Commentary: Longtime former Republican on Patrick Deneen and the demise of the conservative intellectual
I was hoping this politics community would be reasonable and have good discussion.
instead we just get more of r/politics
Social media perpetuating identity politics then acting confused when there’s such a big divide in this country.
Nah lemmy is even further left than Reddit. What would you expect from an anti corporate decentralized group. Lemmy is basically communism of social media.
You are either a far left echo chamber member here or human trash. They see no difference.
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Who is ‘the rest of us’?
Your comment implies we’re all assholes on here, then you’re surprised people aren’t treating you with respect 🤔
Not assholes. Just you are almost all part of the same echo chamber and have very similar beliefs and values and those without those values are shunned because the majority rule on lemmy is far left.
I wouldn’t say human trash, more like deplorable
I liked r/politics. My political identity is enlightened centrist.
“No true Scotsman” fallacy in action. It’s rare to see it in such a pristine condition.
(For the record, I’m an unabashed, unapologetic leftist. But this article is bullshit from graf 1 to the end.)
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You could read the article instead of just responding to the headline.
Name one conservative policy that has furthered mankind. Prohibition, voting rights, sexuality, drug war, terrorism; time after time they’ve been wrong. Even fiscally they run up the deficit. Their only role is to preserve hierarchy and maintain power
Intellectualism is not an inherently moral thing. One can be an amoral, selfish, narcissistic, intellectual.
I didn’t mean to give the impression that it is a moral issue. I consider it from a populist societal perspective. The majority (liberalism)wanting to do one thing, and the minority (conservatives) preventing progress. If conservatives had it their way, we’d still have feudalism… oh wait.
I mean, that’s also taking an “us vs them” mentality that isn’t helpful either. The middle ground is where the vast majority of people sit, and often swing to one side or another based on the situation surrounding them. Taking a “If you’re not with me, you’re against me” stance, just puts those people off. Either they just refuse to engage (which is a big factor in lack of participation in voting in the US) or they move towards the people who are willing to pander them. More often than not the conservatives.
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Progressive policies implemented during a conservative presidency don’t seem like conservative policies.
If you can just hijack any and all “good” policies as inherently progressive then you’re just a self-fuelling fire who wants to hate conservatives no matter what.
I wouldn’t be crediting them with enacting good policy if it wasn’t progressive.
If you can show an example of opposing progress that is good I’m all in on that conservative policy.
The ESA was not good because it maintained the status quo. It was good because it was progressive. The fact that it was implemented during a conservative presidency is irrelevant.
You’re buying in too much to the branding of big-P Progressive. The EPA, and environmental protections, are inherently little-c conservative positions.
Not everything that is good is Progressive, and not everything Progressives want is good, or even intelligent. Rent control, as one very basic example, doesn’t work, and yet Progressives across America push it.
What doesn’t work about it? (I honestly know nothing about it, but I know there are things that sound great on paper and propaganda but in practice it’s bull)
George W Bush massively expanded US Free Trade agreements. We went from 3 to 16 under his admin. That’s good for the entire world.
Pretty much the only thing I don’t like about Biden is his protectionist stance.
I’m gonna assume you think Capitalist expansion and colonialism is a good thing.
The former, yes, the latter I bet we have significant disagreements on the definition of
Tangentially, if you’re interested in rabbit holes, there’s a book by Matt Kennard called Silent Coup that deals with corporate influence over trade, it looks at the agreements countries have to sign to get corporations into their countries.
I’m well aware of this process and support it. Countries are welcome to make any deals they’d like. They’re presumably intelligent, independent entities making decisions in their own best interest.
So you’re in favor of BRICS and the devaluation of the petrodollar, if those countries choose to do that?
Progressivism is moving towards collective goals. Conservatism is protecting individual freedoms.
You many see individual freedoms differently than they do but that is the core fundamental policy they protect.
Everyone living depends on huge networks of interdependent actors for basic survival. Never mind quality of life. The political reality of the individual is that they are the smallest and weakest political unit; least equipped to petition for change.
Conservatism may have individualism all over the label, but conformity is what’s inside the box.
But they don’t protect individual freedoms.
They have taken a hard stance against body autonomy, free speech, individual identity - all in support of corporate and state control over the individual.
This is the same argument as saying conservatives are fiscally responsible. It’s just something people say with nothing historically supporting it.
Neo-conservatism is what you are referring to and yes they are doing those things.
What you’re saying is true in theory, but the American Republican party has absolutely nothing in common with it.
Just look at the patriot act, torture, detention, TSA, and all the other shit pushed through by the GOP that has decimated freedoms and privacy.
The ONLY individual freedom the GOP protects unconditionally is for everyone and their uncle to own guns. Nevermind if your uncle is a lunatic, they’ll protect his freedom to be armed to the teeth.
The republican party isn’t conservative. They are neo-conservative. Different problem.
Name one.
“sensible” conservative policies is such a heavy cope
Go ahead and list an example of one of those past conservative intellectuals and we’ll see how long it takes to dig up an example of them saying something like Civil Rights protesters are all secret communist agents or that child labor and vagrancy laws and debtors prisons are good things.
Like, I get the appeal in wanting to believe the other side is just as smart and well meaning as our side is, but there’s just no basis for that in the historical record. They’ve always been like this and we just keep forgetting.
One can be an intellectual and still a huge piece of shit. Theyre not mutually exclusive. People like Milton Friedman or Henry Kissinger a undebatably intellectuals… but that doesn’t mean they’re angels. It just means they wield their intellect as a whip to beat their opponents with, rather than raising society as a whole.
Honestly this whole “conservatives are just a bunch of dumb rabid animals” is they exact sentiment they want us to feel. Because then we never look at the deeper issues that are actually affecting our world.
Honestly this whole “conservatives are just a bunch of dumb rabid animals” is they exact sentiment they want us to feel. Because then we never look at the deeper issues that are actually affecting our world.
I for one would love to look at the deeper issues that are actually affecting our world, but I end up wasting a ton of my time replying to dumb rabid animal shit David Brooks gets to smear all over the New York Times op-ed page when my older relatives who vote in every single election send me his columns because they think that he makes some good points about “Cultural Marxism”
For example, Karl Marx. Clearly an intellectual as evidenced by his writings. But his colorblind/radical centrist take on minority rights fits right in with modern conservative extremists. And then the way he framed his opinions led to far right authoritarian regimes co-opting the label of communism.
Muh nazis were akschually leftwing and communists rightwing… Typical nazi tactic
If you think that right wing authoritarianism is communism, I’ve got a democratic republic to sell. The only way tankie logic is consistent is if you believe that Nazis were socialists and North Korea is democratic. But somehow those are not true yet the USSR was communist? You gotta stop gulping down the imperialist propaganda. I could forgive someone for believing it during the Red Scare, but these days there’s no excuse.
Tankie apologetics are a farce.
You are the imperialist here, yankee. Did you send tanks into iraq, huh? Will you call me a judeo-bolshevik now?
Is National Socialism not real socialism?
Since you capitalised National Socialists like a proper noun I’ll assume you are referring to Nazis. The answer to that is yes, Nazis were not socialists. Socialists were among the first groups targeted by the Nazis after attaining majority power.
A bit like how communists were oppressed in the USSR, or how democrats are oppressed in North Korea.
The U.S. was more than happy to conflate Marxist-Leninists(tankies) with communists because it made communists look bad. Tankies are all in on continuing to conflate their own ideology with communism because they understand that being proud of right wing extremist ideology is a bad look.
Looks like lemmy politics is just a rehash of r/politics. What was the point then of coming onto Lemmy, why didn’t ya’ll just stay in your Reddit echo chamber?
