Isn’t the basic premise of political conservatism is to minimize public intrusion in private lives? Conserving the primacy of the individual rather than the collective?
1) "Conservatism" these days would arguably be a US phenomenon as leading democracy in the Anglophone world. They certainly didn't get started supporting a monarchy.
2) And it is really interesting to note that, while I think monarchies are stupid, it was a remarkably good strategy. As far as I know (my history might be about to betray me) the UK didn't have an equivalent of the Terror after the French revolution or the period where the French killed off people like Lavoisier. To say nothing of the debacles in places like Russia (Communists) or Germany (Nazis) when they moved away from monarchism.
The UK probably should get rid of the King; but in hindsight a slow transition is arguably the cleverer path. It is a complex topic; the aristocrats in Europe are systematically underwhelming.
At this point its hard to understand the premise of conservatism. It seems to just be outrage and pretty much anything and everything.
I'll avoid suggesting the root is racism, but more and more its becoming harder to do that. Between the pretty blatant racist rants of the leader, to the embrace of far-right fundamentalists, it seems like a common thread.
As for public intrusion of private lives, even that seems hazy. Where does public intrusion end and private life start? For example are private medical choices a matter of public policy? Are the choices about which books to read at the library public or private?
In a two party system many voters can be left without a home when their preferred party swings off in a different direction. And while no voter is going to always be happy with their chosen group, the risk of homelessness goes up as the preferred choice swings away from traditional premises.
For many conservatives (small c) the current direction of Conservative Leaders (big C) is not ok. But changing allegiance is mentally traumatic.
I think your premise can be both accurate, and currently invalid. It sure doesn't seem like "minimal public intrusion" right now. If you had to decide which party represents "live and let live", which party wants personal freedoms, which party prioritizes individual choices, well, I'd argue it's not the nominally "conservative" one.
I concur with everything you said, and to be clear, I wasn’t specifically referring to big C Conservatives, GOP or otherwise, which I agree are straying from small c conservative values. I was referring specifically to political conservatism which I understood to be about minimal intrusion in private affairs. It would appear no mainstream political parties still stand for this.
Im thinking Libitarianism is perhaps more into "individual freedoms" than conservatism, but there's certainly overlap.
If I had to put a fence around it, I'd suggest the root of conservatism is more "govt working in the interests of the rich/aristocracy/establishment." The "people in power before there was a vote".
Charitably described as "keep things the way they are", or less charitably as "return to when our group had riches and power".
So "labor" is getting govt to work for the masses, "conservative" us getting govt to work for those already established, and libitarianism is scaling govt back, and letting people do whatever they like.
Political parties try and be all things to all men.
In some countries (where there are more than two parties) there's more likely to be different parties to cover these bases.
No, that's libertarianism. Libertarianism and conservatism often overlap, especially in the US (which has a long tradition of limited gov't to conserve), but are not the same thing.
As a self-identified conservative, if I had to give as short a summary as possible of what it means to me: we (US, other developed nations) have a pretty good thing going. The least well off 10% here live better lives than the top 10% of a large number of places. That didn't happen by magic or accident, it happened because the people who preceded ud, over centuries of history, made some very good choices. We should figure out what they did right, and then keep doing it.
> The least well off 10% here live better lives than the top 10% of a large number of places.
You're absolutely blind if you think that. Tell me, in what place do the top 10% live worse life than the bottom 10% in the USA? Keep in mind, the bottom decile of income in the USA is $10k/year - think about how a person that earns that lives.
>> We should figure out what they did right, and then keep doing it.
Slavery, settler colonialism modulo a bit of indigenous genocide, toppling democracies and supporting dictators all over the place, exploiting the natural world until it cried "mommy" and then keeping at it until we now have a gigantic environmental and climate crisis, and let's not forget investing more than anyone else on the world's most powerful military which was then used to invade agrarian societies armed with their grandparents' hand-me-down pea-shooters, and of course dropping two atom bombs and killing a couple hundred civilians in one of the worst atrocities of the worst war in history just to show who's boss.
etc etc etc.
Edit: as a matter of fact, the US did get something very right that everyone else keeps getting wrong: it invested in human capital by keeping its borders relatively open during at least some periods of time, so that people could keep coming in that eventually became the most dynamic sections of society. Very few others have done that, and almost nobody got it as right as the US. And yet, it is the "conservatives" today in the US that try their damnedest to kick the door shut against the windfall of human capital that keeps dropping in their lap, even as they keep outsourcing the US' most productive industries to one of its biggest competitors, China. That's not conservative, it's reactionary and completely idiotic to boot.
>and of course dropping two atom bombs and killing a couple hundred civilians in one of the worst atrocities of the worst war in history just to show who's boss.
It'd be helpful if you read about historical events before adopting an opinion on them:
I read the blurb on the page you linked me to and I don't understand why you say that. Could you please clarify why you linked me to that book so I don't have to guess?
I said a few things, as you quoted from my comment:
>and of course dropping two atom bombs and killing a couple hundred civilians in one of the worst atrocities of the worst war in history just to show who's boss.
Is the book saying that:
a) two atom bombs were not dropped,
b) that they didn't kill a couple hundred civilians,
c) that it wasn't one of the worst atrocities in WWII,
d) that WWII was not one of the worst wars in history, or
e) that it didn't show how's boss?
or all of the above? To be honest I can't see any of the points above discussed in the summary of the book on Amazon. Explain?
Establishment Democrats and Republicans are the conservative parties in this sense. Tea party and their anarcho-capitalist descendants aren't really conservative.
I suspect that a lot of people who say they want to do this have a delusion that at some point in the past the whole country/world was aligned with the
fantasy envisioned in their head.
