“Sense of personal responsibility” == “blame the poor for their ‘bad life choices.’”, most of which are, in the end, the bad life choice to not be born to privilege.
The core mission of conservatism is, and in America, has been from the beginning, to come up with reasons why the rich deserve to be rich and the poor deserve to be poor.
Success and failure is not merely a flip of the coin. We have some control over our destiny.
I think this is a good example of the balance we need to have. An unconstrained left sometimes goes as far as to say we have no control over our life outcomes. On the other hand, many on the right seem to feel we have total control over our life outcomes. In my view, reality is that we have neither zero control nor total control. We have, as Timex says, “some” control. And I think it is healthy to have a party to counterbalance the left so we can debate where that line is.
Note that the amount of control each of has is governed in part by our starting point. Someone born a millionaire has way more control over “life outcomes” than someone born a pauper.
You have limited control of your destiny, especially in nations were your wealth gives your advantages. The fewer advantages that your wealth affords you, the more control you have.
In countries with strong social nets, health systems and education systems, you will probably find that individuals with skills, ability and work ethic will probably succeed compared to those without. In nations where those systems are weak, only those from families with the mean will succeed.
Sadly, it’s looking like social mobility is in decline in the US, compared to other similar nations in the world.
This seems rather related.
Sounds like how a modern European right wing populist would describe themselves to me! :)
I don’t think that’s fair. There are two parts to, say, climate change. Firstly deciding it is a problem (which is where conservatives fall down at the moment), but secondly in what solution governments choose - and there is a genuine conservative approach to this problem:
Conservatives say “Put a tax on CO2 production. The government doesn’t decide if some forms of CO2 production are more worthy than others”
Progressives make the decision about what forms of CO2 production are bad at the government level and build a complex system of subsidies, taxes and regulations to attempt to influence behaviour.
Security of capital is in general defended much more vigorously by conservatives than by progressives. Rule of law is in general held in high esteem by genuine democrats whether of conservative or progressive bent. In general conservatives don’t think that government doesn’t have a role; it’s more about not making people’s decisions for them.
The conservatives you all describe sound like science fiction :(
Is this really a conservative versus progressive distinction, though? This seems to be a different axis of values.
The term conservative is always tricky for that reason. There is more than one axis at play.
And particularly across the pond, there are significant differences.
Historically, the Tory party in the UK was against free-trade - favouring protectionism over market solutions, for instance. But this was a long time ago, and things have certainly shifted back and forth. Thatcher, for instance, shifted the party much more toward free markets, joining the European single market backed by the rhetoric of free trade, de-regularisation etc. But the the last Conservative manifesto contained the very interesting passage:
“We do not believe in untrammelled free markets. We reject the cult of selfish individualism. We abhor social division, injustice, unfairness and inequality. We see rigid dogma and ideology not just as needless but dangerous.”
This was very puzzling, and lots of argument has raged about whether this was a return to ‘old’ pre-Thatcher Conservatism or completely at odds. But the existence of the discussion is sufficient to satisfy me that a belief in the power free-markets is, for ‘conservative’ philosophy, more about policy implementation than ideology.
It’s the kind of opinion you might see in the pages of the Atlantic, the Spectator or the Economist. Whether that qualifies it as “conservative” thought in your eyes is up to you - but it’s certainly not something championed by progressives!
Yeah, Thatcher is in line with what I consider “Conservatism”, which I suspect is based upon the time in which I grew up in which my ideals were formed.
To me, Conservatism is akin to Reaganism, of which Thatcher was definitely a part. It’s heavily based on individualism, economic freedom, and free trade. There was a sort of nationalism, but to me it was a markedly better breed of nationalism. Instead of isolationist, Reagan’s brand of nationalism was more about “The US is great, and we should be using that greatness to improve the world for everyone.” This is in stark contrast to Trump’s, “Fuck everyone who isn’t us.”
Progressives don’t decide what “bad carbon is.”
Science does that, and then policy is crafted to address that issue.
Yes, that’s a good way of putting it. I think there’s an economic axis to this discussion, and certainly the pro-markets aspect exists very happily with modern-day conservative thought, but it clearly runs into rough waters too (see the above quote from Theresa May’s manifesto).
Likewise, there’s a real drive on the economic left where many ‘progressives’ seem to cluster, that holds markets as abhorrent forces that only heighten injustice etc.
Free markets, personal liberty, etc. used to be the purview of the liberals - the ideas @Timex presents alongside Reaganism - but in the UK, these ideas were joined by the ideas of social welfare, creating social liberalism. I’d argue it was New Labour that really picked this ball up and ran with it, and much of what we consider old centrist positions really fall into the Thatcher to Blair spectrum of politics.
But everything old is now new again: in America, the GOP seems to have dropped everything regarding liberalism and conservative, while the Democrats seem a big tent composed of those and almost everything else.
In the UK, the Conservatives have absorbed UKIP and lurched back to pre-Thatcher days, while Labour have gone all the way back to pre-Blair.
Yes, the GOP at this point is just pseudo-populist nationalism.
My first exposure to conservatives was the 1980 Republican Nat’l Convention, and it they certainly sounded that way to me.
A cult of that, or the rejection of it?