24-05-2004 06:06									#91
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Oerdin is the reason the right do well. See.. most Americans live in a daze. Probably all the McDonalds they eat.

	24-05-2004 08:00									#92
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quote: Then why did they all register Democrat?

i really hate this argument.

conservative ideology has not always been the republican viewpoint.
liberal ideology has not always been the democratic viewpoint.

if you're too stubborn to realize that, and would rather attach idiocy to a party name rather than the *******s who propagated it, then you're definitely part of the entire american political party problem.

	24-05-2004 08:19									#93
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Exactly, Q -- in antebellum America, the Democratic party was the white supremacist, conservative party, and then during the civil rights era of the 20th century, the Republican party was the white supremacist, conservative party.

	24-05-2004 10:17									#94
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Fun,

Thats a bit revisionist considering it was Repubs who were co-favoring civil rights in the era of the 20th century, and opposed/thwarted by a significant amount of southern Dems.

	24-05-2004 11:33									#95
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quote: Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui "There is no such thing as spontaneous public opinion," Beatrice Webb, the great British leftist, once said. "It all has to be manufactured from a center of conviction and energy." The American Conservative Union is just one of many such centers on the right; it's a lesson that liberal America seems unable to learn. John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, writers for The Economist, are the authors of "The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America."[/q]

I think this is the most correct portion of the article. As such, the common man is being manipulated into believing that the Republican policies are in his best interest when they are not.
I also don't see any great intellectual ideals coming from republicans. In most instances, they seem to want to return to the good old days except for oil drilling and weapons technology.

	24-05-2004 11:46									#96
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I think that the Republicans have figured out how to get appeal to the Lowest Common Demoninator. The Regular Joe vote. On a regular basis, President Bush makes himself seem as if he did not attend Yale, as if he was not born rich. You would think that he used to work on an oil rig in texas rather than own many. He has the Mr.Smith goes to washington thing down to a science.
The democrats really are more of a party of ideals. The people that embrace the democrats are not the ones who think that america is running smoothly and let's keep it that way. There ones who want to give people rights and who want to make changes. Change is never popular. The average guy likes things just the way they are or more of the same. Most prominent policies that the Republicans promote have the idea of maintaining status quo in mind.
It's gotten so bad that Democrats like Kerry even try to hide the fact that they have controversial new ideas. The only way the Democrats can compete with this is when the **** hits the fan then they can say "Hey, let's try this new idea!"

	24-05-2004 21:35									#97
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quote: Fun, Thats a bit revisionist considering it was Repubs who were co-favoring civil rights in the era of the 20th century, and opposed/thwarted by a significant amount of southern Dems.

and please, what is more important?

their party affiliation, comrade? or the fact that they were *******s?

i dunno, it might be hard to understand, but i tend to think it's the people at fault, don't you? after all, the parties are no more than a collection of *******s in the first place.

	24-05-2004 22:12									#98
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No arguement Q. But there is a tendency to stereotype going on round here and considering the dirty laundry of both parties I think it more than a bit hypocritical to say one more moral than the other.

	24-05-2004 22:58									#99
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political parties make it far too easy to disengage the brain from governance.

stereotypes are easier to argue, because if you don't like one group, you can smear all of them by using the tar brush lifted from one example. hey--it's more efficient! you don't have to think about them in any great depth.

of course, most of the idiot demagogues on the radio or on the campaign trail are either a) too cynical to want to change it, or b) too dumb to have a brain to use.

	25-05-2004 06:02									#100
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Did no one read the article I posted?

	25-05-2004 06:29									#101
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The Dems need to kick out the DINOS (Dems In Name Only) like Zell Miller and my rep, Collin Petterson (who, get this, is a good friend of Gary Condit ).

	25-05-2004 08:10									#102
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The basic difference between conservatives and liberals is how much faith they place in "reason"-what this means, is how much faith they place on ideas arrived at theoritacally being able to better the lives of men-which is why free traders were the first liberals- because Free Trade was a notion arrived at not through practice but intellectually.

So, again, it is a contest between those who think solutions should be left to find themlseves through practice, which means following the principals of yesterday becuase they are the result of trial and error and in that mindset were the ones that worked (tried and testedTM) without much faith in the transformative power of intellectualism-the basic conservative notions and thus the emphasis on God, Country, Family (with Free Trade being the oddball notion that does not fit this at all)

vs.

The notion that man has the power to figure it out and start anew with untried but reasoned out ideas about how it could work and should work=-emphasis on big theories like Equality, belief in the ability to sensibly regulate, so forth-the basic liberal notion (with opposition to free trade being the oddball out)


I myself prefer the later, but I can understand the former. HOnestly, anyone who can;t at least begin to understand bnoth I think enters this debate hobbled, no matter how "smart" they may think themlseves.

	25-05-2004 08:34									#103
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quote: Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe Fun, Thats a bit revisionist considering it was Repubs who were co-favoring civil rights in the era of the 20th century, and opposed/thwarted by a significant amount of southern Dems.

That's funny -- what is so revisionist by pointing out the fact that in 1948, it was the Democratic Party that put racial equality up as part of their platform??

	25-05-2004 09:10									#104
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quote: HOnestly, anyone who can;t at least begin to understand bnoth I think enters this debate hobbled, no matter how "smart" they may think themlseves.

Well said!

	25-05-2004 09:10									#105
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quote: So, again, it is a contest between those who think solutions should be left to find themlseves through practice, which means following the principals of yesterday becuase they are the result of trial and error and in that mindset were the ones that worked (tried and testedTM) without much faith in the transformative power of intellectualism-the basic conservative notions and thus the emphasis on God, Country, Family (with Free Trade being the oddball notion that does not fit this at all)

But this is a caricature. Solutions generally do not find themselves through practice, people think them up and test them. That's generally what we do, we make educated guesses about how things are likely to turn out based on our principles. If there is a difference here, it is psychological, as it has been proved that conservatives fear change. More to the point, it is just daft to think that conservatives don't sometimes value rapid change - most of them loved industrialization as long as it made them rich.

There's no methodological principle here that can be characterized as "conservative". At the least it is just an irrational fear of change, at most the belief that "small changes generally work best". But if it is the latter, it is a completely useless belief, since it's too general to produce good results. That's my point of attack - it is a completely silly belief - we should always seek greater detail in such cases.

If it is a principle, it is this: "we should resist radical change when it is likely to produce bad consequences or unlikely to produce catastrophic ones, and we should embrace it when the reverse is true". That's just basic decision theory which everyone agrees on.

quote: vs. The notion that man has the power to figure it out and start anew with untried but reasoned out ideas about how it could work and should work=-emphasis on big theories like Equality, belief in the ability to sensibly regulate, so forth-the basic liberal notion (with opposition to free trade being the oddball out)

But this confuses principles with implementation (conservatives can and do have principles but are often wary about implementation). Liberals may have such principles but even they don't agree (if they are being rational) that they should just be tried out for the sake of it, without any appreciation of the risks.

quote: I myself prefer the later, but I can understand the former. HOnestly, anyone who can;t at least begin to understand bnoth I think enters this debate hobbled, no matter how "smart" they may think themlseves.

Well, that's your opinion. But if conservatism just means "resistance to change" then it is either an irrational prejudice, or a false belief comprised by a crass generalization.

If you want to define conservatism like that, then be my guest. I was trying to do them a favour by eliminating an obviously ridiculous definition.

	25-05-2004 09:19									#106
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quote: If it is a principle, it is this: "we should resist radical change when it is likely to produce bad consequences or unlikely to produce catastrophic ones, and we should embrace it when the reverse is true". That's just basic decision theory which everyone agrees on.

But for modern conservative theory the 'embrace it' doesn't factor in. They NEVER like rapid change. In fact a good argument can be made that conservatives did not like rapid industrialization and would have prefered a slower change, where instead the liberals who were in control at the time were pushing for the change.

	25-05-2004 09:32									#107
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quote: But for modern conservative theory the 'embrace it' doesn't factor in. They NEVER like rapid change. In fact a good argument can be made that conservatives did not like rapid industrialization and would have prefered a slower change, where instead the liberals who were in control at the time were pushing for the change.

Thank you for proving my point. It's just silly never to like rapid change. Sometimes we need it - like in WWII with the transition to a war economy, and now with impending ecological catastophes.

I don't actually buy your definition of conservatism as wholesale resistance to change. Sure a lot of people are like this, but either it's an irrational fear, or a false belief. That doesn't impugn other people who might argue against change based on the merits of a particular case - but it's an open question in most cases, which is to be resolved by appeal to the desirability and probability of good or bad outcomes.

Rational decisions are weighted by multiplying the desirability of an outcome with the probability of attaining it, and comparing this with the same done for alternate strategies or for refraining from doing anything. That is how rational decisions are made. Simply saying "change is for the most part bad" doesn't tell us very much about what we are to decide in particular cases. And since we always deal with particular cases, such generalizations are next to useless.

If resistance to change is what conservatism really is, then it's plain silly as it violates rational norms of decision making that everyone agrees with in practice. That's why conservatives are better served by looking to principles rather than defining themselves in terms of decision making.

	25-05-2004 10:18									#108
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"Liberal" is only sometimes related to "rapid" change- liberal means a connection to a set of intellectual theories and thinking that these theories hold the key to a better society-if these theories are the norm, then your "liberal" would completely support the status quo and oppose any change, given than any change would upset the theory you think should be in power. This does not then make a liberal "conservative", only part of the status quo. The only people who might seek radical revolution all the time are radicals.

And conservatives are rational-If a system has been in place for 5000 years, why on earth would anyone claim it did not work? Of course it works- it had 5000 years to fail and it did not-it kept on going. NOW,the result may not be "nice", but then, life does not ask for "nice" endings. To say conservatives invariably operate on fear is false-htye have a set and they can back it up with rational arguements (even if many are rather annoying in doing so)

	25-05-2004 10:29									#109
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I don't know what conservatism stands for, they supposedly oppose big government and then they get into power and maintain, and even sometimes expand what the liberals have done. It's easy for conservatives to talk about their so called principles but they just don't have any when they get into power. It's just spend and spend more, then they pat themselves on the back for taking issues away from the liberals. Well, isn't that liberalism? Phooey...

	25-05-2004 19:08									#110
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The opposition to big government is not based on theories, which makes this "conservative principle" just another practice arrived by theoretically. If it is the path for the government to grow through practice, then this should be OK with real conservatives-ideological opposition to "Big Government" is a liberal theme...


The fact is "True" conservastives are trully marginal-the fact the original liberals are now termed conservatives gives you an idea of how the goalpost has moved in the last 250 years.

	25-05-2004 20:49									#111
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quote: Originally posted by GePap "Liberal" is only sometimes related to "rapid" change- liberal means a connection to a set of intellectual theories and thinking that these theories hold the key to a better society-if these theories are the norm, then your "liberal" would completely support the status quo and oppose any change, given than any change would upset the theory you think should be in power. This does not then make a liberal "conservative", only part of the status quo. The only people who might seek radical revolution all the time are radicals.

But Imran is the one who has been claiming for a while now that conservatism is about resistance to change. I'd claim that both Liberalism and conservatism operate through moral principles, but that doesn't make "resistance to change" any less of a stupid principle.

quote: And conservatives are rational-If a system has been in place for 5000 years, why on earth would anyone claim it did not work? Of course it works- it had 5000 years to fail and it did not-it kept on going.

That's a ridiculous position to hold, since change forces itself on us. Moreover, a system like slavery "worked" after a fashion, as did preventing women from having the vote. There's no inference from "it works" to "that's the best we can do".

quote: NOW,the result may not be "nice", but then, life does not ask for "nice" endings.

"Life" doesn't ask for anything, people do. And if you are anything less than a monster, you want the best we can do given practical constraints.

quote: To say conservatives invariably operate on fear is false-htye have a set and they can back it up with rational arguements (even if many are rather annoying in doing so)

They do. It's standard operating procedure. The left tend to talk in terms of moral goals, the right appeal to individual selfishness and fear of the "other". Bush has made an art form of this in his calls for tax cuts and his Islamophobia and Homophobia.

I'm not claiming that conservatives never argue, just that the position held by Imran is completely senseless. Other than that it's not clear what they stand for other than inequality. After all, they claim to stand for "freedom" but interpret it in such a way that it is compatible with the worst forms of oppression.

Apolyton is a good example of the intellectual poverty of conservatives. If you argue with them about principles they always retreat back into (a) relativism; (b) selfishness, (c) religion, or (d) might makes right.