I say this as a firm conservative. The courts have so far been outstanding, despite all the inappropriate pressure. I have no doubt they will continue to be. I'm also quite impressed with conservative voters who are speaking out to their conservative representatives.
Ultimately though, despite many many calls not to do so, Congress has goven the executive branch unheard of powers. Executive power needs to be reigned in tightly and then Congressional power needs to reigned in as well. We need to push for Federalism.
The funny thing is, that the GOP is not "conservative," in any way, whatsoever. They are extreme.
The definition of "conservative" means "not-extreme." It is not just "not-liberal." It means being thoughtful, cautious, sticking with the mainstream, learning from the past, not discarding learned wisdom, etc.
Things like anti-abortion, hate-brown-people, put-women-back-in-the-kitchen-or-the-bedroom etc. stuff is often described as "conservative," because so much old culture had it, but these days, they are no longer "mainstream" principles.
I tend to be somewhat "centrist." Some of my own personal values could be construed as "conservative" (like personal Discipline and Integrity, insisting on writing very good-Quality code, or not spending money that I don't have), but I also have values that lean left (like an expansive worldview, not insisting on taking away the Agency of others, etc.).
The wrecking ball that DOGE is running through our government, right now, is not "conservative," at all.
Agreed. To me "conservative" means to be cautious and slow/reluctant to change things. The quick dismantling of institutions that's happening right now is the opposite of conservative.
Oh please, not a single person besides you thinks of "conserving the monarchy during the french revolution" when using the word "conservative" besides you.
If if was not clear my point is that it evolved with the current form of government of the time but never departed from the original goal of for those in power to conserve their power.
While it is overly specific for modern use, it is actually much closer than what the prior poster suggested to the way the term has always been used as a political label and accurate as to its origin as one (more generally, it originally was protecting the power of the aristocracy and religious establishment against the encroachment of bourgeois liberalism; IIRC the liberal/conservative terminology was in use in regard to British politics even prior to the French Revolution, to which it was also applied; the French Revolution is where we get the Left/Right terminology that originally corresponded pretty directly to liberal/conservative though left and liberal have split a bit in more modern use, as the locus of elite power has moved, and liberalism has to a certain extent become associated with status-quo-ism related to that new locus of power), which has always been distinct from how "conservative" is used as anything other than a political label.
> The funny thing is, that the GOP is not "conservative," in any way, whatsoever. They are extreme
The word that describes them the best is reactionary. As a political ideology it fell out of favour some time in the late 19th, early 20th century with the fall of the various reactionary regimes (Austria under Metternich, Imperial Russia).
But the GOP, and some other parties looking to them for inspiration, are reactionary. They are opposed to any social progress and want to go back.
> They are opposed to any social progress and want to go back.
I see it as exact opposite.
The "left" parties have long abandoned social progress and are now regressing. Support or racism (affirmative action), terrorism, violence against women, violence against Jews, violence and rioting in general, denial of science, against meritocracy, against freedom of speech.
Technically, while going back to meritocracy, equality, freedom of speech is "reactionary", I'd definitely term it progress.
In politics, conservative means keeping the status quo. This largely describes the current mainstream Democratic party. You're right, Republicans are not trying to keep the status quo. Going back to an older culture is "reactionary". Current mainstream Republicans can be described in this way.
Personal discipline, thoughtfulness, caution, integrity, wisdom, learning from the past, etc. are not necessarily features of one ideology or another.
You should disabuse yourself of the notion that concepts like personal discipline, contentiousness, and integrity are somehow "conservative" values. They are not in either sense of the word conservative.
Certainly from a political standpoint, republicans (or their equivalent in other nations) have often used these concepts against women, minorities, and the mentally ill as a means of shirking their obligation to help their fellow human. In my observation, they never make much of an attempt to live up to them in their own lives. (e.g. YOU are a welfare queen, but I am an entrepreneur who needed to take a government bailout).
On the other hand, if "conservative" means "old-fashioned" to you, then there is also no reason to believe that the people before us were morally superior to us today. My reading of history leads me to believe quite the opposite.
> My reading of history leads me to believe quite the opposite.
Hey, if we wanted to go back to real old-fashioned (pre-columbian) American values, then we could have human sacrifice, multi-god-animistic-religion, slavery (the Europeans weren't the only ones to do that), etc.
Just a point, Europeans were the only ones to do _chaptel slavery_, i.e treating fellow humans (even if they are currently slave) as object they own and have every right over them.
Other form of slavery were either topologically or chronologically limited. This wasn't the case for European chaptel slavery: your sons and daughter were also property, and changing localtion did not indure you to another lord, but gave him right to pursue you across the world (also, chains were mostly used during triomphs, but chained slave were in practice extremely rare, even in mines)
I’m not in any way a conservative, but it’s a absolutely abhorrent that we’re constantly gaslit into believing conservative means chaos and abrupt change at any cost to own the libs. It takes the fear of change that is part of conservatism and ramps it up into a full blown delusion. What conservative would want massive change all at once and throwing caution to the wind? Like you said, that’s not typical conservative behavior, it’s extremist and fascist behavior. Unfortunately, conservatives went all in on supporting extremists and here we are.
> The definition of "conservative" means "not-extreme."
No, it really doesn't. I mean, yes, that's a definition of "conservative" in common language, but it has never been the definition of "conservative" as a label of political ideology; like many words, "conservative" means different things in different contexts.
Saying, in a discussion of political ideologies, that "conservative" means "not extreme" is like saying in a discussion of programming paradigms that "functional" means "designed to be practical and useful, rather than attractive". That is absolutely a definition of the word, but not the one relevant to the context at hand.
As a political ideology label, "conservative" was defined in reaction and opposition to liberalism and the outward distribution of power away from traditional institutional, hereditary, economic, and religious elites that it represented, and refers to the defense of the privilege and power of such elites and the traditions that sustain and emanate from them within the politico-economic system.
Now, over time since then, as there has been more progress made by liberal and other newer forces against the elites of the time that distinction arose, and even sometimes against the newer elites that arose because of early liberal successes like the bourgeoisie who displaced the feudal aristocracy as the ruling class in the capitalist world, to see their own power somewhat eroded in the transition to mixed economies, there has come to be a distinction sometimes made between plain "conservative" being the a sort of mostly-status-quo-ist defense of current elites that mostly opposes weakening their power and favors very modest steps to shore it up, versus reactionaries that favor more extreme action either to deeply retrench the power of status quo elites or to actually wind back power to past-but-currently-displaced elites -- but even in that terminology reactionaries do not stand in opposition to conservatism but simply stand further out in the same direction. There is a good argumen that the GOP was transitioned over time from plain conservative to outright reactionary, but that's not a change in direction.
Hey, you're not allowed to send those people on the plane! The plane already left even though I told you not to send it? Well, you gotta get them back! You're not sending them back? I'll just keep telling you that you have to do it, that'll really show you!
Oh, pretty please, would you return that man you illegally sent to that torture prison? No? Oh, ok, well would you at least just talk to me about it in daily reports? No? Oh, ok. I guess he'll just die there. Oh well.
The courts have successfully enjoined a large number of actions, required the release of many people from domestic ICE custody, and ended the transfer of anyone new to El Salvador. As I'm always reminding people, the news is a highly optimized machine to deliver you the worst thing that happened today - if you're reading it as though it's a representative sample of everything that's happening, you're going to get a misleading perspective.
So, is Abrego Garcia back in the US and actually having a real trial? What of the other 200+ people who were illegally taken? Still there despite many court orders to return them?
The courts have asked for those people to be released from ICE custody, they haven't complied with a lot of those requests. The courts have asked for them to stop abducting people off the streets without cause but they continue doing it.
Its not a misleading perspective when it's the actual facts and reality. You're acting like well he only send a few hundred people to a torture prison so far, no big deal I guess. He's only deporting some US citizens without due process. He's only arguing having court cases for some crimes is too cumbersome so we should ignore due process for those crimes.
When will they end up charging you with a crime that's too cumbersome to prove in court and thus you no longer get due process? When your imprisonment gets publicized for how terrible it is, will you also be happy to have people shrug off that reporting as a "misleading perspective"?
Every one of those things should be klaxons sounding in the streets.
We'll see if there really aren't any more transfers to El Salvador.
The misleading perspective is your generalization from things that have happened to things that haven’t happened. The system as it currently exists - overzealous immigration enforcement which is often but not always enjoined - cannot ship me to El Salvador.
It’s true that there’s a big danger of someone building a different system that could change that! Preventing that from happening is the key political challenge of today. But effective prevention requires accurate reasoning about which components of society can do what. One of the best ways to ensure there are more transfers to El Salvador is to spread the narrative that courts are powerless and nobody can stop the administration from doing it.
> The system as it currently exists - overzealous immigration enforcement which is often but not always enjoined - cannot ship me to El Salvador
These people had no due process. If you have no due process, you too could be sent there. You'll argue, I'll just show them I'm a citizen. Who are you showing it to? Who are you proving it to? Who goes to review that? Which court reviewed these people's legal status? Which court reviewed the crimes Abrego Garcia was guilty of? Which court will review your case while you're already on the plane before you can even contact a lawyer?
Many of these people have lawful status in the US. They had their lawful status rescinded without due process and were trafficked out of the country without due process. Thinking "that can't happen to me!" is lemming ideology.
US citizens are already being removed from this country without due process despite having due process rights. And you're suggesting I shouldn't talk about it. That me talking about it ensures the next planes leave somehow.
> One of the best ways to ensure there are more transfers to El Salvador is to spread the narrative that courts are powerless and nobody can stop the administration from doing it
It has already been proven the courts are powerless to prevent it -- its already happened! The court told them to stop, the executive branch went ahead anyways, the court said to bring them back, and yet they're still there. Me pointing this out isn't ensuring those planes continue, Trump and his administration remaining in office ensures those planes continue.
Other than your theoretical arrest and expulsion from the country everything I've stated has already happened and is continuing to happen despite what the courts have said. After the first plane that was told it wasn't allowed to leave left and was doubly and triply clarified these planes aren't supposed to go, another plane left. Despite what the courts said. You really think the court opinions are what's holding up the next plane? Why didn't it stop those other planes?
And why would Trump stop? What, he's going to be impeached? As if that hasn't happened before. Congress isn't going to remove him despite him continually breaking the law.
On the grounds that he should have been sent to literally any other country, totally inapplicable to any of the other cases without specific preexisting orders against ES specifically. And notably they have outlined exactly nothing except that the administration had better say how they plan to get him back- the SCOTUS response to the executive saying "we have no plan" was just to say again that they wanted to know the plan.
The government is imprisoning people indefinitely (forever?) for unproven allegations and misdemeanors. They should be able to file habeas petitions for unlawful imprisonment. The courts are doing fuck all about it because the government is contracting to a foreign country to physically imprison them. That's crazy.
> The government is imprisoning people indefinitely (forever?) for unproven allegations and misdemeanors. They should be able to file habeas petitions for unlawful imprisonment. The courts are doing fuck all about it because the government is contracting to a foreign country to physically imprison them. That's crazy.
This doesn't sound too dissimilar from the Guantanamo bay situation, which Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden all kept going
The now famous photo of his hands with the "MS-13" tattoo, which is the evidence of his gang ties, was taken from CECOT. It would not surprise me in the slightest if he was forced to get that tattoo there. CECOT is widely known for torturing its prisoners, and their dictator is obviously doing anything he can to make Trump happy as he's being paid millions by Trump.
This is just a conspiracy theory but it highlights the need for due process. Without it it is very easy for governments to fabricate whatever narrative they want.
What action has been taken as a result of that ruling though? The Supreme Court might as well give the president a big thumbs down if nothing actually happens.
It doesn't matter what the courts say if the executive can disregard that. But this is exactly what they are trying to achieve with this whole "unitary executive" BS, and willing abettance from Republicans in Congress.
> Congress has goven the executive branch unheard of powers. Executive power needs to be reigned in tightly and then Congressional power needs to reigned in as well. We need to push for Federalism.
Sensible people will realize that separation of powers means nothing when the same party holds both powers. R House + R senate + R SCOTUS + R executive => unlimited executive power.
The problem with democratic elections to executive, house and senate is they all follow the "will of the people". In America there is a bit of a lag, but ultimately you still get to the two-wolf one-sheep tyranny of the masses.
The only brake on this is the SCOTUS, but that only works when you actually have a scotus that is empowered to uphold the constitution.
I would argue that Trump only exists as President because Congress has abdicated its lawmaking powers for the past twenty years (give or take). With a functional legislative branch it's not nearly as problematic to have an extremely liberal or conservative president, or textualist Supreme Court justices. We need a refresh of rules governing congress (age & term limits, better pay, disallowing equity trading, elimination of gerrymandering at the state level, and perhaps nationwide adoption of ranked choice voting, which would open the door to viable third parties & ruling by coalition).
Ultimately though, despite many many calls not to do so, Congress has goven the executive branch unheard of powers. Executive power needs to be reigned in tightly and then Congressional power needs to reigned in as well. We need to push for Federalism.