

So deej, all you're saying is "Conservatives were right that communism sucks"? I can get behind that, no problem.

-- Sundar, Saturday, 9 February 2008 17:11 (Yesterday) Link

yeah but communism isnt an all or nothing game, its a single economic policy sure but its made up of a bunch of different concrete actions, and i think a conservative critique of any individual actions - in this country - is not, per se, off base. Sometimes govt interference in economics does more harm than good, is essentially what im saying. And while i reject the notion that unregulated competition is automatically going to produce the best result, i also am aware that regulation can often hamstring and cause its own complications.

the example i gave earlier was how the govt-sponsored creation of the internet basically has leveled the music industry.

not that conservatives were against the creation of the internet or something, my point is just that govt actions have far-reaching results and conservatism makes sense as a form of critique ... basically what J.D. is saying is otm

researching a little bit for this thread has made me realize I am very worried about Obama on the foreign policy front.

also I hung reagan's presidential portrait in my bathroom today.

in other words, you put far more stock in its descriptive rather than prescriptive qualities, right?

xp

now why would you wanna do that?

kingfish ... sorta. thats the general trend, i think. but im sure that in an economic sense there have been plenty of times when the conservative economic prescription was what the dr ordered etc. Maybe not in national politics in the last couple decades but at state level im certain