Is "Conservative" a thing?

Forking a discussion from the thread Black in America

>MartyBrandon: Interesting. We're getting off of the topic of "Black in America" here, but for me the clue is in the name: "conservative" is about resisting any change until it is absolutely forced upon you and then complaining about it until you die, at which point future conservatives will adopt the changed state as the thing that absolutely must not change. That's the through line of conservativism, historically - it's why Teddy Roosevelt's founding of the National Parks is in line with Burke's qualms about the French revolution and the American loyalists' fears of independence on the one side and the bigots who resisted emancipation and then later civil rights. All of these are conservative positions, in that they are about never changing the state of things that existed when one reached adulthood. At least, that's what I learned about conservatives when I was a kid in school, and it's more or less what conservatives say about themselves when they're trying to make themselves presentable in polite society, though they usually put a slightly more self-congratulatory spin on it.

Now, if that's not what "conservative" means, then I'd be interested in knowing what you consider to be "conservative principles". I'm not trying to make a trick question out of this, and I know there isn't going to be a cohesive answer that covers everyone who is considered or who considers themselves a conservative, just as we'd both struggle to find a globally-acceptable characterization of liberalism or progressivism. (or should I say "liberism" and "progressism", in line with the weirdly malformed "conservatism"?) But it would be interesting to know how you characterize the conservative world view if it isn't about a knee-jerk fear of change (or, in other words, a conviction that the world is just fine as it is, thank you very much)

But perhaps this should be split off into its own thread though: is "conservative" a world view (a general position about how politics should happen, eg, "progress should be slowed down as much as possible and resisted by any means necessary") or is it just a set of particular preferences about policy and culture which may be continuously deformed over time, eg, "boo abortion, yay guns, down with woke" in 2023, but something else entirely in 1973 or 2073? And if it's a world view, is it possible to characterize that world view in a way that is both acceptable to conservatives and also predicts the positions held by actual conservatives?

You could ask the same question about "liberal" or "progressive", of course

>1 kiparsky:

One aspect that I think you're overlooking in your third paragraph is that conservative attitudes and policies almost always arise among the privileged and powerful even if, as with Jim Crow, for many the privilege and power exist only in relation to that class with none.

>1 kiparsky: Thanks for creating a fork for this tangent.

"So, did my argument about the need to include Black Lives Matter (and by extension, the long history of the use of authorized and semi-authorized violence to control Black populations) make sense to you?"

No argument about the need to teach the long history of prejudicial violence used in law enforcement, and that's where the focus should be, not on BLM. You have it backwards. It's like saying, we need to teach about PETA and by extension animal rights. Our justice system has many problems that disproportionately impact the Black community, and there are statistics to back this up; however, the claims of BLM are controversial and not well supported. It should be an addendum, if it is included at at, and its prominence in the original curriculum suggests ideological bias.

"Now, if that's not what "conservative" means, then I'd be interested in knowing what you consider to be "conservative principles"."

Please see my previous response. I defined what conservative principles are and from where they are derived. To be clear, I'm referring to small "c" conservatism, the ideology separate from any political party. Perhaps the confusion is that "conservative" has now become somewhat synonymous with the GOP, but that is a recent phenomenon -- a few generations back knowing that a person was democrat or republican was not informative about whether they were conservative or progressive.

That conservatism, the ideology not the GOP, harkens back to our nation's founding principles is not my idea. I grappled with these labels too. It's why I referenced Fukuyama. Jonah Goldberg also writes a lot on this topic.

This notion that conservatives are the baddies denying equality and justice until the noble progressives come to the rescue is both wrong and arrogant. Are your individual liberties being denied? Look to conservatism. The founders took that seriously, and there are strong protections, either existing or that can be derived from conservative principles. Want to build a strong economy that builds more wealth than the world has ever known? Conservatism has you covered. Do you think we need a social safety net for those who do not thrive in the harsh competitive environment of capitalism? Conservatism is less helpful here since it is about individual rights, specifically rights that protect you from the government (a real problem back in the day) and not about guaranteeing your happiness or well-being. Is there a need for collective action to combat climate change? Progressivism is probably needed for this one too.

>3 MartyBrandon: Want to build a strong economy that builds more wealth than the world has ever known? Conservatism has you covered

I don't think that statement stands up to serious scrutiny. But I do agree with the implication in the latter part of your post that we actually need a mix, or a balance perhaps, of conservative and progressive principles. Indeed that has been the balance in many European states for much of my lifetime, and it worked pretty well.

>3 MartyBrandon: I'd like to leave the two topics separate, so I'll respond to the Black Lives part in the original thread if you don't mind. That was the purpose of forking the discussion, after all.

When you say you defined conservative principles, I'm guessing you mean this: "equality and the rule of law; the safeguarding of individual liberties from government encroachment; and free-market capitalism."

That's really hard to square with what's been going around under the flag of conservativism for decades, though. Equality and the rule of law has been opposed by people calling themselves conservatives for a long time - there are many examples, but the reaction to the civil rights movement is an obvious one (conservatives routinely and wantonly broke many laws in order to deny equality and civil liberties to Black people, because they sought to change the existing order - and, to >2 librorumamans:'s point, to threaten the power and privilege preserved by institutionalized racism). Perhaps no true conservative opposed civil rights in this way - but in that case, who were those people, and who were the people supporting them and protecting them?

The "war on drugs" was a decades-long government encroachment on civil liberties, whose effect, and some would say whose purpose, was to deny equality to Black men in this country, and during the '60s, to give legal cover for harassment and disruption of the anti-war movement, which is stretching the idea of "rule of law" pretty far. For a time, some honorable people on the right opposed this, but that was never a common position for people calling themselves "conservatives". Are you going to say that no true conservative supported the war on drugs? If so, that eliminates a lot of conservatives at a stroke - and it's by no means the last cut we're making.

People calling themselves conservatives have opposed equality for women and the rule of law and individual liberties - a three-fer! - in opposing abortion and in seeking for fifty years to overturn the rule of law in this country, in the form of Roe v Wade. We have to remember in this context that the misogyny movement which the conservatives fostered in order to build their base operated with no regard to the law, committing multiple murders and maintaining public death lists to encourage free-lance enforcement of their beliefs contrary to law. Presumably no true conservative supported this lawless movement, but then we have to ask ourselves, who were those people who strove with such violence to deny women the individual liberty to own their own bodies. They were surely not liberals or progressives - if they were not conservatives, who is this third force who works in American politics with no name and a strikingly conservative-looking face?

So, we have very little left of conservativism if we're going to limit the category to just those who accept your principles. I have to ask, then, if these are your principles, who are your conservatives? Or, like Marx, do you have some other principles that we could look at?

> Are your individual liberties being denied? Look to conservatism.

Yes, I do. :)
See above - the only civil liberty that conservatives seem to be able to find is the one about carrying weapons, all the others seem to be optional. Okay, I tell a lie - they've also been really good on the fifth amendment, I suppose that comes with practice.
Maybe they're really strong on your right to not have British soldiers quartered in your home. We'll give them that one, by default.

> The founders took that seriously, and there are strong protections, either existing or that can be derived from conservative principles.

Again, your claiming of the founders as "conservative" does seem to square much better with the definition you reject (the blanket presumption that the current established order is the Good) than with the one you propose. After all, the founders were obviously not much constrained the rule of law, and their concern for equality and civil liberties was pretty limited, and they had little to say about "free market capitalism" - which makes sense, since Wealth of Nations was only published in 1776, and the dominant economic theorizing of the time was still pretty pre-Smith.

I'm going to suggest that it's probably not going to work very well to try to map "the founders" onto today's political strains. If you want your conservative principles to go back that far, we can try, but we haven't even got anything that works for the present and the recent past, so maybe we should hold off on the founders for now.

Speaking of the founding fathers, I thought Revolution was considered radical, not conservative. Correct me if I’m wrong.

>6 2wonderY:

Only if it fails.

We should stop looking at our founders as some kind of Gods. Ben Franklin famously says that we have a republic if we can hold on to it. I don’t see his idea of a republic as very desirable. In his time what that meant was a government exclusively created for white male landowners. They were the only ones who were allowed a vote….the only ones with political power. I much prefer a democracy which is inclusive to everybody even if conservatives always seem to be at work at excluding those who aren’t white and male from participating in the political process.

I might add I have problems with the loyalty test of our pledge of allegiance particularly the lines ‘and to the republic’ (see above) and ‘one nation under God’ (a line that was added in the 1950’s after a campaign by Christian evangelicals).

Conservative today = possessing a 1950's mindset. Conservatives are people who see the protests of white nationalist citizens in America to be justified and patriotic. On the other hand, they label protests of black or brown Americans as anti-American. They look back fondly at the period when blacks and women knew their places.

>4 John5918: Capitalism. Our founding fathers (I'm in the US) were some of the first readers of Adam Smith. Though brutal for workers at times, it is a fabulous engine for building the wealth of a nation.

>5 kiparsky: And one could cite numerous ways in which progressives actually behave regressively, but we can still identify principles, though less constrained than conservatism, that would be considered progressive. We don't need to go into an exhaustive list of historic events. The US was founded by Enlightenment thinkers who established the baseline for our version of conservatism. The emphasis is on the individual with strong limits on government and free markets. It is summarized here under "Liberal conservatism":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism

If you are the sort of person, as I am, who is generally open-minded on social issues but believes in merit and personal responsibility as well as the power of free markets, then someone might label you a "classical liberal", though the political shift in the last couple of decades might also have some trying to brand you as a conservative, which would be true in an ideological sense just not in the way that "conservative" and "liberal" are bandied about in political discourse.

>10 MartyBrandon:

It would be off topic to get into a detailed critique of capitalism, but I'm just flagging the fact that this opinion of yours that capitalism is "a fabulous engine for building the wealth of a nation" is not shared by huge segments of the world's people, politicians, economists and academics, without even getting into a discussion on whether "building the wealth" of "a nation" is an appropriate tool for our interconnected world at large and for the environment.

>12 John5918: Wealth is measurable. It's not an opinion. You can argue about the tradeoffs that come with it, but it is indisputable that the world's wealthiest nations utilize capitalist economics.

>13 MartyBrandon:

And what's so great about being one of the world's wealthiest nations? Maybe wealth is measurable, but first one has to define what "wealth" actually is, and then decide how desirable it is, or at least its pros and cons, or tradeoffs if you like. One also has to consider what is being destroyed by "wealth" and by the unfettered free market model which you believe creates wealth, and also the dangerous divisions which it creates. Your uncritical statement in favour of capitalism just doesn't stand up to scrutiny in the real world.

>14 John5918: For every billionaire in the United States there are several hundred thousand people who are down and out economically. People want to hear about the success stories more. Obscene wealth is more attractive to their eyes but it's a crap way of building a shared society. When does more and more go past the point of what anyone truly needs? My chemo costs about $25,000 a month. I'm lucky....that's all taken by my insurance company. I had the good fortune to work for the Post Office and I could carry that insurance into retirement. There are loads of people here in the United States that cannot afford health care. I have no idea how someone could afford to pay for my medication out of pocket. It's not fair and it's just an example of how easy it is for someone to fall between the cracks but for many people of means or some means they don't want to hear about that. They think that if you're poor it's because you deserve to be. They'd rather look up to the billionaires than look down to the poverty stricken.

>15 lriley:

You remind me of the Tolstoy short story, "How Much Land Does a Man Need?"

>11 MartyBrandon: And one could cite numerous ways in which progressives actually behave regressively, but we can still identify principles, though less constrained than conservatism, that would be considered progressive. We don't need to go into an exhaustive list of historic events.

You seem to be missing my point, let me try again. You offered three items as principles defining conservativism, which it turns out are incompatible with the observed behavior of almost everyone who has called themselves a conservative in living memory.
So when you say these are "principles", either you mean these are just a couple of things which conservatives (like everyone) think are not bad ideas but don't feel bound to stick to and don't feel ashamed to violate, or you mean that almost nobody who calls themselves a conservative actually is one, and a lot of people who don't call themselves conservatives actually are.

By your definition, the civil rights movement was largely a conservative movement and none of those who opposed it were conservatives. Maybe you like the sound of that, but it simply doesn't describe the ordinary use of the word, so if that's really what you mean then again we have to go back and figure out what the hell you actually mean when you say conservative.

I'm not even touching the founding fathers stuff, nor the free-market stuff yet, because I'd really like to deal with this problem first. It should be pretty simple, so let's just get it done: Do you have a way to characterize conservative principles that actually lets some conservatives in, or are you intentionally offering a definition that omits most people who have called themselves conservatives in living memory and drafts in a lot of people that are generally considered to live elsewhere on the political spectrum? Or, I suppose the third choice would be to give up and just say that "conservative" is just a team that people play on, not a coherent school of thought. That might actually be the correct answer!

Having power over others is the only conservative trait that has withstood the test of time.

>14 John5918: I'm not a philosopher nor do I believe that economic wealth should be the only measure of a country's prosperity, and I don't believe that capitalism is without its flaws. My statement is that capitalism is effective for producing economic wealth. Full stop.

>17 kiparsky: I don't understand the purpose of this thread. Broadly speaking, conservatism within an American context is a matter of historical record. You should instead get a book by a reputable political scientist (I recommend Fukuyama). It's not as though I'm going to say, "Gee, that Stanford political science professor I read was all wrong. Thank goodness for the random guy on LibraryThing who cleared it all up." What are you going to debate next, the Pythagorean theorem?

>20 MartyBrandon: I like to know what people think, and why they think what they think. I have so far found nobody who can present a coherent picture of what conservatives believe and why they believe it, so I figured I'd ask an intelligent and reasonable conservative to reason it out with me.

What are you going to debate next, the Pythagorean theorem?
I don't have any questions about the Pythagorean theorem, but if I find that a mathematical concept doesn't make sense to me, yes, I will typically ask about it, for example on math.stackexchange.com or in one of the more conversational forums that I haunt. And usually it isn't a problem, because math people tend to be able to give an account of what they believe about, say, graph theory or whatever it is I'm curious about, and I come away with the understanding I was looking for, sometimes after asking a few clarifying questions where I have trouble.

You use the word "debate" - this generally isn't a "debate", since we're not trying to win or to make the other person lose, it's a collaborative exercise in which we try to come to a shared understanding about something that we find interesting. Usually, since I'm not such a great mathematician, that shared understanding is the one the other person started with, and I see that as a big win for me, because I get to learn something.

If I'm honest, I think that trying to characterize a political ideology - any ideology! - in the way you're doing isn't likely to be blessed with much success, but it's the approach you've chosen so I'd like to see you play out your hand. After all, I might be wrong, and that would be great, because then I'd have learned something.

>21 kiparsky: As much as anyone, I appreciate a spirit of inquiry with the aim of arriving at a greater truth, but one must choose the right tool for the problem. Discussions and debates are best suited for complex problems that have no clear answer: Will Putin remain in power if Russia loses the war in Ukraine? How best might we address inequity in the US? etc.

The question of American conservatism can best be answered by a scholar. I am not a scholar in this area, nor a conservative (at least not a republican). The ideas I posted were taken from books I've read in recent years. In regards to racism among conservatives, I can speak from the lived experience of having been raised by conservatives in the southern US, but for all else I posted what I could remember from my reading.

The fact that you seem even less informed than I, while casually labeling conservatives as racists, should give you a moment of pause. If I characterized all persons taking part in BLM as marxist criminals, then I believe you would readily identify that as a distortion, but you seem willfully blind to any nuance when it comes to conservatives.

>22 MartyBrandon: Discussions and debates are best suited for complex problems that have no clear answer

Well, so far I have had no clear answer to the complex question of how one can characterize conservativism as an ideology, or whether that's even the right question to ask, so I think this question qualifies. :) But if you want to leave it there, that's fine with me.

casually labeling conservatives as racists

I'm sorry, can you point me to what you're referring to here?

>23 kiparsky: "I'm sorry, can you point me to what you're referring to here?"

"Far from being a critique of an "ideological slant", the changes were an ideologically driven rejection of African American studies as a discipline, pushed through by the Sleepy movement, driven I suspect by a desire to rub the tummies of their Lost Cause contingent. It's just another dog-whistle, really."

". . . he knows damned well that he couldn't be elected as dogcatcher without the racist vote . . ."

You seem like an intelligent person, but someone whose mind is ideologically captured. At least DeSantis is pandering to a political constituency. You should ask yourself about your own motivations. Championing the rights of the oppressed is noble, while virtue signaling is not only deplorable but works against the very principles you profess. Even if I knew nothing of conservatism, a statement like

". . . since the nature of conservativism is simply to resist change . . ."

is obviously wrong. It would imply that conservatives oppose change merely for the sake of opposition, but you can easily find conservatives actively endorsing change so long as it agrees with their principles. If you don't know anything about those principles then you really have no business commenting on those people. Same applies in reverse for those who rant about progressives while never bothering to understand liberal ideology.

I think I was pretty precise in your first two quotes. Desantis is going after a particular voting bloc with these actions, and I presume he's getting them. That bloc appreciates a nice blast on the dog whistle. Does this mean that all of his voters are racists? Of course not. It does suggest that he believes that's a critical part of his voter base, without which he cannot win. If you don't like that explanation, the only other oneI can think of is that he likes those voters particularly, or feels some sympathy with them. I said before, I don't think that's the answer, so I have to assume that he's holding his nose and building the coalition that he needs. Ergo, he believes that some part of his coalition feels good when he does racist shit.

The part does not imply anything about the whole, of course. Nothing about the above implies that conservatives in general are racist. That would be a hard thing to say in any case because I still have no idea what makes a conservative a conservative. I only know what I can extrapolate from observation, for example that some people explicitly adopt that label and that others cluster with them.

If you don't know anything about those principles then you really have no business commenting on those people.

Well, I've been asking for a while now to be enlightened on what those principles are. So far, there's been one attempt which didn't work, and then nothing. Are there such principles? Are they ones that can be spelled out? Are they ones that apply to conservatives in general, or just to True Conservatives, and if the latter, how do I know which ones those are?

Since you have some business commenting on these people, clearly you know something about these principles. Please share.

>24 MartyBrandon: virtue signaling is not only deplorable but works against the very principles you profess.

Why? If we live in a society where everyone says that murder is wrong, the children will learn that murder is wrong. There's a bunch of stories about people looking for a hitman to kill their wives turning to a friend who hooked them up with the FBI, or a bartender killing an annoying patron in front of a couple repeat felons, who then turn him into the police. (We just steal stuff, we're not down with killing, they said.) If we tolerated "murder is okay" clubs, people would know who to turn to when they want someone dead. A world where people who think murder is okay don't get to be open about it is a better one.

". . . since the nature of conservativism is simply to resist change . . ."

is obviously wrong. It would imply that conservatives oppose change merely for the sake of opposition, but you can easily find conservatives actively endorsing change so long as it agrees with their principles

I'd say that's obviously true for some definitions of conservativism. Finding people who claim to follow X who don't follow what X teaches is rarely hard; let X be any religion or religious leader, for example. Nor are people who are normally {progressives, libertarians, conservatives} who for some subjects hold a different view rare or inconsistent. We're all more complex than one simple word.

>25 kiparsky: "I think I was pretty precise in your first two quotes. Desantis is going after a particular voting bloc with these actions, and I presume he's getting them. That bloc appreciates a nice blast on the dog whistle. Does this mean that all of his voters are racists? Of course not. "

If you think DeSantis cannot get elected without the "racist vote", then you have implied that racists make up a politically significant slice of his constituency, so you have indeed painted conservatives as racists. And DeSantis is doing the opposite of dog whistling (i.e. using coded language to surreptitiously target a specific group): he is explicitly portraying himself as a culture warrior. He makes this clear with statements like, "Florida is the place where woke goes to die!" -- more like a megaphone than a dog whistle.

"Well, I've been asking for a while now to be enlightened on what those principles are. So far, there's been one attempt which didn't work, and then nothing. Are there such principles?"

Begin with the principle that conservatism and Conservatives (little or big "C") are not all about racism. A lot of us from the South have a racist uncle, that is true, but they are a silent minority that has dwindled rapidly during my lifetime. As someone who dated outside my race and was in an interracial marriage, I can also testify that polls showing high levels of racial acceptance seem to be correct. Ideology has to a large extent replaced race. I've never seen such open disdain as between liberals and Conservatives (polls also show this).

In terms of conservative ideology that is widely professed by American Conservatives, I think previously mentioned limited government. Broadly speaking liberals look to government to fix the ills of society, while Conservatives view government with suspicion and prefer individual or market solutions. Surely, you have seen politicians advocating for "small government" or have heard about their fondness for Ayn Rand?

>26 prosfilaes: "Why? If we live in a society where everyone says that murder is wrong, the children will learn that murder is wrong."

Because you don't solve complex problems with slogans and banners, which is the essence of virtue signaling. You only signal to those around you that you are a team player; that you are on their side. Virtue signaling is done out of self interest, rather than a true concern for solving the problem. It is sometimes necessary to voice an unpopular idea because the path forward is difficult and has no easy answers. Virtue signaling creates conformity, not solutions. And the conformity is not likely to endure since everyone knows they are engaged in groupthink, unlike the commitment one has to a fully understood truth.

"I'd say that's obviously true for some definitions of conservativism."

I'm gonna reiterate that whatever you believe conservatism entails, it is not a mindless attempt to thwart any and all change. Conservatives voted more than 50 times to repeal the Affordable Care Act because it goes against their ideology (i.e. limited government and individual responsibility).

>27 MartyBrandon: Are we to presume that Neo-nazis or Klanners or Militia types or those who sympathize with them don't vote? The those who sympathize I would think would expand those numbers significantly particularly in certain regions of the country. I think we can also pretty much assume that they don't vote for democrats. That these groups of people also tend to be constitutionalists or what they would describe as such, anti-abortion activists, anti-LGBT, anti-BLM via CRT, anti-immigrant, quite often now anti-vaccine, also second amendment advocates to the extremes and climate skeptics and often with links to christian evangelics or hard line catholicism. There are also people enamored with Qanon (some millions of them), election deniers (millions more of them) and other conspiracy groups or get a kick out of people in groups such as the Proud Boys.

I think DeSantis is aiming at all of that and while there may be some connection still with the classic big business Wall St. types these people are mainly just a source for campaign funding.....he'll give them what he can but he needs to feed the resentments of his main base of voters first. That anyway is what I see happening in Florida at the present time.

>27 MartyBrandon: If you think DeSantis cannot get elected without the "racist vote", then you have implied that racists make up a politically significant slice of his constituency, so you have indeed painted conservatives as racists.

I believe there's a failure of logic: the second conclusion does not follow from the first.

>27 MartyBrandon: If you think DeSantis cannot get elected without the "racist vote", then you have implied that racists make up a politically significant slice of his constituenc

A "politicially significant slice" is not necessarily or even usually a majority. A bloc of voters which can make or deny a majority is a politically significant slice, and when electorates are close to evenly split, as they are now, there will be many potentially significant minorities on both sides. This explains why the "ordinary voters" making up the bulk of the electorate often feel that they are taken for granted and not represented: politicians are in fact taking for granted that the "ordinary" conservative voter is going to vote for the conservative that they see as most likely to win, so they appeal to interest groups who can secure them the extra couple of percentage points that put them over the top.

So, no, the fact that Desantis needs to bring a slice of racists on side in order to gain a majority does not imply that conservatives in general hold racist beliefs. Which is good, because if your argument were correct, then you would have to concede (as you've said) that conservatives are in general racist, which is obviously not true, and you'd have a contradiction on your hands.

Begin with the principle that conservatism and Conservatives (little or big "C") are not all about racism.

You're the one who's been making the case that Desantis' policy choices imply that conservatives are generally racist. I hope I've convinced you that this is not the case, and we can move on from that.

I think previously mentioned limited government.
Perhaps you did in passing, but it wasn't one of the principles in the set you offered earlier.

Of course, you've again got a problem with this, since conservatives are all about an activist government intruding in the private lives of ordinary people. For example the control of women's bodies by the state, the drug war, the desire to control immigration, the opposition to gay marriage, the whole trans panic, etc., etc., ad nauseum.
You can't believe in a "limited government" and demand that the government interfere in individual's right to own their own body, to live where they want to live (as long as they pay their taxes and obey the laws, both of which immigrants do at much greater rates than native-born citizens), to marry the person they want to spend their lives with and who they want to have nearby when they come to their end, or to decide who they are and how they present themselves to the world.

So, no, limited government is not consistent with conservative policies in the real world.

However, since I've mentioned gay marriage, I do want to point out that gay marriage was anathema to conservatives back when it was a thing that hadn't been done before. Now that it's a thing that's been done, a lot of conservatives are fine with it and in fact are making the old liberal arguments about it, that marriage is a good thing and that everyone should have access to the benefits of it, and so forth. So again, we're seeing that conservatives, as usual, tend to favor policies that already exist, regardless of what previously was held as conservative doctrine. "Don't change anything" may not be the principle that conservatives want to claim, but so far it's doing better than any of the other contenders.

>28 MartyBrandon: So you're saying that when someone changed something, conservatives voted 50 times for "the way things used to be, whatever that was"?

I see, go on. You were saying about "not a mindless attempt to thwart any and all change"?

I'm going to make a prediction: in ten years, when a generation of people have grown up with the ACA, the conservatives will decide that it is perfectly consistent with their ideology, whatever that ideology turns out to be.

>28 MartyBrandon: You quoted my statement, but you didn't respond to it. Why is it bad that everyone says that murder is wrong, even if many of them don't believe it? I see your points, but I also see the way racists twist and struggle to avoid that label even when in videos of them in private they're doing "seig heil". Likewise, people will deny being rapists, but admit to having sex with incapacitated women. It's good these people don't get to openly brag about what they do, or even admit it to themselves sometimes.

There's a whole bunch of things that are bad, and most people don't have a deep understanding of them. I might argue for more ethical and practical philosophy in schools, but I don't see that as going anywhere. I'm happy for people knowing that, say, bigotry and animal abuse is wrong, even if they can't articulate philosophies that would explain why in detail.

It is sometimes necessary to voice an unpopular idea because the path forward is difficult and has no easy answers.

And sometimes it is necessary to realize that genocide is off the table, no matter what the justifications for it are. Philosophically, the path forward should be driven by our principles; we should pick the path of less bigotry even if that means less profit. Frankly, I don't see virtue signaling as usually about solutions for problems; it's about recognizing the existence of problems, about recognizing that certain things are wrong.

I'm gonna reiterate that whatever you believe conservatism entails, it is not a mindless attempt to thwart any and all change.

According to the OED1, conservative means "Characterized by a tendency to preserve or keep intact or unchanged.", and conservatism only applies to English politics--where it means "Toryism". We're not arguing about some well-defined object; we're talking about a word that can mean many things.

Conservatives voted more than 50 times to repeal the Affordable Care Act because it goes against their ideology (i.e. limited government and individual responsibility).

I find it funny you bring this up in the same post you mention virtue signaling. It was a waste of time and of government money to vote over and over to repeal the Affordable Care Act, because the bill had no chance of getting through the Senate and President. Nothing in limited government and individual responsibility means that individuals with government power should do the same pointless thing over and over. To punctuate this, when they did have the ability to do something about the ACA, they failed to do so, because they didn't make a plan, and actually just repealing it would have consequences too big to justify by a handwave to limited government.

>32 kiparsky: "I'm going to make a prediction: in ten years, when a generation of people have grown up with the ACA, the conservatives will decide that it is perfectly consistent with their ideology, whatever that ideology turns out to be."

I somewhat agree with that prediction. ACA could very well become like social security, a bit of socialism that slipped into the system that no politician would touch because of its wide popularity. However, I think they would accept it silently and not go through the mental gymnastics to show that it is actually compatible with conservative principles. On the other hand, if ACA should fail, they will loudly denounce and remind everyone of what they did to prevent it.

Look, I am not debating with you about the nature of conservatism; I am telling you, as someone raised in it and who has done a little reading to understand our society and my own origins. If you want to invent your own theories and engage in casual disparagement of a group and then try to walk it back, then be my guest.

>29 lriley: "Are we to presume that Neo-nazis or Klanners or Militia types or those who sympathize with them don't vote?"

They do vote, and the more extreme parts of the base are the ones most likely to vote in the primary, so DeSantis has to present a convincing MAGA face in order to get the nomination. Fortunately, the MAGAs are populists, and the really dark parts of the conservative base are still a very small minority. Election deniers and Qanon are more worrisome to me since their numbers are not small, and they seem capable and willing to believe almost anything.

And no you cannot assume they are anti-abortion, anti-LBGT, anti-immigration . . .. Numerous polls show that the nation is divided on these issues. Conservatives who accept abortion tend to favor restrictions, but so do most democratic nations where it is legal. Likewise, you get high levels of conservatives who support legal immigration so long as the border is under control.

"... he'll give them what he can but he needs to feed the resentments of his main base of voters first. That anyway is what I see happening in Florida at the present time."

Totally agree. And I can't see any other way forward for someone to wrench the nomination away from Trump. I'd be very happy to see Larry Hogan secure the nomination, but I don't think he has a chance.

>34 MartyBrandon: Disparagement? I'm just calling out what conservatives are proud of. They're not ashamed to attack women's rights to own their own bodies, they're proud of their "war on drugs", they do not run from their anti-immigrant stance, they're not shy about wanting trans people to just go away and not exist, and they were at one point extremely vocal about the horrors that would be inflicted on a society where Adam and Steve could get married. These are their money positions, this is what they get elected on, this is who they are and what they stand for. (At least, until they change their minds)

So maybe they shouldn't also say they're for limited government if they believe in all of these things, but saying so is not disparagement, it's just a reality check. What's the ideology that actually holds together things that actual conservatives actually run on and vote for, that's what I would like to know.

Maybe there isn't one, and that'd be fine, but if there is one, it shouldn't be this hard to work it out, right?

>35 MartyBrandon: I'd be very happy to see Larry Hogan secure the nomination, but I don't think he has a chance.

He doesn't either.

>33 prosfilaes: "Why is it bad that everyone says that murder is wrong, even if many of them don't believe it?"

You selected a poor example. It doesn't make sense to signal one's virtue by expressing opposition to murder because murder is assumed, axiomatically, to be evil -- most people don't expect a cookie for going a day without murdering someone and it isn't virtue signaling if there is no perceived virtue to be communicated.

Compassion for animals is a better example since we are far from unanimity about the importance of reducing animal suffering. If I believe in this cause, then what is the best way to make progress? I could virtue signal by wearing t-shirts promoting vegetarianism, but it puts the spotlight on me and not the cause, and those not already receptive to the message will ignore me or become defensive. While broadcasting my values may feel good, actually doing good requires that I understand and cooperate with people with whom I disagree in order to convince them to alter their behavior.

"According to the OED1 . . ."

The OED, really? Could you trouble yourself to dig a little deeper? Start with a book by a reputable political scientist (I recommend Francis Fukuyama). This is Library Thing, you know.

"I find it funny you bring this up in the same post you mention virtue signaling. "

Politicians are professional virtue signalers. It's how they get elected. However, repealing ACA was in line with limited government and personal responsibility. To sell ACA to conservatives, I think it would have made sense to stress the strain on businesses which, oddly, have been stuck with providing healthcare.

>37 kiparsky: Too bad. He was the governor of blue state Maryland where I live and was widely popular.

>38 MartyBrandon: I could virtue signal by wearing t-shirts promoting vegetarianism, but it puts the spotlight on me and not the cause,

It tells everyone that sees you that there are vegetarians around, that it's not a dead philosophy. It tells people who have discomfort eating meat that they don't have to just get over it, they aren't alone. It tells people who are dealing with vegetarians at dinner that their family members aren't being bizarre, there's a bunch of people who don't eat meat.

If a bunch of people are wearing pride buttons, then homophobes are outsiders, not the gay people.

actually doing good requires that I understand and cooperate with people with whom I disagree in order to convince them to alter their behavior.

I don't agree. For political things, there's no point in trying to move people who firmly disagree with you. It's the people who never really thought about it, people who are open to change, or are forming their opinions you want to work with. All the hardcore racists in 1950 were untouchable, but either learned to shut or changed position in the coming decades by simple force of the culture. The Internet, in some ways, let them out, as they could find fellow racists online.

>38 MartyBrandon: actually doing good requires that I understand and cooperate with people with whom I disagree in order to convince them to alter their behavior

I think there are two vast and different issues in that short sentence. The first is about doing good, and I certainly agree with you that it can be important to understand and cooperate with people with whom we disagree. In US politics I suppose it's what they call bipartisanship. In the UK we might talk of cross-party cooperation. At a practical level it's often seen when everybody pulls together after some tragedy or disaster, or perhaps when people who share little except their common humanity volunteer together at a soup kitchen.

Convincing people to alter their behaviour is a different issue, I think, and is connected with advocacy, which is trying to change public policy and behaviour, seeking to change the narrative. In this regard, as >40 prosfilaes: puts it so well, symbols such as T-shirts and badges can be an important tool, as they bolster a narrative and signal not "virtue" but what are the accepted norms and values of society. If the norm of society is that vegetarian people, black people, gay people, women, foreigners, original native inhabitants, prisoners, the poor, homeless people, those living with HIV/AIDS, people of a particular religion or tribe, and/or any other group are somehow "different", not part of the mainstream, then they remain hidden and marginalised. In a more open and inclusive society all these people are free to be who they are out in the mainstream and to be recognised as such.

Words and symbols are important. In South Africa you can still hear some white people speaking casually of "people" and "blacks" in the same sentence, with the (perhaps) unconscious implication that "blacks" are different from "people". This casual differentiation between "in groups" ("normal" human beings) and "out groups" (different from "we" "normal" human beings) is found in most societies, perhaps less blatantly than in post-apartheid South Africa but nevertheless still there. One of the precursors to genocide and ethnic cleansing is the use of language to dehumanise a group - insects, cockroaches, animals, slaves, black garbage bags - and it's no accident that in most wars dehumanising terms are used for the enemy.

I might be wandering off topic, but I don't believe it is "virtue signalling" (a term which I think is usually more of a pejorative than a genuine attempt to define anything substantial) for people to use words and symbols in order to resist the words and symbols which oppress and marginalise.

I find it hard to make sense of the term "virtue signalling". I see it used, as above in reference to "signalling" a commitment to some particular social beliefs or causes (as in >38 MartyBrandon:'s example of the vegetarian T-shirt), but not to others. For example, nobody seems upset that people wearing "MAGA" hats or Christian crosses are performing an act of "virtue signalling".

I suspect that >41 John5918: is correct in viewing this as a mere pejorative without any meaningful content, but it also seems to serve a rhetorical function as a distraction.

>42 kiparsky: >41 John5918: >40 prosfilaes:
You all made fair points about symbols and their power to shape society, and I agree with some of them. However, the usefulness of symbols is another reason why you should be opposed to virtue signaling, which implies an inauthentic display of symbols for personal gain. It's a grab for unearned status, moral virtue, or mob appeasement. While it cannot be identified in an individual without understanding their motivations, it becomes obvious in aggregate -- the sudden profundity of BLM signs in a white neighborhood after a few businesses are vandalized; the popularity of crucifixes as ornamentation by pop stars; the emphatic embrace of alternate pronouns by teenagers. The commonality in all of those examples being the superficial and faddish adoption of behavior to accessorize one's image. The cross of a priest selflessly helping a community is not a virtue signal, but the cross worn by the pop-star Madonna is merely a part of the image she has crafted for her own gain.

It isn't that symbols should be eliminated, but rather that meaningful and sincere action should take priority. It's the idea that change begins with the "man in the mirror" and that one leads by example instead of through proselytizing. It's the strategic understanding that when you establish an "us vs. them" dichotomy, you undermine the success of your cause. Instead of the "go vegan" t-shirt, bring a delicious vegan dish to the potluck.

And most dangerous of all is that virtue signaling seeks to curry favor from a group. People who use genocidal language are themselves virtue signaling, it's just that their group has made genocide virtuous. You should be committed to being your best self, as an individual. This will help equip you with the moral fortitude needed to oppose the genocidal mob when it arises. I'm reminded of the quote by Lincoln, "In matters of fashion, swim with the current, but in matters of principle, stand like a rock."

>43 MartyBrandon: That definition seems to presume a lot of knowledge of the beliefs, feelings, intentions, etc, of the person you're judging. How do you know that the display of symbols is "inauthentic"? How do you distinguish between a display of symbols for "personal gain" from a display of symbols for some purpose that you might consider legitimate?

Instead of the "go vegan" t-shirt, bring a delicious vegan dish to the potluck.

Why not both? Does one preclude the other?

I dunno, all of this seems to lie well to one side of any interesting point. If you feel like you need to judge people you don't know and never will know for what they choose to wear, that's your business, but I can't see why I or anyone should care about that judgement you choose to make except possibly as a signal about the quality of your judgements overall. People can be their best selves regardless of what they wear, and frankly it's not up to you to decide what they're allowed to wear or what it means to them. They don't give a damn what you think, and there's no reason they should give a damn, so who is this judgement for? What's all this moralizing and posturing in aid of?

>44 kiparsky: "How do you know that the display of symbols is "inauthentic"?"

Reread the post if you didn't get it the first time.

"If you feel like you need to judge people you don't know and never will know . . ."

That's pretty rich coming from someone participating in a "Pro vs Con" discussion without first considering what "Conservative" actually means. If Gary Larson were on LT, this would become a Far Side cartoon. He'd draw it as a bunch of cats posting their grievances to the "Cats vs. Dogs" forum. One of the cats would have a look of disbelief, and the caption would read, "Muffin is aghast to discover that dogs are not merely obstacles to feline hegemony."

Conservatives elect conservative politicians so I don't see why you can't use the statements of those politicians to define actual on the ground conservatism

>45 MartyBrandon: Are you so sure that I've never considered what "conservative" means?
Again, you seem to have a great faith in your ability to know what's going on in someone else's head. You might want to pause and ask yourself whether that confidence is (a) warranted and (b) serving you well.

Come to that, are you so sure you have considered what "conservative" actually means yourself? After all, so far you've only offered some bland slogans that sound nice, but as we've seen, are in real conflict with actual conservative positions. But rather than wrestle with that and try to uncover a usable definition, you've suggested that you wouldn't be able to answer the question and that I should go ask Fukuyama. So it seems that you can't actually tell me what makes up the conservative ideology, and it certainly sounds like you're just learning this for the first time. Are you sure this isn't a case of pot and kettle?

There are some horrendously bad takes in this thread. Some of the worst, in my opinion, can be combined and rephrased as "every public statement or symbol of personal identity that I disagree with is virtual signaling."

However, that shows what we're talking about it, doesn't it? This is conservative behavior.

What does that mean?

I agree it's difficult to define what conservative means as an adjective. My best approximation on an abstract level is similar to the OED definition. More practically, in my lifetime, a conservative value is whatever the Republicans in power (with extra attention on the wealthiest White men) indicate to followers is the opposite of liberal, progressive, or Democratic values—as if accommodating varied personal needs, making changes to improve societal features, and defending the political power of individual voters are evils to avoid.

The meaning of conservative as a noun is more complication. That's partly because people are complicated and partly because there's intense hypocrisy is political conservatism in the USA. The easy answer to "Who is a conservative?" would be "Whoever identifies as a conservative." The problem with that approach is self-identifying conservatives rarely accept self-identifying answers from other people. They argue about others' identities every day. Many are extremely aggressive about it—in various ways, attacking people whose identities don't match what the conservative aggressor thinks it should be. We see a benign example of that above. (Benign on this forum; potentially lethal in legislation we're seeing.) Another example, because the word is frequently used as a synonym for Republican or GOP members, are Republican politicians publishing ads encouraging the murder of "RINOs" (Republicans in Name Only).

Is a reasonably simple definition possible?

I was curious about a name that repeatedly popped up as someone to go to for understanding: Fukuyama. Who is that?

Searching brought up Francis Fukuyama, a (former?) conservative darling made famous by his essay/article "The End of History?" in 1989 (inaugural year of Republican President George H.W. Bush, R).

Esquire summarized his rise to popularity and views on Republican President Donald Trump in "Democracy and Its Discontents" in 2018.

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a23695274/francis-fukuyama-trump-democracy...

This is a part of his interview that highlights the confusion, I think.

“In a democracy, the ultimate check is always electoral,” {Fukuyama} said. “If the Democrats manage to win back at least the House {in 2018}, they can start to undo some of the damage Trump has done.” And if not? “Then we’re in deep shit.”

Someone who's been described through three decades as an ideal conservative (from what I'm picking up by skimming through articles) relies on Democrats to save the country from Republican leaders. Is that because he was also a Democratic-leaning conservative who fits what is now labeled a "centrist"?

I don't think that's all. Conservatives attempt to preserve what they personally feel is valuable. But I see conservatives tending to rely on the people they actively fight to make things better... as if they don't trust no one's judgement, not even their own as they forcibly push it on others.

Unreasonable contradictions on top of unreasonable contradictions is not an ideology. That's chaos.

>48 aspirit: The problem with this thread is that some of you are just pulling things out of your rear end. If after vigorous participation in a vegan forum, I one day decide to actually explore what veganism means, then you would be right to question my previous passion about something I didn't even understand.

It's fine if you disagree with Fukyama, but enlighten us with some other well-reasoned perspective, preferably motivated by scholarly research unless you happen to be an expert, instead of a half-baked opinion that you generated on the fly.

There is a whole world of political punditry out there, some of which strives to be non-partisan, and I would expect those in a forum like this to show some interest in tapping into that instead of ranting like uninformed ideologues.

You sound like an elitist academic. Why should I believe Fukyama about what conservatism is when I can hear what it is every day from conservative politicians?

>49 MartyBrandon: this is an academic debate since when? I don't remember anyone, including you, showing credentials before participating. I either missed that or your post is virtue signaling your expertise on this topic. (Did I use that term correctly? 🙃) There's no need to out yourself in a pseudonymous social forum like this, but perhaps you could show off a little? I haven't seen anything indicating you know more about the meaning of conservative than anyone else here.

By the way, you seemed to make wrong assumptions about my identity and motivations. I am not representing a political party. The last place I lived where I was required to register with a party to vote, I was a Republican. When I preregistered to vote at 17, my affiliation was with the GOP. But that was long ago.

In my view, I've recovered from much of the harmful indoctrination of my childhood as well as let go of much of the guilt for going along with it so far into my adulthood. I can't take back my past support, only do better. I openly support Democrats at elections partly for that effort to make things better.

However, I dislike the party system in the USA and always have, as long as I've been aware of it. I'm not affiliated with a political party. The party of the Democrats basically doesn't exist in my area. I'm not sure what I would do for it if it did.

And it doesn't matter for the definition of conservative unless we go back to my suggestion that it's currently synonymous with Republican.

However, you seem to be against that definition.

For what it's worth, I was never a conservative Republican. The community I grew up within was mostly conservative, and I was considered extremely liberal, however laughable that is to people with completely different backgrounds.

Where I live now, almost everyone who votes within my voting district is presumed from voting records and the local media to identify as conservative.

And this brings up another of your wrong assumptions: I don't disagree with what I know of Fukyama's current beliefs. I don't know where you got the idea that I do. As a former centrist, still independent from the political parties, and as a marginalized American, I think I can sympathize with him in some ways.

Now, can you tell us where you think I'm wrong in my earlier post?

>49 MartyBrandon: You've still failed to give us any description of conservatism, even though you dismissed my source. You're pulling things out of your rear end; you've certainly seemed to make up what "virtue signalling" means.

>51 aspirit: "this is an academic debate since when? I don't remember anyone, including you, showing credentials before participating."

Academic, no. Factual, yes. At least when you ask a factual question, the answer should be rooted in facts. No need for credentials. If you read the earlier interactions, I never set myself up as a expert, nor do I believe that knowledge is exclusive to academics, but it does require conscious thought.

"I haven't seen anything indicating you know more about the meaning of conservative than anyone else here."

Well, I could hardly know less.

"By the way, you seemed to make wrong assumptions about my identity and motivations."

What assumptions were those? I'm saying that most of the people, including you, are just spouting opinions.

"For what it's worth, I was never a conservative Republican. The community I grew up within was mostly conservative, and I was considered extremely liberal, "

We have at least one thing in common.

>53 MartyBrandon: Factual statement: Trump Organization was convicted of tax crimes last December and fined $1.6 million, which company representatives said they will appeal instead of pay.

Opinion: Donald Trump is conservative.

Sources could be cited for both statements. They both can be considered true. But the opinion isn't a fact. That goes against the standard meanings of fact.

We're all giving our opinions here. Yours was given extra attention. Unfortunately, yours hasn't provided a reasonable answer to the original question.

Most of Fukuyama's publications appear to be outdated. So we're back to considering new opinions for kiparsky to get a satisfactory answer.

Okay, I'm gonna give the 100k foot overview of conservatism. My credentials on the subject are modest: having been raised a conservative, I've read a couple books on the subject and follow a few centrist conservative pundits, but I was a scientist in a previous life, so I value truth.

Because the word conservatism is contextual, this summary applies only to conservatism in the US (the only type I am familiar with). This is also a description of small-c conservatism, i.e. conservatism separate from a political party.

- Enlightenment thinkers establish the US as a country based on individual freedoms and free markets. The federal government is weak with much political power vested in states. Though progressive for its time, this sets the baseline for the principles that would later characterize American conservatism.

- Time passes during which there is little difference between conservatives and progressives. The US political ideology is basically liberalism.

- Early 20th century, legislation is enacted to stabilize financial system, and the US is involved in two world wars causing an expansion of the federal government.

- After WWII social programs expand. There is massive societal upheaval during the civil rights era as traditional values are questioned. This is when conservatism as its own ideology is born. Conservatives oppose the expansion of government, funding social programs, and the rapid disintegration of traditional social norms.

And these days, you can just ask the AI. Here is what ChatGPT has to say about American conservatism.

American conservatism is a political and social philosophy that emphasizes individual freedom, limited government, free markets, traditional values, and a strong national defense. While there is no single set of principles that define American conservatism, here are some of the key ideas that are typically associated with the movement:

Limited Government: Conservatives believe in a small, limited government that doesn't intrude too heavily into the lives of its citizens. This means that they generally favor lower taxes, reduced government spending, and fewer regulations on businesses and individuals.

Individual Liberty: Conservatives believe in individual liberty and personal responsibility. They believe that people should be free to make their own choices and that government should not interfere with these choices, except to protect individual rights.

Free Markets: Conservatives believe in free markets and oppose government intervention in the economy. They argue that the best way to promote economic growth and prosperity is to allow businesses and individuals to compete in a free and open market.
Traditional Values: Conservatives value traditional social institutions such as marriage, family, and religion. They believe that these institutions provide a stable foundation for society and should be preserved and protected.

Strong National Defense: Conservatives believe in a strong national defense and support a robust military. They argue that a strong military is necessary to protect American interests and to deter potential aggressors.

Federalism: Conservatives support the principle of federalism, which means that power should be divided between the federal government and the states. They argue that this system of government ensures that power is not concentrated in the hands of a few individuals or groups.

Respect for the Constitution: Conservatives believe in the importance of the Constitution and the rule of law. They argue that the Constitution should be interpreted according to its original meaning and that judges should not use the courts to advance their own political agendas.

>56 MartyBrandon:

Well, modern conservatism in the USA seems to have little to do with the "individual freedom" in #1, government not intruding too heavily into the lives of its citizens in #2, government should not interfere with individual choices in #3, and respect for the constitution and rule of law in #8. As for #5, are "marriage, family, and religion" the only traditional values that they espouse? What about the traditional value of immigration, for example? And is there not a contradiction between emphasising religion (which in practice largely means Christianity) and the constitutional separation between church and state?

Deleted - duplicate post

>56 MartyBrandon: ChatGPT and similar intelligence models scrape the internet for data that it aggregates in a way that looks like an answer. They are designed to look like people talking on the internet. No answers from ChatGPT should be taken as fact. We don't even know whose opinions or which were genuine (as in, not meant as satire or sarcasm) the bot spouts without cross-research and analysis.

My sources: The people who build and tested the model and others like it.

>57 John5918: My posts were to show that indeed there is a body of ideology that is generally associated with American conservatism. Now that we have established that it exists and what it is generally believed to be, we can debate about the details and whether those are good or bad for society.

>60 MartyBrandon:

No, I'm not debating whether it is good or bad at this stage. I'm just pointing out that modern US conservatism doesn't seem to correspond very faithfully to the indicators that either you or the AI have put forward.

>59 aspirit: "No answers from ChatGPT should be taken as fact."

True for any answer, which one should subject to a reality check. However, I posted the output not as an authority per se, but to show that the most comprehensive compilation of data ever created agrees with the conventional notion of American conservatism that I posted. I wrote my ideas, based on what I could remember from my readings, then consulted ChatGPT. There was considerable agreement, which is a simple cross-validation.

My sources: Myself. My PhD is in computer science, and my research involved machine learning.

>61 John5918: If you have an alternate notion of what constitutes American conservatism, then you need to develop that idea a bit more. You are nipping at the edges by pointing out what you see as inconsistencies. These will always be found when describing human endeavors, but part of it is a matter of framing.

First off, the output I posted is a fair summary of what is generally regarded as American conservatism. Consult a political science book, ask ChatGPT, or ask Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism_in_the_United_States

However, the inconsistencies you mentioned are interesting. I've always thought it was hypocritical of conservatives to be so strongly religious when one of our nation's bedrock ideas is the separation between church and state. But I can also see how it fits with their notions of traditionalism since Christianity and Judeo-Christian values were influential in on our history.

I agree that you accurately described conservative theory but it doesn't correspond well to conservative practice. For example, how does respect for individual autonomy mesh with denying birth control to women?

>63 MartyBrandon: I've always thought it was hypocritical of conservatives to be so strongly religious when one of our nation's bedrock ideas is the separation between church and state.

Well, for sixty-nine years, it's been "one nation under God", hasn't it.

>62 MartyBrandon: I wrote my ideas, based on what I could remember from my readings, then consulted ChatGPT. There was considerable agreement, which is a simple cross-validation.

This only goes to validate that your ideas are consistent with the average of everything that's been said on the subject, which is not consistent with the idea that they've been thought through in any depth.

the most comprehensive compilation of data
It may be a comprehensive compilation of data, but it's important to consider what form of data we're looking at. In this case, the data is samplings of text from the internet, which is to say, it's a highly comprehensive compilation of data points of the form "some rando on the internet thought X" - possibly weighted by some sort of popularity metric.

Now, I've been paying attention to this for a while and I've never seen anything to suggest that the average data point of the form "Some rando on the internet asserted that X" was very strongly correlated with the truth or usefulness of the proposition X being asserted. The only time information on the internet becomes useful is when there's a conscious attempt to correlate and filter. Which is of course what ChatGPT is very much not doing - that's the point of it.

Putting it simply, when ChatGPT produces a result, what you're getting is the average of the internet's opinion, and the internet is, on average, an idiot.
That may make your cross-validation a little less of a comfort to you.

>65 librorumamans:

And BBC's headline for a recent pro-Trump rally is 'God, guns and Trump', the slogan which appears on the T-shirts of his supporters, whom one presumes are part of what is usually termed the "conservative" side of politics.

>55 MartyBrandon: Conservatives oppose ... the rapid disintegration of traditional social norms.

For one, you say "whatever you believe conservatism entails, it is not a mindless attempt to thwart any and all change" and then name part of your conservative values as thwarting any and all change to traditional social norms.

Furthermore, in the post-WWII era, which social norms were under attack? That women are in the kitchen, you can address the black man with "boy", and the Native Americans will give up their culture for the White man's. How dare we say that conservatives are racist; it's just that they formed as a block when there was attack on the traditional social norm of racism, and had to ... is it a worse accusation to say they were mindlessly attempting to thwart change, or mindfully attempting to keep racism a thing?

>64 jjwilson61: That's one of many examples of contradictory behavior one can find at both ends of the spectrum that seem contradictory to the core beliefs by those engaging in them.

The issue for abortion doesn't seem so contradictory (for either side) to me. It's more a matter of framing. Those for it focus on the rights of the mother, while those against it focus on the rights of the unborn child.

>66 kiparsky: "Putting it simply, when ChatGPT produces a result, what you're getting is the average of the internet's opinion, and the internet is, on average, an idiot."

Open AI has been somewhat tight-lipped about the specific data sources; however, the recent large-scale transformers which elicit human-like response utilize high quality data sources, such books, science journals, and Wikipedia instead of scraping from random websites. It's clear though that the creators did not use the treasure trove of political punditry that is on the LT Pro vs. Con forum.

>68 prosfilaes: " . . .is it a worse accusation to say they were mindlessly attempting to thwart change, or mindfully attempting to keep racism a thing?"

It's baked into conservatism that they are more weary of change and generally opt for a more incremental approach when change is justified. And it is also true that this has helped to perpetuate oppression at different points in our history. So while conservative reluctance may have allowed the oppression that was introduced early in our nation's history to endure longer than it should have, oppression itself is not a conservative principle.

>66 kiparsky: >70 MartyBrandon:

For what it's worth (who knows?), you can ask ChatGPT to list its sources for any answer it gives.

>65 librorumamans: No argument from me. It just seems that conservatism could have either drawn upon founding principles like the separation of church and state or the traditionalism of Christianity. They chose the latter, and I have never gotten any traction using a separation of church and state argument when arguing with my conservative relatives.

>72 librorumamans: ". . . you can ask ChatGPT to list its sources for any answer it gives."

Thanks! I didn't think of that, duh. I spent a couple hours trying to get a false response in a couple of areas where I have expert knowledge. It was either spot on or refused to take a position on every question I asked. Truly uncanny.

I did trip it up with "What is the closest start to Earth?" To which it answered, "Proxima Centauri is the closest star . . . ". The Sun is of course the closest star, so I clicked the thumbs-down icon and gave feedback. It corrected its answer to "Other than the Sun, Proxima Centauri . . ." before I had finished typing. Amazing!

>72 librorumamans: ChatGPT is also known to make up sources.

Librarians have complained about this. Patrons are coming into libraries asking for books that don't exist. Businesses have complained about this. Customers are filing complaints that they can't find what the chatbot says will help them.

>74 MartyBrandon: If you ask it the type of frequently-asked science questions that are usually posted with factual answers, it is likely to give you accurate responses. "What is the closest star to Earth?" is a simple question that I'm fairly certain was in an Alexa commercial years ago. You undoubtedly understand from your ML studies (assuming that wasn't like thirty years ago) how that type of question differs from "What does 'politically conservative' mean, so I'm confused by your comparison.

A search on phrases in >56 MartyBrandon: shows that the answer you posted might have mostly come from The Heritage Foundation. While known for being a strong influencer in "conservative" politics, the political group has a reputation for dishonesty, especially in consideration of its stated values.

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/heritage-foundation/

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Heritage_Foundation

https://www.glaad.org/gap/organization/heritage-foundation

>75 aspirit: "You undoubtedly understand from your ML studies (assuming that wasn't like thirty years ago) how that type of question differs from "What does 'politically conservative' mean, so I'm confused by your comparison."

Well, my studies are nearing 20 years in the past, but the principles behind correlative algorithms still hold. They look for associations between tokens (words or word groups), which means that they have no concept of causation. They are strong at providing facts and definitions, but their answers can at times seem unmoored from reality if asked to pontificate. That ChatGPT should know the closest star to Earth was expected; that it could update its answer in real time to improve accuracy was impressive. So, don't be confused. The questions I asked were of a similar type that play to the strengths of this type of architecture.

" . . .shows that the answer you posted might have mostly come from The Heritage Foundation"

Possibly, but you can find the principles associated with American conservatism from many sources, including a conservative think tank like Heritage. I went back and asked ChatGPT for the source of the answer I posted above. Here is what it had to say:

"As an AI language model, my knowledge comes from a vast corpus of texts and sources. For my answer about American conservatism, I drew upon a variety of sources, including academic writings, political manifestos, and media coverage of conservative ideology and principles. Some of the specific sources that informed my response include the works of conservative intellectuals such as Russell Kirk, Edmund Burke, and William F. Buckley Jr., as well as conservative political platforms and the views expressed by conservative politicians and pundits."

Having fleshed out conservative ideology, it seemed only fair to do the same for liberalism. I'll confess that I know even less about liberal principles, despite having flocked with them for most of my adult life. I have a fragmented salad of words and ideas associated with the concept but not a clear narrative for its origins.

Here is what ChatGPT offered regarding American liberalism:

----
American liberalism is a political philosophy that emphasizes individual rights and freedoms, social and economic equality, and the importance of government intervention in ensuring these values. It is often associated with the Democratic Party and progressive politics in the United States.

Liberalism has a long history in the United States, dating back to the founding of the country and the development of liberal democratic principles such as individual liberty, popular sovereignty, and the rule of law. American liberalism has evolved over time, reflecting changing social and economic conditions and political debates.

In the 20th century, American liberalism became closely associated with New Deal policies enacted during the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, which expanded the role of the federal government in ensuring economic stability and promoting social welfare. Liberalism continued to evolve in the post-war period, with the civil rights movement and the rise of the counterculture influencing the development of social liberalism and identity politics.

Today, American liberalism encompasses a wide range of political and social views, but generally supports policies such as universal healthcare, LGBT rights, environmental protection, and progressive taxation. It is often contrasted with conservative ideologies that emphasize limited government, individual responsibility, and traditional values.
----

>77 MartyBrandon:

At equal cost and with almost infinitely greater confidence in the response, one could ask the same question of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

(Edited to correct link.)

>76 MartyBrandon: "Well, my studies are nearing 20 years in the past, but the principles behind correlative algorithms still hold. They look for associations between tokens (words or word groups), which means that they have no concept of causation. They are strong at providing facts and definitions, but their answers can at times seem unmoored from reality if asked to pontificate. "

I agree that this is a pretty good statement of how LLMs work. Another way to put it would be to call them "recommendation engines for text". That's actually quite inaccurate in one way, since Amazon's recommendation engine maintains state about you, in the form of your buying history, and ChatGPT probably does not attempt to build up a state about the individual entities that it interacts with. However, it captures the important thing, which is that ChatGPT has no more conception of what the strings it recommends mean or why you would care about them than Amazon's recommendation engine has about what books are or what you want to do with them.

Certainly I would agree that you're going to get the best results on things that require the least interpretation. However, even "facts and definitions" can go sideways, it all depends on the data selected for training. Personally, I prefer to rely on human intelligence to do my filtering. I tend to learn a lot more that way.

"That ChatGPT should know the closest star to Earth was expected; that it could update its answer in real time to improve accuracy was impressive."

Training that model turns out to be extremely expensive, both in terms of compute time and in terms of dollars spent, so I would bet it's not updating itself in real time. My guess is what's actually happening there is pretty simple: you asked an ambiguous question, which could be answered in (at least) two ways, depending on how pedantic you want to be and how loose you want to be with your language. ChatGPT was able to classify "Proxima Centauri" as the best answer to the question it classified as the best question matching your text. When you played pedantic at it, it updated its classification of the "best matching question", and then gave the answer its weightings suggested for that updated question. That is, I don't think that it's done anything to "improve accuracy" except to locally provide the more pedantically correct answer that you told it you wanted.

>77 MartyBrandon: "Having fleshed out conservative ideology"

Have we done that? I don't think we've made much progress on that question at all. The Heritage Dogma sounds not much different from what we've seen so far, and in particular it's still got the problems we've already seen, plus a few new ones. However, we've been over that and I don't think there's a lot of progress to be made there. Instead, I'm going to suggest that what we've landed on is not so much conservative ideology as conservative identity. Conservatives identify as people who believe in all of those things, and they don't actually mind very much if those beliefs are neither self-consistent nor consistent with their actions. Conservativism then is the public affirmation of some statements of faith, and not anything to do with someone's actions or indeed their actual beliefs.

If this is what you want to land on, I'd call it progress of a sort. We still don't have agreement on anything that can predict a conservative's positions on any issue, past or present, and we don't particularly understand how conservatives today relate to conservatives a hundred or two hundred years ago, or why "conservatives" choose to identify with the radical Founders, but we at least can agree on what conservatives tell themselves they believe. I'm willing to call that a useful milestone, and we can proceed to what actually drives conservatives if we want.

I'd suggest that we move away from trying to find a basket of ideological preferences to explain this. If that were going to work, it would have worked already. Instead, I think that we can more profitably look to attitudes about the world.
For example, as you both demonstrate and deny in >55 MartyBrandon:, conservatives are essentially committed to "the way things used to be". Radicals overturn the established political order and establish what was (as you say) a pretty progressive set of governing principles for its time, and they do this over the objections of the conservatives of the time. As we move forward in history, we repeatedly see radicals and progressives driving changes to the established order, which conservatives at the time object to, but over and over again we see that the positions that conservatives defend today are the ones that radicals and progressives drove forward fifty years before.
Therefore, I'm going to suggest that conservatives tend to be conservative, in that they would prefer not to change things, while progressives and radicals tend to be more willing to experiment with policies, and that these attitudes about change have more explanatory power than any self-congratulatory position papers offered by either side.

For another example, conservatives and progressives seem to differ in their overall views of society. My partner put this nicely the other day: conservatives and liberals both construct a social grouping around themselves (which they might call a "family", "tribe", "circle", or something else), and people who are in the group are treated differently from those outside the group. The difference is that liberals tend to seek to expand their groupings, while conservatives are more reluctant to do so. Liberals want you to be part of their thing, conservatives have their doubts about whether to let other people in. I'm pretty sure this can be improved on, but even as a rough sketch we can see how this predicts the differing views on the role of government in society, on immigration, ideas like "federalism", and so forth. So it seems like it's worth refining this and making it more correct.

>80 kiparsky:

I like your last paragraphs. I would add that in my observation of "conservatives" and those whom I prefer not to call "liberal" as I think that is another dubious term which can mean very different things, but let's say people who are "progressive" or perhaps "left of centre", the "conservatives" tend to want policies which favour those who are part of their in-group, while claiming that it might eventually "trickle down" to others, while the "progressives" are seeking policies which provide progress and a better life with more equal opportunities for everyone, even if it might not be of immediate benefit to themselves.

>80 kiparsky: I'm going to suggest that what we've landed on is not so much conservative ideology as conservative identity. Conservatives identify as people who believe in all of those things, and they don't actually mind very much if those beliefs are neither self-consistent nor consistent with their actions.

As an aside, I'll observe that from my perspective this description characterizes a religion.

>81 John5918: I'll take that caution. I have always had a hard time with the language describing the left, and indeed I have no good idea how I'd describe my own political views if I wanted to summarize them in a word or a phrase. I try to use "liberal" in the older sense, with the connotations of tolerance and a preference for a regulated free market, but in this case I see that I slipped and used it as a generic for "left".

>82 librorumamans: I make no comment on whether that perspective crossed my mind.

>82 librorumamans:

Fair comment. Unfortunately this is how many religious bodies and individuals manifest themselves. In a parallel thread kiparsky aptly refers to "liberal" and "illiberal" manifestations of religion. Both definitely exist, and the "illiberal" form is certainly very visible and influential. Its ideology can accurately be described as you and kiparsky say. There is also a more "liberal" form, which is open, seeks to be welcoming and inclusive, is in dialogue with the modern world, with science and with other viewpoints, religions and philosophies, seeks to be self-consistent in its beliefs, and exhorts its adherents to make their actions a consistent witness to their beliefs - as St Francis of Assisi said, "Preach the Gospel all the time; use words (only) if necessary" - even if we often don't live up to the ideal. Some religious institutions are more prone to illiberality than others, most have both "liberal" and "illiberal" wings (and everything in between), and two individuals ostensibly from the same religious institution may have polar opposite views and behaviour. But viewing the world and living one's life through a ("liberal") religious lens is not necessarily any more or less consistent than any other lens or worldview. Sorry, that's a bit off topic and I'll try not to pursue it further.

>71 MartyBrandon: It's baked into conservatism that they are more weary of change and generally opt for a more incremental approach when change is justified.

"Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!" I don't know that it's true that they "generally opt for a more incremental approach when" they see "change is justified", but they certainly don't see change as justified all the times change is justified. (Or if you want a more relative perspective, they didn't see change as justified all the times we see change as justified retroactively.)

oppression itself is not a conservative principle.

I didn't say oppression itself is a conservative principle. But you said:

>55 MartyBrandon: After WWII social programs expand. There is massive societal upheaval during the civil rights era as traditional values are questioned. This is when conservatism as its own ideology is born. Conservatives oppose the expansion of government, funding social programs, and the rapid disintegration of traditional social norms.

After WWII the "traditional social norms" that were being disintegrated were racism and sexism. And conservatives didn't oppose the speed, they opposed the change at all. So if this is "when conservatism as its own ideology is born", then it was born with racism and sexism as a principle.

>84 John5918:

Yes, indeed.

As I've explained in other threads, I view religion as a sociological phenomenon, separable from theology and also, to a large extent, from incorporated organizations.

But as I wrote in >82 librorumamans:, I was making an aside with no wish to wander off-topic.

Author Jesse Pohlman opined on the meaning of conservative and how it differs from regressive in The Progressive Cafe shortly before this topic started.

https://theprogressivecafe.substack.com/p/conservative-versus-regressive/comment...

Seems relevant.

An interesting letter in the Times (NY) yesterday, on the question of conservatives and progress:

Prof. Jon A. Shields’s overly sunny view of conservatism leaves much to be desired. He ignores the fact that throughout the history of the United States — well, the world, actually, but let’s keep it local — most conservatives have been on the wrong side of every single significant social or political issue. In fact, if conservatives had their way, there wouldn’t be a United States: The Tories did not want to separate from England.

Conservatives opposed abolishing slavery; they opposed child labor laws, women’s suffrage, Social Security, Medicare, gay marriage and working to stop climate change — among other issues. Throughout history, liberals — usually labeled radicals or socialists or another name meant to alienate them from the majority — have proposed ways to improve society for all, and conservatives have strongly opposed them. Then the majority of the population agreed with the liberals and eventually most conservatives changed their minds and also agreed.

Often this agreement has to do with people coming to understand the issues and the ethics involved in making society more equitable. The more one knows about politics and society, the more one will reject conservatism, which is why, as Professor Shields notes, most college professors are not Republicans.

The observation in the first paragraphs about conservatives and the Revolution echoes a point that's been made here, and forces us to ask again how it is that conservatives continue to attempt to co-opt the "Founders" to their side. Again, when we're speaking of people with only a minimalist view of individual liberty who effected what was arguably the single most radical change to a system of government, and who had no language to talk about "free markets", it's remarkable to hear today's conservatives trying to draft them into their camp.

Why Rishi Sunak may be the most socially conservative PM of his generation (Guardian)

He is perhaps the most socially conservative prime minister of his generation, more so than Truss, Boris Johnson or even Theresa May... his views on social issues such as gender, drugs, crime and migration are deeply conservative... He has taken a direct interest in Kemi Badenoch’s drive to change the Equality Act to allow organisations to bar trans women from single-sex spaces and events, including hospital wards and sports. It would redefine sex in the 2010 act to specifically refer to legal protections for “biological sex”. No 10 sources have pointed out that was a formal pledge from Sunak from his leadership campaign, as well as one to review sex education material in schools. But, strikingly, it is one of the few pledges from that campaign that has survived... It is not just trans rights, which has become the unfortunate main battleground of the culture wars, where Sunak is demonstrating his deep social conservatism. He has made “stopping the boats” one of his five priorities and is set to make it virtually impossible for refugees to seek asylum in the UK apart from through an extremely narrow set of country-specific routes...

An example of "conservative" in the modern world.

Another characteristic of conservatives to consider: a conservative seeks certainty as a good in itself. The parody version of this view, of course, is "it is better to be wrong than to be in doubt". I don't say that conservatives generally take it that far, but I think it's characteristic of the conservative mindset to be deeply uncomfortable with uncertainty, while the progressive is comfortable with doubt and ambiguity.
This seems consistent with the basic idea - contested in this thread, but consistent with everything we've heard about the conservative philosophy - that conservatives are drawn to ideas that have been tried (on the assumption, I suppose, that there are no new problems), while progressives are prone to new ideas (on the assumption, I suppose, that there are new problems to solve).

This may be simplistic, but I think there might be something of value in it, if anyone wants to try to refine it.

I kind of look at the Democratic Party like this. Despite some of their more left members they're not really trying all that hard to make things better for people....and that's their leadership setting the agenda. On the other hand they're not trying to make things worse. The Republicans are actually trying to make things worse for the public at large and cover their asses by misdirecting people's angers and resentments. The targeting of groups is one thing and lately it's been trans and BLM that are really at the forefront.....their anti abortion agenda is another. Ignoring climate is another. These things aren't vote getters for them but they're always playing to their base and they're always playing to their billionaire donors and they go into national elections knowing they're not going to get a plurality of the vote but if they can continue to bullshit all the red state voters they might just win again on the electoral college. Anyway that's how I see their strategy.

>91 lriley:

Don't overlook the gerrymandering.

>90 kiparsky: conservatives are drawn to ideas that have been tried (on the assumption, I suppose, that there are no new problems), while progressives are prone to new ideas (on the assumption, I suppose, that there are new problems to solve).

I can identify with that dynamic in a slightly different milieu, namely conservative Christians. Many of them would argue that the bible has a cut and dried answer to every problem. More mainstream Christians would instead argue that the bible doesn't answer questions which haven't yet been asked, but rather it gives us a moral base which we can use to explore new questions. In the Catholic stable it would be the same with the Tradition and teaching of the Church. Conservative types appear to believe that all possible questions have already been answered, whereas the mainstream position would be that the Tradition gives us the tools to explore new questions.