Conservatism was built on the premise that capitalism, if left to its own devices in some pure unregulated state, would solve humanity's problems. Wrong -- it's a man-made concept and therefore imperfect, and when left to its own devices is as oppressive and inadequate to its citizens' needs as communism.

Conservatism was built on the premise that there is such a thing as a monolithic American culture, primarily WASP, middle-class, educated in the Western European tradition, and that any derivation from that was to be treated as a kind of exotic flavor of the same culture, instead of a legitimate American identity in its own right. Again, wrong -- while the founding fathers may have held such biases themselves, they clearly built a country in which church and state were seperate, immigrants were to be embraced, and there was to be no such thing as a national race, ethinicity, religion or even language.

Conservatism was based on the idea that patriotism meant blind, unquestioning faith in our country's power and superiority, especialy when it came to our miltary posture. Wrong -- history has proven that the people who protested the Vietnam War were in the right, and will prove that those who protested the Iraq War were also right, and that certain actions made during wartime, such as the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII or the treatment of prisoners at Guantonomo, can and must be opposed by citizens of good conscience, and that doing so ultimately makes the country stronger, not weaker.

Conservatism was based on the idea that the way to decrease crime is to have draconian punishment. Wrong -- our current prisons hold the greatest percentage of the adult male population than any other developed country, and yet we are not proportionally safer for doing so.

In other words, conservatism is based on a philosophy of identity, income and so-called "self-reliance" that does not apply to the majority of American citizens. It is not enough to try to make "them" more like "us". It's about growing up and accepting the plurality of this country. Diversity isn't a problem to be solved -- it's a condition to be celebrated and negotiated. Fifty years from now English may not be the dominant language -- so what? Where does it say in the Constitution that it has to be?

Conservatism is intellectually dishonest and has never been anything but an excuse for the people who have profited from the exploitation of others to whine about how they don't get to do that anymore. Boo hoo. Good riddance.

Fair enough, what's your excuse for the failure of liberalism in Europe where conservative groups continue to gain ground, as well as the thin margin that liberalism has in America? Guess liberalism doesn't work all that well either. Think we should try something else? nah, just like the neo conservitives, unthinking liberals like yourself will hang on to the dying beliefs of your own obsolete religion. Thanks for playing though, neither republicans, or democrats, those that represent the conservative and liberal movements in our country have any value, or any ideas that have any pratical use in the modern world.

'Conservatives' may be gaining ground in Europe, but they are in no way going to dismantle their social programs. Any european conservative would be regarded as far left here.

nerdnam, actually Europe is quite disturbing at this time, the Neo Nazi party in several european nations are actually gaining seats the legislature (They go by % of votes overall not winning a specific area so its not as dramatic as you might think) Still its scary, also, many are currently supporting deporting immigrants, limiting health care (they feel they are going bankrupt) as well as elminating unemployment benefits, there conservatives vary from just right of left, to just right of off the rocker. Iiberalism is currently on the upswing, which is how the pendelum usually works, they'll keep power for a decade maybe two and then the conservatives will regain power, its just the way of the system.

The regulator mentality.

kalaresh:

Conservatism was built on the premise that capitalism, if left to its own devices in some pure unregulated state, would solve humanity's problems.

Uhhh, no. Capitalism has nothing at all to do with humanity's problems. It's an economic system. It does have to do with leaving PEOPLE to choose their own lives and actions, instead of mandates and rules by government, as we see among the far more submissive Europeans.

kalaresh:

Conservatism was built on the premise that there is such a thing as a monolithic American culture, primarily WASP, middle-class, educated in the Western European tradition, and that any derivation from that was to be treated as a kind of exotic flavor of the same culture, instead of a legitimate American identity in its own right.

Huh? It was a liberal, FDR, with the most shameful record in that regard.

Even Bush didn't put 120,000 CITIZENS and legal residents into concentration camps, with no charges or trials -- and let citizens die for lack of medical care.. The internment commission which led to an apology and reparations - FIFTY years later - concluded that FDR had acted under racism, and had evidence that no Japanese-American had committed a single acto of treason or collusion with the enemy.

Equally shameful -- turning away boatloads of Jewish escapees from the Third Reich.

>>>>>> Again, wrong -- while the founding fathers may have held such biases themselves, they clearly built a country in which church and state were seperate, immigrants were to be embraced, and there was to be no such thing as a national race, ethinicity, religion or even language.

You seem to have confused conservatves with one of the smaller segments, Christian Conservatives, and if you weren't such a bigot, trading in stereotypes, you'd know that most Christian Conservatives believe in separation -- simply because their own denomination has been persecuted by the state.

>>>>>>Conservatism­ was based on the idea that patriotism meant blind, unquestioning faith in our country's power and superiority, especialy when it came to our miltary posture.

Evidence?

>>>>Wrong -- history has proven that the people who protested the Vietnam War were in the right, and will prove that those who protested the Iraq War were also right, and that certain actions made during wartime, such as the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII or the treatment of prisoners at Guantonomo, can and must be opposed by citizens of good conscience, and that doing so ultimately makes the country stronger, not weaker.

I protested VietNam, from the ant-war right. From that perspective, it was quite obvious that the as was needlesly extended by ... Jane Fonda. Middle America did not want to be on her side - of anything.

>>>and how dare you compate Gitmo with FDR's concentration camps. And who told you FDR was a conservative?????

>>>Conservatism is intellectually dishonest and has never been anything but an excuse for the people who have profited from the exploitation of others to whine about how they don't get to do that anymore. Boo hoo. Good riddance.

So how do we deal with the exploitation of the people by lberals? How mnay lives were ruined, and how badly will our ecomomy suffer, because liberals REFUSED to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, in return for $200 million in campaign cash?

The difference between Europe and America is that there IS such a thing as a French ethnicity, a German ethnicity, an Italian ethnicity, so that the encroaching pluralism of those countries in the form of increased immigration is seen as a threat to the country's identity, which in turn explains the increased shift to the "right" (which is still, as nerdnam points out, still pretty liberal by US standards.) A good 40% or so of Americans feel that there is such a thing as an American ethnicity and feel similarly about immigrants; what they seem to forget is that in America we're all immigrants and that the whole point of this country was to escape the oppressive tribalism of other countries.

Okay, that's an oversimplification. Actually, the Europeans who settled America in the 17th and 18th centuries fell into two main groups: those who wanted to flee opression and breathe free and those who wanted to create an even more oppressive society than the ones they left (like the Calvinists.) Even though the former group won out in the sense of creating a government based on Enlightenment principles, the latter group has always had tremendous power and influence. I freely admit that it's complicated; a lot of the same religious fanatics who were most opposed to freedom of expression and the rights of women, for example, were also some of the most vocal opponents of slavery, militarism and capital punishment. America is a big schizophrenic mess, but that doesn't really negate my argument.

In fact, argument is the whole point here. Democracy is supposed to be messy; no one gets everything they want; it's a constant difficult conversation. The reason liberals seem so wishy-washy is that they get that politicians are elected to serve, not dictate. You thought Bush was sexy because he was always so sure of himself. Having the power of your convictions is not itself a virtue, especially if you happen to be wrong 90% of the time. The Republicans freely admitted they weren't dealing with reality; they were acting out of their philosophies and convictions, which only apply to a small percent of the population. Liberalism isn't a coherent philosophy, and it's not trying to be one. We don't need or want to govern a country with a philosophy; we want to respond to the needs of the people through the mechanisms of the Constitution and the workings of government institutions. Conservatives would rather see the government fail and their philosophies remain pure. Meanwhile, a bunch of people died in New Orleans that didn't have to. I say again, Conservatism is wrong.

Ok, mikehihn. The article was about Kristol and the way Conservatism has developed from the 60s onward. I should not have brought up WWII. Obviously FDR doesn't really fit into a modern liberal paradigm any more than Eisenhower fits neatly into a modern conservative one. And even after that I recognize that people don't fit into their slots so neatly: Nixon was in many ways more liberal than Clinton, for example. There's a reason we're talking about Conservatives and Liberals, not Republicans and Democrats. The Conservative things that Carter and Clinton did (and that Obama is doing) irritate me, and there are things that Nixon and the first Bush did that I admire. I fully concur with you about FDR's war crimes, I agree that what Jane Fonda did was stupid, and it's obvious that politicians on both sides of the aisle are equally guilty of letting the economy fail while looking out only for their own interests -- in other words, they were guilty of acting within the tenets of Conservatism. I stand by my argument.

kalaresh:

Ok, mikehihn. The article was about Kristol and the way Conservatism has developed from the 60s onward. I should not have brought up WWII. Obviously FDR doesn't really fit into a modern liberal paradigm any more than Eisenhower fits neatly into a modern conservative one. And even after that I recognize that people don't fit into their slots so neatly: Nixon was in many ways more liberal than Clinton, for example. There's a reason we're talking about Conservatives and Liberals, not Republicans and Democrats. The Conservative things that Carter and Clinton did (and that Obama is doing) irritate me, and there are things that Nixon and the first Bush did that I admire. I fully concur with you about FDR's war crimes, I agree that what Jane Fonda did was stupid, and it's obvious that politicians on both sides of the aisle are equally guilty of letting the economy fail while looking out only for their own interests -- in other words, they were guilty of acting within the tenets of Conservatism. I stand by my argument.

I hope everyone noticed the similarity I only hinted at -- no difference between the GOP Birthers and Dem Truthers -- partisan variants of the Holocaust Deniers.

If a Democrat doesn't walk to your conformist line, then he's acting within the tenets fof conservatism -- which you clearly don't understand (and was my point) And no, I was not born in Kenya.

We no longer talk about Republicans and Democrats because the labels have become meaningless -- but so have the labels of liberal and conservative. Americans are fed up with the lot of you -- because most of us don't fit those labels, and never have.

Again, The New Majority self-defines as Social Liberal and Economic Conservative. The two TINIEST segments are economic liberals and social conservatives -- who also comprise the more hateful segments of the Truthers and the Birthers.

http://PoliticallyHomeless.net

Don't take this personally, but a lot of people need to: Discover America: take the blinders off/

Being both gay and black I've never had the luxury of blinders.

Well aside from your flawed metaphors (you do know what schizophrenia is right???) and your annoying way of putting people into little boxes like everyone but you is a two-dimensional carboard cutout, the idea that a philosophical ideology can be "wrong" is so laughable that I'm sure John Locke is rolling in his grave in frustration. I very much doubt you even really understand that principles of Conservatism at all - relying instead on politics to base your understanding. That's about as ignorant as someone claiming Democrat=Liberal (I'm guilty of that mistake). The two are completely independent concepts and it is possible to be a conservative Democrat (Blue Dog Dem) and quite possible, although highly improbable, to be a liberal Republican (Richard Nixon possibly). Nothing in your post indicates you understand that at ANY level, or to be generous, a willingness to accept that as a possibility.

I doubt that very much. That fact that you feel inclined to mention it at all says otherwise.

All I know is that FDR's war crimes had nothing to do with his support for the New Deal, so applying modern labels to him is meaningless, whereas the government's failure to deal with Hurricane Katrina had everything to do with Conservative thinking -- as did the deaths from tainted spinach (because we underfunded the FDA), the inability of No Child Left Behind to live up to its name, and the inability of many poor people accused of crimes to get equal justice under the law. Conservatism kills.

At the time of Katrina, New Orleans had a Black, Democrat mayor and Louisiana a Democrat govonor. I grew up on the Gulf and it is the mayor and govonor -never the President- that deal with hurricanes. Bush did-5 days before Katrina- call for evacuation of New Orleans and locals did not act. American Somoa just got hit by a tsunami and response has taken a week there-does that mean Obama is racist and liberalism is a failure?

Do you enev know where American Samoa is? Comparing response times is a bit dishonest. NO?

kalaresh:

All I know is that FDR's war crimes had nothing to do with his support for the New Deal, so applying modern labels to him is meaningless,

I thought you had a good argument there ... then you contradict yourself entirely by repeating the same thing you criticize in me!! (Birther-style denial)

I could have been more clear. The author had falsely equated a political philosophy with what had been done by a minority of its adherents. So the analogy to FDR was totally apt.

I could have instead compared FDR and Reagan. Reagan inherited a worse economy than FDR -- cut taxes and regulations, and the recovery began in only 15 months.

FDR increased taxes, launched all sorts of new government intreventions, crushed two recoveries, and the Depression lasted 14 years.

Is that a liberal vs conservative thing? What did JFK do?

Same as Reagan and for the same reason -- the New Deal had left us with massive taxes on the rich and especially business investment in new equipment. The so-called New Deal recovery only reflected all of our trade competitors having been bombed into rubble.

Then in 1986, Democrats crowed that they had "repealed Reaganomics." Until the economy tanked immediately after the investment provisions expired. So they blamed -- what else? -- Reaganomics! To this day, they still claim Reganomics failed, which denies far more evidence than even the crazed Birthers.

More recently, the subprime mortgage collapse almost dragged down our entire financial system -- because liberals blocked proposed regulations by the Bush Administration, under the dim-witted notion that they were promoting affordable housing for the low-income - most of which lost those homes through foreclocure. Again, Democrats destroy our economy and blame everyone else!

I'm not saying that $200 million in campaign cash to Demcrats, from Fannie and Freddie, had anything to do with it. And I'm sure it's a coincidence that all the REALLY BAD subprime loans came through Fannie and Freddie .. the very next year after Barney Frank and his fellow goblins crushed any attempts at regulating Fannie and Freddie.

The entire corruption by Democrats is totally proven by actual C-Span videos.

<link>

Hands caught in the cookie jar, right up to their elbows.

kalaresh:

whereas the government's failure to deal with Hurricane Katrina had everything to do with Conservative thinking

How?

kalaresh:

-- as did the deaths from tainted spinach (because we underfunded the FDA), the inability of No Child Left Behind to live up to its name, and the inability of many poor people accused of crimes to get equal justice under the law. Conservatism kills.

Just as wacky as the Birthers. Exploiting dead people for partisan advantage (with a lie) Thanks for demonstating my point.