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The GOP leadership is prepared to throw anti-gay socons under the bus

Einzige

Elitist as Hell.
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Conservatives at crossroads on gay marriage - Alexander Burns and Maggie Haberman - POLITICO.com

Excellent news.

I favor this not so much because of its policy outcome - I fully believe liberty can be attained completely without the input of the Republican Party at all - but because it may lead to a new kind of American conservatism.

There will be a 'populist' revolt over this, no doubt. The Establishment will be called weak and irrelevant and tyrannical (oh, how like the hippies modern 'conservatives' are).

But maybe this time the Republican Establishment will behave conservatively and crush the populists utterly without mercy. Conservatism is hierarchical; it is deference; it is will-to-power. Populism - anti-elitism - is fundamentally contradictory to the true essence of conservatism, which is elitist, thoroughly individualist - profoundly pagan - noblesse obligé.

Fewer Reagans, more Bismarcks.
 
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Independent of the issue of SSM, I think the old school conservatives are going to try to crush the Tea Party in 2016. Until then, they just need to hold onto the House anyway they can, but I expect an all out war come January 2015 and running through the Prezzy Pick.
 
Conservatives at crossroads on gay marriage - Alexander Burns and Maggie Haberman - POLITICO.com

Excellent news.

I favor this not so much because of its policy outcome - I fully believe liberty can be attained completely without the input of the Republican Party at all - but because it may lead to a new kind of American conservatism.

There will be a 'populist' revolt over this, no doubt. The Establishment will be called weak and irrelevant and tyrannical (oh, how like the hippies modern 'conservatives' are).

But maybe this time the Republican Establishment will behave conservatively and crush the populists utterly without mercy. Conservatism is hierarchical; it is deference; it is will-to-power. Populism - anti-elitism - is fundamentally contradictory to the true essence of conservatism, which is elitist, thoroughly individualist - profoundly pagan - noblesse obligé.

Fewer Reagans, more Bismarcks.

Conservatives are not at a crossroads, Republicans maybe, but not true conservatives.
 
Conservatives are not at a crossroads, Republicans maybe, but not true conservatives.


Southern Democratic populists are not 'true conservatives'.
 
Conservatives are not at a crossroads, Republicans maybe, but not true conservatives.

The No True Scotsman fallacy always rears its head in this kinds of debates. When the tea party is finished, there will only be 6 true conservatives left in the nation. Thank God
 
Independent of the issue of SSM, I think the old school conservatives are going to try to crush the Tea Party in 2016. Until then, they just need to hold onto the House anyway they can, but I expect an all out war come January 2015 and running through the Prezzy Pick.

The Tea Party and the socially conservative populists are synonymous. The former was always a vehicle for the latter. All but the most servile or self-deluded libertarians have fled it.
 
This is the most interesting thread on the whole same sex marriage decisions debate.

This issue is clearly going to have a huge impact on the blighted soul of the GOP, just as the Civil Rights movement did. It's a fault line I suspect the GOP leaders don't know what to do with.
 
I want to see American conservatism completely remade, after the fashion of the radically traditionalist, Romantic, anti-democratic, anti-popular, anti-Christian German Revolutionary Conservatism. A pipe dream because of the influence of Southern heavy sweaters, but obe can dream.
 
I want to see American conservatism completely remade, after the fashion of the radically traditionalist, Romantic, anti-democratic, anti-popular, anti-Christian German Revolutionary Conservatism. A pipe dream because of the influence of Southern heavy sweaters, but obe can dream.

A pipe dream maybe, but the thing is, I expect that deep in the conservative soul is this very wish. The politics don't allow it, but conservative rhetoric constantly bends toward elitism, contempt for working people, a fawning love of the rich, and a real disgust with democracy. So maybe your wish will come true as the GOP disintegrates into electoral irrelevancy.
 
A pipe dream maybe, but the thing is, I expect that deep in the conservative soul is this very wish. The politics don't allow it, but conservative rhetoric constantly bends toward elitism, contempt for working people, a fawning love of the rich, and a real disgust with democracy. So maybe your wish will come true as the GOP disintegrates into electoral irrelevancy.




I predict that in the next 20-30 years as massive demographic change steadily shrinks the GOP to a minor, regional, party, a lot of wacky things will happen at the GOP
 
Quite the opposite, really: American conservatives are profoundly democratic. Hence the insistence on rude majoritarianism in the form of e.g. popular referenda against gay marriage, support for Christianity as the majority religion, etc.

All of this is anathema to the metaphysical conservatives, of course, who instinctively hate democracy and prefer elitist paganism to populist Christianity.

American conservatism isn't evil because it is anti-democratic. It is evil because it embraces democracy.
 
The No True Scotsman fallacy always rears its head in this kinds of debates. When the tea party is finished, there will only be 6 true conservatives left in the nation. Thank God





Praise the Lord!

Final victory is at hand!




"The secret of all victory lies in the organization of the non-obvious. ~ Marcus Aurelius
 
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Conservatives at crossroads on gay marriage - Alexander Burns and Maggie Haberman - POLITICO.com

Excellent news.

I favor this not so much because of its policy outcome - I fully believe liberty can be attained completely without the input of the Republican Party at all - but because it may lead to a new kind of American conservatism.

There will be a 'populist' revolt over this, no doubt. The Establishment will be called weak and irrelevant and tyrannical (oh, how like the hippies modern 'conservatives' are).

But maybe this time the Republican Establishment will behave conservatively and crush the populists utterly without mercy. Conservatism is hierarchical; it is deference; it is will-to-power. Populism - anti-elitism - is fundamentally contradictory to the true essence of conservatism, which is elitist, thoroughly individualist - profoundly pagan - noblesse obligé.

Fewer Reagans, more Bismarcks.

Of course,I am pretty sure Bismark was a bisexual strongman who created government run medicine. Yes,a great conservative was he.
 
Of course,I am pretty sure Bismark was a bisexual strongman who created government run medicine. Yes,a great conservative was he.

The Germanic tradition Bismarck strove to conserve was older by far than the weak laissez-faire that inspires modern American conservatism. There was no conflict between his Statism and his conservatism because in the Kaiserreich the State, in the form of throne-and-altar, was Tradition itself. He would have looked upon Reagan as another free-market Smithianimus radical.

The association between conservatism and small government is a modern invention. Monarchical conservatism in Germany was mercantilist in its economics and protectionist in its trade. The Bismarck health care reform, moreover, was designed to stave off socialist revolution.
 
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You're conflating American Conservatism which is based decidedly on christian individuality and republic ideals with European Conservatism which has its roots in the more ancient rite of monarch and tribal-isms ...


The two can't be compared on the basis of tradition because they have two separate and distinct traditions...
 
You're conflating American Conservatism which is based decidedly on christian individuality and republic ideals with European Conservatism which has its roots in the more ancient rite of monarch and tribal-isms.

Precisely so. And, I'd argue, the older European form of conservative thought is far more intellectually stimulating, far more emotionally exhilarating, and, in the final analysis, more philosophically sound than the ad hoc go-go-Reaganaut balderdash.
 
A pipe dream maybe, but the thing is, I expect that deep in the conservative soul is this very wish. The politics don't allow it, but conservative rhetoric constantly bends toward elitism, contempt for working people, a fawning love of the rich, and a real disgust with democracy. So maybe your wish will come true as the GOP disintegrates into electoral irrelevancy.

The Republican base could use more elitism, if you ask me. Ranting about the establishment, being disproportionately disdainful of intellectuals, politicians, the Senate, the Supreme Court, and lobbyists is just silly nonsense.
 
The Republican base could use more elitism, if you ask me. Ranting about the establishment, being disproportionately disdainful of intellectuals, politicians, the Senate, the Supreme Court, and lobbyists is just silly nonsense.

The fundamental problem is that the modern Republicans are, in every sense, Democrats. And why not? They were Democrats de jure as well as de facto as recently as Kennedy. If 'democratic' is taken to mean 'majoritarian' - the rule of the numerically superior over the qualitatively superior - they are far more democratic than the Democrats ever were. At least Roosevelt was patrician...
 
Precisely so. And, I'd argue, the older European form of conservative thought is far more intellectually stimulating, far more emotionally exhilarating, and, in the final analysis, more philosophically sound than the ad hoc go-go-Reaganaut balderdash.

I would be likely to agree with you. The Reagan Era, with the harbinger of the NeoCons is the absolutely worst thing that could have happened to the Conservative Movement here in America.

It diminished the accompanying sense of Duty that went along with all those dollars and took the notion of a strong military presence a bit too literally.

I think it was you, saying libertarianism and conservatism are incompatible but I think the main vein which makes them such is laissez faire economics. Which again I think you had made brief mention.

Distributism, which is my economic mode of choice, (well, an alloy of sorts which pairs it with some fundamentals of Proudhon's mutualism) is by far a more compatible economic mode for the conservative.
 
I would be likely to agree with you. The Reagan Era, with the harbinger of the NeoCons is the absolutely worst thing that could have happened to the Conservative Movement here in America.

It diminished the accompanying sense of Duty that went along with all those dollars and took the notion of a strong military presence a bit too literally.

I think it was you, saying libertarianism and conservatism are incompatible but I think the main vein which makes them such is laissez faire economics. Which again I think you had made brief mention.

Distributism, which is my economic mode of choice, (well, an alloy of sorts which pairs it with some fundamentals of Proudhon's mutualism) is by far a more compatible economic mode for the conservative.

But the interesting thing is that while neoconservatives struck alliances with populists, a number were much more willing to embrace much older notions of the proper society and the role of the intellectual and the policy wonk than the so-called American traditionalists were. If one were to consider the Straussians, you would notice that their viewpoint that the ancients had something more to offer society than the moderns critiques liberalism to a degree that libertarians could not tolerate.
 
I want to see American conservatism completely remade, after the fashion of the radically traditionalist, Romantic, anti-democratic, anti-popular, anti-Christian German Revolutionary Conservatism. A pipe dream because of the influence of Southern heavy sweaters, but obe can dream.

You think maybe that would make the Democrats shift into an actual socialist party, instead of a watered down bankers' party that just happens to not try to enforce fundamentalist Christian ethics? Things like SSM are the main issues that keep the Ds and Rs from just merging into one big party dedicated to bankers and the super rich.
 
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