A blog which some readers may find of interest, Conservative tendency. The most recent post is a bit of a pedantic muddle:
I had a friend who was raised in China in the 1970s (the daughter of a general, in fact), and she was in a deep sense a conservative, though she was not interested in Western politics. She was educated in Confucian values and classical Chinese literature by her maternal grandmother, who had been a concubine, and yet she was also deeply affected by Maoist Communist ideas.
The point I’m making is that I know there is no simple left/right dichotomy. I am interested in how people think and form their values, and, if I tend to identify with “one side” of politics, I am not totally sure of my position and I remain respectful towards and sometimes fascinated by those with views very different from my own.
I say pedantic muddle as a compliment. When it comes to political discussion it is easy enough to find plain and precise assertiveness, distilling a complex subject down to a potent pith in an unselfconscious manner. A rarer find is that of the humility to admit that the task at hand may be more than one’s tool are fit for.
Yeah, I’ve actually become a governmentalist.
Conservatism is supposed to be about preserving the American way of life and liberalism is supposed to make sure it’s available to everyone.
Modern liberalism has turned into calling the American way of life “oppression” and making sure everyone who wants to live any kind of life they want is empowered to do so. Conservatism today is about calling any kind of government involvement in anything “oppression” and claiming that business doesn’t need any kind of regulation except that enforced by the free marketplace.
If we want a family-oriented America, we’ll need to make people feel secure in their jobs and finances, like they were during the baby boom, and cut off income with no strings attached.
This might not be the most appropriate place to say this, but I’m going to say it anyways. I am reading a novel by James P Hogan that was written about 22 years ago (Mirror Maze) and it got me thinking about the Soviet Union and the nature of totalitarian ideologies. I have come to the conclusion that the U.S. has a very real risk of totalitarianism if government power is not reigned in soon.
Both the liberal-left/progressive/socialist and the conservative Christian right ideologies are clearly totalitarian ideologies. The reason why I have come to believe this is because they fit the following characteristics:
1) The ideology claims to be the ONE and ONLY correct worldview. As such, all other worldviews are considered wrong and therefor evil. Both ideologies make this claim.
2) The ideology claims jurisdiction over all human beings. Both ideologies make this claim as well.
3) The ideology is intrusive on ones personal and economic life. The Christian right tends to be intrusive in ones personal life whereas the liberal-left is intrusive in ones economic life. So, both ideologies meet this characteristic half-way.
Both ideologies meet 2.5 of these criteria, which qualifies them as totalitarian.
The scary thing to me is just how entrenched these ideologies are in the general public. They say freedom disappears to thunderous applause (or is that democracy?).
This is the reason why I do not believe in the “political solution” to any problem, whatsoever, and why I advocated a strictly minimal government. I believe the risk of totalitarianism to be very real here in the U.S. and I believe it is necessary to fight back against it in order to preserve freedom.
I am sometimes asked how I can be libertarian at 47 years old. My response is how can anyone not be libertarian at my age. The fact is that we are all different in our tastes and desire, dreams and goals. None of us has the complete answer to all of the questions to everyone. I think being a libertarian, more than anything, demonstrates a certain humility and humbleness with regards to life and other people. The older I get, the less I know whats best for others. I can decide only for myself and allow others to live their own lives. How this can be called arrogance is incomprehensible. Is presuming to know what best for others a more appropriate definition of arrogance? I think so.
In response to kurt9, I was going to question whether totalitarianism wouldn’t demand three out of three rather than two and a half! But more seriously, I don’t see the Christian conservative right as a totalitarian threat even if it has totalitarian aspirations because as you point out there is another competing ideology (perhaps even more potent)…
And by the way, thanks to “David Hume” for featuring my site.
MarkE,
Granted the liberal-left ideology is stronger than the Christian right in this country. However, that does not diminish the fact that it, as much as the liberal left, is a totalitarian ideology. I maintain that ANY worldview that presumes that one person can decide what is best for another person has the potential to evolve into a totalitarian meme.
As an individual, I believe the best approach is to reject any worldview that suggests that the individual should be required to live for some “greater” purpose or entity. This is why I reject both socialism and religion equally.
I would also argue that all political systems end up “captured” by promulgators of such ideologies. You take any issue that becomes politicized, everything from nuclear energy to abortion. People use these issues to promote their ideological agenda rather than to come up with the optimal solution that creates the greatest amount of freedom for the greatest number of people. Indeed, politics seems to just another arena where different ideological factions duke it out for control of all other people. I believe this flaw to be inherent to politics and why, in fact, the very concept of “polical solution” is an impossibility.
I believe the only way around this problem is to make the political milieu as small as possible. E.g. limited government based strictly around constitutional limits.
Improvements in life and solutions to whatever bedevils our lives always comes from scientist who make discoveries, engineers who convert those discoveries into new technologies, and business entrepreneurs who convert those technologies into new products and services. This process is called productive accomplishment and seems to me the ONLY way to improve life and society. It makes no sense to allow those that do not engage in this process to interfere with those that do.
I’m about a decade older than Kurt9, and agree almost completely with his views. To put it in pithy (I hope) terms: Politics is all gangs; religion is all cults.
My rant was prompted by internet discussion I have found over the past 3 days about 1) whether or not to have kids, 2) whether I have the right to choose when and how I can die, and 3) whether I should be allowed to go into cryonics suspension and pursue radical life extension, if I so choose.
The discussion I encountered with regards to all three of these subjects demonstrated only that there are far too many people in this country who think its their business to tell others what they can and cannot do with regards to their personal life choices.
Personally, I think people who stick their noses into other peoples’ personal life decisions ought to be killed, plain and simple.
wow, is Kurt9 a poe?
As in Edgar Allan?
I think Robert Heinlein was correct when he said that political labels (conservative, liberal, socialist, Christian, etc.) were not basic criteria. That people divide into two and only two political classifications: those that believe people should be controlled and those who have no such desire.
All social organization has hierarchy, with a group of people at the top who derive most of the benefits of the organization. Once a particular social organization is created and the class of people at the top come into being, the purpose for the continued existence of that organization is to maintain the perks and privileges of those people at the top of the social organization. Any rhetoric given out by that organization is simply “sales rhetoric” to justify the continued existence of that organization. Hence, I have come to believe that all religion, philosophy, and ideology that has ever existed and continues to exist today is nothing more than sophistry that is created to justify the existence of whatever social organization that is supported by that particular sophistry. I do not believe there is any deeper underlying reality or “truth” to any of this sophistry.