Why Did American Conservatism Give Up On Liberty? Because It's Why They Lose.

[Oddball]

Intense ideology distorts, pollutes and perverts pretty much everything it touches.

So while, indeed, liberty is at the core of the American DNA, the misguided nutters on the Right have twisted its meaning to anarchy, nihilism, and "fuck you, I've got mine, you can die for all I care".

What dreary stale pablum....Have you leftbats ever updated your rote boilerplate handbook since Reagan?

 

[Mac1958]

What dreary stale pablum....Have you leftbats ever updated your rote boilerplate handbook since Reagan?

There's one now.

 

[SweetSue92]

Progressives and conservatives fought in the marketplace of ideas thanks to the basic freedoms enshrined in the First Amendment. After two centuries of cheating — barring the interregnum of a foolish, evil civil war they also lost — progressives beat them. The effort to form a more perfect union had at last entered a stage where all could participate with...well, fewer barriers than before, certainly. Conservatives tried to erect road blocks to voting and societal participation, to be sure, but for almost fifty years there was a steady march of increasing acceptance of people that were permitted at last to be themselves. So when they claim that “cultural hegemony” is as “coercive as any state,” what they really mean is that enough other people got wise to their BS that people who weren’t their fellow bigots didn’t like them any more. Oppression!

This is modern American conservatism in a nutshell. I mean, there are some weird conflations here — somehow, corporations exploiting workers and using slave labor overseas is the fault of liberalism (sure, neoliberalism bears some guilt here, but that comes from the brief era in the 90s when it looked like the two parties might start to merge in a neo-corporate middle) — but the argument here is that by allowing people to ignore churches, marry who they love, control their bodies, and breathe while Black, that takes away their “right to live in a culture that supports their way of life.” By which, of course, they mean White Christian Patriarchy that suppresses other ways of life. They’re not particularly subtle about that last part.

There’s an awful lot of awful revealed in this article, but for me, the most disturbing part is that these people are the right’s thinkers. Their philosophers. This is what passes for depth in American conservatism. It’s obscene in ways I’m still grappling with, but what really drives the moral bankruptcy of the far-right home is, they’re done with liberal democracy. Voting rights? Freedom of speech, religion, assembly, press? They’re obstacles to “human virtue.” Which, again, clearly amounts to (say it with me) White Christian Patriarchy.

The New Right’s Grim, Increasingly Popular Fantasies of an International Nationalism - Type Investigations

www.typeinvestigations.org

The rights thinkers? That's an oxymoron, and an insult. It actually doesn't occur to these people, that their way of "Thinking ", is exactly what the Constitution protects individual rights from. And why the Constitution was written and ratified.

The Left hasn't cared about individual rights in ever, but stopped PRETENDING to care decades ago.

The ultimate display of this? Their treatment of the unvaccinated, and the absolute gasping NEED of so called "liberals" to use government fiat to bring everyone into line.

It's disgusting. And revealing.

 

[Anathema]

Liberty requires a population with Morals and Values to regulate their decisions. Thst no longer exists in American Society. Liberty doesn’t work when people not only can but will make the wrong decisions; even knowing they’re the wrong decisions.

 

[BrokeLoser]

I'm just a guy that's old enough to remember that the good old days were not all that good.

Hahaha…A lost nation with no identity, $30T in debt, a larger homeless population than some countries, Veterans sleeping, pissing, shitting and dying on our streets, a middle class that can’t save a dime or get ahead, 20-40 million illegal wetbacks fucking over the citizenry, a worthless public school system, a destroyed healthcare system, a citizenry that hates one another, criminality off the charts, a pandemic killing in record numbers, social media and media steering the direction of the nation, fuel at all time highs…I could go on and on.
Are you sure you’re paying attention…are you sure the “old days” weren’t far better than the present?

 

[Dogmaphobe]

his core principals are whatever his pathetic party tells him they are......

He's such a good little prole, isn't he?

His Ministry of Truth tells him that freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength, so he favors severe limitations on what anybody can do while taking pride in all those many, many things he does not know.

 

[occupied]

Hahaha…A lost nation with no identity, $30T in debt, a larger homeless population than some countries, Veterans sleeping, pissing, shitting and dying on our streets, a middle class that can’t save a dime or get ahead, 20-40 million illegal wetbacks fucking over the citizenry, a worthless public school system, a destroyed healthcare system, a citizenry that hates one another, criminality off the charts, a pandemic killing in record numbers, social media and media steering the direction of the nation, fuel at all time highs…I could go on and on.
Are you sure you’re paying attention…are you sure the “old days” weren’t far better than the present?

Bitch,bitch,bitch. The most spoiled, sheltered and entitled generation of humans that ever lived is upset the world didn't turn out like the TV shows they watched growing up. Donna Reed, Father knows best, Brady bunch etc were idealized bullshit when they were made. The real world has always been full of problems and people who solve them so that you can sit around and bitch in relative safety.

 

[MinTrut]

Progressives and conservatives fought in the marketplace of ideas thanks to the basic freedoms enshrined in the First Amendment. After two centuries of cheating — barring the interregnum of a foolish, evil civil war they also lost — progressives beat them. The effort to form a more perfect union had at last entered a stage where all could participate with...well, fewer barriers than before, certainly. Conservatives tried to erect road blocks to voting and societal participation, to be sure, but for almost fifty years there was a steady march of increasing acceptance of people that were permitted at last to be themselves. So when they claim that “cultural hegemony” is as “coercive as any state,” what they really mean is that enough other people got wise to their BS that people who weren’t their fellow bigots didn’t like them any more. Oppression!

This is modern American conservatism in a nutshell. I mean, there are some weird conflations here — somehow, corporations exploiting workers and using slave labor overseas is the fault of liberalism (sure, neoliberalism bears some guilt here, but that comes from the brief era in the 90s when it looked like the two parties might start to merge in a neo-corporate middle) — but the argument here is that by allowing people to ignore churches, marry who they love, control their bodies, and breathe while Black, that takes away their “right to live in a culture that supports their way of life.” By which, of course, they mean White Christian Patriarchy that suppresses other ways of life. They’re not particularly subtle about that last part.

There’s an awful lot of awful revealed in this article, but for me, the most disturbing part is that these people are the right’s thinkers. Their philosophers. This is what passes for depth in American conservatism. It’s obscene in ways I’m still grappling with, but what really drives the moral bankruptcy of the far-right home is, they’re done with liberal democracy. Voting rights? Freedom of speech, religion, assembly, press? They’re obstacles to “human virtue.” Which, again, clearly amounts to (say it with me) White Christian Patriarchy.

The New Right’s Grim, Increasingly Popular Fantasies of an International Nationalism - Type Investigations

www.typeinvestigations.org

The rights thinkers? That's an oxymoron, and an insult. It actually doesn't occur to these people, that their way of "Thinking ", is exactly what the Constitution protects individual rights from. And why the Constitution was written and ratified.

^ Demented garbage.

If you believe it, you're not competent to vote.

 

[BrokeLoser]

Bitch,bitch,bitch. The most spoiled, sheltered and entitled generation of humans that ever lived is upset the world didn't turn out like the TV shows they watched growing up. Donna Reed, Father knows best, Brady bunch etc were idealized bullshit when they were made. The real world has always been full of problems and people who solve them so that you can sit around and bitch in relative safety.

Exposing you to the truth is not bitching…stop trying to sell your twisted bullshit…Nobody decent and sane is buying it.

 

[occupied]

Exposing you to the truth is not bitching…stop trying to sell your twisted bullshit…Nobody decent and sane is buying it.

The world cannot be improved by complaining alone.