Some friends I just can’t shake
hard enough
around the neck
with a firm grip
There’s a general difference between conservative and regressive, or reactionary. Being conservative in the true meaning of the word can simply mean that you have a preference to wait and see, to, if in doubt, stick with the old and trusted. And there’s nothing wrong with that: It’s a good idea to have new ideas, but following every new idea blindly? Not so much. Society needs inertia, and that means both moving forward and not moving faster than we can actually adapt to ourselves changing. And we all have that in us. To different degrees, but it doesn’t get more than 70% progressive or 70% conservative, in my observation.
That’s because there’s absolutely nothing wrong with lentil stew. It is, like so many things, tradition, “tradition” in the sense of a sum of successful innovations. Does anyone here have any problems with traditional woodwork? No? Thought so. Even the woodworking innovators respect it.
How to distinguish reactionaries from such true conservatives? Easy, actually: Reactionaries will invoke a past that never was, trying to move there, betraying that they’re actually terminally misguided progressives. They do that in defence of failed innovations – such as the nuclear family, or capitalism, or whatever.
I appreciate your honest response but, I haven’t heard those intentions from anyone claiming to be conservative until just now.
I think it’s fine to celebrate traditions, even fine to share them when asked, or offer to share them with people you know. My family makes these really specific pancakes for holidays, I love making those, great tradition. Some families deny their children basic healthcare because, traditionally their faith tells them to and that’s child abuse, awful tradition. I get what you mean but it’s a pretty shaky argument. As for waiting and reacting, how much longer do we need to wait to react to things like climate change, the homelessness epidemic, the opioid crisis, childhood cancer? If any of your traditions are against solving those problems, I’m sorry but I’m against those traditions and they aren’t compatible with modern society.
I’m curious, why not find a new title for your political beliefs, and shame modern conservatives who line their pockets with money from big corporations? Sounds like the conservative badge isn’t quite reflecting what you’d like it to anymore.
I’m curious, why not find a new title for your political beliefs, and shame modern conservatives who line their pockets with money from big corporations? Sounds like the conservative badge isn’t quite reflecting what you’d like it to anymore.
I’m an Anarchist, a widely misunderstood term. I thus emphasise with actual conservatives who are similarly misunderstood, is all.
how much longer do we need to wait to react to things like climate change, the homelessness epidemic, the opioid crisis, childhood cancer?
We don’t. Oh wait opioid crisis you mean the US, and your use of epidemic isn’t hyperbole.
E.g. farmers over here don’t mind environmentalism, they mind being told what to do by Greens who fail to care about farmers still being able to earn a living – they’re getting squeezed by supermarkets and agricultural subsidies, for decades, were designed to kill off family-sized farms. People don’t mind electric cars they mind having to pay for a new one, doubly so while absolutely nothing got invested into rail over the decades and the FDP penny-pinched the 49 Euro ticket. People don’t mind new building developments they mind that what gets built (by private developers) is way too expensive. People, and this is very telling, don’t mind wind mills as such they mind not owning them: In SH, on the countryside, where mills are largely owned by municipal cooperatives, everyone is in favour, in MV, where they don’t have much money at all to invest, they do mind as it’s big corporations from the city who put the mills there. And this goes deep, studies show how subsonic noise emissions from those mills are calming to one group and a stressor for the other.
Things like cars and intensive, import-dependent agriculture aren’t actually successful innovations, but mobility of people and everyone being fed are successful innovations. It’s especially in these areas where trouble arises when so-called progressives declare the unsuccessful part evil but don’t bother to protect the successful parts, thinking their part is done by fighting something, instead of building something new to replace it.
So, how long do we need to take until the US gets its act together? Exactly as long as it takes for progressives to realise that everything is going to change much faster if they care about being popular with the conservative crowd. Not the MAGAs and crazy evangelicals, forget about them, they’re a symptom, not a cause.
Oh, last thing: Jehovah’s Witnesses over here accept blood donations etc. for their kids. They had to change doctrine to get the status of a public-law church. I think they used an anabaptist-like “religious duty only starts when you’re old enough to practice it” kind of reasoning – that’s a good innovation, isn’t it?
I think you fail to account for the people that just don’t care or are too (morally or otherwise) corrupt to care. You will not get a CxU voter to vote for anything else than their christian conservative values where anything against the status quo is bad.
A simple fact is that actions to minimize climate change will never be popular because it will affect most people in significant ways and it will hurt. We still need to do this, though. Conservatives are so hyperfocused on not changing anything and making other people’s lives miserable that they cannot see what is coming to all of us not in the far future but potentially really soon.
There is no time to appease the conservatives and do things more their way to be more popular, because as the Americans say “if you give an inch they take a mile”. Nothing will happen and that is something we all can’t afford.
What it ultimately comes down to is corporate interest. Conservative parties will do nothing until it is in the interest of the corporations that fund them and their corrupt politicians. As you can see with the 49€ ticket, the railway maintenance or basically anything in control of FDP, CxU or SPD
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