> * Does that mean that everyone who supports that political party (or even a a tiny fraction) also believes such things?
By your logic, the answer should be "yes." Is that correct?*
I think the source of the conflict here is that, no, this does not follow. The position I described is distinctly progressive in nature, on the opposite end of the spectrum from a belief that one might characterize as conservative. That does not imply that everybody who identifies as progressive believes it.
> Right/conservative political philosophy is fundamentally not.
> Conservatives believe that even if we are all human, we do not all have enough in common to be able to form a cohesive, coherent society. Conservatives believe that there are good and bad people and that they can identify and assign people to each group.
You're assigning beliefs and motives to other people's actions.
Looking beyond the internet groups (which are a whole other issue on both sides) I know plenty of conservatives, including some people who voted for Trump. Not a single one of them has the beliefs you're assigning. They all fundamentally believe that people should be treated equally regardless of their race, creed, gender, sexual orientation, viewpoint, etc. They believe that the differences among people makes our society great and that everyone should be welcome/included.
They often disagree about the best way to achieve an open, inclusive, successful society but the end goal is the same.
Assigning a belief or morality to other people and then ostracizing them for it is part of the problem, not a solution.
> "For instance, I don't believe that I'm conservative at all, but my liberal friends and family tend to classify me as "conservative"."
Rather than the old paradigm where political left == liberalism, I think there needs to be a distinction between the new progressive left and classical liberalism since both hold some views and philosophies that are incompatible with each other.
It may well be that, like me, it is not you that has changed necessarily but more that what is considered the left nowadays has drifted away from old school liberalism and you find yourself as alienated by progressives as you are by conservatives?
>I think the source of the conflict here is that, no, this does not follow. The position I described is distinctly progressive in nature, on the opposite end of the spectrum from a belief that one might characterize as conservative. That does not imply that everybody who identifies as progressive believes it.
No. The source of the "conflict," as you describe (I call it a spirited conversation, but whatever blows your skirt up) is that you made an unsupported assertion (that the "progressive" position is that people with bad childhoods shouldn't be prosecuted for crimes they go on to commit), and I asked for specific information as to who, exactly, claims that to be not only their position, but that of progressives in general.
You danced around that very specific request and then somewhat backed off your (ridiculous) assertion.
And no, you didn't say "it's a progressive position," you said[0]:
There’s something very odd to me about the modern
progressive position that, more or less, if you can
explain a crime, then you can in some sense excuse
it.
Not "a progressive postion," which is debatable at best, you called it "the progressive position" implying that was the belief of most who call themselves "progressive."
That's simply not true. Nor has it ever been.
And I called you out on your wholly unsupported, unsubstantiated and flat wrong assertion.
You are seemingly trying to walk back your statement and chalk it up to "conflict."
No. I'm not in conflict with you at all. You may think you're in conflict with me, but I'm just here trying to have good faith discussions.
> That's about as useful as saying Democrats sit on the left and Republicans on the right. It does not produce any understanding at all.
Then I think you misunderstand the quote. There is a very clear message in it.
> And for the record, you can substitute Conservatism for Progressivism and the statement would carry no less veracity, and the same utility.
No, you cannot. Progressivism is fundamentally based on moving towards equality, conservatism is not. This is why conservatism makes sense in the previous quote and progressivism doesn't.
> Like it or not, Republicans are the "conservative" party and around 95% of them support Trump and the vast majority of them consider themselves to be conservatives.
I apologize but I may be missing your point.
In the GP, I was suggesting that the term "conservative" is being used in competing ways by different groups, and we should be clear on that.
Are you saying that it's not worth making such a distinction, because the vast, vast majority of the public use the term "conservative" to mean "whatever the Republican party's platform is"?
>Yes some conservatives have a greater reaction to 9/11, and seem to be more suspectable to external threats / rhetoric like Islamic terrorism, china, russia, etc.
So which is it? :)
>If you are not seeing that likely because you are more closely aligned with one group over the other.
Well I'm in the UK which is a completely different world when it comes to politics. Even then I don't really identify with either of the main parties, I could pick issues that I align with from both sides.
>If you are not seeing that likely because you are more closely aligned with one group over the other.
Yet you reacted when I mentioned conservatives.
>I am close to neither, as I am more an individualist and reject any type of collectivism from religion, to government structures
> Does "everyone else" include progressive wonks like Matt Yglesias?
Its kind of odd that the only people I ever see positively citing "progressive" Yglesias are doing so in the context of using Yglesias's support for an economic position to bolster the idea that its not a particularly conservative viewpoint.
> f your argument is that conservative politics in practice aren't very conservative (in the incrementalist fashion, as you describe), then I'm not sure if any political ideology is really self-consistent in that way.
No, it has nothing to do with self-consistency. “Conservative” as an ideological label refers to something other than than incrementalism, though in contexts other than ideology, it can refer to that. It is simply words having different meanings in different contexts.
Conservative ideology and incrementalist praxis have nothing to do with each other, though they can be mistaken for each other when the status quo is near the goals of ideological conservatism. (In the US, that apparent overlap with incrementalist praxis is currently more common with neoliberal ideology today than conservative ideology—it can be hard to tell an incrementalist who doesn't seek neoliberal ends from a neoliberal of any praxis, because the status quo is mostly neoliberal.)
US progressives that aren't alienated from the political process tend to be Democrats (by voting behavior if not identity), but the reverse is not true; Democrats as a whole are a coalition of (mainly) progressives center-right corporate conservatives, the latter being somewhat more dominant, and many of them (Manchin and Sinema get a lot of attention recently, but the problem is much deeper) regularly ally with Republicans against progressives.
> Why would I support any politician when the available choices do not line up with my views and desires in almost any fashion
Engagement alters the available choices; engagement by (frequently disappointed) progressives has reduced the center-right domination of the Democratic Party from its peak in the 1990s.
> You’re saying that what progressives championed in the early 1900s, and continue to support is conservative. It doesn’t make much sense.
Why doesn’t it make sense? Political progressives and older land-owning (relative) conservatives have different reasons for opposing upzoning, but they clearly do agree in their opposition to it.
Beyond that, I specifically called out that these terms are overloaded and I’m trying to be relatively explicit about what I mean when I use them. I’m not interested in arguing for positions I never took, e.g. that “the conservative movement never really had much to say about housing policy”. I’m not talking about any movement—I’m talking about people who are, fundamentally, conservative. They may be granola-chomping, Smartwool-and-Birkenstock-wearing, Prius-driving, ex-hippie boomers who’ve never voted GOP in their lives, but if they own land and oppose upzoning because they don’t want their single family home neighborhoods to change, then they are, in a sense (to be clear, the same sense I’ve been talking about this whole time), conservative.
> Left-wing politics is about liberalism and equality, yes?
No. Not in either of the sensed “liberalism” is currently used. Equality, yes, in a manner particularly opposed to the structural inequities of capitalism, but not liberalism, which is either about capitalism or a viewpoint which seeks to maintain capitalism a while moderating certain inequities within it, depending on which of th current usages of “liberalism” you refer to.
> I believe what you meant was as a radical progressive
“Radical progressive” is a phrase used in US politics go refer to a certain range of left-wing positions.
> That liberalism is associated with progressivism
It's not, though one of the senses of liberalism is adjacent to progressivism.
> seems to take away from progressive right-wingers
While the term “progressive right-wingers” may not be
nonsensical in some historical usages of “progressive”, it is simply oxymoronic in the current usage.
> which may believe in the inherent inequality of certain inevitable social structures, but work to abolish or reform broken regulation.
You seem to be using “progressive” as simply anyone who seeks change from the status quo to realize their political values, which is a novel use.
>I don't really buy this. Despite parties using those terms, they don't really mean anything when any given thing had been the status quo at some point in history.
I think that most conservatives don't look to some distant point in the past, but the status quo now, or perhaps some time earlier in their lifetime. If you view all over your examples through this lens, the ambiguity is resolved.
If you look at conservative views and values, they are more consistent through time than liberal views. I think the data presented a few parent threads up clearly supports this view.
I'm not saying there is a moral high ground in being more resistant to change or less resistant to change, but in my mind, it is clearly part of political reality we live in, and a valuable lens to understand the current political divide.
If you don't agree with this view, what alternative do you propose? Are conservative and progressive values and interests random? What values inform the positions they take and how they change over time?
>This comes down to your views on a single question: do you have to be tolerant of opinions or actions that harm others? Right now, I think most progressives say no, conservatives obviously say yes. That is the actual gray area this comes down to.
Firing someone is a harmful action. Progressives obviously support this.
As for your cartoon - Categorizing anyone who disagrees with your values as a cartoon villain of pure evil, deserving of no rights and no response but violence, is the foundation of evil. The cartoon glorifies harmful action - and it's a great representation of the far left now.
Progressives absolutely tolerate opinions and actions that harm others - they hold the opinions and commit the actions with great energy.
> You completely skipped my point. Progressives have treated this topic this way because there is no compromise position.
Isn't the compromise position to tolerate everybody's own personal words and definitions? That certainly used to be the progressive position, at least up to about a decade ago.
> is an ideology like conservativism what it claims to outsiders or to what its adherents actually do and say to one another? Professed vs revealed preferences.
We could say the same about "liberalism" when we look at deadly riots, fires started at police stations with people inside, people executed on the street, ideas like "f** x" based largely on x's race or profession.
It's clear that the majority on both sides are relatively moderate. They aren't the loud minority you hear the most of. Why do both sides use this defense, but neither side believes it about the other?
I think the source of the conflict here is that, no, this does not follow. The position I described is distinctly progressive in nature, on the opposite end of the spectrum from a belief that one might characterize as conservative. That does not imply that everybody who identifies as progressive believes it.
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