I’m a conservative, but I’m getting disillusioned by the movement. Barely any of them seem to care about actually limiting the scope of the government, which is one of my biggest political values, and many seem to be either dumb or grifters. Even worse, we’ve got alt-right Christian nationalists calling for a theocratic fascist state. This isn’t how either Christians nor conservatives are supposed to behave, but I don’t think there’s a political home for me anywhere else. I’d be more at home with the centrists if I wasn’t still right wing to some degree.
limiting the scope of the government, which is one of my biggest political values
Why?
Smaller government = bigger corporations. And corporate control = everything goes to shit. We’ve reached maximum shareholder primacy.
And it’s not like we can “vote with our dollar” anymore, with how consolidated everything is. For example, consider the attempts at boycotting Nestle…
Big government usually has more power to do more harm than big government, as the state has a monopoly on violence to a degree.
I wonder if that’s even true. Sure, corporations aren’t black-bagging people in the night (yet), and the VOC genociding entire islands was many many years ago, but who put lead in gasoline and lied about its safety? Who covered up decades of climate change research? Why are we inhaling a credit card of microplastics every week? How are property management companies colluding on rents to create price floors and evict families?
Or here’s something forward-looking:
If Albertsons and Kroger are allowed to merge, do you think that’d be a good thing for American food security? If the government was not powerful enough to stop the merger, what should the citizenry do?
If your main value is small government, have you looked into classical anarchism?
I support small government, but not no government. I respect anarchism and libertarianism, but I don’t think that type of society would work well enough for my liking.
Anarchism isn’t chaos, or no government. It’s not even strictly for “smaller” government. But flatter government. Anarchist organization and government aren’t oxymorons.
It’s a nonsense framework anyway. I have conservative leanings in 2A aspects and hard left leanings in such social aspects as gender and sexuality. Everyone just has to find their best fit, and the American duopoly I live under is a godawful system for that. Proportional representation would be better, but only to a degree.
