Real Conservatives Don't Exist

[Daktoria]

Conservatives today are actually anarchists at best, liberals at worst. They are rugged individualists who don't care about objective morality. They don't care about upholding principles. They care about being anti-intellectuals who refuse to have manners. Instead, they concede to moral and cultural relativism and emotivism. They only uphold people's rights if they're practical, functional, or useful in their opinion, and insist on forcing people to assume the risk of learning from experience instead of being entitled to security based on a priori reason and free will.

It's fascinating because these are the excuses which are traditionally used to advocate central planning, and modern conservatives have effectively become central planners. People's rights to privacy and freedom of assembly become subject to whether or not authorities find their behavior "reasonable" which basically means that people's prosperity is subject to a socialist popularity contest. If your community doesn't like you because you aren't fitting in with traditions and you're rocking the boat, then you're not entitled to your success. Instead, people can abuse you and hide behind plausible deniability, or maliciously prosecute you altogether.

I guess what's most ironic about this is how conservatives love to appeal to principles, concepts, ideas, and values to justify their position in public, but in private, all of those principles get thrown out the window. Conservatives revert back to bullying, and it's no wonder that conservatives are losing so much now. Nobody believes them anymore. They're like the boy who cried wolf, and people look to government regulation as the great savior from that bullying which happens in private whether we're talking about family values, church, or workplace bullying.

Does conservatism exist anymore? No. It's just liberals walking around in conservative clothing.

No, there are conservatives, you likely just don’t like what they’ve become.

Prior to the advent of the bane of the extreme fiscal and social right, conservatives were advocates of responsible governance, individual liberty, and appropriate budgetary policy where government was not the ‘enemy.’

Traditional conservatives, for example, were advocates of privacy rights with regard to abortion, where limiting the authority of government and enhancing individual liberty conformed to conservative dogma at that time – sadly this is no longer the case.

And there are a few actual conservatives today who support equal protection rights for same-sex couples to marry, because, again, they understand this places limits on government and enhances individual liberty. Unfortunately such conservatives are now few and far between.

Instead we must suffer the extreme social and fiscal right: reactionary, authoritarian conservatives who needlessly fear an American society changing for the better, becoming more diverse, inclusive, and in touch with the Framers’ original intent where expressions of individual liberty are to be celebrated and safeguarded. Indeed, the reactionary, authoritarian conservative represents the greatest threat to our civil liberties, as most on the right seek to deny citizens their civil liberties in a pathetic, futile effort to return to an idealized American past that never actually existed to begin with; an American past hostile to minorities, homosexuals, and women.

Although our Constitution and its case law exist to protect citizens from the fear, ignorance, and hate exhibited by most conservatives today, advocates of individual liberty must nonetheless remain vigilant, as these liberties can be easily lost.

[MENTION=29614]C_Clayton_Jones[/MENTION]

I've never really understood why many conservatives are against abortion since it's a perfect example of ruggedly individualist behavior where offspring are expected to satisfy their makers in advance of being treated with respect.

Conservatives today don't think about the children. They just insist on work ethic instead of remembering heritage.

Maybe that's why they have the fiscal positions they do - they've forgotten the difference between management and economics. Their results-oriented perspective has resulted in a backlash towards objectifying how wealth is earned, yet they complain about higher taxes on higher amounts of wealth.

If they weren't so results-oriented in the first place about rugged individualism, then progressive taxes wouldn't be a problem since businesses would be qualitatively taxed instead based on how they earn their wealth rather than what they earn.

 

[Daktoria]

Conservatives today are actually anarchists at best, liberals at worst. They are rugged individualists who don't care about objective morality. They don't care about upholding principles. They care about being anti-intellectuals who refuse to have manners. Instead, they concede to moral and cultural relativism and emotivism. They only uphold people's rights if they're practical, functional, or useful in their opinion, and insist on forcing people to assume the risk of learning from experience instead of being entitled to security based on a priori reason and free will.

Its easy to argue that someting doesnt ecxist when you make up the definition of that something.

Straw man - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[MENTION=6581]M14 Shooter[/MENTION]

Exactly. Modern conservatives have forgotten the old right and have made up a definition of neoconservatism instead.