How can conservatives divorce themselves from conservatives past?

[expatriot]

I have often stated the rhetorical question in conversation "When have conservatives ever been right? They killed Jesus, they thought the earth was in the center of the universe, they were loyal to the King in the American Revolution, they fought to preserve slavery, to keep women from voting, they supported segregation, etc."

Conservativism is the brake pedal of history. But yet every generation of conservative seeks to disinherit the regressive policies of the previous generation's conservatives.

Case in point: Over at FR in discussions of Rosa Parks while there are a few who are disresepecting her, etc. a majority of them claim to hold her in reverence and what she did. It is as if they identify with her more than that white man standing in the aisle insisting that she move seats. Don't they see that that white man standing in the aisle insisting that he be given privilege over her would have been a regular poster to freerepublic.com? He would have been a FREEPER. And as for Rosa Parks? Which discussion forum would she have chosen? Oh yes, she would have most certiainly been a DUmmie.

How can they disinherit the fights of their political forefathers while we proudly claim lineage to ours.

[Michael_UK]

1. You're right - on every social issue, the right has always been wrong.

I'll be kind and give them some credibility on a few economic issues.

[whatever4]

3. I'm a libertarian, and I agree

The neocons have so perverted anything decent about conservatism, I think most people forget what it used to mean. It didn't used to mean exclusively Christian, and it was strongly for privacy rights. All gone, poof, forgotten.

Where I get into tugging matches is when the liberal/progressive moves so far into fixing government, they seem to want government to fix us too. I'm for social programs, but not if they ever hold someone down. I'm for safe regulations, but not when the regulations are turned into a profit-making scam, not when they're useless money-making stamps on products that still don't protect us or live up to their own rules.

There's progressive, and then there's talking to people I used to work with, from China and Russia, where they had to request to move to another place. They either had to wait, sometimes a decade or two, or find another family to swap with. Their schools and their jobs were determined FOR them. You know? All done "for" them. Even where they lived.

Some people are starting to want those types of government "help", and in this climate, it's hard as hell to point out how that leads to more government abuse. I fear the time when we won't have any choice in accepting "help". In the end, I fear the same old boss.

And that is what conservatives used to be good for. They were, if nothing else, full of people that wanted to do it their own way. Do everything their own way, they believed in free enterprise, they believed in doing better. We're a hard working country, and always have been. It just took them too damned long to realize that someone else hopped on the sled, gave it a huge push down the hill, and then broke the steering rod. While a car is coming down the hill straight at us. It seems the goon on the sled doesn't care where the sled goes; he's going to jump off long before it hits anyway.

My two cents, I think conservatives were used, but they're late in realizing it, and they don't know how to fight back. In fighting back, they sound as if they're joining "us", and they don't like that. Part of it is not having a strategy, to fight the right from the right, and partly it's just ego. And too many just don't care, as long as they're on the winning side.

[sui generis]

2. conservatives don't even KNOW what they are

A real political "conservative" is someone who has a problem with large government in private lives and someone who has a problem with the government collecting and spending money wastefully.

Political "liberals" believe that the government IS the voice and intent of the people and as such serves the people and the natural extension of that is the pursuit of social programs that benefit us in retirement, health, welfare, and medical care, and the pursuit of regulations that keep the environment available to us and healthy, drinking water and the air we breathe free of contaminants.

Today's conservatives think that "conservative" means social conservative -- someone who thinks everyone should fuck for reproductive purposes only, and only in the missionary position with the man on top and the woman on the bottom. They think that "smaller government" means less government in the national parks, courtrooms and classrooms, and more bible and more developers. Today's conservatives believe that any taxation is too much, and that if you're poor it's because you've made choices that keep you poor.

Today's conservatives believe that the majority rules no matter what even if it's a bare majority ("up or down"), unless you're talking about religion, in which case evangelical babtists should rule.

They are fucking schizophrenic - and they will eventually keep divorcing themselves from the crap they can no longer stand about themselves until they wake up one morning and discover that they are liberals after all, when they discover they actually need social security and medicare and medicaid and welfare and school lunch vouchers and that they really DO have a problem with religion in government when Islam is the prevalent religion in America and that they really DO have a problem the government in their bedrooms when they can no longer download any kind of porn or even say "god damn" in public without being put on a no-fly list and having their passport taken, when they can lose their job because someone accused them of being heterosexual.