1y ago

There's no such thing as a conservative intellectual — only apologists for right-wing power

www.salon.com There's no such thing as a conservative intellectual — only apologists for right-wing power

From Burke to Buckley to Patrick Deneen, we've seen a 200-year history of defending the indefensible

Commentary: Longtime former Republican on Patrick Deneen and the demise of the conservative intellectual

politics @lemmy.world

There's no such thing as a conservative intellectual — only apologists for right-wing power

www.salon.com /2023/07/01/theres-no-such-thing-as-a-conservative-intellectual--only-apologists-for-right-wing-power/

453 152

You're viewing a single thread.

104 comments

This is incorrect.
There is a such thing as a "conservative intellectual". It's just that they've been long since drowned out by the rest of the party, and the right-wing voting base has no appetite for actual, sensible conservative policies right now.
- Name one conservative policy that has furthered mankind. Prohibition, voting rights, sexuality, drug war, terrorism; time after time they’ve been wrong. Even fiscally they run up the deficit. Their only role is to preserve hierarchy and maintain power
  
  Intellectualism is not an inherently moral thing. One can be an amoral, selfish, narcissistic, intellectual.
  
  I didn’t mean to give the impression that it is a moral issue. I consider it from a populist societal perspective. The majority (liberalism)wanting to do one thing, and the minority (conservatives) preventing progress. If conservatives had it their way, we’d still have feudalism… oh wait.
  
  I mean, that's also taking an "us vs them" mentality that isn't helpful either. The middle ground is where the vast majority of people sit, and often swing to one side or another based on the situation surrounding them. Taking a "If you're not with me, you're against me" stance, just puts those people off. Either they just refuse to engage (which is a big factor in lack of participation in voting in the US) or they move towards the people who are willing to pander them. More often than not the conservatives.
  
  Apparently I suffer from what is called naive realism. I’m working on it. I just wished conservatives would too.
  
  Problem is human rights have become the giant center of it all, and it IS if you're not with me you're against me. There's no fence from where I stand because stripping rights to play games can't be an option. All these bills being passed with no legs just to keep fires alive. I say this from a safe state, I'm white, born straight, all the simple stuff. I try not to be off-putting - but "I'm a fiscal conservative and a social democrat" is a cop-out these days
  I almost deleted all this lol but I may as well post. I find all that you've written thoughtful. I've stayed out of politics for the past few months because it's was all just been too much these past 6 or 7 years...and it's about to get awful again. I think I'm glad I'm off Reddit for politics season. There were good discussions there, but I think there will be more to get out of it here
  Anyway, thanks for your replies
  
  Those sound like the exact kinds of people who shouldn't have any influence over our politics
  
  Those are core conservative "intellectuals'.
  
  Name one conservative policy that has furthered mankind.
  Richard Nixon was at the helm when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was founded. I believe he also was responsible for protecting national parks, but I didn't bother fact-checking that one.
  https://www.epa.gov/history#:~:text=EPA%20was%20created%20on%20December,human%20health%20and%20the%20environment.
  Now, granted, modern conservative politics are garbage-culture war bullshit, but we need to be cautious of forgetting history. Rewriting history is their game.
  
  Progressive policies implemented during a conservative presidency don’t seem like conservative policies.
  
  If you can just hijack any and all "good" policies as inherently progressive then you're just a self-fuelling fire who wants to hate conservatives no matter what.
  
  I wouldn’t be crediting them with enacting good policy if it wasn’t progressive.
  If you can show an example of opposing progress that is good I’m all in on that conservative policy.
  The ESA was not good because it maintained the status quo. It was good because it was progressive. The fact that it was implemented during a conservative presidency is irrelevant.
  
  May I also just add, that for his example he had to go, 60 years into the past....
  My entire lifetime, the GOP has simply don't nothing that has helped the average Joe. It's always hate based culture wars, tax cuts and protect guns. That's it.
  They provide zero solutions for anything. And if you do try to provide a solution, which inevitably will have painful parts to it because fixing things is hard, they blast propaganda how you're anti American. They are just not interesting in governing.
  
  You're buying in too much to the branding of big-P Progressive. The EPA, and environmental protections, are inherently little-c conservative positions.
  Not everything that is good is Progressive, and not everything Progressives want is good, or even intelligent. Rent control, as one very basic example, doesn't work, and yet Progressives across America push it.
  
  What doesn't work about it? (I honestly know nothing about it, but I know there are things that sound great on paper and propaganda but in practice it's bull)
  
  Rent control disincentives building new apartments, because there is little financial incentive in doing so in an area choked by supply shortages, thus it exacerbates supply shortages over time.
  See here: https://www.nmhc.org/news/articles/the-high-cost-of-rent-control/
  Note that this is not theoretical - we've seen rent control attempted to poor effect worldwide
  
  Ty
  
  You made me think about this. Thanks
  
  George W Bush massively expanded US Free Trade agreements. We went from 3 to 16 under his admin. That's good for the entire world.
  Pretty much the only thing I don't like about Biden is his protectionist stance.
  
  I’m gonna assume you think Capitalist expansion and colonialism is a good thing.
  
  The former, yes, the latter I bet we have significant disagreements on the definition of
  
  Tangentially, if you’re interested in rabbit holes, there’s a book by Matt Kennard called Silent Coup that deals with corporate influence over trade, it looks at the agreements countries have to sign to get corporations into their countries.
  
  I'm well aware of this process and support it. Countries are welcome to make any deals they'd like. They're presumably intelligent, independent entities making decisions in their own best interest.
  
  So you’re in favor of BRICS and the devaluation of the petrodollar, if those countries choose to do that?
  
  I recognize their right and potential desire to do it, but I think the likely economic responses and ensuing global downturn isn't worth the eventual possible payoff for them
  As an example of an actual unpopular opinion I have, I think it's good that countries sell Nestle their water rights and then buy water back from them, if it results in a large enough economic impact for their nation.
  
  Why do you think that opinion is unpopular?
  
  It is unpopular in my circles, which includes a lot of "fuck nestle" kind of people
  
  Maybe they did the maths and think it’s worth it. The “PetroYuan” sounds weird
  
  I am quite confident that the dollar will remain the world currency, likely until we move to a single world currency in the far future.
  
  Progressivism is moving towards collective goals. Conservatism is protecting individual freedoms.
  You many see individual freedoms differently than they do but that is the core fundamental policy they protect.
  
  But they don't protect individual freedoms.
  They have taken a hard stance against body autonomy, free speech, individual identity - all in support of corporate and state control over the individual.
  This is the same argument as saying conservatives are fiscally responsible. It's just something people say with nothing historically supporting it.
  
  Neo-conservatism is what you are referring to and yes they are doing those things.
  
  What you're saying is true in theory, but the American Republican party has absolutely nothing in common with it.
  Just look at the patriot act, torture, detention, TSA, and all the other shit pushed through by the GOP that has decimated freedoms and privacy.
  The ONLY individual freedom the GOP protects unconditionally is for everyone and their uncle to own guns. Nevermind if your uncle is a lunatic, they'll protect his freedom to be armed to the teeth.
  
  The republican party isn't conservative. They are neo-conservative. Different problem.
  
  Everyone living depends on huge networks of interdependent actors for basic survival. Never mind quality of life. The political reality of the individual is that they are the smallest and weakest political unit; least equipped to petition for change.
  Conservatism may have individualism all over the label, but conformity is what's inside the box.
- Go ahead and list an example of one of those past conservative intellectuals and we'll see how long it takes to dig up an example of them saying something like Civil Rights protesters are all secret communist agents or that child labor and vagrancy laws and debtors prisons are good things.
  Like, I get the appeal in wanting to believe the other side is just as smart and well meaning as our side is, but there's just no basis for that in the historical record. They've always been like this and we just keep forgetting.
  
  One can be an intellectual and still a huge piece of shit. Theyre not mutually exclusive. People like Milton Friedman or Henry Kissinger a undebatably intellectuals... but that doesn't mean they're angels. It just means they wield their intellect as a whip to beat their opponents with, rather than raising society as a whole.
  Honestly this whole "conservatives are just a bunch of dumb rabid animals" is they exact sentiment they want us to feel. Because then we never look at the deeper issues that are actually affecting our world.
  
  Honestly this whole "conservatives are just a bunch of dumb rabid animals" is they exact sentiment they want us to feel. Because then we never look at the deeper issues that are actually affecting our world.
  I for one would love to look at the deeper issues that are actually affecting our world, but I end up wasting a ton of my time replying to dumb rabid animal shit David Brooks gets to smear all over the New York Times op-ed page when my older relatives who vote in every single election send me his columns because they think that he makes some good points about "Cultural Marxism"
  
  And that's their entire ploy. Keep people engaged with pointless dialogues that don't mean anything. It's better to point them to an article refuting such claims and move on. The debates aren't worth getting into if they're not made in earnest.
  
  For example, Karl Marx. Clearly an intellectual as evidenced by his writings. But his colorblind/radical centrist take on minority rights fits right in with modern conservative extremists. And then the way he framed his opinions led to far right authoritarian regimes co-opting the label of communism.
  
  Muh nazis were akschually leftwing and communists rightwing... Typical nazi tactic
  
  If you think that right wing authoritarianism is communism, I’ve got a democratic republic to sell. The only way tankie logic is consistent is if you believe that Nazis were socialists and North Korea is democratic. But somehow those are not true yet the USSR was communist? You gotta stop gulping down the imperialist propaganda. I could forgive someone for believing it during the Red Scare, but these days there’s no excuse.
  Tankie apologetics are a farce.
  
  You are the imperialist here, yankee. Did you send tanks into iraq, huh? Will you call me a judeo-bolshevik now?
  
  You’ll never be an ally to communists, no matter how hard you perpetuate Cold War propaganda.
  
  Is National Socialism not real socialism?
  
  Since you capitalised National Socialists like a proper noun I’ll assume you are referring to Nazis. The answer to that is yes, Nazis were not socialists. Socialists were among the first groups targeted by the Nazis after attaining majority power.
  A bit like how communists were oppressed in the USSR, or how democrats are oppressed in North Korea.
  The U.S. was more than happy to conflate Marxist-Leninists(tankies) with communists because it made communists look bad. Tankies are all in on continuing to conflate their own ideology with communism because they understand that being proud of right wing extremist ideology is a bad look.
  
  Yankeeland is the most fash country, but the fash dont wanna be called fash, so they call the nonwesterners fash. Typical racist tactic.
- "sensible" conservative policies is such a heavy cope
- Name one.
- You could read the article instead of just responding to the headline.

104 comments