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Rugged Individualism: Liberal or Conservative

Is rugged individualism really conservative?


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By definition, Conservatives favor the "make no law" approach to governing.

That the religious right is a part of the Republican Coalition does nothing to make central governmental control of a person's gentalia any less Liberal than does the assertion that Central Governmental control of anything is any less Liberal.

If you seek the limit of personal freedom in favor of the control of peoples' lives by a central authority, you are espousing liberalism.

This is ridiculous. Long, long ago, Republicans were socially libertarian enough to support women's rights and to see sexual behavior, birth control, and abortion as private matters that the government should have nothing to do with, but the composition of the Republican Party has completely changed since then. Republicans wanted to win so much that they sold their souls to the far right wing misogynistic, homophobic, religio-sexual busybody police. It started with blackmail by the Christian Coalition - only have anti-abortion presidential candidates and have a relevant plank in your national party platform and we'll deliver the votes, but if not, we're voting for a third party. Everything went downhill from there. There is still a wonderful organization called Pro-choice Republican Majority or something, and they still want to get their party back from these control freaks, but the truth is that most Republican social libertarians left the GOP and became independents. Liberalism today is the only national force for social libertarianism and individual constitutional rights in everything but your pocketbook.
 
On the actual topic of individualism, it is quite true that too much individualism is detrimental, even to the individual. Just like too much communialism is. The generalizations of liberal a conservative in this thread are of no consequences, but the idea of balance is crucial. We are too much in love with individualism in this country, to the point where we harm ourselves and our neighbors in a vain quest to be superior. We think that we can have everything. Of course we can't. There isn't everything to go around, and we all try to have it all, then we'll spend our lives just trying to take from each other. Instead, we need to be content to share, and to strive to improve ourselves. If we work together, we all prosper. But we need to each prosper in our individual ways, to cultivate our unique aspects and talents that make us stand out.
Ultimately your argument is about communalism. You didn't say an single positive think about individualism while promoting communal sharing, right after stating we need balance. A contradiction to say the least.
 
The libertarian/conservative in-fighting is interesting.
 
The libertarian/conservative in-fighting is interesting.

And absolutely necessary. These two things have been lumped in together by history that, originally, were at loggerheads. H.L. Mencken hated conservatives; William Jennings Bryan, whom I consider a conservative communitarian, attacked the proto-libertarians of his day.
 
From Choiceone:
"This is ridiculous. Long, long ago, Republicans were socially libertarian enough to support women's rights and to see sexual behavior, birth control, and abortion as private matters that the government should have nothing to do with, but the composition of the Republican Party has completely changed since then. Republicans wanted to win so much that they sold their souls to the far right wing misogynistic, homophobic, religio-sexual busybody police. It started with blackmail by the Christian Coalition - only have anti-abortion presidential candidates and have a relevant plank in your national party platform and we'll deliver the votes, but if not, we're voting for a third party. Everything went downhill from there. There is still a wonderful organization called Pro-choice Republican Majority or something, and they still want to get their party back from these control freaks, but the truth is that most Republican social libertarians left the GOP and became independents. Liberalism today is the only national force for social libertarianism and individual constitutional rights in everything but your pocketbook."


I agree. Niether the Reps nor the Dems have any Conservatism left after the pushes and pulls of the constituent slivers that form their coalitions.

ALL of the Social baggage that comes along with the "get elected at all costs" is a distraction that will lead to a huge debt and annual deficits of epic proportion.

The job of the government is pretty much to defend the borders, maintain the domestic peace and deliver the mail until a better solution arises. It has.

All of the rest is a debt machine that is constructing the gallows upon which our country is about to be hanged. The younger folks in our society should be rioting in the streets that each of them will have a debt that is higher than the cost of a college education. That they are not is evidence of their stupidity.
 
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Am I the only one who finds it hilarious that one wants to ascribe the attribute of individualism to a group? :lol:


Big Smile!

Government is not a solitary pursuit. The base issue for all politics is whether or not the individual is best served by the government allowing the individual to exercise personal liberties or by allowing the individual to surrender personal liberty for security.

Today's American Government and the Governments of most of the Great Democracies of the West have wandered to the Socialist end of this consideration. We now find that the government has reserved the duty to tell us what to drink and in what quantity it may be served. We are now at a tipping point. There is very little distance between the control of those in elderly care homes and the control of the average citizen in the view of the modern Liberal.

Soon, personal liberty will be viewed as the right to elect the euthanizing drug from a limited array in lieu of a cure formerly available.
 
Of course, what could broadly be termed as a left-libertarian/right-populist political spectrum would have its share of contradictions as well, such as the fact that the left-libertarians would be conservative insofar as they looked to the past - to the old classical liberal and anarchist movements - for guidance. But contradictions in a society are inescapable, and simply resolve themselves into further contradictions.


For the reasons you cite, the labels of Liberal and Conservative have lost meaning. I feel this is a designed result of the elite of both parties. The yammering heads on the TV have reduced politics to inflammatory slogans and have lost sight of the basics entirely.

The debate, from a governmental standpoint, is whether or not government should be invasive or reserved. Liberalism demands that it be invasive while Conservatism demands that it be reserved. Regardless of the issue under consideration, if one is demanding a Central Government solution, one is espousing Liberalism. If one is demanding that solutions be dispersed to the localities for address, one is espousing Conservatism.

If you look at the enumerated powers as a limiting list of duties for government, you are a Conservative. If you see these as a springboard to begin the expansion of the role of government, you are a Liberal.

All of the hyphenated ideological linkings of the time piece labels of the past are confusions for the bastardization of our Constitution.
 
Good for him :) hes going to grow up a liberal conservative slayer...lolol...



What within that story identifies anyone as either Conservative or Liberal?
 
Frederick Jackson Turner - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Here's some reading on the probable origins of this thinking.
Since Turner implied that real Americans proved class privileges were unnecessary to build a nation, the fact that he was rejected by the 60s Left academics once again reveals that, despite their anti-Establishment public image, these people are really unAmerican and anti-American upper-class snobs.
 
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