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View Full Version : How liberals and conservatives have abandoned their redeeming qualities



iustitia
05-14-2016, 05:10 AM
I personally despise both major parties, as do most Americans, and I feel that the labels people today use to describe themselves are undeserved or at least betray their historical context. Parties and ideologies have shifted over centuries, which is to be expected. But with hindsight I want to cover a few things 'liberals' and 'conservatives' have abandoned in their path to power. I think there are, or rather were, noble qualities inherent in both ideologies/philosophies. Here's what I think they've lost and why I think they've betrayed their intellectual roots.

Liberals
*Taxes: Liberals waged the American Revolution partly over taxation. The British levied taxes on sugar, paper, tea and eventually the concept of a distant capital reserving the right to tax your livelihood lost credibility. Americans pay out the ass in taxes now but today's liberal legitimizes this because it's in concert with 'representation', failing to see the irony of our capital taxing hundreds of millions spanning a continent. They condemn tax protesters not as patriots like the Whiskey Rebels but as extremists. Taxation is a completely trivial matter to liberals now unless it opens the door to increased rates. The British consumed a fifth of American GDP, whereas now our federal government alone consumes over a third.
*Trade: Liberals were advocates of trade and opposed to trade barriers. The Nullification Movement arose out of a liberal opposition to tariff hikes. Liberals today talk about knocking down barriers to trade but actually support trade agreements that prioritize labor and environmental regulations along with government job plans.
*Monopolies: Liberals didn't just talk about opposing monopolies; they started a revolution against a mercantilist system in which corporations like the East Indian Company thrived. The Boston Tea Party was a rejection of British monopolies. Those who identify as liberal today often talk a lot about corporate welfare but support it when in power or pretend it doesn't exist.
*Central banking: Liberals opposed central banking not only because it was unconstitutional but also because they saw it as a destabilizing force which distorts markets and rightly so. Andrew Jackson waged his entire presidential campaign on destroying the Second Bank of the United States.
*Inflation: Liberals opposed fiat currency. The Founding Fathers learned from the disastrous paper currency printed by Congress in the American Revolution. The notes were worthless, and it was written into the Constitution that only gold and silver could be coined. Real money has a store of value and liberals supported the gold standard. Modern liberalism has an inflationist view of economics. Modern liberalism confiscated gold from citizens and penalized its ownership, abolished the gold standard, and supports printing dollars out of thin air which devalues the currency.
*Debt: Liberals originally rejected debt, and before the Revolution the Colonies were relatively debt-free compared to the British who racked up debt maintaining an overseas empire. Andrew Jackson, founder of the Democratic Party, is the only president to have ever paid off the national debt. Liberals today support more and more spending through government programs and war, which has racked up trillions of dollars in debt with no indication of lowering.
*Markets: Liberals believed in the market and supported constitutionally limited authority over matters of commerce and rejected interfering with the market, whereas modern liberals believe regulations are for the good of all and welcome thousands upon thousands of regulations with millions of pages.
*Localism: Liberals believing in freedom understandably feared centralized power. They opposed the royal innovation and imperial dictates of the British Empire, they supported loose alliances and confederacies based on consent. They believed in the autonomy of the individual and trusted localism over centralism. And they rejected the Constitution because they feared the possibility, now a reality, that the federal government's power would balloon out of control. They trusted communities and at the most states to deal with political matters. They distrusted federal power and demanded a Bill of Rights intended to protect citizens from overreach. Liberals today can be described as loving big solutions for small problems. For comparison, the biggest national issue in America's earliest days was the slave trade with most liberals pragmatically seeking compromises at the national level to phase the institution out over time instead of violating state and local laws, whereas today liberals support a federal government obsessing over how 20% of 1% of the population uses the bathroom.
*Conscience: Liberals believed that speech and the press were the vanguards of a free society and valued the right to offend others and rejected censorship. Liberals today have created a social atmosphere that discourages speaking one's mind and threatens their livelihoods, property, freedom and safety. Our press and universities promote the concepts of hate crimes and thought crimes. They promote sheltering people from offensive views, that is views they dislike, and silencing them. They reject protecting religious principles in favor of philosophical materialism bordering on fanaticism. They control and manipulate language that discourages debate or discussing issues honestly.
*Commoners: Liberals valued rugged individualism over collectivism. They saw virtue in the simplicity of the yeoman farmer and corruption in metropolitanism. Liberals didn't reject labor as a sin and didn't accept central planning as a virtue. Andrew Jackson started from the bottom and rode his appeal to the common man to the presidency in a long fight against elites that rejected the will of the people. Liberals today speak platitudes about the middle class, farmers and so on and yet undeniably treat working whites with political and social contempt. And while it's all well and good to remember the legacy of slavery and racism in America, modern liberals do so by disenfranchising the majority of voters in favor of numerous identity-based groups and splinter groups. If you're a straight, white man in America the liberal doesn't care about your voice unless you're in a union or on government assistance.
*Revolution: Liberals were the fathers of the right to bear arms, America's separation from the British, the revolt against the Whiskey Tax, the Nullification Movement, and Southern secession. Today liberals view even discussion of rejecting federal supremacy as blasphemous, and relegate supporters of old liberal principles to the realm of kooks, zealots, bigots and fascists.

Conservatives
*Temperament: Conservatives approached matters with caution. George Washington did not support the Boston Tea Party and many were outraged over destruction of property. John Adams defended British troops in court after the Boston Massacre. Would you believe many conservatives of the day were weary of revolution? John Adams for instance mirrored the "father of conservatism" Edmund Burke in opposing the French Revolution. Both were right to fear it, as the radical forces that liberals like Jefferson and Paine supported eventually turned French civilization on its head and after an era of terror gave the people a dictator in Napoleon. Today those who are called conservatives, though usually correct in principle, are the most easily misguided and agitated morons you will find. They're so easily manipulated by politicians that compliment them, and bloviating talking heads pawning off their latest books, that it's not hard to realize why they're not taken seriously.
*Self-respect: Conservatives once considered Jesus a role model and based civilization around centuries of culture, law and history. Conservatives today have a historical attention span dating back to the election of Ronald Reagan. Virtually any GOP debate will involve some question or answer about Ronald Reagan. If lucky they'll invoke Lincoln when they want to humble-brag about how they aren't racist like Democrats were/are. Conservatives invoke the Founding Fathers too, despite being generally ignorant of their existence as a large group of individuals with diverse opinions. Conservatives have given into the liberal's war on culture by replacing religious and cultural myth with secular religious symbols and patriotic myth. Conservatives will invoke "the Founders" like liberals invoke "equality".
*Culture: Conservatism or traditionalism is about preserving the very basis of civilization. It's about not trusting radical upheaval of society. It's why the American Revolution was approached with caution. It's why the French Revolution was opposed. It's why many conservatives were weary of the Union destroying the South. Even after supporting American independence conservatives still favored strong relations with the British because of common heritage and culture. It's weird then, that men like Pat Buchanan are treated like bastard children for opposing the internationalist desire to export democracy to countries and cultures that are neither compatible with it nor desiring of it. Conservatives today hate cultural shifts brought on by immigration policies and secular humanism but support destroying alien cultures overseas. They cheer on the blowback by whites, men and Christians in America against multiculturalism, feminism, queerism and infanticide... yet can't see the blowback by traditionally conservative Muslim tribes and culture against liberal internationalism.
*Hierarchy: Conservatism has a history, for better or worse, of supporting inequality. Today conservatives argue for social order and property rights while simultaneously trying to outcompete the modern liberal on equality. Conservatives are constantly on the defensive over race, religion, gender, sexuality and so on because they have no intellectual or philosophical connection to the conservative acknowledgement that egalitarianism is not inherently good. Why do you care about property rights of the rich? Why do you care about market freedom? Why do you care about gender roles? Why do you - whether you admit it or not - care about demographic changes? Language? Religion? Because cultural institutions and inequality are natural extensions of being human! The French Revolution was a failure, Marxism was a failure, and egalitarian liberalism has failed internationally! And conservatives today are so stupid that they can't articulate that hierarchy is not inherently wrong and equality is not inherently good? Unbelievable.
*Peace: Conservatives in America are historically against rushing to war. They feared the American Revolution while liberals championed it. Washington and Adams avoided war and sought peace with Europeans and Muslims. They opposed the War of 1812 while liberals started it, going as far as trying to break off from the Union and co-existing with the British. Liberals started the Mexican-American War. Conservatives were weary of imperialism and fighting Spain. Of the four big wars of the 20th century all were started by liberals - WWI (Wilson), WWII (Roosevelt), Korea (Truman) and Vietnam (Johnson). Conservatives were against these wars and favored peace; they didn't want to police the world. Conservatives today are easily frightened into supporting war and over the dumbest shit. If Iran arrests Americans for crossing their borders or entering their waters conservatives chomp at the bit to bomb them. Conservatism has no business in war beyond defending its cultural borders. After unifying Germany even Bismark opposed war.
*Wisdom: Conservatives once aspired to knowledge. They didn't belittle it. They learned from history. They didn't run from it. Despite constantly evoking Reagan they forget that he wrote in his journal that his biggest regret was going into Lebanon since it got Americans killed in the Beirut Bombing. Conservatives today absolutely refuse to learn from history. The Drug War has been a horrendous failure and conservatives will eat up any propaganda about health risks from pot they can get their hands on. No hindsight unless they get it from a government-approved textbook.
*Sovereignty: Conservatives have always stood for God and Country, not internationalism. George Washington warned against entangling alliances. Conservatives stood for neutrality. Conservatives, for better or worse, supported American jobs and industry over cheap labor and bad trade deals. Conservatives were against the League of Nations, supported the America First movement, opposed police actions overseas, ended the draft, and Mr. Republican Robert Taft didn't even want to be in NATO. In a GOP debate this election, when asked about how they would affect America's future, several candidates talked about Israel. Conservatives today confuse America's capital with Tel Aviv.
*Responsibility: Conservatives like John Adams renounced drinking tea, because they considered it unpatriotic, in favor of the stronger caffeinated coffee. To my knowledge, tea was not outlawed because of social attitudes toward the stimulant. It was liberals that pushed for regulation of food and drugs. Today, conservatives cringe over no longer spending billions of dollars to punish people for smoking a plant with no fatalities. Personal responsibility is only given lip service by today's conservative. They can't even see the irony of keeping cigarettes, alcohol and prescription drugs legal while fighting a drug war against a drug that's killed no one.
*Community: Conservatives once believed in the home being a castle and the family/community being foundations of society. Conservatives were opposed to the idea that something as important as education should be interfered with by centralized government. Enough decades of Horace Mann-style Prussian education and conservatives not only didn't abolish the Department of Education like they promised to - they support it now! There's no sacred that conservatives won't sell out on today.
*Principle: Conservatives, though imperfect, believed themselves to be chivalrous and honorable. Conservatives were outraged over the use of nuclear weapons on civilians, presidential overreach, and preemptive war. The notion of gentlemen fighting proportionately and not reading eachother's mail has been replaced with a love of assassinations, acceptable losses, collateral damage and violations of civil liberty.

iustitia
05-14-2016, 05:12 AM
TLDR;
Liberals had their roots in the Enlightenment and individualism. Since the American Revolution liberals slowly moved away from the doctrines of life, liberty and Property. There's never been a more illiberal version of liberalism than now, in my opinion. Conservatives of the past are rightly identified as traditionalists. As American principles have eroded with time so have the things conservatives stand for preserving. I don't even know what conservatives are trying to conserve any more. While it's true that special interests have a huge part in why the major parties are so similar if not identical on issues that actually matter, I think the gradual abandonment of principles has led to liberals and conservatives being so worthless to most Americans. There are no redeeming qualities for either camp. I'm going to sleep.

FindersKeepers
05-14-2016, 05:30 AM
So true.

And, so very sad.

Mac-7
05-14-2016, 05:38 AM
You think Truman started the Korean War?

thats wrong

The communists started it

Peter1469
05-14-2016, 05:41 AM
TLDR;
Liberals had their roots in the Enlightenment and individualism. Since the American Revolution liberals slowly moved away from the doctrines of life, liberty and Property. There's never been a more illiberal version of liberalism than now, in my opinion. Conservatives of the past are rightly identified as traditionalists. As American principles have eroded with time so have the things conservatives stand for preserving. I don't even know what conservatives are trying to conserve any more. While it's true that special interests have a huge part in why the major parties are so similar if not identical on issues that actually matter, I think the gradual abandonment of principles has led to liberals and conservatives being so worthless to most Americans. There are no redeeming qualities for either camp. I'm going to sleep.

Probably because they are not "camps." Our electoral system favors two parties. So we have two parties that are really filled with different groups or camps. The republicans are broken into the following camps: social cons, neo cons, fiscal cons, paleocons, and the North Eastern Blue Blood establishment.

The neocons came from the democratic party in the late 1960s when democrats removed national defense from its platform.

The democrats have many more camps. Basically people who identify strongly as a victim flock to the party. What unites them is their idea that the government can fix whatever issue(s) create their victim status.

Anyway, so you really can't pin either party down on a coherent belief system. They are too diverse for that.