FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Mon Mar 18, 2024 6:36 pm
I would say that there's fairly widespread use of the term with a big C and I would say that if we wish to have monolithic terms such as "Liberalism", "The Left" and so on, then "Conservatism" should probably qualify with a similar set of caveats to those others.
I don't think so, and I did say why. The Left has a particular, identifiable set of ideological derivations and theories. They've got their Marx, their Foucault, their Gramsci, their Freire, etc., all penning manifestos of what kind of Socialism they aim to create.
Conservatism, by contrast, is a sort of general impulse that binds widely disparate groups together, and has no central ideological commitments. They have no singular manifestos, and for anybody one might name as the progenitor of conservatism, one would find most of the field would disagree with that. Conservatism's just a kind of "mood" or "impulse" to preserve some legacy but it's a little thin on saying what the specific legacy is that should be "conserved." With regard to content, it's highly variable, actually.
That also explains why rounding up any single "conservative movement" is like trying to herd cats. They're not naturally inclined to stick together at all. But Socialism seems to be the glue that keeps the Left a monolythic ideological entity.
Instead of the historical science that Marxists adore, Conservatives tend more towards such explanations of historical tendency as Manifest Destiny, Protestant Work Ethic, perhaps with a little dash of the Invisible Hand of the markets.
I don't think they really do. "Manifest Destiny" is an ideological curiosity very peculiar to America, not to conservatives. The Protestant work ethic is actually a construct of Weber, which he premises on a minority religious position known as "Calvinism," and not even most Christians are Calvinists: secular conservatives are certainly not. And the idea of that the market has an "Invisible Hand" is a weird one from Adam Smith. A person could easily be a conservative while believing in none of these things at all. That's what I mean about "herding cats."
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Mar 13, 2024 5:03 pm
Not quite.
Unlike the Left, the conservatives do not have a blithe trust in some "History" to get things right. Things don't "age like fine wine." Rather, conservatives tend to believe that things have to be managed, and managed deliberately, cautiously and progressively, rather than radically and violently overthrown. The tendency among conservatives is also to point to the failures of history, not just the successes, and to point out that radical, violent change (think the French Revolution, for example) rarely turns out well, because people are fallible, foolish and flawed on many occasions. And this is why conservatism also places such emphasis on things like rights, constitutions, checks-and-balances, logic, rationality, scientific testing, historical knowledge, plain language, and so forth...these are assumed by conservatives to offer some bulwark against foolish, radical impulses that are so prevalent in mankind and so evident in history. (You'll also note that these same things -- rights, constitutions, checks-and-balances, logic, rationality, scientific testing, historical knowledge, plain language -- are all under vigorous seige by the Left today, which proclaims them the false tools of the "oppressors," and instructs us to be very ready to dismiss them all).
rights, constitutions, checks-and-balances ... those were radical ideas when created,
Yes, they were. And I have pointed out, to Gary in particular, that the terms "right" and "left" politically are not the same as during the monarchist era. They've moved considerably. Nowadays, "Left" means Socialistic, and "right" means a huge spectrum running from the center of what used to be called "liberalism" (i.e. classical liberalism) all the way to radical nationalism and such, and catching up everything in between.
Cats again.
More latterly though, I would agree that modern Conservatives would be expected to have the highest regard for institutions that check the power of the excutive and so on.
Well, they're not keen on institutions, and tend to have less belief in the intrinsic goodness of government than the Left does, for sure. But I would argue this stems from them tending to have a more realistic and less naive view of basic human nature, and a stronger belief in personal liberties than in the possibilities of human social engineering.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Mar 13, 2024 5:03 pm
But here we come to another reason that conservatism is harder to pin down than Leftism: conservatives, not being ideologically driven but rather committed (for different reasons, perhaps) to a general impulse toward the sifting of the past for wisdom and the controlled progressing of the present, do not form a single ideological group. It's not like the Left, which can trace its entire pattern of thinking back to people like Marcuse and Gramsci, or beyond them to Marx or Nietzsche, and to their founding manifestos. Being an impulse rather than an ideology, conservatives do not mass and mob with the same sort of alacrity that one finds in the Left. Even the most radical "Conservatives" only manage to form small groups, because the interests within the broad scope of conservatism are too diverse, and there is no single ideological package to pull them all together.
There are radicals who stand against Conservatism who aren't The Left, in fact they hate The Left and consider themselves Conservatives.
Of whom are you thinking?
Not terrible.
Good. I'm gratified we're finding grounds for a pleasant, civil conversation on this particular issue. It's very nice.
