I'm a dumb liberal

[lehighguy]

Pre 1960s the Dems controlled the south and were the major proponents of state sponsored racism. They opposed efforts to bring civil rights to southern blacks and often worked hand in hand with the KKK. They used the filibuster to block civil rights legislation (yes, Johnsons legislation).

Most progress before the 60s came from republicans. Brown v Board of Education was supported by conservative judges. Most state interference and discrimination against blacks was opposed on the grounds of small government. After all, what business is it of the government who can ride on which seat of the bus.

Things have changed alot since then, and they are no longer the same parties (or I would argue parties at all). Heck, what did they represent only 5 years ago? Certainly not what they represent now.

Parties are tools of charismatic politicians, and thier posistions are posistions of political convienence. They change constantly, and comparison to anything more then a decade old is almost meaningless.

[Andrew Fletcher]

There used to be liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats.

There aren't anymore. The political parties have almost completely realigned. All the liberal Republicans? They are Democrats now. All the conservative Democrats from the South who hate black people? They've become Republicans.

Political parties do shift, unless they're aligned along ideological poles. U.S. politics is.

Conservatism may have found a new home, but the ideology hasn't changed.

[lehighguy]

If conservatism has found a new home, why don't republicans do conservative things.

If liberalism has found a new home, why do they act so illiberally.

[ QUOTE ]
I'm a dumb liberal.

[/ QUOTE ]

waxie, you may be a lot of things, but dumb ain't one of 'em.

Unenlightend about certain matters, probably.

Idealistic toward many issues, certainly.

But dumb? Nah.

[img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Andrew Fletcher]

Shhhh.

I used to be totally idealistic, but I've become the biggest wimpy liberal ever. I went from Chomsky/Zinn to Schlesinger and Galbraith in like two years. College is great.

[Beer and Pizza]

[ QUOTE ]
I went from Chomsky/Zinn...

[/ QUOTE ]

You should be proud to have escaped from this evil mental handicap. You are one lucky fellow.

[Andrew Fletcher]

Do you know who the other two guys are?

You should be more worried about them than Chomsky or Zinn.

I would start with Justin Raimondo. He is the editorial director of Antiwar.com and has written a few books on coservatism.

[jogger08152]

Someone said that conservatives are practical, rather than idealistic. I'd suggest that the opposite generalization would be truer; we conservatives tend to adhere to certain principles (EG "decentralized government is better because it enables people to vote with their feet") and attempt to solve (or in fairness, at times pretend to solve, attempt to explain away, etc) social problems from within that paradigm, behaving inflexibly about our principles. Thus, conservatives support lower Federal taxes across the board, disregarding Keynesian economic principles that might actually be useful at times (EG raising taxes during times of prosperity); we're always ready to throw a few bucks at the military because we believe that peace is best kept through military strength - and this in turn allows that strength to remain unused, always assuming we manage not to elect any more pols whose last name rhymes with 'push'

I would contrast this with what I think of as the conventional liberal approach - see a problem (and we might argue as to what is a problem of course), try to fix it by whatever means seems good at the time, often kowtowing to fad, and with seldom a thought of governing principles. This leads to things like the fit of "political correctness" that swept American universities in the early nineties. (Presumably the problem that PC was intended to address was speech that gave offense to certain individuals (again, I would argue that giving offense is generally not a "problem" in the political sense), and the response was to forcibly curtail speech that might be construed as offensive - and in the process, hyphenate the hell out of people. Anybody ever met a physically-challenged (nay, differently-abled) African-American with a learning disability?)

A principled conservative would reject PC, or a conservative equivalent if one were to spring up - out of hand - even if the proposed curtailment would eliminate primarily or exclusively speech he disliked and disagreed with: the principle that free speech promotes democracy and meritocracy is more important than the advantage of quelling speech one dislikes. And to forestall the obvious, yes, the "Christian right" often falls short of this principle (or rather, advocates another principle which I do not; "I'll let others elaborate," as someone on here occasionally says).

The roots of conservatism are the liberalism of the rennaisance, Montesque notably, and its influence on early American politics. Ben Franklin, with his pithy remarks ("Q: what type of government are you giving us, Mr. Franklin? A. A republic, if you can keep it;" "Those who would trade a little liberty for a little safety, will lose both and deserve neither.") would be a good example, as might Thomas Jefferson (numerous examples) - though in his day he was quite "progressive."

Incidentally, the current herd of republicans in the White House and Congress are -far- from the conservatives I'd hoped to elect when I voted for Bush in the election he may not have won. I didn't vote for him the second time around, and I'd argue that anyone who did, isn't actually a conservative.