Commentary: Longtime former Republican on Patrick Deneen and the demise of the conservative intellectual
This is incorrect.
There is a such thing as a “conservative intellectual”. It’s just that they’ve been long since drowned out by the rest of the party, and the right-wing voting base has no appetite for actual, sensible conservative policies right now.
You could read the article instead of just responding to the headline.
Go ahead and list an example of one of those past conservative intellectuals and we’ll see how long it takes to dig up an example of them saying something like Civil Rights protesters are all secret communist agents or that child labor and vagrancy laws and debtors prisons are good things.
Like, I get the appeal in wanting to believe the other side is just as smart and well meaning as our side is, but there’s just no basis for that in the historical record. They’ve always been like this and we just keep forgetting.
One can be an intellectual and still a huge piece of shit. Theyre not mutually exclusive. People like Milton Friedman or Henry Kissinger a undebatably intellectuals… but that doesn’t mean they’re angels. It just means they wield their intellect as a whip to beat their opponents with, rather than raising society as a whole.
Honestly this whole “conservatives are just a bunch of dumb rabid animals” is they exact sentiment they want us to feel. Because then we never look at the deeper issues that are actually affecting our world.
For example, Karl Marx. Clearly an intellectual as evidenced by his writings. But his colorblind/radical centrist take on minority rights fits right in with modern conservative extremists. And then the way he framed his opinions led to far right authoritarian regimes co-opting the label of communism.
Muh nazis were akschually leftwing and communists rightwing… Typical nazi tactic
If you think that right wing authoritarianism is communism, I’ve got a democratic republic to sell. The only way tankie logic is consistent is if you believe that Nazis were socialists and North Korea is democratic. But somehow those are not true yet the USSR was communist? You gotta stop gulping down the imperialist propaganda. I could forgive someone for believing it during the Red Scare, but these days there’s no excuse.
Tankie apologetics are a farce.
Is National Socialism not real socialism?
Since you capitalised National Socialists like a proper noun I’ll assume you are referring to Nazis. The answer to that is yes, Nazis were not socialists. Socialists were among the first groups targeted by the Nazis after attaining majority power.
A bit like how communists were oppressed in the USSR, or how democrats are oppressed in North Korea.
The U.S. was more than happy to conflate Marxist-Leninists(tankies) with communists because it made communists look bad. Tankies are all in on continuing to conflate their own ideology with communism because they understand that being proud of right wing extremist ideology is a bad look.
You are the imperialist here, yankee. Did you send tanks into iraq, huh? Will you call me a judeo-bolshevik now?
Name one conservative policy that has furthered mankind. Prohibition, voting rights, sexuality, drug war, terrorism; time after time they’ve been wrong. Even fiscally they run up the deficit. Their only role is to preserve hierarchy and maintain power
George W Bush massively expanded US Free Trade agreements. We went from 3 to 16 under his admin. That’s good for the entire world.
Pretty much the only thing I don’t like about Biden is his protectionist stance.
I’m gonna assume you think Capitalist expansion and colonialism is a good thing.
The former, yes, the latter I bet we have significant disagreements on the definition of
Tangentially, if you’re interested in rabbit holes, there’s a book by Matt Kennard called Silent Coup that deals with corporate influence over trade, it looks at the agreements countries have to sign to get corporations into their countries.
I’m well aware of this process and support it. Countries are welcome to make any deals they’d like. They’re presumably intelligent, independent entities making decisions in their own best interest.
So you’re in favor of BRICS and the devaluation of the petrodollar, if those countries choose to do that?
Name one conservative policy that has furthered mankind.
Richard Nixon was at the helm when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was founded. I believe he also was responsible for protecting national parks, but I didn’t bother fact-checking that one.
https://www.epa.gov/history#:~:text=EPA was created on December,human health and the environment.
Now, granted, modern conservative politics are garbage-culture war bullshit, but we need to be cautious of forgetting history. Rewriting history is their game.
Progressive policies implemented during a conservative presidency don’t seem like conservative policies.
If you can just hijack any and all “good” policies as inherently progressive then you’re just a self-fuelling fire who wants to hate conservatives no matter what.
I wouldn’t be crediting them with enacting good policy if it wasn’t progressive.
If you can show an example of opposing progress that is good I’m all in on that conservative policy.
The ESA was not good because it maintained the status quo. It was good because it was progressive. The fact that it was implemented during a conservative presidency is irrelevant.
You’re buying in too much to the branding of big-P Progressive. The EPA, and environmental protections, are inherently little-c conservative positions.
Not everything that is good is Progressive, and not everything Progressives want is good, or even intelligent. Rent control, as one very basic example, doesn’t work, and yet Progressives across America push it.
What doesn’t work about it? (I honestly know nothing about it, but I know there are things that sound great on paper and propaganda but in practice it’s bull)
Progressivism is moving towards collective goals. Conservatism is protecting individual freedoms.
You many see individual freedoms differently than they do but that is the core fundamental policy they protect.
What you’re saying is true in theory, but the American Republican party has absolutely nothing in common with it.
Just look at the patriot act, torture, detention, TSA, and all the other shit pushed through by the GOP that has decimated freedoms and privacy.
The ONLY individual freedom the GOP protects unconditionally is for everyone and their uncle to own guns. Nevermind if your uncle is a lunatic, they’ll protect his freedom to be armed to the teeth.
The republican party isn’t conservative. They are neo-conservative. Different problem.
I was hoping this politics community would be reasonable and have good discussion.
instead we just get more of r/politics
Social media perpetuating identity politics then acting confused when there’s such a big divide in this country.
Nah lemmy is even further left than Reddit. What would you expect from an anti corporate decentralized group. Lemmy is basically communism of social media.
You are either a far left echo chamber member here or human trash. They see no difference.
At base, it is about how you treat people. That is the issue, no more. GOP and rightwingers intend to harm, limit, exclude people for unilateral reasons. The rest of us want to be left alone, and leave others alone, to varying degrees, and yeah some of us, like me, radically so, to let people decide for themselves how to live.
There are and have been plenty of people we’d describe as “conservative” at some point but who work towards collective and individual freedoms.
Not fucking one of them is a republican today. NAME ONE.
And fuck you weasels trying to twist words into lessening the impact of right wing extremists.
There are not “two sides”. There are extremists, a minority, then the rest of us.
The problem is the minority has the money and the power to expand.
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