Bfgrn
Gold Member
- Apr 4, 2009
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You started out with bullshit and built your foundation from there. That is called "propaganda" not an "improvement. I know leftist think like you do because you are the ones that are ill-informed and brainwashed.Horseshit. You are using dictionary terms in their strictest sense. If it was so godamn liberal why do today's liberals consider it just a guide or a living breathing document?
Good effort. I agree partially, but here is where I think there is room for improvement.
People say - perhaps rightly, perhaps wrongly - that there is small portion of "Talk Radio Republicans" who get the bulk of their information from a very small class of partisan pundits (across various pop media sources). These pundits don't teach intellectual history, they just circulate a very fixed and dogmatic set of talking points. Don't prove them right.
The Framers were deeply inspired by Enlightenment Liberals like John Locke. You should really study this stuff. The USA was born in part as a reaction to old Conservative Europe, with its hereditary privilege and Divine Rights of Kings. Indeed, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, due process, etc., were all inspired by the Liberalism that took over Europe in the 1700s and came to fruition in the French Revolution (opposed by great Conservatives like Edmund Burke, who saw the topdown social/political changes as contradicting the natural/traditional fabric of society). The fight between Religion and Science (between Galileo and the Church) was also a fight between liberals (who were championing science) and conservatives (who were protecting Biblical Cosmology (geocentrism) from Gallilaen Heliocentrism). You should know this stuff so you can properly evaluate your own political beliefs.
New Deal Liberalism is a variant of Liberalism, as is Libertarianism (which builds around the classical liberalism of John Locke and Adam Smith, but shares much of the social liberalism of the American Liberals). You should realize where all these varieties of Liberalism overlap and where they differ so you can contribute more fully.
An interesting intellectual exercise for you. Some intellectual historians think that FDR modified Liberalism (with the New Deal) as much as Reagan modified conservatism (by embracing Libertarianism). If you're going to enter these discussions, you should know this stuff. You should know the difference between say Keynes (who believed in markets and private property) and Marx (who did not). Rather than letting your thought be controlled by men like Rush Limbaugh, who don't teach the nuances of intellectual history, I very respectfully and humbly suggest that you do more historical research.
You are also incredibly arrogant. Another hallmark of the left. You smear your enemies with distortions and lies, another hallmark. I'm not Limbaugh, didn't bring him up and for you to ASSUME that's where I get my conservative ideals is stupid. I suggest you get your head out of your ass.
An intellectual exercise for me? You condescending arrogant asshole! You don't even know what conservativism is and you want to lecture people from up high?
But thanks for proving the conservatives being right about liberals. You probably thought you were saying something smart, instead you came off like a jackass. People don't need Rush for that. But they do listen in and say "yeah, I know the type". You and your type made Rush Limbaugh easy money filthy rich.
WOW, better put some 'ice' on your butt-hurt 'weasel'. Londoner is right one the mark. Maybe you will listen to a F.A. Hayek, Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, Presidential Medal of Freedom
Why I am Not a Conservative by F. A. Hayek
In general, it can probably be said that the conservative does not object to coercion or arbitrary power so long as it is used for what he regards as the right purposes. He believes that if government is in the hands of decent men, it ought not to be too much restricted by rigid rules. Since he is essentially opportunist and lacks principles, his main hope must be that the wise and the good will rule - not merely by example, as we all must wish, but by authority given to them and enforced by them.
When I say that the conservative lacks principles, I do not mean to suggest that he lacks moral conviction. The typical conservative is indeed usually a man of very strong moral convictions. What I mean is that he has no political principles which enable him to work with people whose moral values differ from his own for a political order in which both can obey their convictions. It is the recognition of such principles that permits the coexistence of different sets of values that makes it possible to build a peaceful society with a minimum of force. The acceptance of such principles means that we agree to tolerate much that we dislike.
To live and work successfully with others requires more than faithfulness to one's concrete aims. It requires an intellectual commitment to a type of order in which, even on issues which to one are fundamental, others are allowed to pursue different ends.
It is for this reason that to the liberal neither moral nor religious ideals are proper objects of coercion, while both conservatives and socialists recognize no such limits.
In the last resort, the conservative position rests on the belief that in any society there are recognizably superior persons whose inherited standards and values and position ought to be protected and who should have a greater influence on public affairs than others. The liberal, of course, does not deny that there are some superior people - he is not an egalitarian - but he denies that anyone has authority to decide who these superior people are. While the conservative inclines to defend a particular established hierarchy and wishes authority to protect the status of those whom he values, the liberal feels that no respect for established values can justify the resort to privilege or monopoly or any other coercive power of the state in order to shelter such people against the forces of economic change. Though he is fully aware of the important role that cultural and intellectual elites have played in the evolution of civilization, he also believes that these elites have to prove themselves by their capacity to maintain their position under the same rules that apply to all others.
Closely connected with this is the usual attitude of the conservative to democracy. I have made it clear earlier that I do not regard majority rule as an end but merely as a means, or perhaps even as the least evil of those forms of government from which we have to choose. But I believe that the conservatives deceive themselves when they blame the evils of our time on democracy. The chief evil is unlimited government, and nobody is qualified to wield unlimited power. The powers which modern democracy possesses would be even more intolerable in the hands of some small elite.
Classical liberals assume a natural equality of humans; conservatives assume a natural hierarchy.
James M. Buchanan
Liberalism is trust of the people, tempered by prudence; conservatism, distrust of people, tempered by fear.
William E. Gladstone (1809 1898)