0 comment Wednesday, October 29, 2014 | admin
There is an interesting post and discussion thread at Chronicles, in which Thomas Fleming discusses how feminism has undermined, to the point of destruction, our most basic social institution, marriage and family.
He notes how there are now few defenders, even among ''conservatives'', of the ''patriarchy'', as feminists have labeled our former traditions.
''The recent decision to deploy women on submarines has been hailed as a victory in the continuing struggle to liberate women from the oppression of the domineering male sex. Conservatives have generally deplored the move, citing the inevitable sexual tensions and lowering of morale that will result from putting young males and females in such close quarters for long periods of time. (And, think of all those poor male homosexuals who find the submarine service so attractive because of the lack of female competition!). Some conservatives even go so far as to declare their opposition to women serving in any military capacity, but they are a species on the endangered list: Even the great nemesis of women in uniform, James Webb, has backed off, proving once again, that no honest man can be a US senator.''
It is a worthwhile piece, and the discussion following is also good. I recommend reading it.
This piece particularly caught my interest, especially the first paragraph, which I have quoted above. In a recent post titled 'A little leaven', I mentioned the degree to which feminism (as well as leftism in all its manifestations) has captured 'conservatives', especially Republicans. Women in the military seems to be one idea which conservatives, despite strong opposition in the early days of feminism's propaganda onslaught, have now embraced.
As I mentioned in that earlier blog entry, those ''conservatives'' who argue for a co-ed military and women in combat, often do so on the basis that there are patriotic women who want to fight for our country, and they should not only be permitted to do so, but applauded and praised for it.
If one counters that women are simply not the equals of men in the realm of physical size, strength, and aggressiveness, the feminist 'conservatives' fall back on the old familiar liberal response: they will cite some exception which supposedly disproves the rule. Example: "I know a young woman who is as fit and strong as most young men, and she can fight alongside any man. Would you forbid her from doing her part to defend her country?"
The fact that women like the one described above are pretty rare does not deter these people from making a broad generalization that women can be the equals of men in battle, just because there are a few isolated examples of strong, brave, tough women.
Never mind, also, the fact that there is more than one way to ''serve one's country'', as in previous World Wars when women had auxiliary groups and occupied support roles, rather than going into combat in co-ed units with the men.
The other large faction of 'conservatives' who argue for women in combat and for a co-ed military is a group that seems to be mostly men, who argue from an egalitarian perspective: ''If women want to be equal, let 'em be 100 percent equal, and pull their own weight. Draft 'em. Make 'em serve. Make 'em fight and die just like the men. It's unfair to send only males out to fight and die for their country.''
I've heard that one more than a few times, and true to form, someone on the Chronicles thread says something similar.
Let's look at that argument. In a way, it's a concession to feminism. It posits that men and women are, or should be, for fairness' sake, equals in all things, and that women can just toughen up and take it like men, never mind that most women would be not fit nor willing to go into combat.
Now, is that the case because women are too cowardly or too lazy or too privileged to want to go to war, or because women are not fitted for such roles?
Should 'conservatives' be arguing from egalitarian principles like 'equality' and 'fairness'? Do those arguing these things actually believe the sexes are equal in ability to fight and in the aggressive traits needed to be an effective warrior? Do they believe that women and men can actually share living quarters, with little privacy or room for modesty, without problematic situations arising?
Do these egalitarians really believe that, or is their profession of belief in equality disingenuous? I think, obviously, that they believe no such thing; their arguments exhibit a desire to punish women, or feminists at least, by forcing them to endure the hardships of combat.
I can concede that the anger towards women is legitimate and justified. Feminism is and has always been a hostile, misandrist movement, which on its part has had punitive instincts toward males. So it is understandable that many men respond in kind.
But to go as far as to argue for women in the military and in combat just out of spite is going a little far. Firstly, does the conservative who makes these arguments believe that the presence of women in military roles in co-ed situations does not have a deleterious effect on male bonding and camaraderie, which is a big part of the effectiveness of the soldier and the military generally?
The presence of women in these situations generates sexual tension, sometimes jealousy and squabbling amongst the men. Men also feel the need to tone down their normal male group behavior because of the presence of females. Women, too, probably develop rivalries and squabbles with other women in the group, who may be romantic/sexual competition for them.
It's an established fact that pregnancies in the co-ed military are a problem, which anybody with common sense could have foreseen.
There is also the possibility during warfare for captured female soldiers to be raped, which possibility most of us who have daughters would take very seriously. But the hard-nosed egalitarian 'conservative' says ''so what? Men get raped too, why are women considered too delicate to risk that? Don't we value our sons just as much as our daughters?"
I tend to doubt that male prisoners are as likely to be raped by captors, although I could be wrong about that.
To return to the question of differences in muscular strength, stamina, and plain old grit, can the average female offer fellow male soldiers the same kind of physical back-up in a combat situation as another male would? To say 'yes' is being unrealistic, I think.
A while back, I mentioned a fire we had here at home, and the fact that one of the firefighters was a young woman who looked to be all of 5'3'' and rather small-framed. There is no way she could perform on the same level as her fellow firefighters who were all young men in their prime, most of them well over 6 feet tall, and solidly built. Sorry, but I want the strong young men here in the case of emergency, and if that hurts the girls' feelings, so be it.
I have heard that the physical requisites for these jobs have been lowered so as to give women a 'fairer' chance to qualify, and that in itself is wrong. It's the same with our military.
Women and men are not equals in all respects, certainly not in strength and size. To even have to say that is ridiculous; it used to be a given, something that even young children could see.
While acknowledging that there are no doubt some women who acquit themselves pretty well in the military, I still believe that these rare exceptions do not disprove the rule.
It does seem as though there is a fairly large group of people on the right who seem to think the idea of female soldiers is perfectly acceptable, whether through cynicism or because they have simply bought the egalitarian, leftist thinking that argues for overturning traditional male-female roles. It's ''progress'', or ''things are just different now; nothing stays the same forever''.
The larger question here, though, is why have so many conservatives bought into the egalitarianism of the left? Just as in the earlier blog entry I wrote, I will say that even some of us stubborn right-wingers have succumbed to the propaganda and to that old devil, peer pressure. These ideas are popular, and nobody wants to be an old fogey or a 'reactionary' or the dread 'sexist.'
That's the real issue that must be dealt with: how do we discourage or avert this insidious leftism, and once having found it, how do we excise it from our midst?
He notes how there are now few defenders, even among ''conservatives'', of the ''patriarchy'', as feminists have labeled our former traditions.
''The recent decision to deploy women on submarines has been hailed as a victory in the continuing struggle to liberate women from the oppression of the domineering male sex. Conservatives have generally deplored the move, citing the inevitable sexual tensions and lowering of morale that will result from putting young males and females in such close quarters for long periods of time. (And, think of all those poor male homosexuals who find the submarine service so attractive because of the lack of female competition!). Some conservatives even go so far as to declare their opposition to women serving in any military capacity, but they are a species on the endangered list: Even the great nemesis of women in uniform, James Webb, has backed off, proving once again, that no honest man can be a US senator.''
It is a worthwhile piece, and the discussion following is also good. I recommend reading it.
This piece particularly caught my interest, especially the first paragraph, which I have quoted above. In a recent post titled 'A little leaven', I mentioned the degree to which feminism (as well as leftism in all its manifestations) has captured 'conservatives', especially Republicans. Women in the military seems to be one idea which conservatives, despite strong opposition in the early days of feminism's propaganda onslaught, have now embraced.
As I mentioned in that earlier blog entry, those ''conservatives'' who argue for a co-ed military and women in combat, often do so on the basis that there are patriotic women who want to fight for our country, and they should not only be permitted to do so, but applauded and praised for it.
If one counters that women are simply not the equals of men in the realm of physical size, strength, and aggressiveness, the feminist 'conservatives' fall back on the old familiar liberal response: they will cite some exception which supposedly disproves the rule. Example: "I know a young woman who is as fit and strong as most young men, and she can fight alongside any man. Would you forbid her from doing her part to defend her country?"
The fact that women like the one described above are pretty rare does not deter these people from making a broad generalization that women can be the equals of men in battle, just because there are a few isolated examples of strong, brave, tough women.
Never mind, also, the fact that there is more than one way to ''serve one's country'', as in previous World Wars when women had auxiliary groups and occupied support roles, rather than going into combat in co-ed units with the men.
The other large faction of 'conservatives' who argue for women in combat and for a co-ed military is a group that seems to be mostly men, who argue from an egalitarian perspective: ''If women want to be equal, let 'em be 100 percent equal, and pull their own weight. Draft 'em. Make 'em serve. Make 'em fight and die just like the men. It's unfair to send only males out to fight and die for their country.''
I've heard that one more than a few times, and true to form, someone on the Chronicles thread says something similar.
Let's look at that argument. In a way, it's a concession to feminism. It posits that men and women are, or should be, for fairness' sake, equals in all things, and that women can just toughen up and take it like men, never mind that most women would be not fit nor willing to go into combat.
Now, is that the case because women are too cowardly or too lazy or too privileged to want to go to war, or because women are not fitted for such roles?
Should 'conservatives' be arguing from egalitarian principles like 'equality' and 'fairness'? Do those arguing these things actually believe the sexes are equal in ability to fight and in the aggressive traits needed to be an effective warrior? Do they believe that women and men can actually share living quarters, with little privacy or room for modesty, without problematic situations arising?
Do these egalitarians really believe that, or is their profession of belief in equality disingenuous? I think, obviously, that they believe no such thing; their arguments exhibit a desire to punish women, or feminists at least, by forcing them to endure the hardships of combat.
I can concede that the anger towards women is legitimate and justified. Feminism is and has always been a hostile, misandrist movement, which on its part has had punitive instincts toward males. So it is understandable that many men respond in kind.
But to go as far as to argue for women in the military and in combat just out of spite is going a little far. Firstly, does the conservative who makes these arguments believe that the presence of women in military roles in co-ed situations does not have a deleterious effect on male bonding and camaraderie, which is a big part of the effectiveness of the soldier and the military generally?
The presence of women in these situations generates sexual tension, sometimes jealousy and squabbling amongst the men. Men also feel the need to tone down their normal male group behavior because of the presence of females. Women, too, probably develop rivalries and squabbles with other women in the group, who may be romantic/sexual competition for them.
It's an established fact that pregnancies in the co-ed military are a problem, which anybody with common sense could have foreseen.
There is also the possibility during warfare for captured female soldiers to be raped, which possibility most of us who have daughters would take very seriously. But the hard-nosed egalitarian 'conservative' says ''so what? Men get raped too, why are women considered too delicate to risk that? Don't we value our sons just as much as our daughters?"
I tend to doubt that male prisoners are as likely to be raped by captors, although I could be wrong about that.
To return to the question of differences in muscular strength, stamina, and plain old grit, can the average female offer fellow male soldiers the same kind of physical back-up in a combat situation as another male would? To say 'yes' is being unrealistic, I think.
A while back, I mentioned a fire we had here at home, and the fact that one of the firefighters was a young woman who looked to be all of 5'3'' and rather small-framed. There is no way she could perform on the same level as her fellow firefighters who were all young men in their prime, most of them well over 6 feet tall, and solidly built. Sorry, but I want the strong young men here in the case of emergency, and if that hurts the girls' feelings, so be it.
I have heard that the physical requisites for these jobs have been lowered so as to give women a 'fairer' chance to qualify, and that in itself is wrong. It's the same with our military.
Women and men are not equals in all respects, certainly not in strength and size. To even have to say that is ridiculous; it used to be a given, something that even young children could see.
While acknowledging that there are no doubt some women who acquit themselves pretty well in the military, I still believe that these rare exceptions do not disprove the rule.
It does seem as though there is a fairly large group of people on the right who seem to think the idea of female soldiers is perfectly acceptable, whether through cynicism or because they have simply bought the egalitarian, leftist thinking that argues for overturning traditional male-female roles. It's ''progress'', or ''things are just different now; nothing stays the same forever''.
The larger question here, though, is why have so many conservatives bought into the egalitarianism of the left? Just as in the earlier blog entry I wrote, I will say that even some of us stubborn right-wingers have succumbed to the propaganda and to that old devil, peer pressure. These ideas are popular, and nobody wants to be an old fogey or a 'reactionary' or the dread 'sexist.'
That's the real issue that must be dealt with: how do we discourage or avert this insidious leftism, and once having found it, how do we excise it from our midst?
Labels: Conservative Principles, Egalitarianism, Feminism, Misandry, Political Correctness
0 comment Friday, October 24, 2014 | admin
Over at the Forum, Glenn W. asks some very good questions, and in hopes of getting some responses from blog readers, I asked Glenn's permission to post this here. There are some very good issues raised and I hope by posting it here to share with you all, it might generate some thoughtful responses:
I have been told that the seeds of the American revolution were sown in the many taverns scattered throughout the thirteen colonies. Men would meet in these taverns and discuss politics and over time began to formulate ideas as to how we could break away from England. I have been encouraged by what I have seen on the internet because I believe that the blogosphere has become the tavern of the 21st century. For the first time in my lifetime men (and woman) can actually meet and discuss important issues of the day without it being filtered by large news organizations. The potential impact is huge.
I can see many issues being discussed as to how to protect our freedoms and our posterity from the very real dangers we are facing in this day and age. Meeting in the "VA tavern" to discuss these issues is the start of finding a solution. So, here we are and the modern version of parliament (aka the imperial congress) just tried to pass the modern version of the Stamp Act (the illegal immigrant amnesty bill). Since those jokers aren't as bright as there press releases would like us to believe, they will keep trying to pass that abomination. This caused alarms to go off for a lot of people who usually don't follow politics and possibly galvanized a real resistance to the insanity.
This is the time to decide on a strategy as to how we should react when the next abomination occurs. Or, maybe there does not need to be only one strategy. I identify with people such as Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry who would now be branded as "bomb throwers." I am sure there were many patriots who were more measured in their approach but as strong in their resolve as Adams and Henry. I do believe that attacks from many directions could be very effective. What should those approaches be? What do I need to do to hold up my end of the bargain? I believe that the political situation will get worse before it gets better. I have never been active in political campaigning but I am willing to hand out tracts and make calls for candidates I believe in but is that enough? If the situation deteriorates to the point where I won't take any more, what should my actions be? Would I be willing to push matters to the point that the founders did with the Boston tea party? What should our Boston tea party be?
This is a bit of a tangent but I will throw it in as well. Going forward we will need a set of common principles that we can agree on. I have seen some of the attempts to come up with a conservative manifesto where there are broad principles that we can all agree to. I am afraid that we have become too fractured and may not be able to come to a consensus. What if we once again used the founders as our inspiration and agreed to restoring a government where we could all live in freedom while having moderately different world views, something like:
1) Once again set boundaries on the federal government so they fulfill their obligations of defending the U.S. from invasion and regulating interstate commerce.
2) Restore the states to being the watchdog over the federal government.
3) Restore the liberties inherent in our constitutional republic where certain rights cannot be violated by any government body. This guards against a tyranny of the majority which the founders feared.
Under this concept of states rights (I may not be using this term precisely but I hope you get my point) I can live in a state where rugged individualism is honored and you can choose to live in a state with a more paternalistic approach to government. You stay out of my business and I'll stay out of yours.
I am sure that most of you are way ahead of me on this one and I am interested in what your thoughts are. Can we come up with an approach that we can all live with, and fight for, that avoids some of the stumbling blocks we seem to keep running into?
The time is coming soon where the crisis will be here. How are we going to react to and exploit the next crisis? Will we be willing to sneak out in the middle of the night to dump a ship load of tea into Boston harbor? I hope so.
I have been told that the seeds of the American revolution were sown in the many taverns scattered throughout the thirteen colonies. Men would meet in these taverns and discuss politics and over time began to formulate ideas as to how we could break away from England. I have been encouraged by what I have seen on the internet because I believe that the blogosphere has become the tavern of the 21st century. For the first time in my lifetime men (and woman) can actually meet and discuss important issues of the day without it being filtered by large news organizations. The potential impact is huge.
I can see many issues being discussed as to how to protect our freedoms and our posterity from the very real dangers we are facing in this day and age. Meeting in the "VA tavern" to discuss these issues is the start of finding a solution. So, here we are and the modern version of parliament (aka the imperial congress) just tried to pass the modern version of the Stamp Act (the illegal immigrant amnesty bill). Since those jokers aren't as bright as there press releases would like us to believe, they will keep trying to pass that abomination. This caused alarms to go off for a lot of people who usually don't follow politics and possibly galvanized a real resistance to the insanity.
This is the time to decide on a strategy as to how we should react when the next abomination occurs. Or, maybe there does not need to be only one strategy. I identify with people such as Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry who would now be branded as "bomb throwers." I am sure there were many patriots who were more measured in their approach but as strong in their resolve as Adams and Henry. I do believe that attacks from many directions could be very effective. What should those approaches be? What do I need to do to hold up my end of the bargain? I believe that the political situation will get worse before it gets better. I have never been active in political campaigning but I am willing to hand out tracts and make calls for candidates I believe in but is that enough? If the situation deteriorates to the point where I won't take any more, what should my actions be? Would I be willing to push matters to the point that the founders did with the Boston tea party? What should our Boston tea party be?
This is a bit of a tangent but I will throw it in as well. Going forward we will need a set of common principles that we can agree on. I have seen some of the attempts to come up with a conservative manifesto where there are broad principles that we can all agree to. I am afraid that we have become too fractured and may not be able to come to a consensus. What if we once again used the founders as our inspiration and agreed to restoring a government where we could all live in freedom while having moderately different world views, something like:
1) Once again set boundaries on the federal government so they fulfill their obligations of defending the U.S. from invasion and regulating interstate commerce.
2) Restore the states to being the watchdog over the federal government.
3) Restore the liberties inherent in our constitutional republic where certain rights cannot be violated by any government body. This guards against a tyranny of the majority which the founders feared.
Under this concept of states rights (I may not be using this term precisely but I hope you get my point) I can live in a state where rugged individualism is honored and you can choose to live in a state with a more paternalistic approach to government. You stay out of my business and I'll stay out of yours.
I am sure that most of you are way ahead of me on this one and I am interested in what your thoughts are. Can we come up with an approach that we can all live with, and fight for, that avoids some of the stumbling blocks we seem to keep running into?
The time is coming soon where the crisis will be here. How are we going to react to and exploit the next crisis? Will we be willing to sneak out in the middle of the night to dump a ship load of tea into Boston harbor? I hope so.
Labels: American Society, Conservatism, Conservative Principles, Government, Patriotism, StateS Rights
0 comment Wednesday, September 10, 2014 | admin
Is conservatism worth conserving?
A recurring subject on this blog has been the state of conservatism, and what conservatism actually means these days. It's a commonplace observation now that there are many conflicting and contradictory viewpoints which are included under the label 'conservative'. The contradictions have become ever more glaringly obvious during the present Presidential campaign, in which the term 'conservative' is used to describe a gamut of views from those of John McCain to Tom Tancredo to Ron Paul. How can such a disparate group of people be described as conservative while still preserving any kind of fixed definition of conservatism?
There is quite a spectrum of viewpoints there.
Now we have the various shades of 'conservatism': neoconservatism (whose advocates often vociferously deny, first, that there is such a thing as neoconservatism, and second, that they themselves are neoconservatives), paleoconservatives (many of whom also reject that label) and 'traditionalists'.
Lately it has seemed to me that 'traditionalists' are also an ill-defined group, being divided among the more mainstream Republicans (who may oppose illegal immigration and multiculturalism as well as the Iraq war), and those who are closer to the paleoconservative viewpoint, but who may dissent from the paleos on issues like the Middle East or social issues.
The last few years for me have been a journey away from the Republican mainstream. This shifting of opinions on my part had mostly to do with the immigration issue and the national question, and later, with the Iraq war and interventionism in general.
One conclusion that was inescapable for me is that conservatism as it stands today is in the business of conserving yesterday's liberalism. That observation is not original with me; others have noted it, including R.L. Dabney in the 19th century. It is even more true today than it was in his day.
American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt hath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth, and has no idea of being guilty of the folly of martyrdom.'' - Robert L. Dabney, Discussions, Vol. 4 [1897].
So how can we respond to this 'loss of savor' within conservatism? Can we rediscover the Original Scriptures of conservatism like Hilkiah the high priest finding the forgotten book of the Law in II Kings ? That would make it easy; if only we had a Bible of conservatism to keep us on the straight and narrow, to keep us true and on target. But the problem is, 'conservatism' is not an ideology and it is not a set of dogmas or a rigid group of precepts. Conservatism is always particular to a time and place and people. It's about conserving the true and the classical and the traditional, the time-honored, within a particular civilization and its heritage.
As I observe life, I notice that more and more, it seems we really did begin anew in the post-counterculture era, after the late 60s and 70s. True, we didn't suddenly throw out the calendar and decree a new beginning officially as did the revolutionaries in 18th century France. But our world did change then, and it was done rather suddenly in many cases but very gradually in others, so that we've scarcely noticed how very different our world is from what it was before the 60s Revolution. And we as a people and as a culture have changed considerably. We have all become, to some degree or another, accepting of the post-60s liberal and radical innovations in our way of life and our behavior.
I am a keen watcher of people, and what I see around me, even among 'conservatives', is a country of people who are children of the counterculture in many respects. A lot of the old traditions which lent some gentility to daily life: social niceties, etiquette, chivalry (which means far more than opening doors for ladies) decorum, restraint. All these things are conspicuously missing in our society.
The old America had certain ways of doing things, and certain rules, often unspoken, that acted as a social lubricant, minimizing friction between people. There was a hierarchy in society, and our liberal egalitarian age rebels against any hint of hierarchies. But it used to be that one's elders were respected, as were authority figures in general. Differences between the sexes were acknowledged and adjusted for accordingly. Children were taught to honor their parents and elders.
Now we are all rank egalitarians; women and men are expected to behave the same, and we indulge in this pretense that women are the equals of men in all respects, including bodily strength and size. Gone are most of the displays of courtesy like titles before names: Mr. or Mrs. or Miss. College students and even high school students call their teachers by their first names; the teachers seem mostly flattered by this display of familiarity; I think it helps them maintain an illusion that they are still young, and that their students are their peers and friends.
Back in the 1970s, after Nixon made his famous trip to China and normalized relations with the Communist regime there, we were deluged with images of life in Communist China. One of the striking things to a Westerner, at least to me, was the fact that the Chinese people we saw in the pictures of the teeming cities of China was their uniformity. The men all wore the 'Mao jackets' and caps; the women, too, wore some kind of drab proletarian uniform-style garb. Everybody dressed the same. You could see no distinctions in their dress to indicate any kind of class distinctions, much less individual differences.
Now, of course, China is much more Westernized in outward aspects, at least, but oddly we in the West have begun to follow the example of Mao-era China, voluntarily donning drab proletarian-style clothes which look very uniform-like. Nondescript shirts and jackets, jeans, and athletic shoes -- even the old folks with walkers or canes are decked out in The Uniform: running shoes and jeans. We see the same style of clothing everywhere: shopping, going to the theatre or to a concert or even to church: jeans, running shoes, shapeless clothes.
The 70s brought the 'unisex' trend in which men and women increasingly dressed alike. This trend has not gone away. We seem to be determined to erase or level out all the visible differences among us. And now, the old dress much as their middle-aged children do. It used to be that old people had their own distinctive style which was always appropriate to their age and station. Nowadays there are more 60-year-olds dressing like 30-year-olds.
Class differences, generational differences, sex differences, all these distinctions seem to be played down in the New America, at least in our outward appearance.
Now, some will say 'but clothes are superficial; clothes don't make the man (or woman)'. It's true, they don't, but clothes certainly reflect our priorities. And it seems we are moving more towards uniformity and egalitarianism, judging by the way we present ourselves.
And I think it's no accident that there is less respect for age, sex, and authority now than there was in the Old America.
The decline in civility is a problem that is visible everywhere we go; people seem to have hair-trigger tempers and a barely-concealed hostility towards others in too many situations. Old America was not like this.
Post-60s America is not the same place, if we look at society and human interaction, as it was before. The skeptic will answer that nothing stays the same; each generation differs from the one preceding it, and from the one following. It's true that change is the one constant in this world, but does that mean that we have to accept change willy-nilly, regardless of whether it's beneficial or destructive? No; being a 'conservative' should mean trying to preserve that which is good and trying to stave off whatever is corrosive and destructive of our way of life and our heritage. Civilization depends on continuity; if we are civilized and we have a way of life which has worked well for us, which we have, then passing that civilization on to the coming generations in as intact a form as possible is the essence of maintaining civilization. Once we discard all that was good and all that fostered stability and equilibrium, then 'things fall apart; the center cannot hold.'
Somewhere along the line we were duped out of our birthright, just as Esau was, and for similar reasons; we focus too much on the here and now and on our own gratification without thinking of tomorrow or of the generations to come. And somehow we've been duped into believing that 'conservatism' means a particular political party, or lower taxes and smaller government, when it really has so much more to do with the way we live our daily lives, the rules which govern our interactions among ourselves, and the principle of continuity and respect for the past.
And on those criteria, I encounter precious few conservatives today. We have mostly become petulant children of the counterculture, with all the arrogance and impetuousness inherent in that era.
We have lost the essential part of conservatism, which is the society we are supposedly trying to preserve, and ultimately the people who create that society. Once we've accepted the liberal goals such as egalitarianism and the leveling out of all distinctions, along with the idea that human history is 'progressive' and ever improving, then we have become what we claim to despise.
At this point I am no longer losing sleep over the fortunes of something called 'conservatism'. Conservatism is a diversion and a distraction; what we should be concerned over is our heritage and our way of life and our people. That is what we should be preserving -- or, more accurately, restoring.
We don't need to read any holy canons of Conservatism to find our way back; we have the example of the generations that went before us, and their time-tested ways of living and being and doing. We have the authority we seek, contained in the lives of our forefathers.
We need to shed the liberalism and egalitarian progressivism which has warped every area of our lives. We need to scrape away the accretions of the past few decades from the palimpsest of America and find our true heritage underneath the crude scrawlings of the recent past.
A recurring subject on this blog has been the state of conservatism, and what conservatism actually means these days. It's a commonplace observation now that there are many conflicting and contradictory viewpoints which are included under the label 'conservative'. The contradictions have become ever more glaringly obvious during the present Presidential campaign, in which the term 'conservative' is used to describe a gamut of views from those of John McCain to Tom Tancredo to Ron Paul. How can such a disparate group of people be described as conservative while still preserving any kind of fixed definition of conservatism?
There is quite a spectrum of viewpoints there.
Now we have the various shades of 'conservatism': neoconservatism (whose advocates often vociferously deny, first, that there is such a thing as neoconservatism, and second, that they themselves are neoconservatives), paleoconservatives (many of whom also reject that label) and 'traditionalists'.
Lately it has seemed to me that 'traditionalists' are also an ill-defined group, being divided among the more mainstream Republicans (who may oppose illegal immigration and multiculturalism as well as the Iraq war), and those who are closer to the paleoconservative viewpoint, but who may dissent from the paleos on issues like the Middle East or social issues.
The last few years for me have been a journey away from the Republican mainstream. This shifting of opinions on my part had mostly to do with the immigration issue and the national question, and later, with the Iraq war and interventionism in general.
One conclusion that was inescapable for me is that conservatism as it stands today is in the business of conserving yesterday's liberalism. That observation is not original with me; others have noted it, including R.L. Dabney in the 19th century. It is even more true today than it was in his day.
American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt hath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth, and has no idea of being guilty of the folly of martyrdom.'' - Robert L. Dabney, Discussions, Vol. 4 [1897].
So how can we respond to this 'loss of savor' within conservatism? Can we rediscover the Original Scriptures of conservatism like Hilkiah the high priest finding the forgotten book of the Law in II Kings ? That would make it easy; if only we had a Bible of conservatism to keep us on the straight and narrow, to keep us true and on target. But the problem is, 'conservatism' is not an ideology and it is not a set of dogmas or a rigid group of precepts. Conservatism is always particular to a time and place and people. It's about conserving the true and the classical and the traditional, the time-honored, within a particular civilization and its heritage.
As I observe life, I notice that more and more, it seems we really did begin anew in the post-counterculture era, after the late 60s and 70s. True, we didn't suddenly throw out the calendar and decree a new beginning officially as did the revolutionaries in 18th century France. But our world did change then, and it was done rather suddenly in many cases but very gradually in others, so that we've scarcely noticed how very different our world is from what it was before the 60s Revolution. And we as a people and as a culture have changed considerably. We have all become, to some degree or another, accepting of the post-60s liberal and radical innovations in our way of life and our behavior.
I am a keen watcher of people, and what I see around me, even among 'conservatives', is a country of people who are children of the counterculture in many respects. A lot of the old traditions which lent some gentility to daily life: social niceties, etiquette, chivalry (which means far more than opening doors for ladies) decorum, restraint. All these things are conspicuously missing in our society.
The old America had certain ways of doing things, and certain rules, often unspoken, that acted as a social lubricant, minimizing friction between people. There was a hierarchy in society, and our liberal egalitarian age rebels against any hint of hierarchies. But it used to be that one's elders were respected, as were authority figures in general. Differences between the sexes were acknowledged and adjusted for accordingly. Children were taught to honor their parents and elders.
Now we are all rank egalitarians; women and men are expected to behave the same, and we indulge in this pretense that women are the equals of men in all respects, including bodily strength and size. Gone are most of the displays of courtesy like titles before names: Mr. or Mrs. or Miss. College students and even high school students call their teachers by their first names; the teachers seem mostly flattered by this display of familiarity; I think it helps them maintain an illusion that they are still young, and that their students are their peers and friends.
Back in the 1970s, after Nixon made his famous trip to China and normalized relations with the Communist regime there, we were deluged with images of life in Communist China. One of the striking things to a Westerner, at least to me, was the fact that the Chinese people we saw in the pictures of the teeming cities of China was their uniformity. The men all wore the 'Mao jackets' and caps; the women, too, wore some kind of drab proletarian uniform-style garb. Everybody dressed the same. You could see no distinctions in their dress to indicate any kind of class distinctions, much less individual differences.
Now, of course, China is much more Westernized in outward aspects, at least, but oddly we in the West have begun to follow the example of Mao-era China, voluntarily donning drab proletarian-style clothes which look very uniform-like. Nondescript shirts and jackets, jeans, and athletic shoes -- even the old folks with walkers or canes are decked out in The Uniform: running shoes and jeans. We see the same style of clothing everywhere: shopping, going to the theatre or to a concert or even to church: jeans, running shoes, shapeless clothes.
The 70s brought the 'unisex' trend in which men and women increasingly dressed alike. This trend has not gone away. We seem to be determined to erase or level out all the visible differences among us. And now, the old dress much as their middle-aged children do. It used to be that old people had their own distinctive style which was always appropriate to their age and station. Nowadays there are more 60-year-olds dressing like 30-year-olds.
Class differences, generational differences, sex differences, all these distinctions seem to be played down in the New America, at least in our outward appearance.
Now, some will say 'but clothes are superficial; clothes don't make the man (or woman)'. It's true, they don't, but clothes certainly reflect our priorities. And it seems we are moving more towards uniformity and egalitarianism, judging by the way we present ourselves.
And I think it's no accident that there is less respect for age, sex, and authority now than there was in the Old America.
The decline in civility is a problem that is visible everywhere we go; people seem to have hair-trigger tempers and a barely-concealed hostility towards others in too many situations. Old America was not like this.
Post-60s America is not the same place, if we look at society and human interaction, as it was before. The skeptic will answer that nothing stays the same; each generation differs from the one preceding it, and from the one following. It's true that change is the one constant in this world, but does that mean that we have to accept change willy-nilly, regardless of whether it's beneficial or destructive? No; being a 'conservative' should mean trying to preserve that which is good and trying to stave off whatever is corrosive and destructive of our way of life and our heritage. Civilization depends on continuity; if we are civilized and we have a way of life which has worked well for us, which we have, then passing that civilization on to the coming generations in as intact a form as possible is the essence of maintaining civilization. Once we discard all that was good and all that fostered stability and equilibrium, then 'things fall apart; the center cannot hold.'
Somewhere along the line we were duped out of our birthright, just as Esau was, and for similar reasons; we focus too much on the here and now and on our own gratification without thinking of tomorrow or of the generations to come. And somehow we've been duped into believing that 'conservatism' means a particular political party, or lower taxes and smaller government, when it really has so much more to do with the way we live our daily lives, the rules which govern our interactions among ourselves, and the principle of continuity and respect for the past.
And on those criteria, I encounter precious few conservatives today. We have mostly become petulant children of the counterculture, with all the arrogance and impetuousness inherent in that era.
We have lost the essential part of conservatism, which is the society we are supposedly trying to preserve, and ultimately the people who create that society. Once we've accepted the liberal goals such as egalitarianism and the leveling out of all distinctions, along with the idea that human history is 'progressive' and ever improving, then we have become what we claim to despise.
At this point I am no longer losing sleep over the fortunes of something called 'conservatism'. Conservatism is a diversion and a distraction; what we should be concerned over is our heritage and our way of life and our people. That is what we should be preserving -- or, more accurately, restoring.
We don't need to read any holy canons of Conservatism to find our way back; we have the example of the generations that went before us, and their time-tested ways of living and being and doing. We have the authority we seek, contained in the lives of our forefathers.
We need to shed the liberalism and egalitarian progressivism which has warped every area of our lives. We need to scrape away the accretions of the past few decades from the palimpsest of America and find our true heritage underneath the crude scrawlings of the recent past.
Labels: American Identity, Conservatism, Conservative Principles, Egalitarianism, Heritage
0 comment Thursday, August 21, 2014 | admin
Recently I discovered the blog called A True Progressive. Blogger Jemison Thorsby's choice of a blog name is from this quote by C.S. Lewis, (which I've used in the past here on this blog)"
We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive."
That is exactly the kind of progressive approach we need now, more than ever before.
In this blog entry, Thorsby diagnoses what is wrong with our system, in the context of the present political situation.
One of our biggest challenges is we recognize symptoms of a problem but not the systemic issues that cause them. We have a sense we are overtaxed/over-regulated yet ill-served by government, but we don�t ask how we got here. Frustrated, people tend to fall into two camps. One shrugs, says we live in the best of all possible worlds, and accepts the flaws and flubs as the price of doing business. The other rages against the machine, wanting to tear down the system and start fresh (ah, the tonic of youth known as revolution!).
There is another way, however. We are so indoctrinated with the idea of "progress" we have a bias against the past. If yesterday�s gadgets and gizmos were inferior, and people harbored silly ideas like segregation, the past has nothing to teach us, right? This arrogance-of-the-now cuts us off from generations of lessons learned through hard knocks, as we throw out babies with the bathwater.''
[Emphasis mine]
These two paragraphs cut right to the heart of it, especially the second one, above. Thorsby is making a point that I have often tried to make here: the 'arrogance-of-the-now', the idea which seems to pervade our society, the idea that the past is worse than irrelevant. The past is one long dark age, only redeemed by the liberal revolution of the 1960s. The implication is always that our forefathers were benighted, backward, moral deficients. We are the first people, we post-moderns, to have seen the light. "Nothing like us ever was."
In a series delineating the history of conservatism, Fred Hutchison wrote an article called 'What went wrong? The bad seeds sowed from Bacon to Kant'. In it, Hutchison describes this mindset, tracing it back some centuries.
He is mostly discussing science in this piece, but the attitude he describes permeates Western culture generally.
Francis Bacon (1561�1626) laid the indispensable empirical foundations of Western science, enabling science to become the glory of European culture. He also introduced a handful of logical fallacies in which many Western scientists still believe.
Bacon was the father of Western skepticism. He greatly damaged Western culture by providing philosophical grounds for brushing aside the cultural and intellectual heritage of the West.
[...]
Bacon proposed that we should cancel all the knowledge of the past and start from scratch, using a method for acquiring knowledge that he would teach us. We should expunge from our minds of all preconceptions, prejudices, assumptions, theories, and old knowledge. He claimed that all knowledge brought forward from the past is tainted and should be expurgated.
This alone should have made Francis Bacon public enemy number one to all conservatives from that day forward. However, Bacon's contribution to the empirical foundation of modern science was so great that he has generally escaped the censure of future generations. Yet, even Bacon's most important contributions were laced with fallacies. The man who would cure all our old fallacies was a great sower of new fallacies and new myths.
Western culture after 1800 A.D. declined in direct proportion to the extent to which Western man cut himself off from his cultural past. Those who were most persuaded by Bacon and his philosophical heirs went the furthest in cutting themselves off from the Western cultural heritage. Great thinkers such as Descartes, Locke, Rousseau, Diderot, and Hume were among Bacon's heirs and gave weight and momentum to his program of cutting us off from the past and building a new world on the ashes.''
[Emphasis mine]
In another article in the series, Hutchison elaborates on how the traditionalism that led to the Renaissance is at odds with progressivism, historicism, and multiculturalism:
a) Progressivism looks upon the cultural past with contempt, lionizes the mediocrities of our present day, and idealizes an unknown future.
b) Historicism values only the present culture and finds cultural history and traditional morality irrelevant to the needs and values of the present moment.
c) Multiculturalism demeans the works of "dead white European males," and exalts contemporary works that are chosen for praise with no regard for innate merit, but valued solely on whether the works are authentic expressions of favored cultures.''
And in this piece, relating the history of the 'five kinds of conservatism', Hutchison names those five kinds as:
1) Traditionalism, 2) Christian Conservatism, 3) Natural Law Conservatism, 4) Neoconservatism, and 5) Libertarianism.
And he says:
Looking back is the way forward
The seminal ideal of Western Traditionalism in the ancient world was the belief in a golden age of the mythical past. Societies that had glorious visions of their cultural past tried to recover and preserve as much of it as possible. They wanted to conserve precious old cultural treasures and hence were called conservatives. Tradition was valued as a means of embracing the wisdom and blessings of the past and preserving the culture from decay.
Liberals have long argued that looking back to the past blocks "progress." This essay's walk through history indicates that where culture is concerned, almost the opposite is true. Every cultural renaissance we shall encounter in Part 1, was inspired by "backward-looking" conservative ideals. My counterintuitive hypothesis is that for the cultural improvement of a society, looking back is often the way forward.''
I think this is a crucial point. We are so accustomed to hearing that 'we can never go backward', 'you can't turn the clock back' and 'people who look to the past are reactionaries' -- that last being considered a slur rather than a neutral descriptive word.
But what is the good of conserving when there is little left, after the liberal demolitionists have had their way, that is worth conserving? We have to be able to acknowledge that we are on the wrong road, and that it is necessary to correct our course, and seemingly 'go backward' if we want to truly go forward. It's either backward or downward.
Conservatives these days are rather like the comic figure of the man who is hopelessly lost on an unfamiliar road, but who is too proud or arrogant to stop and ask for directions, or better yet, to consult a map and follow the known way home. There are some men who are more afraid of looking inept or admitting to being lost than they are of finding themselves out of gas on a remote road, far from their destination.
And we do have the maps provided by our forebears; they left us a wonderful set of maps to guide us through life; a whole set of traditions, a record of experiences, a body of knowledge and wisdom, that is Western culture. We in America are doubly blessed in that we have our own set of maps in our Founding documents. And we are too proud or too obtuse to rely on those maps, preferring to blunder down dangerous side-roads toward our doom on our own foolish initiative.
This arrogance and self-willed stubbornness is a profoundly un-conservative attitude; it doesn't get much more un-conservative than this. As long as we continue to disregard and look down our noses at our forefathers, at all those who went before us, we will never be able to get ourselves back on the right track; we will continue to wander off into uncharted territory without a compass. To be really 'conservative', to conserve the republic our Founding Fathers created for their posterity (that's us), we have to find our way back to the trail they blazed for us. Trying to be 'conservative' while disregarding the past and treating this present order of thing as not only inevitable but worth preserving, will only lead us further astray. We've got to find our way back before night falls.
To return to Jemison Thorsby's post,
The quote from which this blog draws its name refers to "progressive" as sometimes being the person who backtracks to the point he began down the wrong road. To me, America started down that road almost immediately after its birth.''
Thorsby describes how the original desire of the Founders to minimize and distribute power in a balanced way has been thwarted by those who destroyed the barriers between the branches of government. Now there is little to impede the will of those who have got control of this hypertrophied state power, and the people have been shut out of the process. Many of us wonder why 'our government' seems to have gone rogue and to be operating not only independently of our will, but in direct violation of our will.
We need to be the kind of 'progressives' who are willing to recognize that we are lost and heading in the wrong direction, who are then willing to turn back and find the good paths, as in Jeremiah's words:
Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where [is] the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.''
Conservatism should be synonymous with 'asking for the old paths, the good way', but unfortunately for us and for our Republic, it no longer is. The very name 'conservatism' has been so corrupted as to be devoid of meaning these days; maybe we who really are seeking the old paths, the known, tried-and-true ways, should name ourselves something more meaningful.
Forum comments here.
We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive."
That is exactly the kind of progressive approach we need now, more than ever before.
In this blog entry, Thorsby diagnoses what is wrong with our system, in the context of the present political situation.
One of our biggest challenges is we recognize symptoms of a problem but not the systemic issues that cause them. We have a sense we are overtaxed/over-regulated yet ill-served by government, but we don�t ask how we got here. Frustrated, people tend to fall into two camps. One shrugs, says we live in the best of all possible worlds, and accepts the flaws and flubs as the price of doing business. The other rages against the machine, wanting to tear down the system and start fresh (ah, the tonic of youth known as revolution!).
There is another way, however. We are so indoctrinated with the idea of "progress" we have a bias against the past. If yesterday�s gadgets and gizmos were inferior, and people harbored silly ideas like segregation, the past has nothing to teach us, right? This arrogance-of-the-now cuts us off from generations of lessons learned through hard knocks, as we throw out babies with the bathwater.''
[Emphasis mine]
These two paragraphs cut right to the heart of it, especially the second one, above. Thorsby is making a point that I have often tried to make here: the 'arrogance-of-the-now', the idea which seems to pervade our society, the idea that the past is worse than irrelevant. The past is one long dark age, only redeemed by the liberal revolution of the 1960s. The implication is always that our forefathers were benighted, backward, moral deficients. We are the first people, we post-moderns, to have seen the light. "Nothing like us ever was."
In a series delineating the history of conservatism, Fred Hutchison wrote an article called 'What went wrong? The bad seeds sowed from Bacon to Kant'. In it, Hutchison describes this mindset, tracing it back some centuries.
He is mostly discussing science in this piece, but the attitude he describes permeates Western culture generally.
Francis Bacon (1561�1626) laid the indispensable empirical foundations of Western science, enabling science to become the glory of European culture. He also introduced a handful of logical fallacies in which many Western scientists still believe.
Bacon was the father of Western skepticism. He greatly damaged Western culture by providing philosophical grounds for brushing aside the cultural and intellectual heritage of the West.
[...]
Bacon proposed that we should cancel all the knowledge of the past and start from scratch, using a method for acquiring knowledge that he would teach us. We should expunge from our minds of all preconceptions, prejudices, assumptions, theories, and old knowledge. He claimed that all knowledge brought forward from the past is tainted and should be expurgated.
This alone should have made Francis Bacon public enemy number one to all conservatives from that day forward. However, Bacon's contribution to the empirical foundation of modern science was so great that he has generally escaped the censure of future generations. Yet, even Bacon's most important contributions were laced with fallacies. The man who would cure all our old fallacies was a great sower of new fallacies and new myths.
Western culture after 1800 A.D. declined in direct proportion to the extent to which Western man cut himself off from his cultural past. Those who were most persuaded by Bacon and his philosophical heirs went the furthest in cutting themselves off from the Western cultural heritage. Great thinkers such as Descartes, Locke, Rousseau, Diderot, and Hume were among Bacon's heirs and gave weight and momentum to his program of cutting us off from the past and building a new world on the ashes.''
[Emphasis mine]
In another article in the series, Hutchison elaborates on how the traditionalism that led to the Renaissance is at odds with progressivism, historicism, and multiculturalism:
a) Progressivism looks upon the cultural past with contempt, lionizes the mediocrities of our present day, and idealizes an unknown future.
b) Historicism values only the present culture and finds cultural history and traditional morality irrelevant to the needs and values of the present moment.
c) Multiculturalism demeans the works of "dead white European males," and exalts contemporary works that are chosen for praise with no regard for innate merit, but valued solely on whether the works are authentic expressions of favored cultures.''
And in this piece, relating the history of the 'five kinds of conservatism', Hutchison names those five kinds as:
1) Traditionalism, 2) Christian Conservatism, 3) Natural Law Conservatism, 4) Neoconservatism, and 5) Libertarianism.
And he says:
Looking back is the way forward
The seminal ideal of Western Traditionalism in the ancient world was the belief in a golden age of the mythical past. Societies that had glorious visions of their cultural past tried to recover and preserve as much of it as possible. They wanted to conserve precious old cultural treasures and hence were called conservatives. Tradition was valued as a means of embracing the wisdom and blessings of the past and preserving the culture from decay.
Liberals have long argued that looking back to the past blocks "progress." This essay's walk through history indicates that where culture is concerned, almost the opposite is true. Every cultural renaissance we shall encounter in Part 1, was inspired by "backward-looking" conservative ideals. My counterintuitive hypothesis is that for the cultural improvement of a society, looking back is often the way forward.''
I think this is a crucial point. We are so accustomed to hearing that 'we can never go backward', 'you can't turn the clock back' and 'people who look to the past are reactionaries' -- that last being considered a slur rather than a neutral descriptive word.
But what is the good of conserving when there is little left, after the liberal demolitionists have had their way, that is worth conserving? We have to be able to acknowledge that we are on the wrong road, and that it is necessary to correct our course, and seemingly 'go backward' if we want to truly go forward. It's either backward or downward.
Conservatives these days are rather like the comic figure of the man who is hopelessly lost on an unfamiliar road, but who is too proud or arrogant to stop and ask for directions, or better yet, to consult a map and follow the known way home. There are some men who are more afraid of looking inept or admitting to being lost than they are of finding themselves out of gas on a remote road, far from their destination.
And we do have the maps provided by our forebears; they left us a wonderful set of maps to guide us through life; a whole set of traditions, a record of experiences, a body of knowledge and wisdom, that is Western culture. We in America are doubly blessed in that we have our own set of maps in our Founding documents. And we are too proud or too obtuse to rely on those maps, preferring to blunder down dangerous side-roads toward our doom on our own foolish initiative.
This arrogance and self-willed stubbornness is a profoundly un-conservative attitude; it doesn't get much more un-conservative than this. As long as we continue to disregard and look down our noses at our forefathers, at all those who went before us, we will never be able to get ourselves back on the right track; we will continue to wander off into uncharted territory without a compass. To be really 'conservative', to conserve the republic our Founding Fathers created for their posterity (that's us), we have to find our way back to the trail they blazed for us. Trying to be 'conservative' while disregarding the past and treating this present order of thing as not only inevitable but worth preserving, will only lead us further astray. We've got to find our way back before night falls.
To return to Jemison Thorsby's post,
The quote from which this blog draws its name refers to "progressive" as sometimes being the person who backtracks to the point he began down the wrong road. To me, America started down that road almost immediately after its birth.''
Thorsby describes how the original desire of the Founders to minimize and distribute power in a balanced way has been thwarted by those who destroyed the barriers between the branches of government. Now there is little to impede the will of those who have got control of this hypertrophied state power, and the people have been shut out of the process. Many of us wonder why 'our government' seems to have gone rogue and to be operating not only independently of our will, but in direct violation of our will.
We need to be the kind of 'progressives' who are willing to recognize that we are lost and heading in the wrong direction, who are then willing to turn back and find the good paths, as in Jeremiah's words:
Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where [is] the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.''
Conservatism should be synonymous with 'asking for the old paths, the good way', but unfortunately for us and for our Republic, it no longer is. The very name 'conservatism' has been so corrupted as to be devoid of meaning these days; maybe we who really are seeking the old paths, the known, tried-and-true ways, should name ourselves something more meaningful.
Forum comments here.
Labels: Conservative Principles, Founding Fathers, Western Civilization
0 comment Thursday, July 10, 2014 | admin
From Free Republic:
I love my country.....and I won't give it up!
I'm tired of hearing the refrain...."the GOP is dead"....and "the country is going down the tubes the way of Western European socialist countries".
I'm sorry, I won't accept that.
I'm willing to bet most of the people parrotting these lines are old, grizzled, bitter men who are cynical bastards to begin with.
Here's the deal.....I'm a 20-something conservative who loves his country and the values, traditions, and institutions it was founded on. I refuse to accept that it is all for naught at this point.
He goes on to list the discouraging argument he hears from 'conservatives':
Common refrains I hear are:
1. Demographics are changing this country and eliminating any chance of a conservative renewal.
A: Well, Irish Catholics not too long ago voted straight ticket Democrat 100% of the time. Blacks were solidly Republican until the 1960s. Are you telling me conservatives cannot win arguments with Hispanic voters to bring them to our side??? Only if we write them off!!!! People who take the demographic argument are making a borderline racist argument. Yes, the Dems have made an effort to institutionalize minorities into government programs, but they are doomed to fail. Let's start winning some arguments! It aint' that hard if you really try.
2. Young people are indoctrinated in schools and universities.
A: Hogwash. Another baby-boomer argument. The students at University of Missouri were NOT a bunch of brainwashed lefty ideolgues.
[...]
Final comments:
I believe in the power of goodness. America is a special place. Freedom is a universal value. The GOP and the conservative movement et al needs to start pushing this hardcore.
[...]
All you moronic, cynical old nellies can just bother not responding to this post. This is for optimistic freedom-loving Americans ONLY.
God bless all of you, and God bless America...the country I love.''
Well, I guess I am one of those 'moronic, cynical old nellies' the poster despises.
There is that idea, so often expressed by mainstream Republican types, that to be 'conservative', one must be optimistic all the time. Anything else is labeled a 'liberal' attitude; only liberals find fault with things as they are. I don't know how or when this kind of attitude became mandatory among the mainstream GOP types; I am going to guess it was probably during the Reagan era, when Republican triumphalism and smug optimism seemed to be the thing. The belief was apparently that the country was returning to its 'conservative' roots and the future was rosy -- as long as people voted GOP and stayed optimistic. The optimism seems unwarranted, in retrospect, as things have undoubtedly gotten steadily worse from a conservative standpoint. Of course this young man probably cannot see that, since it appears he was probably born after Reagan's presidency and has little historical perspective.
His contention that colleges do not indoctrinate their students is not supported by any facts; he merely says that his school (apparently the University of Missouri) was not liberal. So it seems, however, that his college education did not teach him anything about argument and debate; providing an anecdote does not prove his assertions.
He also takes a swipe at 'baby-boomers', whom he obviously dislikes; this seems distressingly common these days. I would guess his grandparents could have been boomers, if not his parents. To my mind, respect for elders is a must for real conservatives; how is it possible to be ''conservative'' in any way and loathe the generations before you? Sure, the boomers were in many cases notoriously liberal, but it appears the later generations are even more so, considering the numbers of them who voted for the current regime. Again, exceptions do not disprove the rule.
It appears that, as with far too many Americans, he considers 'conservative' and Republican to be one and the same; surely he should be able to see that this is far from true. All he has to do is to look at the party leadership, or at the pathetic candidate who was just defeated at the polls, to see how very un-conservative his beloved Republican Party is.
The first complaint on his list was about the demographic changes harming the prospects of his beloved GOP. He does not believe that this will be the case. Obviously he's been listening to Karl Rove, George Bush, John McCain, Mike Huckabee and all the others who foolishly believe that the Hispanics who are here in the tens of millions will one day vote Republican:
"Are you telling me conservatives cannot win arguments with Hispanic voters to bring them to our side??? Only if we write them off!!!! People who take the demographic argument are making a borderline racist argument. Yes, the Dems have made an effort to institutionalize minorities into government programs, but they are doomed to fail. Let's start winning some arguments! It aint' that hard if you really try.''Only the most stubborn and blind Republican can continue to wallow in that kind of fantasy about winning over Hispanic voters (who are supposedly really ''conservative'' at heart) and bringing minorities en masse into the Republican fold. This thinking is rooted in the idea that the Democrats are 'holding minorities back' with their socialism, and that if only minorities learned about the wonders of the free market and the Protestant work ethic, they would be staunch Republicans and all-American success stories. He totally discounts any inherent differences among the races. Little does he realize, it seems, how very liberal his own thinking is. And he caps off the bit about demographics with a flourish of the race card, saying that the 'demographic argument' is 'borderline racism'.
Sometimes when I encounter people like this who believe themselves conservative while holding many core liberal ideas, I wonder if it is worth it to try to open their minds a little bit and examine their liberal presuppositions. If I meet someone who is as vehement as this young man seems to be, I tend to write them off; he seems very fixed in his thinking, and he's certain he is 'conservative' and right. Such people are very hard to get through to; if I tried to engage this young man in a discussion he would probably think me to be one of those 'right-wing extremists' or one of those 'cynical old nellies.' I think he is one of those who stubbornly holds to his beliefs despite evidence to the contrary in the real world, and in many instances, this stubbornness is rooted in the determination to be ''optimistic'' as he describes himself.
Is conservatism optimistic as a rule? I think conservatism above all should be realistic. Being aware of the world's essential imperfections and imperfectibility, and above all, being cognizant of the fact that human nature is flawed and limited tends to rein in any tendency to blind faith in a rosy future, or any utopian schemes such as the liberals love to envision.
Being optimistic is good only as long as we temper it with realism and humility and a little skepticism. If I don't see these traits or at least the potential for them in someone, I don't attempt to try to reason and argue with them. I suppose I have come to choose my battles a little more carefully. I only hope that this young man and the others out there who may be like him will come to realistic views on the world, and above all, I hope he will come to realize that patriotism should mean, above all, a commitment to his people, to his kin and home and faith, (if he has one).
Putting all his hope and faith in a political party or in some abstract universal idea like ''freedom'' will lead to eternal disappointment and frustration. I hope that he and others like him will look to the wisdom of earlier times rather than the dubious 'wisdom' of Limbaugh or Hannity or Beck.
I hope he learns that if he truly wants to conserve, then conserving one's people and heritage is at the top of the list.
I love my country.....and I won't give it up!
I'm tired of hearing the refrain...."the GOP is dead"....and "the country is going down the tubes the way of Western European socialist countries".
I'm sorry, I won't accept that.
I'm willing to bet most of the people parrotting these lines are old, grizzled, bitter men who are cynical bastards to begin with.
Here's the deal.....I'm a 20-something conservative who loves his country and the values, traditions, and institutions it was founded on. I refuse to accept that it is all for naught at this point.
He goes on to list the discouraging argument he hears from 'conservatives':
Common refrains I hear are:
1. Demographics are changing this country and eliminating any chance of a conservative renewal.
A: Well, Irish Catholics not too long ago voted straight ticket Democrat 100% of the time. Blacks were solidly Republican until the 1960s. Are you telling me conservatives cannot win arguments with Hispanic voters to bring them to our side??? Only if we write them off!!!! People who take the demographic argument are making a borderline racist argument. Yes, the Dems have made an effort to institutionalize minorities into government programs, but they are doomed to fail. Let's start winning some arguments! It aint' that hard if you really try.
2. Young people are indoctrinated in schools and universities.
A: Hogwash. Another baby-boomer argument. The students at University of Missouri were NOT a bunch of brainwashed lefty ideolgues.
[...]
Final comments:
I believe in the power of goodness. America is a special place. Freedom is a universal value. The GOP and the conservative movement et al needs to start pushing this hardcore.
[...]
All you moronic, cynical old nellies can just bother not responding to this post. This is for optimistic freedom-loving Americans ONLY.
God bless all of you, and God bless America...the country I love.''
Well, I guess I am one of those 'moronic, cynical old nellies' the poster despises.
There is that idea, so often expressed by mainstream Republican types, that to be 'conservative', one must be optimistic all the time. Anything else is labeled a 'liberal' attitude; only liberals find fault with things as they are. I don't know how or when this kind of attitude became mandatory among the mainstream GOP types; I am going to guess it was probably during the Reagan era, when Republican triumphalism and smug optimism seemed to be the thing. The belief was apparently that the country was returning to its 'conservative' roots and the future was rosy -- as long as people voted GOP and stayed optimistic. The optimism seems unwarranted, in retrospect, as things have undoubtedly gotten steadily worse from a conservative standpoint. Of course this young man probably cannot see that, since it appears he was probably born after Reagan's presidency and has little historical perspective.
His contention that colleges do not indoctrinate their students is not supported by any facts; he merely says that his school (apparently the University of Missouri) was not liberal. So it seems, however, that his college education did not teach him anything about argument and debate; providing an anecdote does not prove his assertions.
He also takes a swipe at 'baby-boomers', whom he obviously dislikes; this seems distressingly common these days. I would guess his grandparents could have been boomers, if not his parents. To my mind, respect for elders is a must for real conservatives; how is it possible to be ''conservative'' in any way and loathe the generations before you? Sure, the boomers were in many cases notoriously liberal, but it appears the later generations are even more so, considering the numbers of them who voted for the current regime. Again, exceptions do not disprove the rule.
It appears that, as with far too many Americans, he considers 'conservative' and Republican to be one and the same; surely he should be able to see that this is far from true. All he has to do is to look at the party leadership, or at the pathetic candidate who was just defeated at the polls, to see how very un-conservative his beloved Republican Party is.
The first complaint on his list was about the demographic changes harming the prospects of his beloved GOP. He does not believe that this will be the case. Obviously he's been listening to Karl Rove, George Bush, John McCain, Mike Huckabee and all the others who foolishly believe that the Hispanics who are here in the tens of millions will one day vote Republican:
"Are you telling me conservatives cannot win arguments with Hispanic voters to bring them to our side??? Only if we write them off!!!! People who take the demographic argument are making a borderline racist argument. Yes, the Dems have made an effort to institutionalize minorities into government programs, but they are doomed to fail. Let's start winning some arguments! It aint' that hard if you really try.''Only the most stubborn and blind Republican can continue to wallow in that kind of fantasy about winning over Hispanic voters (who are supposedly really ''conservative'' at heart) and bringing minorities en masse into the Republican fold. This thinking is rooted in the idea that the Democrats are 'holding minorities back' with their socialism, and that if only minorities learned about the wonders of the free market and the Protestant work ethic, they would be staunch Republicans and all-American success stories. He totally discounts any inherent differences among the races. Little does he realize, it seems, how very liberal his own thinking is. And he caps off the bit about demographics with a flourish of the race card, saying that the 'demographic argument' is 'borderline racism'.
Sometimes when I encounter people like this who believe themselves conservative while holding many core liberal ideas, I wonder if it is worth it to try to open their minds a little bit and examine their liberal presuppositions. If I meet someone who is as vehement as this young man seems to be, I tend to write them off; he seems very fixed in his thinking, and he's certain he is 'conservative' and right. Such people are very hard to get through to; if I tried to engage this young man in a discussion he would probably think me to be one of those 'right-wing extremists' or one of those 'cynical old nellies.' I think he is one of those who stubbornly holds to his beliefs despite evidence to the contrary in the real world, and in many instances, this stubbornness is rooted in the determination to be ''optimistic'' as he describes himself.
Is conservatism optimistic as a rule? I think conservatism above all should be realistic. Being aware of the world's essential imperfections and imperfectibility, and above all, being cognizant of the fact that human nature is flawed and limited tends to rein in any tendency to blind faith in a rosy future, or any utopian schemes such as the liberals love to envision.
Being optimistic is good only as long as we temper it with realism and humility and a little skepticism. If I don't see these traits or at least the potential for them in someone, I don't attempt to try to reason and argue with them. I suppose I have come to choose my battles a little more carefully. I only hope that this young man and the others out there who may be like him will come to realistic views on the world, and above all, I hope he will come to realize that patriotism should mean, above all, a commitment to his people, to his kin and home and faith, (if he has one).
Putting all his hope and faith in a political party or in some abstract universal idea like ''freedom'' will lead to eternal disappointment and frustration. I hope that he and others like him will look to the wisdom of earlier times rather than the dubious 'wisdom' of Limbaugh or Hannity or Beck.
I hope he learns that if he truly wants to conserve, then conserving one's people and heritage is at the top of the list.
Labels: Conservatism, Conservative Principles, Creeping Liberalism, Generational Divide, Republicans
0 comment Friday, June 13, 2014 | admin
Here/s a rather interesting post at What's Wrong With the World, having to do with today's 'conservatism' and its relation to the dominant liberalism of our time.
"Conservatism" is in our time not conservatism but right-liberalism: political liberalism with a few 'conservative' unprincipled exceptions. The exceptions are unprincipled in the sense that they are not founded in our liberalism, and we for the most part don't recognize their incompatibility with our own liberalism. For a while that meant that 'conservatism' was classical liberalism; now it means, for the most part, culturally 'big tent' neoconservatism. In general it means 'whatever liberalism was about 30 or 50 years ago'.
So looking beyond the election of this very moment, the way to beat the Left politically, and (among other things) effectively save the children being massacred by the acolytes of Moloch -- the only way to beat the Left politically, as an eminently practical concern -- is to stop becoming the Left, through a quasi-Hegelian process which seems to take about two generations.''
In this post, Zippy Catholic decries the lack of an ''anchor political conservatism" which would be an effective counter to the dominant core worldview of the liberal.
The first commenter on the thread asks for a definition of liberalism, and then asks ''What is the antithesis of liberalism?"
I've read the existing comments, and there are several, but it seems no one has come up with a solid definition as requested.
We've covered similar territory on this blog, as my longtime readers will remember. So I won't attempt to re-plow that same ground, but any of you who can offer a good definition of liberalism are welcome to do so.
The whole discussion also brings into play the idea of liberty vs. equality, which has also been a recurring discussion on this blog, and it is an important idea that is not discussed or considered as it should be today. It is very much at the heart of what distinguishes liberals and 'conservatives', though of course I will reiterate that even 'conservatives' these days are imbued with the core ideas of liberalism. And the idea of liberty and freedom are constant themes on both ends of the political spectrum, though each side has differing ideas on what actually constitutes 'liberty' or freedom. Both sides constantly evoke 'liberty' and 'freedom' and yet they are not saying the same things when they use those words.
Do liberals, for example, support freedom of association? Their support of anti-discrimination laws, which deny freedom of association, show that they ultimately don't believe we have freedom of association.
Do they support our freedom to arm ourselves? .
Or our right to freedom of speech and freedom of thought? Only if we use that 'freedom' to say politically correct things, or to think the correct liberal thoughts.
And on it goes.
But the liberal worldview is terribly flawed in that it believes that 'equality' can coexist with freedom or liberty.
The discussion makes me think of this statement by Alexander Hamilton:
Inequality will exist as long as liberty exists. It unavoidably results from that very liberty itself. ''
Liberals don't see, or refuse to see, that we cannot ever have equality without some kind of strong hand to enforce it, which inevitably restricts freedom and liberty.
'Equal housing opportunity' means that landlords lose their right to rent to people of their choosing. And landlords are allowed to discriminate based on credit ratings, income, employment and various other things, but they are forbidden to discriminate on racial/ethnic/religious grounds, because ''all men are created equal.''
(Jefferson obviously lacked prescience when he insisted on that phrase; he obviously didn't foresee the perverted uses to which that phrase has been put.)
Equal opportunity in employment has come to mean affirmative action requirements, filling slots with people of the requisite color or ethnicity, or gender.
The illusory goal of equal outcomes in education has meant the dumbing-down of the schools nationwide, as well as the denial of the right of the majority students to get a good education. The many are being sacrificed in the name of the self-esteem of the few -- all for the sake of preserving this fallacy that we are all equal, if we only 'level the playing field' and rig the system to help the less able to 'excel'.
The recent sub-prime mortgage debacle (which is still playing out) was in large part likely traceable to the misguided effort to create 'equality' in home ownership and to bring minorities into more 'exclusive' neighborhoods previously dominated by Whites.
The effort to stamp out all vestiges of 'discrimination' has meant the stamping-out of standards in every area of life -- so as to try to establish an unnatural 'equality' which can only be maintained, if it is ever achieved, with more coercive government action and more propaganda to keep people from thinking inappropriate thoughts or holding politically incorrect ideas which question 'equality,'
Lord Acton said, many years ago, ''The deepest cause which made the French Revolution so disastrous to liberty was its theory of equality."
It seems obvious that if the utopian idea of creating absolute equality between peoples is paramount, as it is in liberalism, liberty will suffer, as in fact it is suffering.
And it follows that if Obama is elected, this obsession with enforcing 'equality' will be carried to even greater extremes than it is at present.
The consequences for liberty and for our American freedoms will be considerable, especially when we now live in a society in which ethnic/racial groups contend fiercely to further their own interests only, without regard to the general welfare.
Kinsman John Randolph long ago said:
"The principle of liberty and equality, if coupled only with mere selfishness, will make men only devils, each trying to be independent that he may fight only for his own interest."
And to return to the subject of 'core beliefs' of conservatism, one of the ways in which today's conservatives have been subverted by liberalism is the embrace of a kind of faux-populism or egalitarianism. Just wander over to any of the big Republican forums and notice the great number of comments disparaging any kind of social hierarchy; everybody professes to be a hard-core egalitarian and (small-d) democrat and disparages the idea of social ranks. Because our forefathers rejected British royal rule, we tend to jeer the whole idea of aristocracy or royalty. However, the idea of a monarchy in this country was considered, and we've probably all heard that George Washington was offered the crown, though he declined it.
But it seems that most American conservatives embrace the idea of 'democracy' although our forefathers rightly disdained that idea, and they embrace 'equality' as an abstract idea, often without really considering what that ideal implies if followed to its extreme, as with the liberals and leftists.
As to some kind of conservative credo or set of core principles, it seems that every now and then, even here on this blog, somebody calls for a 'conservative credo' or manifesto, and decries our lack of an ideology. But it seems to me that 'ideology' as such implies a set of abstract principles, which, by their abstract nature, tend to become disembodied and lacking a grounding in real human experience. Liberals are very ideological, which is the reason for their disconnect with human nature, and for their perpetual attempt to re-make human nature after their ideological pipe-dreams.
Russell Kirk was adamant that conservatism and ideology don't go together.
His 'Ten Conservative Principles' can be found at the link.
The cry of the Obamanistas is 'Change' and transformation. This is typically liberal: change for its own sake, seeking change without regard for the consequences to the larger society, the rush to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Kirk says, of 'progress' and permanence:
Therefore the intelligent conservative endeavors to reconcile the claims of Permanence and the claims of Progression. He thinks that the liberal and the radical, blind to the just claims of Permanence, would endanger the heritage bequeathed to us, in an endeavor to hurry us into some dubious Terrestrial Paradise. The conservative, in short, favors reasoned and temperate progress; he is opposed to the cult of Progress, whose votaries believe that everything new necessarily is superior to everything old.
Change is essential to the body social, the conservative reasons, just as it is essential to the human body. A body that has ceased to renew itself has begun to die. But if that body is to be vigorous, the change must occur in a regular manner, harmonizing with the form and nature of that body; otherwise change produces a monstrous growth, a cancer, which devours its host. The conservative takes care that nothing in a society should ever be wholly old, and that nothing should ever be wholly new. This is the means of the conservation of a nation, quite as it is the means of conservation of a living organism. Just how much change a society requires, and what sort of change, depend upon the circumstances of an age and a nation.''
As to a manifesto or a plan which we need to counter the left, or as to a plan for restoring what has been lost to liberalism's manic quest for utopia, we have an adequate blueprint in the traditional society that existed in America over the last few centuries. Look to the past for the core values and principles on which we sustained this country. Our ancestors were wise people; they weren't perfect, and no perfect society exists. Traditional American ways served us very well, up until the upheavals of the 50s, 60s and thereafter. What has happened since then has been a disaster; first, in rather slow motion, but now accelerating to a dangerous speed.
And there are too few ''standing athwart history, yelling 'stop'!' these days.
"Conservatism" is in our time not conservatism but right-liberalism: political liberalism with a few 'conservative' unprincipled exceptions. The exceptions are unprincipled in the sense that they are not founded in our liberalism, and we for the most part don't recognize their incompatibility with our own liberalism. For a while that meant that 'conservatism' was classical liberalism; now it means, for the most part, culturally 'big tent' neoconservatism. In general it means 'whatever liberalism was about 30 or 50 years ago'.
So looking beyond the election of this very moment, the way to beat the Left politically, and (among other things) effectively save the children being massacred by the acolytes of Moloch -- the only way to beat the Left politically, as an eminently practical concern -- is to stop becoming the Left, through a quasi-Hegelian process which seems to take about two generations.''
In this post, Zippy Catholic decries the lack of an ''anchor political conservatism" which would be an effective counter to the dominant core worldview of the liberal.
The first commenter on the thread asks for a definition of liberalism, and then asks ''What is the antithesis of liberalism?"
I've read the existing comments, and there are several, but it seems no one has come up with a solid definition as requested.
We've covered similar territory on this blog, as my longtime readers will remember. So I won't attempt to re-plow that same ground, but any of you who can offer a good definition of liberalism are welcome to do so.
The whole discussion also brings into play the idea of liberty vs. equality, which has also been a recurring discussion on this blog, and it is an important idea that is not discussed or considered as it should be today. It is very much at the heart of what distinguishes liberals and 'conservatives', though of course I will reiterate that even 'conservatives' these days are imbued with the core ideas of liberalism. And the idea of liberty and freedom are constant themes on both ends of the political spectrum, though each side has differing ideas on what actually constitutes 'liberty' or freedom. Both sides constantly evoke 'liberty' and 'freedom' and yet they are not saying the same things when they use those words.
Do liberals, for example, support freedom of association? Their support of anti-discrimination laws, which deny freedom of association, show that they ultimately don't believe we have freedom of association.
Do they support our freedom to arm ourselves? .
Or our right to freedom of speech and freedom of thought? Only if we use that 'freedom' to say politically correct things, or to think the correct liberal thoughts.
And on it goes.
But the liberal worldview is terribly flawed in that it believes that 'equality' can coexist with freedom or liberty.
The discussion makes me think of this statement by Alexander Hamilton:
Inequality will exist as long as liberty exists. It unavoidably results from that very liberty itself. ''
Liberals don't see, or refuse to see, that we cannot ever have equality without some kind of strong hand to enforce it, which inevitably restricts freedom and liberty.
'Equal housing opportunity' means that landlords lose their right to rent to people of their choosing. And landlords are allowed to discriminate based on credit ratings, income, employment and various other things, but they are forbidden to discriminate on racial/ethnic/religious grounds, because ''all men are created equal.''
(Jefferson obviously lacked prescience when he insisted on that phrase; he obviously didn't foresee the perverted uses to which that phrase has been put.)
Equal opportunity in employment has come to mean affirmative action requirements, filling slots with people of the requisite color or ethnicity, or gender.
The illusory goal of equal outcomes in education has meant the dumbing-down of the schools nationwide, as well as the denial of the right of the majority students to get a good education. The many are being sacrificed in the name of the self-esteem of the few -- all for the sake of preserving this fallacy that we are all equal, if we only 'level the playing field' and rig the system to help the less able to 'excel'.
The recent sub-prime mortgage debacle (which is still playing out) was in large part likely traceable to the misguided effort to create 'equality' in home ownership and to bring minorities into more 'exclusive' neighborhoods previously dominated by Whites.
The effort to stamp out all vestiges of 'discrimination' has meant the stamping-out of standards in every area of life -- so as to try to establish an unnatural 'equality' which can only be maintained, if it is ever achieved, with more coercive government action and more propaganda to keep people from thinking inappropriate thoughts or holding politically incorrect ideas which question 'equality,'
Lord Acton said, many years ago, ''The deepest cause which made the French Revolution so disastrous to liberty was its theory of equality."
It seems obvious that if the utopian idea of creating absolute equality between peoples is paramount, as it is in liberalism, liberty will suffer, as in fact it is suffering.
And it follows that if Obama is elected, this obsession with enforcing 'equality' will be carried to even greater extremes than it is at present.
The consequences for liberty and for our American freedoms will be considerable, especially when we now live in a society in which ethnic/racial groups contend fiercely to further their own interests only, without regard to the general welfare.
Kinsman John Randolph long ago said:
"The principle of liberty and equality, if coupled only with mere selfishness, will make men only devils, each trying to be independent that he may fight only for his own interest."
And to return to the subject of 'core beliefs' of conservatism, one of the ways in which today's conservatives have been subverted by liberalism is the embrace of a kind of faux-populism or egalitarianism. Just wander over to any of the big Republican forums and notice the great number of comments disparaging any kind of social hierarchy; everybody professes to be a hard-core egalitarian and (small-d) democrat and disparages the idea of social ranks. Because our forefathers rejected British royal rule, we tend to jeer the whole idea of aristocracy or royalty. However, the idea of a monarchy in this country was considered, and we've probably all heard that George Washington was offered the crown, though he declined it.
But it seems that most American conservatives embrace the idea of 'democracy' although our forefathers rightly disdained that idea, and they embrace 'equality' as an abstract idea, often without really considering what that ideal implies if followed to its extreme, as with the liberals and leftists.
As to some kind of conservative credo or set of core principles, it seems that every now and then, even here on this blog, somebody calls for a 'conservative credo' or manifesto, and decries our lack of an ideology. But it seems to me that 'ideology' as such implies a set of abstract principles, which, by their abstract nature, tend to become disembodied and lacking a grounding in real human experience. Liberals are very ideological, which is the reason for their disconnect with human nature, and for their perpetual attempt to re-make human nature after their ideological pipe-dreams.
Russell Kirk was adamant that conservatism and ideology don't go together.
His 'Ten Conservative Principles' can be found at the link.
The cry of the Obamanistas is 'Change' and transformation. This is typically liberal: change for its own sake, seeking change without regard for the consequences to the larger society, the rush to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Kirk says, of 'progress' and permanence:
Therefore the intelligent conservative endeavors to reconcile the claims of Permanence and the claims of Progression. He thinks that the liberal and the radical, blind to the just claims of Permanence, would endanger the heritage bequeathed to us, in an endeavor to hurry us into some dubious Terrestrial Paradise. The conservative, in short, favors reasoned and temperate progress; he is opposed to the cult of Progress, whose votaries believe that everything new necessarily is superior to everything old.
Change is essential to the body social, the conservative reasons, just as it is essential to the human body. A body that has ceased to renew itself has begun to die. But if that body is to be vigorous, the change must occur in a regular manner, harmonizing with the form and nature of that body; otherwise change produces a monstrous growth, a cancer, which devours its host. The conservative takes care that nothing in a society should ever be wholly old, and that nothing should ever be wholly new. This is the means of the conservation of a nation, quite as it is the means of conservation of a living organism. Just how much change a society requires, and what sort of change, depend upon the circumstances of an age and a nation.''
As to a manifesto or a plan which we need to counter the left, or as to a plan for restoring what has been lost to liberalism's manic quest for utopia, we have an adequate blueprint in the traditional society that existed in America over the last few centuries. Look to the past for the core values and principles on which we sustained this country. Our ancestors were wise people; they weren't perfect, and no perfect society exists. Traditional American ways served us very well, up until the upheavals of the 50s, 60s and thereafter. What has happened since then has been a disaster; first, in rather slow motion, but now accelerating to a dangerous speed.
And there are too few ''standing athwart history, yelling 'stop'!' these days.
Labels: Conservative Principles, Creeping Liberalism, Egalitarianism, Equality, Faux Conservatism, Liberty