Commentary: Longtime former Republican on Patrick Deneen and the demise of the conservative intellectual
Name one conservative policy that has furthered mankind. Prohibition, voting rights, sexuality, drug war, terrorism; time after time they’ve been wrong. Even fiscally they run up the deficit. Their only role is to preserve hierarchy and maintain power
George W Bush massively expanded US Free Trade agreements. We went from 3 to 16 under his admin. That’s good for the entire world.
Pretty much the only thing I don’t like about Biden is his protectionist stance.
I’m gonna assume you think Capitalist expansion and colonialism is a good thing.
The former, yes, the latter I bet we have significant disagreements on the definition of
Progressivism is moving towards collective goals. Conservatism is protecting individual freedoms.
You many see individual freedoms differently than they do but that is the core fundamental policy they protect.
Everyone living depends on huge networks of interdependent actors for basic survival. Never mind quality of life. The political reality of the individual is that they are the smallest and weakest political unit; least equipped to petition for change.
Conservatism may have individualism all over the label, but conformity is what’s inside the box.
What you’re saying is true in theory, but the American Republican party has absolutely nothing in common with it.
Just look at the patriot act, torture, detention, TSA, and all the other shit pushed through by the GOP that has decimated freedoms and privacy.
The ONLY individual freedom the GOP protects unconditionally is for everyone and their uncle to own guns. Nevermind if your uncle is a lunatic, they’ll protect his freedom to be armed to the teeth.
But they don’t protect individual freedoms.
They have taken a hard stance against body autonomy, free speech, individual identity - all in support of corporate and state control over the individual.
This is the same argument as saying conservatives are fiscally responsible. It’s just something people say with nothing historically supporting it.
Name one conservative policy that has furthered mankind.
Richard Nixon was at the helm when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was founded. I believe he also was responsible for protecting national parks, but I didn’t bother fact-checking that one.
https://www.epa.gov/history#:~:text=EPA was created on December,human health and the environment.
Now, granted, modern conservative politics are garbage-culture war bullshit, but we need to be cautious of forgetting history. Rewriting history is their game.
Progressive policies implemented during a conservative presidency don’t seem like conservative policies.
If you can just hijack any and all “good” policies as inherently progressive then you’re just a self-fuelling fire who wants to hate conservatives no matter what.
Intellectualism is not an inherently moral thing. One can be an amoral, selfish, narcissistic, intellectual.
I didn’t mean to give the impression that it is a moral issue. I consider it from a populist societal perspective. The majority (liberalism)wanting to do one thing, and the minority (conservatives) preventing progress. If conservatives had it their way, we’d still have feudalism… oh wait.
I mean, that’s also taking an “us vs them” mentality that isn’t helpful either. The middle ground is where the vast majority of people sit, and often swing to one side or another based on the situation surrounding them. Taking a “If you’re not with me, you’re against me” stance, just puts those people off. Either they just refuse to engage (which is a big factor in lack of participation in voting in the US) or they move towards the people who are willing to pander them. More often than not the conservatives.
Those sound like the exact kinds of people who shouldn’t have any influence over our politics
