What Do "conservatives" Conserve?

[Chibiabos]

I've tried to think of the term "conservative" and what it is those who call themselves (and we also call) "conservatives" actually conserve. They certainly aren't 'fiscally conservative,' considering how badly they operate on the bottom line, giving us the worst government fiscal deficit in history ... 'tax and spend' liberals like Clinton actually manage to do not bad at all by comparison (we even had a budget surplus, for a very rare change, under Clinton!). They certainly don't believe in practicing conservation when it comes to energy, water or the environment.

 

And then it dawned on me what it is conservatives actually conserve! Here's a list of a few things "conservatives" conserve ...

• Environmentalism - they practice environmentalism as little as possible, thus conserving it!
  
• Liberty - they conserve this just as they do environmentalism!
  
• Justice - same as above!
  
• Honor
  
• Freedom
  
• Fiscal conservatism (they practice fiscal conservatism as little as possible; thus they conserve fiscal conservatism!)
  
• Tolerance
  
• International harmony
  

[Thurisaz]

Very sarcastic and very straight to the point

[Vigile]

If the conservative party would actually conserve the Constitution and conserve government growth and spending, I would be willing to throw in with them. As it stands now, neither party currently offers these alternatives.

[D Laurier]

Ugh Conservatives.

A conservative is a rabid gorilla on a blend of speed and cocaine.

A liberal is the same gorilla, without rabies.

 

Originaly the conservatives (tories) were all about the navy. Rule britania on the waves, and wooden walls of england. (an exclusive monopoly on the right to commit piracy)

Their policy was to sail into a port and fire a couple broadsides into the town, Then make their demands.

If those demands weren't met immediately, They would lay waste to the whole town.

 

Not much has changed since.

 

Conservatives are notoriously short sighted. If a conservative has a sick slave They will let that slave die rather than spend a few pennies on medicine, Despite the fact that a replacement slave will cost vastly more to buy and train.

 

 

Liberals (whigs) favoured spending on the army. They wanted to hire allies to help do their looting and pillaging.

(an OPEN monopoly on the right to commit piracy)

And they were willing to wait a day or two for the town to meet their demands, before laying it to waste.

 

A liberal will invest in the health of his slave (and thus profit in the long term) not out of compassion, but out of inteligent greed.

 

 

Theres not a lot to choose between them

[Amethyst]

Well, conservatives say they want to "conserve" money, but in reality all they do is spend it on their own pet projects, as opposed to spending it on things that would actually help society.

[Lerato]

What do conservatives conserve?

Hmm I would say that they conserve a large portion of their brains from actually thinking.

 

Actually though I think the term refers to them wanting to bring back "the good ole days" (that never existed). For an idea of conservative utopia take a look at 50s era sitcoms.

[Caretaker]

Conservatives conserve the Status Quo. The Good Ole Times. The Way Things Were. Blah blah blah. "God" forbid anyone who wants to be different.

[Yaoi Huntress Earth]

Conservatives conserve the Status Quo. The Good Ole Times. The Way Things Were. Blah blah blah. "God" forbid anyone who wants to be different.

 

You took the words out of my mouth.

[Caretaker]

Basically, when I think of a Conservative, I tend to think of someone who either dislikes or outright is afraid of change. For instance, my step-grandmother, who has a fear of computers, thinks they are the cause of all the problems with today's kids. By gosh! They aren't being taught how to write by hand anymore! She seems to think that students must hand-write their term papers in cursive like she did, as if somehow, a term paper needed such a "personal touch" to it.

[robbie]

As I see it, to be conservative is to look backwards rather than forwards. It is to fight human progress rather than encourage it. It is to attempt--and always fail eventually--to impose outdated and culturally specific ideas on all of humanity.

 

As a Catholic I was of course conservative...maybe not in terms of the spectrum within Catholicism, but certainly within society. Remembering that, I feel a sort of sympathy for conservatives. They know they are losing, and in the end will lose completely. That is part of the reason they make up bullshit like the Second Coming or Heaven, desperately trying to believe they might win in the end. That is why they say human progress is actually the sign of the 'end times', and that it is increasing corruption and 'sin'.

 

At the same time, I take comfort in the fact that no matter how powerful the mythical 'moral majority' may seem, they will be forgotten by history. Those of us who have not studied the Civil Rights movement in the US in detail, for example, can still name Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. as heroes of their time. Yet I can't think of an individual racist opponent. I know only of Falwell's opposition after reading biographies following his recent death.

 

It is amongst liberals that the future population will find its heroes. Amongst conservatives it will find embarrasments and horrors only.

[Christine]

This is an excerpt from a book called Life! Why We Exist...And What We Must Do To Survive by Martin G Walker

Conservatism versus Liberalism

 

Conservatism and liberalism, its counterpart, derive from fundamental, universal concepts—all societies at all times have encompassed some variations of these two perspectives, which have in turn defined and divided two general modes of thinking. Conservatism tends to emphasize the importance of norms and traditions; it can be defined by its reaction against differences from the norm. It also tends to emphasize the rights and responsibilities of the individual to protect and perpetuate these norms, more than the rights and responsibilities of the central government. Liberalism, on the other hand, encourages openness to variety within the community and embraces change; it places faith in the benefit of organized and centralized social infrastructure to help balance the inevitable inequities that exist in any large group.

 

In the United States today, for example, conservatives prefer to let the market prevail and to minimize the role of central government; they work to confirm and strengthen traditional (faith-based and family) values while resisting the influence of “nontraditional” ways of life. Conservatism aims to empower the individual to account for her own place in the market and in society. Conservative government typically intervenes reactively rather than proactively in asserting and reinforcing these goals. In conservatism, government champions the right of the individual to make the correct choices, until she proves incapable of doing so.

 

Conservatives approve of the status quo and seek to maintain a traditional mode of human society. They have a static viewpoint, which leads to a protectionist perspective. Conservatives resist change and emphasize the rightness of the norm, or standard. Conservatism protects and elevates the importance of the individual who embodies or reflects this norm (an extreme example being the tendency of conservatives to want to preserve the culture and racial identity of the majority at the expense of the minority). So long as individual choices don’t work against the persistence of society, conservatives emphasize the importance of individual persistence.

 

On issues of morality and values, the conservative reacts against the different, a response that emerges from a fear of the unknown and unfamiliar. Homosexuality, for example, seems to threaten to the institution of family. The conservative fears that it could lead to a general disintegration of the family structure. To the moral conservative, even the thought and concept of homosexuality can be repugnant, a threat to his own type and to the persistence of the way of life he feels is right. (What greater threat to the persistence of a family-based society than the idea that the family structure itself will fall apart?)

 

Conservatism does not embrace the concept that the persistence of life as a form carries the greatest moral imperative, and that this imperative must trump the importance of the persistence of a particular society in order for life to persist. It implicitly rejects the perspective that a society or species can and must evolve and change. Conservatives hold a blinkered and truncated perspective on the moral spectrum, and conservative thinking can and does conflict with the overriding moral imperative of the persistence of life as a form. (This helps to explain why the fundamentalist religious right in America supports the idea that the world was created intact, that human beings did not evolve, that a divine creator put us on earth in his likeness. This extreme perspective shelters the conservative from the possibility that the way of living which feels right and proper to him is naturally subject to change and has no greater claim on legitimacy than what came before or what might yet come.)

 

Economic conservatism starts from an impulse to keep economic decisions as close to the individual and family unit as possible. The individual and the local community know best how to control their own finances. Conservatives don’t like the idea of having the government make decisions about the general good. The conservative makes her own way and chooses her own charity. The conservative places faith in and pays more attention to the local community than to society generally. From a governmental perspective, the conservative wants to be assured that society generally shares similar values (the conservative family wants its government to help ensure that other communities operate in the same way). Therefore, as with moral conservatism, economic conservatism works to support the persistence of the individual and the social group that helps itself while remaining suspicious of or reacting against attempts to pool economic and political resources for the betterment of the broader society. Again, this approach tends to limit government’s involvement in furthering the persistence of life as a form.

 

On this basis, to the extent that it can and does work against the persistence of life as a form, conservatism would be judged wrong. To emphasize the qualification, conservatism can be judged wrong only inasmuch as the conservative perspective works against the persistence of life as a form by supporting the persistence of a particular way of life or society. Examples of conservatism generally judged to be wrong include the conservative reactions against the abolition of slavery, segregation, racially mixed marriage, homosexual marriage, unrestricted imports, and foreign culture.

 

Conservatism can be defined as a mode of thinking and interacting that reflects a basic desire of the living entity to persist in its current form and to encourage persistence of its current form. In the context of the individual and of the species, conservatism can be right and good. But when set against that which leads to the persistence of life as a form, unadulterated conservatism can result in modes of thinking and choices and behaviors that restrict persistence and are therefore wrong.

 

Liberalism, on the other hand, incorporates the idea that the persistence of life as a form carries the highest moral imperative—that the importance of the individual and society must remain subordinate to this primary imperative. Liberals tend to support federal programs that aim to level the economic playing field or provide safety nets rather than allowing market forces to provide economic balance. This robs the individual and the local community of the full right and will to choose their own way in the economic world. The liberal aims to strike a balance between individual freedom and the good of all. From a moral perspective, liberals support the choice of the individual—even when it deviates from the norm—and tend to defend change, even those influences that irretrievably alter the societal norm.

 

Economic liberalism tends to suppress the fullest economic will of the individual, and to work against the creative life force by moving toward a leveling out of the economic playing field (that is, seeking that field’s lowest common denominator). Thus, liberalism tends to operate against the persistence of certain individuals in favor of humanity generally, and in some cases it works against the persistence of a particular society. The liberal impulse aims to remove arbitrary inequality and injustice, and to remove the worst (and avoidable) ravages of poverty, disease, and oppression wherever and why ever they exist. Liberalism, when granted this urge, wills the persistence of most individuals (particularly the disadvantaged), the social group (by making the whole stronger), and life as a form (through embracing change and seeking to move the whole forward).

 

Moral liberalism is often attacked as a degenerative and destructive mode of thinking and choosing. It embraces ideas and choices that work against the persistence of the traditional family group and that can lead to destabilizing change in the structure of society generally. But the liberal impulse encourages change and thereby supports the possibility of adaptation.

 

Liberalism generally and generically has been associated with ideas and choices that threaten the established mold and shake things up so that progress can be made. Therefore, in its conceptual form, liberalism is the conscious and temperamental embodiment of the will to persist in the form of life.

[woodsmoke]

So, according to that excerpt, conservatism strongly advocates individual freedom as the ultimate virtue--so long as that freedom doesn't lead/contribute to someone making a truly individualistic decision.

 

Hrm.. Something about "let not the left hand know what the right hand is doing..."

 

...........

 

Holy shit!

 

It all makes sense now! Dear god, how did I not see it before?!

 

Absolute genius! Fucking Brilliant!

[Lycorth]

Coming from an ex-conservative, conservatives want to conserve the Xian religion, which is the foundation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, as any good American knows

[BlueGiant]

The conservatives in the US? What do those neo-cons conserve? The answer is simple:

 

 

Their own power.

[woodsmoke]

Also, I'm curious what it says about me that, as I was reading the bit Chris posted, my subconscious kept wanting to shave the "s" off the theoretical conservative "she."

 

[♦ nivek ♦]

Leave it to Beaver worlds where them "niggers, spics, dirty jews, and all'tha restathem GOLDAMM FURRINERS KNEW THEIR PLACES!"

 

Dunno what is worth "conserving" anymore. Politics have so intertwined the majority Janus Party faces that they instead of faceing away are now tounge kissing....

We the ratepayers are more and more fucked as we continue to let *experts* guide our every movement and thoughts with Sate owned, err, controlled propaganda machines.

 

Excerpt from Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau:

"Under a government which imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison... Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose. If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay [the State], and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible. If the tax-gatherer, or any other public officer, asks me, as one has done, 'But what shall I do?' my answer is, 'If you really wish to do anything, resign your office.' When the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned from office, then the revolution is accomplished. But even suppose blood shed when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man's real manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death. I see this blood flowing now."

 

From the uS Declaration of Independence:

 

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed

 

 

Seems as long as folks have things easy, "being conservative" simplymeans "keeping the lights on, fridge full, beers handy" "let the EXPERTS handle things while we tune out the world around us".

 

There is NO separation between *sides* save for minor details that are not yet worth starting Voting From Rooftops over.

 

uS is a nation of overfed sheep in the guise of a strongarmed bully.. We've allowed ourselves the bread and circusii at the expense of any hopeful future.

 

I refuse to hunker in a bunker whilst the Dept of HomelandInsecuritat enumerates and folds more americans. I refuse to take more numbers and stand in lines for gov dot org gifts. Hate the weak and un-civil who freely take at all levels and refuse to give back to their communities and Nation.

 

No one, conservative nor liberal gives a fuck past "Oh, whats in this goody box for me?!!!??". Politics, the sewer is has always been has spewed its deadly vice all over the world. It'll be a h ella lot more interesting this ride while shit happens.

 

Hang on and hope you've got the right ticket to end..

 

kFL

[Christine]

Conservatives approve of the status quo and seek to maintain a traditional mode of human society. They have a static viewpoint, which leads to a protectionist perspective. Conservatives resist change and emphasize the rightness of the norm, or standard.

 

Based in fear and selfishness

 

Liberalism generally and generically has been associated with ideas and choices that threaten the established mold and shake things up so that progress can be made.

 

Courage and selflessness

 

Last time I checked time moves forward, not backward. Conservatives hold back progress.

[The Sage Nabooru]

The bottom line to me is, Progressives progress, conservatives hold back.

 

Progressives look to the future, conservatives look to the past.

 

The progressive says "things will be better if we move forward". The conservative says "everything was better back in the day".

 

If you ask me, all conservatives are effectively fighting a losing battle, simply because no matter how hard you try you can't hold back time and progress, ultimately.