Trump and Sanders Are Both Conservatives

[Chris]

From a classical liberal view they are both conservative.

Trump and Sanders Are Both Conservatives (http://fee.org/articles/trump-and-sanders-are-both-conservatives/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=fee_daily&mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRokuKTKZKXonjHpfsX86O0vX6%2Bg 38431UFwdcjKPmjr1YEDT8B0aPyQAgobGp5I5FEBS7TYRKtst6 cMUw%3D%3D)


...They are both conservatives from the perspective of classical liberalism. More specifically, they are conservatives in the sense that F.A. Hayek used the term in 1960 when he wrote the postscript to The Constitution of Liberty titled “Why I Am Not a Conservative.” There he said of conservatives,



They typically lack the courage to welcome the same undesigned change from which new tools of human endeavors will emerge.… This fear of trusting uncontrolled social forces is closely related to two other characteristics of conservatism: its fondness for authority and its lack of understanding of economic forces.… The conservative does not object to coercion or arbitrary power so long as it is used for what he regards as the right purposes. He believes that if government is in the hands of decent men, it ought not to be too much restricted by rigid rules.


That description would seem to apply to both Trump and Sanders. They share a fear of uncontrolled and undesigned change, especially in the economy. ...

[kilgram]

Wow, such a trustworthy source... Hayek.

And as always, Hayek saying nonsense. All that was going out from his mouth was poison. As his ideology, and acts. And that guy who was authoritarian is so brave to accuse to others of authoritarian. Ironic as minimum.

[Chris]

Wow, such a trustworthy source... Hayek.

And as always, Hayek saying nonsense. All that was going out from his mouth was poison. As his ideology, and acts. And that guy who was authoritarian is so brave to accuse to others of authoritarian. Ironic as minimum.

Nice ad hom. You know what....

[PNW]

Stupidest thing I've read in months.

[Peter1469]

Since when did educated people dismiss Hayek? Anyway, this is a great example of people needing to understand definitions when they respond.

Although it seems as if some above never even got to definitions before they bowed out of the debate.

[Chris]

Stupidest thing I've read in months.

Seems you have nothing to say.

[Chris]

Since when did educated people dismiss Hayek? Anyway, this is a great example of people needing to understand definitions when they respond.

Although it seems as if some above never even got to definitions before they bowed out of the debate.

Right, if we use conventional, modern definitions of conservative, and liberal, the article makes no sense, but if we use classical liberal definitions, as the OP author did, as Hayek did, then we need to look at things in a different perspective.

[Private Pickle]

Stupidest thing I've read in months.

You do read your own stuff before you post it right?

[zip98053]

From a classical liberal view they are both conservative.

Trump and Sanders Are Both Conservatives (http://fee.org/articles/trump-and-sanders-are-both-conservatives/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=fee_daily&mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRokuKTKZKXonjHpfsX86O0vX6%2Bg 38431UFwdcjKPmjr1YEDT8B0aPyQAgobGp5I5FEBS7TYRKtst6 cMUw%3D%3D)

Hayek's definition is tortured, not useful, and is certainly not "classic". I'll define conservative as meaning anyone who watches more than 20 minutes of Faux News per week for reasons other than colleting clips for satirical shows on the Comedy Channel. So, by that definition, none of the candidates is a true conservative because none of the candidates will waste their time watching that crap on Faux.

[Chris]

Hayek's definition is tortured, not useful, and is certainly not "classic". I'll define conservative as meaning anyone who watches more than 20 minutes of Faux News per week for reasons other than colleting clips for satirical shows on the Comedy Channel. So, by that definition, none of the candidates is a true conservative because none of the candidates will waste their time watching that crap on Faux.

And that^^ was not tortured, useful, and "classic"?

It's classical, btw, classical liberalism, as in...


"Classical liberalism" is the term used to designate the ideology advocating private property, an unhampered market economy, the rule of law, constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion and of the press, and international peace based on free trade. Up until around 1900, this ideology was generally known simply as liberalism. The qualifying "classical" is now usually necessary, in English-speaking countries at least (but not, for instance, in France), because liberalism has come to be associated with wide-ranging interferences with private property and the market on behalf of egalitarian goals. This version of liberalism — if such it can still be called — is sometimes designated as "social," or (erroneously) "modern" or the "new," liberalism.

@ https://mises.org/library/what-classical-liberalism


Or...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmeeMYrnweg

[Cigar]

News to me ... and Sanders :laugh:

[Chris]

News to me ... and Sanders :laugh:

It's not news, it's history.

[del]

lol

[Common Sense]

It's not news, it's history.

You spelled opinion wrong.

[Chris]

You spelled opinion wrong.

The definition of classical liberalism is not opinion. Unless, perhaps, you consider everything mere opinion.

[Chris]

lol

lol @ lol

[Common Sense]

The definition of classical liberalism is not opinion. Unless, perhaps, you consider everything mere opinion.

Sure, yet Sanders and Trump don't fit the definition of conservative. Even the author states he is "arguing" that they are, not stating.

The author also labels them both as fascist...

[Chris]

Sure, yet Sanders and Trump don't fit the definition of conservative. Even the author states he is "arguing" that they are, not stating.

The author also labels them both as fascist...

Whether Trump and Sanders fit the historical definition of conservative is opinion. But you need to first begin with historical definitions, then argue the point. Not merely and meaninglessly say oh that's opinion.

[Tahuyaman]

If Trump and Sanders are conservatives, I just spent the weekend in bed with kate Upton.

[Chris]

If Trump and Sanders are conservatives, I just spent the weekend in bed with kate Upton.

How was it?

[Mister D]

Right, if we use conventional, modern definitions of conservative, and liberal, the article makes no sense, but if we use classical liberal definitions, as the OP author did, as Hayek did, then we need to look at things in a different perspective.

As I'm sure you know I disagree with Hayek and think he caricatures conservatism and interprets a traditionalist disdain for commercial values with an inability or refusal to understand economic forces. That said, my question is this: IYO, really the classical liberal view or is it more of a radicalized version? Isn't Hayek going quite a bit further than Adam Smith or John Locke, for example? Perhaps you could say Hayek takes the philosophy of a Smith or a Locke to its logical conclusion? I'm interested in your take as a liberal.

[Tahuyaman]

How was it?

If one is going to make up incredible stuff, you may as well make it count.

[Chris]

As I'm sure you know I disagree with Hayek and think he caricatures conservatism and interprets a traditionalist disdain for commercial values with an inability or refusal to understand economic forces. That said, my question is this: IYO, really the classical liberal view or is it more of a radicalized version? Isn't Hayek going quite a bit further than Adam Smith or John Locke, for example? Perhaps you could say Hayek takes the philosophy of a Smith or a Locke to its logical conclusion? I'm interested in your take as a liberal.


I think Hayek portrays the classical liberal view very well, and along with it the classical liberal view of conservatism. Listen to the video of Friedman saying much the same thing.

I think Smith and Locke were participating in the creation of/formulation of classical liberalism and not really back then looking at it as an ideology the way Hayek looks back.

I think all three and more were trying to capture economic and social forces as something outside the design and management of men. As liberals they very much focuses on the individual as actor in society, though Hayek, once he stepped away from economics, to philosophy explores society as a force shaping and defining individuals.

Now I understand you disagree with those liberal views, especially individualism, but it's a disagreement with that tradition from Smith to Hayek and beyond.

[Chris]

If one is going to make up incredible stuff, you may as well make it count.

The classical view presented in the OP wasn't made up, it was the classical view. It may seem made up from the perspective of modern liberalism and conservatism.

[Mister D]

I think Hayek portrays the classical liberal view very well, and along with it the classical liberal view of conservatism. Listen to the video of Friedman saying much the same thing.

I think Smith and Locke were participating in the creation of/formulation of classical liberalism and not really back then looking at it as an ideology the way Hayek looks back.

I think all three and more were trying to capture economic and social forces as something outside the design and management of men. As liberals they very much focuses on the individual as actor in society, though Hayek, once he stepped away from economics, to philosophy explores society as a force shaping and defining individuals.

Now I understand you disagree with those liberal views, especially individualism, but it's a disagreement with that tradition from Smith to Hayek and beyond.

But what conservatives are being described? For example, one of the central themes of conservatism is that societies are not designed and managed. That's a recurring theme from de Maiste to Oakshott to Evola to de Benoist. It was the conservative critique of the French Revolution and of liberalism generally that one cannot design and manage society. Liberal rationalism was a frequent target of conservative critics. I don't see how Hayek could be describing any conservatism but contemporary post-war conservatism. That is, the liberal conservatism of party politics. Or perhaps Hayek has fascism in mind? That would help explain this.

[Chris]

But what conservatives are being described? For example, one of the central themes of conservatism is that societies are not designed and managed. That's a recurring theme from de Maiste to Oakshott to Evola to de Benoist. It was the conservative critique of the French Revolution and of liberalism generally that one cannot design and manage society. Liberal rationalism was a frequent target of conservative critics. I don't see how Hayek could be describing any conservatism but contemporary post-war conservatism. That is, the liberal conservatism of party politics. Or perhaps Hayek has fascism in mind? That would help explain this.


Locke was criticizing the conservatism of Hobbes and that sort of view of man as needing the sort of governing he envisioned, partly I think created from Divine Right of Kings; Smith was criticising mercantilism where the government and the rich colluded especially in protected joint stock companies (not unlike what we have today). Hayek aligned himself with Burke and what he saw as the English liberal tradition, that came to America, against that of the French that led to a new centrally planned and collectively managed sort of government.

Hayek was in his time considered a conservative, and he admits to being somewhat aligned with conservatism--this is the 1940s..60s--against progressivism and what was then called socialism.


Conservatism proper is a legitimate, probably necessary, and certainly widespread
attitude of opposition to drastic change. It has, since the French Revolution, for a century
and a half played an important role in European politics. Until the rise of socialism its
opposite was liberalism. There is nothing corresponding to this conflict in the history of
the United States, because what in Europe was called "liberalism" was here the common
tradition on which the American polity had been built: thus the defender of the American
tradition was a liberal in the European sense.[

From Hayek's Why I am Not a Conservative (http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/articles/hayek-why-i-am-not-conservative.pdf) (.pdf). Recall Buckley's 1955 saying "A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it," as we go on:


Let me now state what seems to me the decisive objection to any conservatism which
deserves to be called such. It is that by its very nature it cannot offer an alternative to the
direction in which we are moving. It may succeed by its resistance to current tendencies
in slowing down undesirable developments, but, since it does not indicate another
direction, it cannot prevent their continuance. It has, for this reason, invariably been the
fate of conservatism to be dragged along a path not of its own choosing. The tug of war
between conservatives and progressives can only affect the speed, not the direction, of
contemporary developments. But, though there is a need for a "brake on the vehicle of
progress,"[3] I personally cannot be content with simply helping to apply the brake.

That I think it the difference.

And it's difficult to get across when meanings of words differ between then and now, and as well between here and Europe.

[Mister D]

Locke was criticizing the conservatism of Hobbes and that sort of view of man as needing the sort of governing he envisioned, partly I think created from Divine Right of Kings; Smith was criticising mercantilism where the government and the rich colluded especially in protected joint stock companies (not unlike what we have today). Hayek aligned himself with Burke and what he saw as the English liberal tradition, that came to America, against that of the French that led to a new centrally planned and collectively managed sort of government.

Hayek was in his time considered a conservative, and he admits to being somewhat aligned with conservatism--this is the 1940s..60s--against progressivism and what was then called socialism.



From Hayek's Why I am Not a Conservative (http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/articles/hayek-why-i-am-not-conservative.pdf) (.pdf). Recall Buckley's 1955 saying "A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it," as we go on:



That I think it the difference.

And it's difficult to get across when meanings of words differ between then and now, and as well between here and Europe.

We discussed Hobbes before. I don't think Hobbes was a conservative because of his advocacy of social contract theory. Conservatives don't ask themselves where society comes from. That's a question that simply doesn't occur to a conservative but we can leave that aside for now. May make for good conversation later though. :smiley:

Getting sleepy now. I will follow up in AM. Perhaps create a thread about what the term "conservatism" refers to. tPF of course. :wink: I think what both Hayek and Buckley describe is a caricature (unintentional on Buckley's part) of conservatism.

[Chris]

We discussed Hobbes before. I don't think Hobbes was a conservative because of his advocacy of social contract theory. Conservatives don't ask themselves where society comes from. That's a question that simply doesn't occur to a conservative but we can leave that aside for now. May make for good conversation later though. :smiley:

Getting sleepy now. I will follow up in AM. Perhaps create a thread about what the term "conservatism" refers to. tPF of course. :wink: I think what both Hayek and Buckley describe is a caricature (unintentional on Buckley's part) of conservatism.

Yea, the myth of social contract theory.

One thing to keep in mind is that the American conservative movement that started with the likes of Buckley and Kirk in the 50s was reactionary to FDR's policies. There was an old right prior to that but the New Conservatives then weren't really a continuation of that, they were all ex-liberals.

What you call caricature is likely just different views of what conservatism is. Kirk probably comes closer to your view.