What Is Conservatism and What Is Wrong with It?

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is the title of this essay

"This is how it begins:

Liberals in the United States have been losing political debates to conservatives for a quarter century. In order to start winning again, liberals must answer two simple questions: what is conservatism, and what is wrong with it? As it happens, the answers to these questions are also simple:

Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.

Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception and has no place in the modern world.

These ideas are not new. Indeed they were common sense until recently. Nowadays, though, most of the people who call themselves "conservatives" have little notion of what conservatism even is. They have been deceived by one of the great public relations campaigns of human history. Only by analyzing this deception will it become possible to revive democracy in the United States.

And this is how it ends:

Conservatism until very recently was quite open about the fact that it is incompatible with the modern world. That is right. The modern world is a good place, and it will win."

I haven't read what's in between yet. discuss?

― Sébastien Chikara (Sébastien Chikara), Thursday, 16 September 2004 16:48 (twenty-one years ago)

I guess I think it is politically biased. Conservatism in it's purist form, I think, merely seeks to preserve the existing structures of society. It would argue that any sudden change to a structure suddenly enacted by a government will cause unforseen and large disruptions and problems. Existing structures are preferable because they have evolved over time and stood the test of time without causing great problems (eg civil war).

Of course, I am not a conservative in any sense. And the reason the word has changed meaning so much is because Right Wing people are stupid.

― Kevin Gilchrist (Mr Fusion), Thursday, 16 September 2004 16:57 (twenty-one years ago)

i think it serves an important purpose, in it pure form as kevin defines it. all change is not for good.

there is a larger philosophical sense too: people are weak and evil (fallen). a broader sort of pessimism and cynicism that i can really get behind.

― ryan (ryan), Thursday, 16 September 2004 17:17 (twenty-one years ago)

A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.

This doesn't make much sense to me. Even if you cede that notable conservative politicians were "aristocratic" somehow (like the Bush dynasty), I'm not sure how that's inherent to conservative politics.

― jaymc (jaymc), Thursday, 16 September 2004 17:34 (twenty-one years ago)

As an American liberal, I often think of myself as a 'conservative' inasmuch as I desire the continuance of American values such as separation of church and state, personal freedom, equitable distribution of wealth, education, healthcare, and opportunity, democratic control over the national economy, etc... as opposed to the radical agenda now espoused by so-called conservatives.

― Michael White (Hereward), Thursday, 16 September 2004 17:35 (twenty-one years ago)

To me, conservative politics in America seem to coalesce around broad ideas about personal responsibility and individual success, and a certain mentality where no one's to be trusted and it's every man for himself.

― jaymc (jaymc), Thursday, 16 September 2004 17:39 (twenty-one years ago)

where no one's to be trusted and it's every man for himself.

I believe in the second part.

― LC, Thursday, 16 September 2004 17:43 (twenty-one years ago)

A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.

Many aristocrats went for socialism (e.g. Shelley)

― fcussen (Burger), Thursday, 16 September 2004 17:44 (twenty-one years ago)

lol sorry I just watched Se7en

― LC, Thursday, 16 September 2004 17:45 (twenty-one years ago)

We need to dissassociate "Right Wing" from "Conservative" and "Left Wing" from "Liberal"
A Conservative fights to preserve what still works.
A Liberal fights to fix whats broken.
The Right Wing (called such because the Nobility sat to the right of the French King in court) represents the aristocrats.
The Left Wing (called such because the Commoners sat to the left of the French King in court) represents the working man.
A True Conservative (as far as I'm concerned) has much more in common with the True Liberal than he does with the Right Wing.

(Then again all four of these terms have been drug through the mud by pabulbum-puking, commie-symp, crypto-fascist, bleeding-heart, what-about-our-children, creepazoidal punditoids for so long they actually became meaningless terms.)

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Thursday, 16 September 2004 17:48 (twenty-one years ago)

I think jaymc is pretty otm here. I always thought it was pretty ironic that conservatives tend to 'trust' individuals more than liberals do (the government must keep people in check!), but when it comes to action, conservatives' praise of the individual becomes used as a weapon to pass unsavory things such as getting rid of affirmative action, taxation, regulation etc.

― still bevens (bscrubbins), Thursday, 16 September 2004 18:29 (twenty-one years ago)

Left Wing or Right Wing don't come from the French Court. The expressions come from The National Assembly the revolution imposed on Louis XVI. The Third Estate sat on the left and the First Estate on the right of the king.

― Michael White (Hereward), Thursday, 16 September 2004 18:34 (twenty-one years ago)

Right-o. What everyone else already said about conservative =/= right wing and liberal =/= left wing. The liberals of today are the conservatives of tomorrow.

― mouse (mouse), Thursday, 16 September 2004 19:02 (twenty-one years ago)

-- jaymc (jmcunnin...), September 16th, 2004.

Were these ideas a part of conservatism prior to the civil rights movement? When liberalism was associated with laissez faire economics and the Protestant work ethic, was it defined in opposition to conservatism?

― youn, Thursday, 16 September 2004 19:13 (twenty-one years ago)

I think Agre is arguing that conservatism, in practice, is not a philosophically coherent position other than in the terms he describes.

― youn, Thursday, 16 September 2004 19:14 (twenty-one years ago)

SIGH.

CONSERVATIVE, n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 16 September 2004 19:15 (twenty-one years ago)

Good ole Bierce.

― Michael White (Hereward), Thursday, 16 September 2004 21:29 (twenty-one years ago)

RADICALISM, n.
The conservatism of to-morrow injected into the affairs of to-day.

― Michael White (Hereward), Thursday, 16 September 2004 21:32 (twenty-one years ago)

Liberals dream of equal rights,
Conservatives live in a world gone by,
Socialists preach of a promised land,
But old Uncle Son was an ordinary man...

― Lt. Kingfish Del Pickles (Kingfish), Thursday, 16 September 2004 22:13 (twenty-one years ago)

To be honest, I thought it came from a later stage in the history of the Revolution, after the Assembly had divided vaguely into the Montagnard (left-wing) and Girondin (right-wing) factions. By that time, the old division into three estates had pretty much broken down.

Many aristocrats went for socialism (eg Shelley)

Or, more recently, Tony Benn, who (after his father died) had to get Parliament to remove his peerage so he could remain an MP.

In the UK, there's a handy shorthand way of dealing with the whole "'conservative' doesn't mean wanting to keep things the same any more" argument. Someone who wants to retain the current structures of society is a 'small-c conservative'. Someone who is a radical free-marketeer would be a Conservative (or possibly a Thatcherite).

― caitlin (caitlin), Friday, 17 September 2004 11:02 (twenty-one years ago)

Tony Benn was not an "aristocrat" as such, his father was given a hereditary life peerage

― Dadaismus (Dada), Friday, 17 September 2004 11:06 (twenty-one years ago)

Well, maybe not in the strongest sense of the word, but he inherited a position of political power, or at least the possibility of one. All it takes to be an aristocracy (in the modern sense) is that political power runs through family lines, which it would have done had Tony taken up a place in the House of Lords. It's not something to criticise him for, and his actions when he wasn't allowed into the house of commons are much to be admired. I guess we can agree that he wasn't working class anyway. (again, not a criticism, I love Tony Benn to bits)

― Kevin Gilchrist (Mr Fusion), Friday, 17 September 2004 11:17 (twenty-one years ago)

... well, by that definition, Michael Foot is even more of an aristocrat that Tony Benn!

― Dadaismus (Dada), Friday, 17 September 2004 11:18 (twenty-one years ago)

just thought i'd link to a related essay "Metaphor, Morality, and Politics," Or, "Why Conservatives Have Left Liberals In the Dust" by George Lakoff. He's a leftie FWIW

― Jaunty Alan (Alan), Friday, 17 September 2004 11:19 (twenty-one years ago)

An American Leftie? Well, the American left has been left in the dust.

― Dadaismus (Dada), Friday, 17 September 2004 11:20 (twenty-one years ago)

Indeed so, Dada (in relation to Foot, though the US left is certainly far from healthy). I think it's hard to reconcile socialism with serving in the upper house, at least on a hereditary peerage.

― Kevin Gilchrist (Mr Fusion), Friday, 17 September 2004 11:22 (twenty-one years ago)

three years pass...

I do some random pondering, Alfred does as well. Now to see how the rest of the year plays out.

― Ned Raggett, Saturday, 23 February 2008 22:19 (seventeen years ago)

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