Challenging conservative principles is our greatest opportunity

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Friday December 19, 2008 · 1:32 PM PST

2008/12/19 · 13:32

Couldn't convince my house meeting that the greatest opportunity we should have is in challenging conservative principles, rather than concentrating on issues such as energy, etc.

In the coming years conservatives will try to convince American citizens that smaller government is better. We need to dispute that principle. The size of government is a consequence of a free market-like process in which no individual or small group can determine the outcome. The size of government is the consequence of millions upon millions of individual choices. The best use of our time and energies, I believe, will be to aggressively argue this point.

The second principle we should aggressively point out is that morality (social conservatism) and freedom (economic conservatism) are incompatible. Conservatives, themselves, have illustrated the confusion and contradictions inherent in their own principles, to wit:
*The purpose of politics is the promotion not of freedom but of virtue [Brent Bozell]
*Freedom is the ultimate political end. Virtue is none of the State's business. [Frank Meyer]
*Free markets destroy traditions. [George Will]

Part Four: What's Wrong With Collectivism?

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Friday August 31, 2007 · 11:53 AM PDT

2007/08/31 · 11:53

I've struggled over this critique of basic conservative principles to try to arrive at a particular point as logically and as sequentially as I can. The point is that ideally every segment of American society would have had a hand in constructing the original table, a seat at the original table, a say in what issues and problems should be addressed and enough power to negotiate policies that would give each group as much satisfaction as possible in a world of conflicting agendas and values.

There wouldn't have been slavery. Everyone would be equal (in a way that would take too much space to discuss in this essay). And lots of other nice, ideal things.

But the fact is that everyone didn't have a seat at the table and many groups of Americans have struggled mightily to achieve better lives. Banding together, in collectives, to make things better has been a strategy of necessity and choice. Conservatives have waged a mighty war to present Individualism as the "American Way," a self-serving strategy to keep from having to share power. This is what needs to be exposed.

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Tuesday August 14, 2007 · 11:36 AM PDT

2007/08/14 · 11:36

Continuing my deconstruction of conservative principles. As I've said, conservativism is a contradictory mix of Traditionalism and Libertarianism.

When conservatives bring up "freedom" or "liberty" and "the free market" it is Libertarianism which is dominant and this is what we get most often from conservative politicians.

This Libertarianism is based on a philosophy of "Individualism," which is a theory of cause and effect; which claims that great things will happen if only individuals are free of government intervention in our lives.

The difficulty a liberal might face in countering Individualism is in dealing with the claims that conservatives make about the negative effects of government on our character and lives. We're often reduced to saying, "It is not either so." But the best rebuttal, I think, is to demonstrate that Individualism is an abstraction which is divorced from specific times and places and conditions in the real world. Here are some thoughts about how Individualism fails to be anchored in reality.

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Saturday August 04, 2007 · 9:25 AM PDT

2007/08/04 · 09:25

This is part two of my essay on conservative principles. Aloysha, after reading part one, refered me to a 2004 essay by Philip Agre on the same subject and I recommend this as another thoughtful approach that uses most of the same background.

An interesting thing happened as I did my research on conservative principles: George Will came up as being the most reasonable of the bunch and in many places I use excerpts from his essays as a foil to the more extreme conservaives. It is Will who stagtes plainly that Captialism Destroys Tradition.

As the reader will see, conservativism is actually an unstable alliance between conflicting principles, which we should be able to easily shred in debate over first principles.

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Friday August 03, 2007 · 2:49 PM PDT

2007/08/03 · 14:49

I'm still interested in urging liberals and progressives to engage conservatives on their basic principles as well as on issues.

I've spent the last year reading a lot about conservative principles and feel that their being wrong on basic principles is what ultimately makes them wrong on issues.

I've prepared an essay using words and ideas taken directly from the icons of intellectual conservatism, such as Buckley, Willmoore Kendall, Stanton M. Evans, etc. and shaped these into an analysis showing the contractions and confusions among their basic principles. I think liberals might use these examples to undermine conservative arguments. I offer this information to liberals who may not be that familiar with the basic tenets of conservatism.

(I had trouble putting up the full nineteen pages and shall try to put the essay up in chunks).

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Monday April 23, 2007 · 9:19 AM PDT

2007/04/23 · 09:19

Having recently completed writing an essay about conservatism: "Collateral Damage - The Limits of Faith: Do Conservatives Accept War, Poverty and Inequality as the Price of Conservatism?" (The answer is yes), I would like to turn my attention to an exposition about what liberalism is.

Thinking off the top of my head, this would probably include some history of liberalism; the connection between liberalism and the Democratic Party; the world view of liberalism; achievements of liberalism; perhaps the axioms inherent in liberalism.

Will the readers of Daily Kos kindly help me out with some recommendations about books you know of that are good sources for the exposition of liberalism. Thanks.

"Supporting Our Troops" is a ruse

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Thursday March 15, 2007 · 11:11 AM PDT

2007/03/15 · 11:11

I wish Democrats would have the courage to stand up, unanimously, and call attention to conservative illogic.

Bush decided on a policy to invade Iraq and, so, troops became present in Iraq because of the policy, following the policy. Bush decided on a policy of "staying the course" and, so, the presence of troops in Iraq was a consequence of that policy decision. Their continued presence came after the policy decision. Bush decided on a "surge" policy and sent more troops to Iraq. The presence of troops in Iraq now follows after the policy decision.

Policy decisions were the justification for putting troops in Iraq. Today, conservatives are reversing this timing sequence and claiming that the presence of the troops are the justification for the presence of the troops. This is like saying that your justification for commiting incest again is that you've already commited incest.

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Thursday March 08, 2007 · 2:04 PM PST

2007/03/08 · 14:04

Some, if not most, posters on DailyKos exhibit the characteristics that I deplore in conservatives. Look, everyone is an American. We have different viewpoints and our individual viewpoints are legitmate.

The ideal liberal attitude, in my view, is that every American should get to think and behave in the way they choose. People who want to get an abortion can get one and those who don't want to get one shouldn't be forced to do so.
(Up to the point where we bump up against what other people choose to do, and there's the rub.

We have a lot of people in this country who are conservative and liberals should support their ability to behave as conservatives (up to the rubbing point). We shouldn't treat conservatives as second class citizens, or call them dumb or mean. (Let them do that to us if that's what turns them on).

The same goes for blue dogs. They are Americans. Liberals should acknowedge their existence: they are here. We should acknowedge the validity of their viewpoints, the same as we acknowledge our own.

Liberalism should be about a ground up society. Conservatism is about authoritarianism. Bashing blue dogs is authoritarian. (And by my own logic, I suppose, liberals should be able to choose to be authoritarian if they so choose).

Choice, Human Nature and Liberty

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Wednesday February 28, 2007 · 11:16 AM PST

2007/02/28 · 11:16

We've been documenting the contradictions in conservatism in conservatives own words. Among the contradictions are the interactions between between conservative theory about choice, human nature and liberty.

Conservatives love choice, as long as it is a choice they approve of. If they don't approve of your choice they approve of using the police power of the State to coerce you into not making that choice.

Liberty is the pre-condition to being able to make choices, but people can only make virtuous choices if liberty is total and not circumscribed by the State.

Finally, human nature, according to conservatives, is immutable. This leads to questions of how free we are to make choices or does our human nature determine our choices.

We use a long quotation from a Ronald Reagan speech to demonstrate how he avoided addressing these contradictions.

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Tuesday February 27, 2007 · 12:34 PM PST

2007/02/27 · 12:34

If you haven't come across the political debates on Catholic sites you're missing some interesting debates.

I cam across something this morning that I'd missed the first time I tried to research the - attributed to William Buckley but actually coined by Garry Wills - epigram, "Mater Si, Magristra No" in the July 29, 1961 issue of "National Review."

Some time previously - not sure if it was 1961 or a few years earlier - one of the Popes had issued an encyclical on Catholic social teaching, which struck Buckley as having socialist leanings.

Soi

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Monday February 26, 2007 · 10:52 AM PST

2007/02/26 · 10:52

We began our research on self-referencing conservative thought and theory thinking we knew the achilles heel of conservatism; the way in to unravel conservatism's convoluted theories and demonstrate its contradictions.

The conservative notion of "cause and effect" we thought was the way in.(Having jousted with conservative talk radio hosts I've experienced first hand their ability to defend their first false premise with a second false premise and the second with a third.) Expose their false notion of cause and effect and everything unravels.

But as we went along we found that although cause and effect was a major error in conservative theory other premises were just as fundamental if not more so.

One of these stems from Eric Voegelin's concept of Gnosticism. He claims that trying to make any improvements or progress in our secular history takes us farther away from God, and is an attempt an immanentizing heaven here on earth.

Logically, this leads to a belief that we should do nothing. While this extreme view is not often espoused the attitude appears consistently in conservative theory.

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Friday February 23, 2007 · 9:25 AM PST

2007/02/23 · 09:25

Conservatives have trouble explaining the existence of what they call "The State," meaning a centralized national government; this includes most vehemently what they call "The Welfare State;" and represents a fundamental bewilderment about why history doesn't occur the way they think it ought to.

While conservatives will say that individual liberty is the highest value, when push comes to shove the justification of the individual's existence is always to perpetuate the existence of The State.

We explore this in more detail below.

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Challenging conservative principles is our greatest opportunity

Part Four: What's Wrong With Collectivism?

Part Three: The Rhetoric Of Individualism

Part Two: Capitalism Destroys Tradition

An Essay On Conservative Principles

What Are The Best Books About Liberalism?

"Supporting Our Troops" is a ruse

Bashing Blue Dogs is Unliberal

Choice, Human Nature and Liberty

Reprise: Mater Si, Magistra No

Nothing Can Be Done But Do It Conservatively

Conservative Confusion about the "State"