"Commonsense Conservatism"

[dank69]

A bold play Cotton, let's see how it works out for him:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/how-republican-arkansas-gov-asa-hutchinson-learned-to-embrace-mask-mandates-090039278.html

A slightly less shitbag politician is still a shitbag, and I am guessing he is going to eventually cave when the rest of the shitbags choke him out for daring to counter the GOP's decent into authoritarianism.

 

[Moonbeam]

I don't know. I wonder if this guy would have withdrawn from Afghanistan in the shit stain way Biden did. There are things to be said in favor of common sense conservatism depending what that really is as compared to what it should be.

 

[dank69]

I don't know. I wonder if this guy would have withdrawn from Afghanistan in the shit stain way Biden did. There are things to be said in favor of common sense conservatism depending what that really is as compared to what it should be.

I've barely paid attention to the Afghanistan mess. I'd assumed that Biden pulled the last of our troops out and then the government collapsed before we could get the civvies out. But now I'm reading that our troops have not been pulled out and we actually added 5000 more to assist with the drawdown. So maybe someone can articulate exactly what it is that Biden did wrong here?

Oh, and to answer your question: this guy would have stayed in Afghanistan for his 4 or 8 year term and left it for the next guy.

 

[dawp]

commonsense and conservatism is a contradiction of terms.

 

[pauldun170]

Lingo translator
"commonsense conservatism"
commonsense conservatism: Term used by idiots who reject "Expertise" when their judgement is challenged. "We don't need any education. Common sense tells me that them womens can't get pregnant in pool water!!"

Bullshit terms like this will be familiar to those of us who lived through the compassionate conservatism era
Compassionate conservatism: "I hear you bitching and while I will refuse to do anything to help you directly and I will do my best preventing any of my tax money being spent on your little whatever problem you are making up, I will pray for you and stuff."

Assholes in the GOP are constantly trying to come up with shitty catch phrases

 

[nakedfrog]

commonsense and conservatism is a contradiction of terms.

Not inherently, but certainly accurate if we're just going by the GOP over the last few decades.

 

[Moonbeam]

Not inherently, but certainly accurate if we're just going by the GOP over the last few decades.

Conservative thinking, as I see it, is a survival strategy that bypasses the slow process of logic in favor of instant action. This is good common sense when that approach becomes human conservative thinking when a snapping twig in the dark could be a lion. It is insane when applied to Covid masks and vaccines. Conservatives are better prepared to deal with evils like the Taliban because they are very much like them. They can't be trusted and they don't trust anybody else. Liberals were fools to trust the Afghan government and the Taliban. You could see the result a mile away. It will cost them in 2022 and 2024 is what I fear. Stupid bastards are driven to shoot themselves in the head.

 

[dank69]

Conservative thinking, as I see it, is a survival strategy that bypasses the slow process of logic in favor of instant action. This is good common sense when that approach becomes human conservative thinking when a snapping twig in the dark could be a lion. It is insane when applied to Covid masks and vaccines. Conservatives are better prepared to deal with evils like the Taliban because they are very much like them. They can't be trusted and they don't trust anybody else. Liberals were fools to trust the Afghan government and the Taliban. You could see the result a mile away. It will cost them in 2022 and 2024 is what I fear. Stupid bastards are driven to shoot themselves in the head.

Afghanistan is not going to be on Americans' minds in 2022. If anything, Dems will be able to campaign on getting us out.

 

[pmv]

A bold play Cotton, let's see how it works out for him:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/how-republican-arkansas-gov-asa-hutchinson-learned-to-embrace-mask-mandates-090039278.html

A slightly less shitbag politician is still a shitbag, and I am guessing he is going to eventually cave when the rest of the shitbags choke him out for daring to counter the GOP's decent into authoritarianism.

Puzzled how the interviewer starts that off by declaring that a 'bedrock principle' of conservativism is "individual freedom". Since when? Has anyone told that to the Taliban or the Iranian Mullahs (as conservative as they come, surely?). How about the die-hard Maoists left in China, or Stalin-fans in the former-USSR?

The bedrock principle of conservatism is fear of change and distrust of both novelty and the use of reason.

 

[Moonbeam]

Puzzled how the interviewer starts that off by declaring that a 'bedrock principle' of conservativism is "individual freedom". Since when? Has anyone told that to the Taliban or the Iranian Mullahs (as conservative as they come, surely?). How about the die-hard Maoists left in China, or Stalin-fans in the former-USSR?

The bedrock principle of conservatism is fear of change and distrust of both novelty and the use of reason.

Conservatives survived childhood torture to make them conform by knuckling under. What they fear is that liberals will rock the boat and bring all that repressed trauma to consciousness. The difference between conservatives and liberals is that conservatives joined the team torture and liberals joined the resistance. Both are fucked but in different ways as neither will remember and die to the game. The truth is always a third way, the resolution of opposites at a higher level of understanding.

You have perhaps assigned a value judgment to those who are broken different from those who resist as their way to survive when the wisdom to know why one went one way and another another way is unknowable, at least to my mind.

 

[pmv]

commonsense and conservatism is a contradiction of terms.

I don't see anything positive about claims to 'common sense' in any case. I hate that term. It's nearly meaningless, it's only ever invoked when people have no evidence or rational argument for their position but are just basing it on the unexamined prejudices they acquired growing up. Then they just declare it to be 'common sense' meaning 'don't ask me to justify or support it with evidence because I haven't got any, just accept it because I say so'.

Conservatism is more of a mixed-bag. Sometimes I sympathise with conservatism, indeed sometimes I _am_ quite conservative, but often it's an exasperating trait. Especially in aesthetics or design, when you come up with something new and better or more interesting and everyone resists it because it's slightly different from what they are used to. In politics it almost always leads to disaster. For one thing conservatives might not be violent themselves but it tends to breed extremism - most radical Islamists or violent Incels or far-right terrorists are products of conservative backgrounds and upbringing.

 

[dank69]

I don't see anything positive about claims to 'common sense' in any case. I hate that term. It's nearly meaningless, it's only ever invoked when people have no evidence or rational argument for their position but are just basing it on the unexamined prejudices they acquired growing up. Then they just declare it to be 'common sense' meaning 'don't ask me to justify or support it with evidence because I haven't got any, just accept it because I say so'.

Conservatism is more of a mixed-bag. Sometimes I sympathise with conservatism, indeed sometimes I _am_ quite conservative, but often it's an exasperating trait. Especially in aesthetics or design, when you come up with something new and better or more interesting and everyone resists it because it's slightly different from what they are used to. In politics it almost always leads to disaster. For one thing conservatives might not be violent themselves but it tends to breed extremism - most radical Islamists or violent Incels or far-right terrorists are products of conservative backgrounds and upbringing.

Conservatism makes no sense to me. If we think something will be better, try it. If it sucks, change it back. Obviously there are exceptions, but the insane fear of every new thing needs to stop.

 

[kage69]

Should pan out about as well as 'compassionate conservatism' did.

Imagine if 'conservation' as they know it actually applied to American lives. Or the environment. Or equal rights protections.

 

[pmv]

Speaking of conservatives

‘Bleeding for Jesus’: book tells story of QC who pitilessly abused young men

A moral crusader was accused of targeting public schoolboys at Christian camps and administering ‘horrific’ beatings

www.theguardian.com

A new book, Bleeding for Jesus, tells the story of Smyth, the moral crusader who fought legal battles for “Christian values” in Britain’s courts while allegedly mercilessly abusing young men at his Hampshire home, and the Iwerne Trust, which organised the “Bash camps” that were his hunting ground and which turned a blind eye to his activities.

The Iwerne project, which Graystone describes as a cult, recruited “young men who were the brightest and best from the most elite schools in the country to win them for the Christian faith, to create a church of purity within the wider Church of England”, he said.

It produced many of the most prominent conservative evangelical leaders within the C of E over the past 40 years. Many see themselves as “the guardians of the true gospel against the forces of liberalism”.

 

[pmv]

Conservatism makes no sense to me. If we think something will be better, try it. If it sucks, change it back. Obviously there are exceptions, but the insane fear of every new thing needs to stop.

Playing devil's advocate a bit, but sometimes I can see merit in some kinds of conservatism. People do seem to psychologically need a degree of continuity, in order to build communities or maintain a sense of identity. It bugs me, for example, that all the schools I went to in my childhood have since not only ceased to exist as institutions, but been physically demolished. The area I grew up in is unrecognisable to me, both phsyically and socially - it's been taken over by foreigners (by which I mean English people from outside the M25, generally with private-school accents). When a parent looked into their family history they found every single home their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents had ever lived in no longer physically existed.

All that is solid melts into air.

Areas with long-settled populations tend to be spared some of the social problems that come with churn and transience. Obviously there are upsides and downsides to that, as anyone whose ever been 'the only X in the village' will tell you (I used to know someone who grew up half-African mixed-race in Eastern Europe and was quite relieved to come to London and find everyone was 'mixed'). But there are also benefits to a lack of changes.

The other way I sometimes agree with conservatives is in distrusting mad, over-ambitious schemes and grand projects, that never work out as advertised. The invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan being cases in point. Or a great many government IT projects that went way over budget and failed to deliver (ironically, most of them promoted by the 'Conservative' party).

I mean, the 'Conservative' party is anything but conservative. It's a Liberal party, or was, before Boris started to turn it into a populist nationalist party.

At one point we had three liberal parties - the Conservatives, the Lib Dems and Blair's New Labour. What a wide range of choice.

 

[pmv]

What's remarkable is how bad the so-called 'Conservative Party' is at actually conserving anything worth keeping. They're technically the "Conservative and Unionist" party, and yet, having failed to preserve anything of value in the country, may preside over the dissolution of the Union.

 

[Zorba]

Puzzled how the interviewer starts that off by declaring that a 'bedrock principle' of conservativism is "individual freedom". Since when? Has anyone told that to the Taliban or the Iranian Mullahs (as conservative as they come, surely?). How about the die-hard Maoists left in China, or Stalin-fans in the former-USSR?

The bedrock principle of conservatism is fear of change and distrust of both novelty and the use of reason.

Funny, because of conservative fear, I spent years getting my balls rubbed at the airport in order to take milk through for my toddler. Doesn't seem like individual freedom to me.

 

[pmv]

Lingo translator
"commonsense conservatism"
commonsense conservatism: Term used by idiots who reject "Expertise" when their judgement is challenged. "We don't need any education. Common sense tells me that them womens can't get pregnant in pool water!!"

Bullshit terms like this will be familiar to those of us who lived through the compassionate conservatism era
Compassionate conservatism: "I hear you bitching and while I will refuse to do anything to help you directly and I will do my best preventing any of my tax money being spent on your little whatever problem you are making up, I will pray for you and stuff."

Assholes in the GOP are constantly trying to come up with shitty catch phrases

Alliteration seems to be the most important thing for them. Coming soon - 'credible conservatism' and 'creative conservatism'.

 

[Moonbeam]

Alliteration seems to be the most important thing for them. Coming soon - 'credible conservatism' and 'creative conservatism'.

Low lever thinking , reflex and knee jerk reactions, came long before reason as a survival mechanism.

 

[Stokely]

I know a lot of so-called "Conservatives" and not one of them does or says the things they supposedly stand for. Small government? That's a laugh, just don't include "moral" issues or the military among other things in your definition of "small". They don't really deserve the use of that word, that should be reserved for people that don't want to let corporations run roughshod over the environment. The only thing "Conservatives" want to conserve is their place at the top of the hill--in that sense, sure I guess it makes sense. They all seem to pine for a mythical 1955 when undesirables knew their place and life was swell (no pesky regulations to spoil the capitalistic fun).

Find me a real moderate Conservative and I'll go look for an actual Socialist or Communist government (hint: no such thing, other than in name only.)

 

[sandorski]

I know a lot of so-called "Conservatives" and not one of them does or says the things they supposedly stand for. Small government? That's a laugh, just don't include "moral" issues or the military among other things in your definition of "small". They don't really deserve the use of that word, that should be reserved for people that don't want to let corporations run roughshod over the environment. The only thing "Conservatives" want to conserve is their place at the top of the hill--in that sense, sure I guess it makes sense. They all seem to pine for a mythical 1955 when undesirables knew their place and life was swell (no pesky regulations to spoil the capitalistic fun).

Find me a real moderate Conservative and I'll go look for an actual Socialist or Communist government (hint: no such thing, other than in name only.)

They Conserved so hard they distilled Conservatism into one thing, Power.

 

[Fenixgoon]

I'm not sure there's such a thing as "common sense conservatism" because everything that is "common sense" in the conservative mindset is either blatantly wrong or screws some segment of the population over.
The only thing I could in theory get behind is "small government" when it comes to individual habits (abortion, recreational drugs) - which means the government stays out of that shit and doesn't throw people in jail for it.
But in practice conservatives are all too happy to insert the government to "protect freedom(s)", whatever that actually means.

 

[HomerJS]

I'm not sure there's such a thing as "common sense conservatism" because everything that is "common sense" in the conservative mindset is either blatantly wrong or screws some segment of the population over.
The only thing I could in theory get behind is "small government" when it comes to individual habits (abortion, recreational drugs) - which means the government stays out of that shit and doesn't throw people in jail for it.
But in practice conservatives are all too happy to insert the government to "protect freedom(s)", whatever that actually means.

They can't get to common sense until they can manage to stop lying

 

[VRAMdemon]

Meh .. I don't see Hutchinson out debunking these CT about the virus in public and taking to task all the batshit coming from his colleagues.. The only real "commonsense Conservative" I see is Adam Kinzinger. With maybe a few other honorable mentions

 

[cytg111]

Conservative thinking, as I see it, is a survival strategy that bypasses the slow process of logic in favor of instant action. This is good common sense when that approach becomes human conservative thinking when a snapping twig in the dark could be a lion. It is insane when applied to Covid masks and vaccines. Conservatives are better prepared to deal with evils like the Taliban because they are very much like them. They can't be trusted and they don't trust anybody else. Liberals were fools to trust the Afghan government and the Taliban. You could see the result a mile away. It will cost them in 2022 and 2024 is what I fear. Stupid bastards are driven to shoot themselves in the head.

True conservatives would be awesome at handling covid, personal responsibility, stepping up, doing your bit etc.
Right?
Trumpism <> conservatism.