 sj |
||
|
||
BS: I think I'm conservative
|
|
|
Subject: I think I'm conservative From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 18 Dec 00 - 08:52 PM I've been thinking, and I've decided that in fact I'm conservative by temperament.
Someone on the box quoted the old remark "When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change" (Lucius Cary 1641) - as a touchstone of conservatism.
And I realised that that is exactly what I think. Of course the list of things that I'd see it as necessary to change is quite extensive, starting with an extremely wide-ranging re-distribution of resources and power. And the list of things I'd want to preserve would include all kinds of things that people calling themselves conservatives would want to get rid of.
The more I think of it, the more bizarre it is that a bias in favour of change is seen as a left wing attitude, and a bias against change is seen as right-wing. I think both attitudes are equally present across the whole political spectrum. (And the appetite for change for it's own sake is dominant right across the board, left and right.)
And that's why there is no difficult in matching left-wing politics with a determination to hold on to tradition in songs and music and in other ways. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: CarolC Date: 18 Dec 00 - 09:01 PM I vote for McGrath of Harlow. (But only if you agree to change the things I want changed.) |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: InOBU Date: 18 Dec 00 - 09:04 PM Kev: It is very late at night, in England... I glanced over your piece and either we are all concervative over here on the left side of the world, or it is getting late for me as well... Get a good night's sleep and the desire to be called concervative will pass. If you find yourself feeling like a tory, call me at once and I will come over with whiskey and we will have an intersession. Worried, Larry |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: InOBU Date: 18 Dec 00 - 09:06 PM PS as it is getting late at night, check out my post about innocents abroad. I think I figured out the GWB mystery in Scotland! It is getting to be the hour of inlightenment - Ah if only I could still drink! - Larry |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: InOBU Date: 18 Dec 00 - 09:07 PM PPS Where the potatos glowing tonight? |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: Bill D Date: 18 Dec 00 - 09:43 PM The labels just don't cover all the possibilities...there is Social conservatism, fiscal conservatism, political conservatism, moral conservatism....etc...it is when someone is blindly ALL of these at once that it gets scary! to me, the type of 'conservatism' that involves one group imposing rules, morés, religious restrictions, etc., on others, is to be feared. I suspect that you are liberal as all-get-out on some issues...*grin* ...me? now that I see George Bush saying that he is going right ahead with trying to get a tax cut which will mostly help the wealthy classes, I KNOW what I can point to as 'conservatism' that rubs my sensibilities raw! |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: catspaw49 Date: 18 Dec 00 - 09:49 PM Snap out of it Kev.........smoke a joint or somethin'.............Take a hot lead enema...........anything..............Get a grip bro....... Spaw |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: flattop Date: 18 Dec 00 - 09:52 PM Ah, another one out of the closet, or is it more conservative to go into the closet, or just to hide in the closet and debate with oneself? |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: Troll Date: 18 Dec 00 - 09:54 PM Better blatant than latent. troll ***BG*** |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: flattop Date: 18 Dec 00 - 10:15 PM Sounds like a hook for a lyric but not a slogan for a conservative, T roll. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: Sorcha Date: 18 Dec 00 - 10:16 PM The older I get, the more conservative I seem to become...scary thought, huh? |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: flattop Date: 18 Dec 00 - 10:21 PM You're not much scarier than you've ever been, Sorcha. Now if you were in the closet, that would be a different story. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: Troll Date: 18 Dec 00 - 10:27 PM In the closet with Sorcha...get a grip boy! Yep. That's what happens. The older you get the more conservative you get. I started out conservative so right now I'm somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun. As my Wife says, if I go any further to the right, they'll have to put a safety harness on me to keep me from falling off the edge. WHEEEEEEE troll |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: flattop Date: 18 Dec 00 - 10:35 PM I thought Kevin was in the closet. Was Attila a rightwinger? Would a true conservative accept a safety harness or just accept the tradition of falling off the edge? |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: Troll Date: 18 Dec 00 - 11:03 PM I do NOT want to be in the closet with Kev. Period. End of song. End of story. Sure Attila was a conservative. Didn't his depredations do what the liberals are always accusing the conservatives of doing; set civilization back several centuries? Stands to reason then. Of course the true conservative would accept the safety harness. The tradition is "falling off the edge". Nowhere does it say "falling off the edge AND GETTING KILLED!" The safety harness is so we can be hauled back up. We're conservative, not suicidal. troll |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: flattop Date: 18 Dec 00 - 11:22 PM So you agree, Mr. T.Roll, that Shocha in the closet is a different story altogether. Where you disagree you have not given convincing arguments. If Attila was conservative would he have pushed ahead for change? Aluric(sp?), a later hun, claimed to be saving Rome when he sacked the town. Using a harness in self-interest, you may have failed the true conservative test rather than determined a trait of true conservativism. Wouldn't true conservatives of the dead and rotten British Empire dismiss the harness, mutter something like, 'Well it's over the edge then pippery poo,' and take the fall? Where do you find your leaders, Mr. T. Roll?
|
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: flattop Date: 18 Dec 00 - 11:35 PM Since we're on the road to Rome, one of the many great footnotes in the Penguin edition of Juvenal's Sixteen Satires tells of an emperor crossing a bridge in his chariot when a woman tries to stop him. He yells, 'Get out of the way, I'm the Emperor, I don't have time.' As he passes she yells back, 'Then you don't have time to be Emperor.' |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: Troll Date: 18 Dec 00 - 11:48 PM Attila was not pushing ahead for change. He destroyed the towns and villages as he passed thereby putting things back to the way they USED to be. A most conservative point of view. Alaric merely TOLD people he was trying to save Rome so they would leave him alone while he sacked the city. Apparently they believed him. But then it's never been hard to fool a liberal. They'll believe almost anything. Regarding the safety harness, I couldn't agree with you more. The British seem to have a defeatist attitude about some things. I mean Tony Blair. Well I ask you. The true conservative is, above all, a survivor. We survived FDR and Bill Clinton. We can survive anything except being in power. The present situation would worry me but GWB is really a centrist so we'll be OK. I hope this clears up any questions you may have had. Forward into the past! troll |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: ddw Date: 19 Dec 00 - 12:10 AM Troll — I though conservatives wanted to keep things the way they are, reactionaries want to return to the past. And to paraphrase Winston Churchill: A young man who is not a liberal has no heart; an older man who is not conservative has no brain. Bill D. As for "one group imposing rules, morés, religious restrictions, etc., on others, is to be feared." It seems to be that's the position of what passes for a liberal these days. They have rules for everything, dictate mores (you CANNOT dislike this group or that group), restrict religion (You CANNOT say a prayer at the start of anything). Most conservatives think he governs best who governs least. I'm proud to be one. david |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: Troll Date: 19 Dec 00 - 12:18 AM David, true enough. I was just having a bit of fun. I do like a bit of fun now and again. Besides, flattop seemed to enjoy it and it is a good thing to help others especially...well, never mind. troll |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: ddw Date: 19 Dec 00 - 01:28 AM Hey, Troll — I wasn't flaming you — just having a bit of fun myself. Back in the dark ages I majored in political science and love to play with the definitions, since fewer and fewer people really understand that what we call conservative today is really a 17th-century liberal — they want the whole damned ruling class off their back, whether the rulers are there by divine right or by the democratic election of the oligarchy. It's the liberals who want to micromanage your life, take all your money for their hairbrained, usually useless programs and then start a war when somebody doesn't agree with them. On which note I'm going home.... shalom david |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: The Shambles Date: 19 Dec 00 - 02:37 AM I think that it less to do with change as such, but the type of change. Both sides of the fence have pretty much the same problems with any change.
To me it is more like this.......
A conservative hears somrthing (possibly a change) and has a reaction, usually a negative one, to it. Then will then look around for someone who shares that reaction. This confirms that their first reaction was correct and this will not now change much from the first reaction and will not be given too much further thought, largely because they are not alone in their thinking.
A liberal will have a reaction, maybe the same one as the conservative, but will not trust this reaction. They will then look around for the opposite reaction, which will enable them to start on a long process of thinking and subtle adjustments. The more people that are in agreement, the more suspicious and unsure, they will become. If this this correct, I would just like to say that, I am in total agreement with the statement that Kevin is a now Tory. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: Jon Freeman Date: 19 Dec 00 - 03:55 AM Maybe I'm a socialist conservative then or maybe I am just confused. Jon |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: Jock Morris Date: 19 Dec 00 - 04:18 AM Relax folks, he only said he was conservative not a Conservative. Sending Kev a virtual single malt (Kev, you're welcome to call by and collect a real one any time (PM me for address))just to be on the safe side though:-) Scott |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 19 Dec 00 - 05:02 AM I think it was Paul Goodman, or it may have been Noam Chomsky, who said he was a neolithic conservative.
Having an attitude of "if it works don't mend it" is quite consistent with recognising that it doesn't work, and badly need mending.
What sends me up the wall is the assumpotion - and it's just as prevalent among rightwingwers as leftwingers, if anytjing miore so in my experience - and in the middle, that novelty is a thing to be fostered, for it's own sake. If something's been around for a bit, it's time to thrown it out and start anew. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: CarolC Date: 19 Dec 00 - 06:03 AM That's called "job security". |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: flattop Date: 19 Dec 00 - 07:04 AM Just a quick note before I rush madly off to the big city. Bertrand Russell wrote that people would rather die by the latest means than live by an old fashioned method. He was writing about the atomic bomb but you know people. Back into the closet with that biker chick Jon, if you're still confused. I believe you can still say a prayer at the start of a prayer meeting so lighten up and have fun guys while we look into the constitutionality. I quite sure Bertrand Russell tried to bring up his daughter properly but she decided to become a Christian missionary. I still think you're special casing your true conservatives, Troll. You seem to be confusing the conservative ideal with practical, sniveling, complaining, self-pitying, undertaxed, Americans. Reminds me of Withold Gombrovicz referring to socialists with in-door toilets. Would a true conservative have in-door toilets or would he rely on long squatting traditions? I have seen more distorted British war propaganda films portraying conservative leaders than I've seen real right wing conservatives jumping over cliffs, I must admit with some regret. If they were to jump off cliffs, even wearing harnesses, they'd probably shit their pants just like the rest of us. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: mkebenn Date: 19 Dec 00 - 07:58 AM Caligula taught the Romans to enjoy getting sacked.. Mike |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: InOBU Date: 19 Dec 00 - 08:22 AM Funny how most Americans believe there are only liberals and conceratives... well that is what we get for haveing a one party system with two factions... My old departed and RED dad, God love him, said of Churchill - "If you aren't a socialist by the age of twenty one, you have no heart, and if you stop being a socialist, at any age, you never understood it in the first place." To many reds are just being fashionable, like all the American radicals who came to their class awareness to keep from have bits of their bodies blown away by the Viet Cong. Some of us were dyed in the wool. Kev. it is that conservative leftist we both share, and I know that is what you meant, just pulling everyone's chain, late at night, and now, another bleak morning with no hangover, well, it is less funny, eh? Troll, my family owns, and I live in the building Trotsky lived in when he was in New York. Who knows the great sceen from Morgan when he describes the death of Trotsky to a peeler, using an egg? Magic! Still waiting for reality to live up to my best fantacy... and the great leap forward (beam me up Scotty) Larry |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: Troll Date: 19 Dec 00 - 08:56 AM David, not to worry. I understand. Flattop, we'd have indoor toilets of course. Conservatives don't wear hair shirts. We enjoy our creature comforts as much as the next guy. We just don't jump on the latest fad, that's all. Of course I'm an idealist.What's your point? Most of those radicals who came into their class awareness during Viet Nam, when right back to their midle and upper middle class existence as soon as the danger was over. I know a few of them here in Gainesville and they get more and more conservative the older they get. Re: trotsky, My wifes fathers family lived in Connecticut, her grandfather was a dentist. Her grandmother used to say that, while they were friends,her husband was NOT a Trotskyite. I don't know the year but you could probably that out at someplace like Workmans Circle. BTW, The Memsahib is in New York right now. She attended a Bat Mitzvah last weekend. Had I thought about it, I would have had her give you a call. She's staying up in the north Bronx, right on the Westchester co. line. troll |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: InOBU Date: 19 Dec 00 - 10:07 AM Next time! I seldom get up to the Bronx, my passport is not in order... - Larry |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: DougR Date: 19 Dec 00 - 11:03 AM McGrath: Please read "The Conscience of a Conservative," by Barry Goldwater. If after reading it you still view your self as a Conservative, get back to us. Never in my wildest imagination would I think of you as one. :>) DougR |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 19 Dec 00 - 11:39 AM troll's admitted he's not a conservative anyway - he's too keen on change. As was Attila the Hun, so far as I've heard.
And also, so far as I've heard Barry Goldwater was too keen on the wrong changes to count as conservative - I'd put him down as a free-market liberal.
For an example, some years ago they nationalised the railway system in Great Britain - a necessary and therefore desirable change. Then they privatised it, for doctrinaire reasons, and to give their friends a handout - an unnecessary and therefore undesirable change which has come close to wrecking the whole system. Renationalising the railways now is necessary, and therefore desirable.
Again, reducing tax levels so as to allow the rich to keep more money was an unecessary and highly undesirable change.
Modernising brewing methods is unnecesaary and undesirable. And so on and so forth.
|
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: Troll Date: 19 Dec 00 - 02:16 PM Certainly I want change, Kevin. But slowly, carefully, with much forethought, not "Oh boy, this looks like fun. Lets do that and see what happens!" The fad of the moment is not the way to have effective progress. Neither is the attitude of "That's the way we've always done it." The one uses vitamins and coffee enemas to cure cancer, the other uses leeches. troll |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: catspaw49 Date: 19 Dec 00 - 02:22 PM Well I'm liberal to a degree I think everybody should be free But if you think I'd let Barry Goldwater Move in next door Marry my daughter You must think I'm crazy. ..............Bob Dylan Had to throw that in guys........Sorry. Spaw |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 19 Dec 00 - 02:38 PM The point is, it's not a left/right thing at all. You can be as far left as it comes, and still be temperamentally opposed to changes except when it's essential. And you can be as far right as it gets, and still be a neophile, who likes change for its own sake.
And I would say that none of this has anything to do with whether you are liberal in outlook or not, that's determined on a completely different set of criteria, nothing to do with whether you liek change or not. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: DougR Date: 19 Dec 00 - 04:02 PM I think the problem lies in our various ideas of what a Liberal is, and what a Conservative is. In Great Britain the two terms may have no correlation at all to what they mean in America. McGrath, had you called Barry a "free market liberal" to his face, you might have disturbed him somewhat. He certainly defined himself as a Conservative. As far as a I know, in American politics, "free market liberal" is not even a part of our language. To many of you, a person that opposes change appears to be a cornerstone in describing what is a Conservative. Where that idea comes from, I have no idea. Anybody ever heard of the "Starwars Defense Initiative" proposed by President Reagan? That's not change? But maybe Reagan was not a Conservative either. Maybe he, too, was a "free market liberal." :>) DougR |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 19 Dec 00 - 04:34 PM "McGrath, had you called Barry a "free market liberal" to his face, you might have disturbed him somewhat. "
Good. And that goes for Reagan. And the English Cobnsevative Party. None of them have the conservative temperament. Neophiles all of them.
Star wars, I ask you...A clear giveaway. A techno-freak. A right wing radical.
The other word for what I'm talking about, I suppose, is Luddite:
"I saw great Cobbett riding, the horseman of the Shires, G.K.Chesterton (An Old Song)
|
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: Troll Date: 19 Dec 00 - 04:47 PM The word for Reagan on SDI, sadly, was "sucker". Teller sold him a bill of goods and he bought it. I think his intentions were good but "Star Wars" was not the way to do it. troll |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 19 Dec 00 - 04:51 PM And here is a poem by Padraic Pearse that sums it up for me. Written, I read somewhere, the day before he was shot, for trying to bring about a necessary change..
The Wayfarer by Padraig Pearse
The beauty of the world has made me sad.
Sometimes my heart has shaken with great joy
Or little rabbits, in a field at evening,
Or some green hill, where shadows drifted by,
Or little children with bare feet
Things young and happy.
And then my heart has told me -
Things bright, and green.
And I have gone upon my way, sorrowful.
|
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: Bill D Date: 19 Dec 00 - 05:37 PM In response to DDW...... (re-paste of relevant sentences) ""As for "one group imposing rules, morés, religious restrictions, etc., on others, is to be feared." It seems to be that's the position of what passes for a liberal these days. They have rules for everything, dictate mores (you CANNOT dislike this group or that group), restrict religion (You CANNOT say a prayer at the start of anything). "" ..surely you are not really suggesting that laws against discriminaton 'infringe' on those who DO 'dislike this group or that'?.... or that restricting of public prayers which make minorities uncomfortable is the same as 'restriction of religion'??? In this society, under the Constitution, freedom OF religion is guaranteed, as it should be...but there can be no sane exercise of that right unless it also allows freedom FROM religion for those who so choose!..Jerry Falwell would have the entire societal structure based on HIS notion of religion if he could, and THAT is really conservative!....I would allow Mr. Falwell to worship as he pleases, but would NOT appreciate him trying to dictate how I live my life ...and that, I guess makes me a 'liberal' on the matter. (I belong to a society whose concern is wood (like tress & their products)...and by chance, a lot of the older members are conservative Christian...and there is a small, but unhappy group within it who do NOT see why we must be regaled with prayers to Jesus before every function or meal!..If I understand theology correctly, Jesus will hear even silent, personal prayers!)....there are similar distinctions to be made in other areas where YOUR right follow your proclivities may be superceeded by MY right not to be subjected to them..(smoking, playing bagpipes in a restaurant, carrying weapons...etc..) Churches make distinctions between sins of omission, and sins of comission...in a similar way, I make a distinction between laws which restrict other's rights, and laws which restrict those who WISH to restrict other's rights... (gee-..sorry not to have a cute little remark here..*grin*..I do sound so serious & grim...but it ain't always funny) |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: DougR Date: 19 Dec 00 - 06:17 PM Troll: was not extolling the Starwars concept, but trying to point out to McGrath, who seems ROOTED to the idea that conservatives are resistant to change, that the Starwars idea was sort of a new idea. Well, maybe Buck Rogers thought of it several years ago, I don't know. DougR |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: MarkS Date: 19 Dec 00 - 06:40 PM Would guess that if those of us who define themselves as conservative and those of us who prefer liberal were to sit down and compare attitudes on issues, there would be more points of similarity than of difference. The problem these days is that many who define themselves as liberal are more classically radical, while many so called conservatives are really reactionary. MarkS |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 19 Dec 00 - 06:42 PM "the idea that conservatives are resistant to change"That's what conservative means in the first place(and I'm resistant to surrendering words just because they are also used to mean something else).
I think great harm is done by all these political factions that use words like conservative and liberal and democrat and republican as party labels and as political epithets - as if they had anything at all to do with where you are on the political spectrum.
I think the Irish idea of having completely arbitrary but fine sounding labels like Fianna Fail and Fine Gael has a lot going for it. I think the Americans would do well to abandon all this talk about Democrats and Republicans, and talk in terms of The Donkey Party and The Elephant Party instead.
I don't think Nader has a totem animal - that makes me a bit suspicious. I think the Greens should adopt the Buffalo as their heraldic beast. Or maybe take up Benjamin Franklin's suggestion for a national symbol for the USA, and adopt the Turkey. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: Troll Date: 19 Dec 00 - 10:29 PM Turkey sounds about right for Nader. troll *G* |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: ddw Date: 19 Dec 00 - 11:17 PM Bill D — I wholeheartedly agree with you, to a point. I part your company when you trundle out the likes of Jerry Falwell as "conservative." The dork's a "reactionary," i.e., someone who wants to return to an idealized past that never really existed. As for laws being distinguishable by whether they prevent us from doing something (praying in public) as opposed to restricting those who would dictate we MUST pray — I feel there's no difference worth mentioning. My point is that liberals (read as leftist, socialist, communist, whatever) want to make a law to govern it; a conservative (read as individualist, free-marketer or whatever) knows you can't legislate morality and doesn't try. I reiterate: "He governs best who governs least." As for laws that restrict the rights of those who would restrict my rights — what a crock. It's just another name for trying to legislate morality. Societies are formed of fluid sets of in-groups and out-groups and we join/dislike them at various stages of our lives. Most people are uncomfortable with "different" people — i.e., members of an out-group. That's why there are fights at Catholic-public high school football games. Five years later they may marry on of the other team's cheerleaders. Do we really need laws saying we can't "dislike" those people? Now, substitute school allegiances — with a dash of religious rivalry thrown in — with national, racial or whatever differences. Is it going to help to make laws? I doubt it. People will either grow out of their prejudices, or they won't. Laws aren't going to make any difference. But liberals will sure as hell pass them. Just one more observation and I'll wrap up this rant — Have you ever noticed that nobody ever makes a law that doesn't forbid the population from doing what it would do naturally? Not sure if that's good or bad, I just find it interesting.... cheers, david |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: flattop Date: 20 Dec 00 - 07:32 AM Looks like a classic example of latin based words running out of steam. Perhaps we could replace conservative with preservative with its sweeter overtones. None of this Jerry Falwell stuff. Yeah, let's talk about Kevin becoming a preservative. Later we can turn all our perverts into converts. Unfortunately I have no time to talk for a few days so you'll have to quibble without me. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 20 Dec 00 - 09:01 AM Preservative is latin-based. So is convert, unfortunately, and quibble... "flattop isn't though.
Here's a link to an article I've just been reading about the eforts that little squit William Hague is making to turn "liberal" into a smear word in England along American lines. (The author thinks it's unlikely to work, and I agree - it's got too many non-threatening connotations.)
Tony Blair tried to do something like that that with his "forces of conversatism" speech last year - but at least he used that one accurately, to mean people who are suspicious of change, and he identified them with his selected enemies on the left as well as the right. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: flattop Date: 20 Dec 00 - 09:40 AM Leslie Feidler asked in his book Freaks, 'Are you one of the Normals?' Makes being cluster around the mean seem strange. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: I think I'm conservative From: flattop Date: 20 Dec 00 - 09:53 AM And flattop isn't derived from the latin for something like Flatula Topola? |