To my knowledge, the concept of “conservatism” is the will to conserve, preserve past values that are seen as superior. While I don’t agree with this either, this community has almost exclusively posts about fearing new things and trying to show them as evil. Evil migrants, evil new generations, evil new sexualities, whatever.
I do not see any “values” in it, only fear. Rejecting migrants is not based on morals or values that are rational, but on fear. Same for the rest. Which leads to the question, what is the point of this community? It does not lead to debate, people calling it out as fascism on one side (which is quite justified as the root ideas are seemingly identical) and the other side just saying that it’s wrong and that’s it. There’s no debate of values, as there are no values to debate about.
I do not agree with the concept of conservatism, and I couldn’t care less if this place is forever doomed to be downvoted in oblivion. But if you actually want to do something else than fear-mongering, even if you insist on talking about conservatism, then maybe it would be a good idea to refocus the community on actual ideas, and not the typical far-right speeches of hatred and fear that already flood a lot of media.
Of course I believe that it would be better to reconsider opinions that basically encourage the worst of humanity; but even aside from that, there is more to do than to replace every possibility of a conversation with the (stereo)typical “immigrants bad, jesus good, gays evil” speech.
What I find strange is that for a community that seems to be about discussing politics there is a huge absence of politics. I think the best way to explain is with a few examples. I’ll post a few of the newest headlines from other political communities and we’ll compare.
- Feds’ water legislation needs to do better around Indigenous rights
- Recall campaign launched to oust B.C. education minister over SOGI
- Danielle Smith to invoke Sovereignty Act on Ottawa power rules next week, say sources
- Trudeau government claims victory in latest trade dispute with U.S. over dairy
- Feds want Toronto to do more in exchange for housing cash — the mayor says she’s ready
Each one of these headlines mentions a politician or government agency and something they’ve done or said
- ‘I Will Come For You’: Court Filing Reveals Judge in Trump Case Received ‘Hundreds’ of Threats
- Andrew Cuomo accused of sexual harassment in new lawsuit filed by former executive assistant Brittany Commisso
- Republican Senate candidate’s family egg company caught in price-fixing plot
- ‘Pipe down’: Biden allies step up calls for Dems to rally around president
- Backlash to affirmative action hits pioneering maternal health program for Black women
The slant here is a lot more obvious with headlines being more sensationalized, however, except for the last one it’s all about what politicians have said or done. The last one is about a conservative group suing to end a government program that provides charity to pregnant Black women which opens discussion about weather or not that program should exist.
- One of America’s fastest growing high school sports has ‘no benchwarmers’
- Pro-Palestinian protesters disrupt Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City
- Migrants Take All Free Thanksgiving Turkeys Intended For Struggling New Yorkers
- Poll: Gun ownership reaches record high with American electorate
- USAToday Fact check: Yes, there’s a vehicle ‘kill switch’ in Biden’s 2021 infrastructure bill, and we lie about it.
Only the last article has anything to do with politicians or the government. The rest are just articles about guns, migrants, and protests. If the aim is for political discussion, articles should be about politics. I’m not sure what discussion can had with these kinds of articles, other than “that article is stupid” which is said more often with a downvote than a comment.
Only the last article has anything to do with politicians or the government.
And on top of that, that particular post misrepresented the actual article. So the conversation on that one was ~90% calling out the post for misrepresenting the article instead of the policy itself.
Only because you morons are absolutely dedicated to proving that a kill switch is not a kill switch because it would make your policy look bad
Your use of name calling makes you look worse.
He doesn’t have a real argument and he knows it, so he resorts to ad hominems. As usual.
I don’t care about how you think I look bub
The rest are just articles about guns, migrants, and protests
Are these not highly politicized topics, at the bare minimum? I mean for fuck sake, you genuinely believe protests to be a non-political subject? It just sounds more like you’re upset that not everyone agrees with you.
Gun policies, immigration policies, and the government’s stance on the Isreal-Palestine conflict are politics. Gun sales, migrants receiving charity, and protests are only tangentially related.
I’m not mad at all. I’m genuinely interested in reading what people think about government policies. I’m just pointing out that this community doesn’t make many posts where people can actually discuss policies. “Gun sales are up”. Alright? And? What’s the discussion to be had? That’s not a political stance that can be debated, that’s a sales report.
And the sex lives of ex politicians aren’t tangential? The shit you listed is just celebrity gossip for broken millennials.
can you point to the list of sex lives of ex politicians
Andrew Cuomo.
you misread, i asked for the list of sex lives of ex politicians
‘andrew cuomo’ is not a list, nor is a criminal case about power abuse in local government ‘the sex lives of former politicians’
I didn’t claim that was the full list. I chose an example.
I do find this to be an interesting perspective, because in general, I wouldn’t consider these to be tangential, but rather the real-world nature of political topics. Immigration isn’t just some nebulous political topic that gets discussed as a matter of theory up in DC. It’s a real thing that has real, tangible effects, and those merit discussion, not just as some tangential foot note of the theory.
I honestly don’t see the problem here. It sounds like celebrity gossip versus actual news.
I remember reading the description of the values of the Republican party in the voter guide when I first could vote and thinking it made a lot of sense. Then I learned that instead of states rights, support of small business, and individual liberty it’s all about pushing conformity at every level based on repressive ideology and taking over the federal mechanisms of power to enforce their will, I got a lot less interested.
At this point I have seen so many rabid, judgemental, hateful conservatives that I am convinced they need to burn the party to the ground and start from scratch.
At this point I have seen so many rabid, judgemental, hateful conservatives that I am convinced they need to burn the party to the ground and start from scratch.
Something about glass houses and stones seems pretty relevant here
with the (stereo)typical “immigrants bad, jesus good, gays evil” speech.
That middle part has all but vanished here. We can’t have compassion for migrants because we have “limited resources” and clearly they’re all just bad people (totally unrelated to their skin color they’ll tell you). They gladly elect politicians that destroy the social safety net for the poor.
The only thing even remotely related to Jesus being here is supply side Jesus.
You have a weird view if you still think all conservatives are christians. Hell, have I posted a single christian thing here?
I think your problem is you have this inaccurate preconceived notion, and its just not jiving with what you see.
You have a weird view if you still think all conservatives are christians.
I do not think that, and never said I did. However, the majority of republicans/conservatives are christian, and the party/ideology are irrevocably intertwined at this point.
I’m an atheist/agnostic. Most conservatives I know are hardcore atheist.
Now none of are anti-religion. I do attend mass from time to time as I like the tradition but I have never had faith.
Well said!
To my knowledge, the concept of “conservatism” is the will to conserve
That is not how any label has ever worked.
As if you’d know anything about it
I would describe conservatism as the belief that changing things can make them worse, which can manifest (or appear to manifest) as a fear of change.
Im a libertarian-leaning socially-liberal economically-conservative person rather than a standard Republican so I don’t know how representative I am, but here are my conservative values: the people of the USA are amazingly free, wealthy, and safe. I am an immigrant; my family got enough government support to survive when we came here with almost nothing, I attended excellent public schools and went to college with a generous scholarship, and now I live a secure upper-middle-class lifestyle. For me, the American Dream is very much real.
I worry when I hear people (most of whom had great opportunities like I did) claim that America is exceptionally bad and demand drastic change. I would say that they want to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, but many of them are worse than that because they apparently don’t recognize that the eggs that the goose is laying are even golden. I’m not claiming that there’s no room for improvement, but improvements must be made slowly and carefully in order to avoid breaking what we do have already, which is both precious and fragile.
my family got enough government support to survive when we came here with almost nothing, I attended excellent public schools and went to college with a generous scholarship
And most of those things have gotten significantly worse because of “conservatives”. And the people who want “drastic change” are the progressives who want to restore the old values. What you already have is getting worse all the time.
Because the problem in the US is that political left is seen as the same as progressive and political right is conservative. And the right opposes government interventions in the form of social safety nets, free education, etc. Those are not conservative values, but since the US only has 2 parties, they’ve become conservative value because the conservatives are also right-wing.
If you’re a libertarian, I don’t see how you even support tax-funded programs like these.
I don’t think these things have gotten worse, but my perception is based on looking at immigrants in NYC, which isn’t a Republican area. With that said, I don’t disagree with you. A lot of current Republicans are willing and even eager to break things - the distinction between them and the most extreme Democrats seems to be which “utopian” vision they want to reach by burning down the current system, and IMO that willingness to destroy what we already have should be unacceptable to reasonable conservatives.
As an aside: I’m not captial-L Libertarian. I lean towards libertarianism because I really don’t like being told what to do and therefore I oppose both Democratic “nanny state” policies and Republican moral busybodies. However, I think that government is the best tool for providing a level of social services that almost everyone is willing to support out of basic human decency, and I also think that these social services make good economic sense from a purely selfish perspective too - I pay a lot more in taxes than I ever received in social services so the USA got a good deal on me.
I’m a republican and I do think the moral majority is too much involved in the party. Abortion is a perfect example. A small government republican would leave it up the woman to make her own decision. Instead we have people pushing Jesus as the answer.
and IMO that willingness to destroy what we already have should be unacceptable to reasonable conservatives.
Why? A huge amount of what we already have fucking sucks. Why should it be unacceptable to get rid of it?
Because it’s better to fix an existing system than to have none at all.
Why is more government always the answer?
Fix != more
Your ideals are based on a view that doesn’t see past your own nose.
Just declaring that everyone you disagree with has no values doesn’t make it so.
Then what ARE the values of conservatism?
That highly depends on the individual.
…this community has almost exclusively posts about fearing new things and trying to show them as evil. Evil migrants, evil new generations, evil new sexualities, whatever.
I do not see any “values” in it, only fear. Rejecting migrants is not based on morals or values that are rational, but on fear. Same for the rest. Which leads to the question, what is the point of this community? It does not lead to debate, people calling it out as fascism on one side (which is quite justified as the root ideas are seemingly identical) and the other side just saying that it’s wrong and that’s it. There’s no debate of values, as there are no values to debate about.
Fear is a valid emotion when it comes to politics. Underlying articles based on fear, if that’s what you see, are the values to be protected, sustained, or advocated. I don’t really see fear itself as a problem.
That you see only fear is reductive. Isn’t “conservatives are afraid of everything” too easy? For me, it has no explanatory power. Why are they afraid?
it would be a good idea to refocus the community on actual ideas, and not the typical far-right speeches of hatred and fear that already flood a lot of media.
Yeah, but also meet them halfway.
Go beyond the hatred and the fear to what values they’re really trying to communicate. If all you see in a Trump speech, for example, is his fascist tendencies (of which there are many, don’t get me wrong), then you’ll miss the appeal to regular people on the losing side of Democratic policies. The pathetic, in both the colloquial and rhetorical sense, appeal to leftists as invasive vermin is itself an expression of values defined in opposition.
As far as I’m concerned, the job of leftists in this community is to tease out the values that conservatives routinely fail to identify clearly and discuss that. That should be what makes this place different.
Fear is the mind killer. It’s rarely valid, despite being an emotion. Often highly irrational. Leading to bad decisions. Policy and legislation should never be based on fear. Fear should be the last thing anyone accommodates politically.
Note: I’m the main poster, and head mod. I’m trying my best, but I’m kind of a fuck up, and have a hard time explaining myself well.
When you’re posting news articles, it’s usually about the stuff that happened recently. Combined with “Not all progress is good progress”, it’s basically indistinguishable from “fearing new things”. But fair point, and I’ve been trying to find good stuff happening, like the rates of gun ownership going up, and high school skeet shooting clubs. I’ll give it more thought on what quality content actually looks like. In the meantime, I’ll keep going.
