This is messed up. I guess now is the time to get a VPN, especially one that allows you to pick the jurisdiction the VPN is in, given how much different regions are censoring content in different ways now.
Some of the most ridiculous legislation from conservatives seem to be from both Texas and Florida. My theory is that this is to drive away liberal minded residents, or to discourage liberal minded people from migrating to the state. The electoral votes from either of these states are absolutely necessary for guaranteeing the republicans a shot at the white house every 4 years.
Many of these laws are obviously not constitutional. However, we don't have a constitutional court system in the US that is required to review bills before they can be enacted as law. So the burden of challenging these laws is often placed on private citizens or rights advocacy groups. But until they can be struck down, these malicious laws are used to disenfranchise any member of the electorate who would oppose the right. Essentially: "We can make life as miserable as possible for you because you are not welcome here."
> we don't have a constitutional court system in the US that is required to review bills before they can be enacted as law
Ideally the legislative branch would serve this role by thoughtful application of their deep knowledge of the Constitution. But the incentives seem to drive them to performative displays of religious fervour and ignorance of founding principles.
The Constitutionality question may be moot. I’m not convinced the Supreme Court is any less politically motivated than any other branch of the U.S. government. The quaint vision of a learned dispassionate body is crumbling, if it ever really existed in reality.
Similar worrisome bills are surfacing in FL where bloggers would not be able to write about the governor, the lieutenant governor or state legislators without burdensome registration with the state of FL.
Remember kids, it's a first amendment violation if Twitter doesn't promote your tweet to its entire userbase, but the government banning speech? Completely acceptable!
No, conservatism is about preserving the so-called "natural social hierarchies", including patriarchy, as well as economic hierarchies such as land ownership -- it is primarily about obedience, not freedom. It's not about the past, or generally resisting change, other than it sometimes coinciding with these principles. This is not a new definition forced onto it, it's the same definition that the founders of the conservative movement in the 1700s used and it remains the primary philosophy of the conservative movement.
No, it is exactly the correct label. The states doing this are conservative, and the politicians passing this legislation are conservative, and they will all state this explicitly.
What you are trying is "no true scotsman".
But more to the point: if the "conservative" party, "conservative" politicians, and "conservative" voters are all saying "ban speech we don't like", "ban books we don't like", "ban history we don't like", "ban medical procedures we don't like", "criminalize and ban LGBT people we don't like", "ban criticizing conservative politicians", then that is what "conservative" means.
No, I'm really not trying to do "no true scotsman". I'm pointing out that they're getting a pass by being labeled "conservative", as if they're merely trying to resist or slow down change. What they're actually trying to do is create drastic changes. Moldbug spelled this out, calling conservatism a doomed strategy and separating himself from it with his own label of "Reaction".
I voted for Biden in 2020 (my first time voting for a major party candidate in a national election), and consider this a solidly conservative choice - in the true sense of the word.
The misleading labeling has a fall out effect of screwing up the whole zeitgeist. For starters, the mainstream media (that they endlessly shout the label "leftist" about) is actually (still) conservative, as it (still) fundamentally serves the entrenched pools of capital its owned by or plays golf with.
No, what defines "conservative" politics is the policies of conservative parties, politicians, and voters _now_ not what you think it meant 50 or 100 years ago.
> If the "Pro Apples" party voted to ban apples, would that be the metric by which we defined Pro Apples?
Yes. This already happens: There are people, religions, and political parties who claim to be, and are reported on as, "pro life", yet consistently take the position that life is secondary to their religious beliefs.
The fact that you do this or others do this does not make it reasonable or authoritatively true. If the conservative party votes for more government control we best not defer to it but rather call them out on it.
The core of every “conservative” political party in the US is that the government gets to choose who is and who is not a person.
Who does and does not have bodily autonomy.
What specific version of what specific religion is legal, and that if you have those beliefs you can force your beliefs on anyone else, and discriminate against anyone you want.
So how about you drop this BS “conservatism” is not about government control when the core and original and still core tenet of “conservatism” is that not all people are equal, and that not all people should have the same rights, and it has been forever.
It would be more valid than insisting they can't possibly be against apples, despite their blatant anti-apple policies and constant drumbeat of anti-apple propaganda, because that isn't what "Pro Apples" means.
Uh, who do you think the Puritans were? The founding Americans were people who got kicked out of Europe for being religious nuts. Then wave after wave of socially conservative poor people came to the country: Germans, Italians, Irish, etc. As to the Republican Party—it’s been a coalition of religious conservatives and big business since literally Lincoln’s era.
The puritans did not build a republic, the masons did, a bunch of radicals that met with other republic forming radicals in Europe. Social conservatives of their time were deeply concerned about losing the feudal rule that kept society together.
The Republican party was religious radicals who either requested or demanded a new way and fought the status quo slavery loving (social conservative) democrats.
People in current seats have nothing to do with the history of the organizations they are in and if transported to the past would often more welcome in opponent organizations. This is also true of the revolutionary founding fathers and their very different views and make up than the puritans.
All indications are that the puritans could neither write not respect a constitution. Rhode Island was made up of people who wanted freedoms not stifled by that bunch.
Puritans, Pilgrims, Quakers, etc., had huge impacts on the founding of the republic. The fact they opposed feudalism doesn't mean they weren't socially conservative, or align them with the humanist radicals of continental Europe. It's not uncommon for religious fundamentalist movements to be politically radical because they oppose secular power. The Islamists who overthrew the Shah were nonetheless social conservatives.
The masons thing is historical revisionism. Masons included people of different political stripes, including members of the British Monarchy. Edmund Burke was a freemason. Among the founders, some of the most socially radical folks like Jefferson weren't masons.
> The Republican party was religious radicals who either requested or demanded a new way and fought the status quo slavery loving (social conservative) democrats.
It's very odd to acknowledge that people were "religious radicals" but then deny that they were social conservatives. The Confederates certainly saw Republicans that way. They attacked Republicans as religious "zeal[ots]" and portrayed themselves as being on the side of "science": https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornersto....
I don't think we are agreeing on terminology.. AFAIK radicals and social conservatives are opposites. One wants changes to match new ideas the other a freeze or return.
The masons and quakers are examples of groups with tolerance that make them compatible with other ideas, mixes, radicalism and a republic. Other groups may coexist in a republic because the republic was designed for compatibility but they are really social conservatives and a super majority of them makes them persecutors instead of persecuted. I.e. people who would impose Sharia law as soon as they got 2/3rds are perfectly fine as a minority in a tolerant republic.
> I don't think we are agreeing on terminology.. AFAIK radicals and social conservatives are opposites. One wants changes to match new ideas the other a freeze or return.
That’s not a sensible definition of “social conservative” because by that logic radical islamists aren’t also social conservatives.
> The masons and quakers are examples of groups with tolerance that make them compatible with other ideas, mixes, radicalism and a republic
Social conservatism doesn’t necessarily preclude pluralism. Quakers and Puritans may have been fine living in adjacent colonies, but that doesn’t mean they were “tolerant” of departures from behavioral norms within their own communities: https://worldspirituality.org/quaker-discipline-html/
That’s a good analogy to what America was like at the founding. American pluralism arose from multiple socially conservative and religious groups agreeing to share a country while leaving each other alone.
Yeah.. I would put the Islamic fundamentalists under social conservative they want to resume a system from ~820 AD. AFAIK these kinds of uses of radical are poor metaphors and certainly weren't relevant in the 18th or 19th century.
I generally view most of that explanation of the US as propaganda. The founders of the republic were 2nd generation+ congregationalists who were more going through the motions than puritans like their socially conservative forefathers. Shay's rebellion really highlights more about the nature of the actual inhabitants of the young nation, the way they influenced the republic and the fact that they were entirely foreign to Washington. I also don't think many of them could vote until Jackson.
The idea that the government can’t ban speech and actions harmful to the moral fiber of society is a 1960s liberal invention. It peaked with the ACLU convincing a bunch of liberal justices that strip clubs were protected speech. Who do you think were on the other side of those cases?
Conservatives aren’t libertarians and they don’t claim to be.
Sure, if it was the 1960's it might be appropriate to call this topic a conservative position. That doesn't mean it's conservative two generations later. Your comment basically demonstrates my larger point - if you tie your positions to how things were at some fixed time in the past, then as time moves forward you have less and less claim to being called "conservative" as what you want becomes ever more of a drastic departure from current society.
“Conservatism” isn’t defined (except maybe by liberals) in temporal terms. That’s like saying that liberalism is about change, without qualification.
For example, conservatives don’t like the administrative state, even though it’s pushing a century old at this point. That’s because conservatives are generally skeptical of the ability of reason to organize society. The fact that we’ve been doing that a long time doesn’t make it any more palatable.
It's interesting that you're putting out that Jacobin article as a good description of conservatism. It is describing a bunch of characterizations that are often invoked by liberals, but would seem to be convenient straw men. (I'll circle back and read it again to see if I can pull anything else out of it, but that's what I've gotten so far)
Running with what I've gotten from it - if we're not supposed to question power structures and just let them be, then why all the criticism and hate for the Cathedral? Isn't it just another power structure that actually came out of the Church and has existed for a few hundred years in its own right - pretty much all of modernity? And similarly with the bureaucratic state - it is what it is.
Furthermore - trying to invoke a "better" power structure from some arbitrary time in the past as the way things should be - isn't this solidly venturing into the territory of trying to use reason to organize and change society? How else can you judge that a previous power structure was better?
It would seem that starting with that article's description of conservatism's foundations, it's a quick leap to get back to my working definition of resisting change rather than trying to go backwards.
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For my perspective, reading Unqualified Reservations has informed my own thinking. The "alt right" seems to have descended from it and its contemporaries, so I don't think it's particularly wrong to reference it. For example, https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2009/01/gentle-intr... has what I thought was a good mostly-above-the-fray attempt at describing left vs right, if you can stomach the hyperbole and overstatement. FWIW that post was part of my switching from seeing myself as an unaligned libertarian back to being liberal (thanks Yarvin!). I don't necessarily like the Cathedral, nor the direction it and the blue team tend to pull in. But I certainly don't want to go backwards and try to shoehorn society into more prescriptive hierarchies!
“Conservatism” isn’t defined (except maybe by liberals) in temporal terms. That’s like saying that liberalism is about change, without qualification.
For example, conservatives don’t like the administrative state, even though it’s pushing a century old at this point. That’s because conservatives are generally skeptical of the ability of reason to organize society. The fact that we’ve been doing that a long time doesn’t make it any more palatable.
Thought experiment: Would it be anti-free-speech for the government to ban websites from posting specific and detailed information on how to obtain poisons that can be used to commit murder?
If you say "no," you're just as anti-free-speech as these conservatives. You just disagree with them about whether instructions for abortion are instructions for obtaining a medical procedure (protected speech) or instructions to commit murder (unprotected speech). (Presumably because you disagree about the underlying issue, which is whether abortion is a medical procedure that ought to be legal, or a form of murder that ought to be illegal.)
No need to opine. The US DoJ already settled that debate.
To quote Wikipedia: "In 2015, Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson sued the United States government on free speech grounds and in 2018 the Department of Justice settled, acknowledging Wilson's right to publish instructions for the production of 3D printed firearms." Therefore, the answer to your question is "yes".
So the GQP is full of hypocrites who want to be above the rules and will ruthlessly wield governmental censorship while crying about being censored (private entities not amplifying their voice). As such, they are the party in favor of both censorship and compelled speech.
In relation to this my objective is to viciously mock, not to persuade nor polarize.
I am an outsider with no ability to influence American politics, yet American politics does affect me an ocean away regardless. The legitimization of bullshit, conspiracy and inanity Trump did in his 2 campaigns and 1 mandate has damaged politics as a whole worldwide. It has proven that being completely detached from reality is a viable strategy. As such my usage of the term is fully intentional.
