4d ago

We call people who want to regress conservative and not reactionary

Has started to grind my gears, since there is no way to quickly explain that I'm happy with the current situation (I live in the nordics, not the US). Historically I would be considered a conservative, since I don't see a need to progress (atleast at an accelerated rate). However that term is now used to define reactionaries, which are people who reacting to the changing society wants to regress to a earlier time.

Why must we change the meanings of such obvious words?

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I watched a video a while ago (unfortunately can't find it now) about how modern politics has shifted over the last few decades, along with the Overton window.
The woman in the video was a political scientist / sociologist.
It was really eye opening the way she described their tendencies. Typically, "conservatives" strive to maintain the status quo, and are characterized as being more resistant to progressive policies that are intended to change the current system. That actually describes today's Liberals more accurately than today's conservatives...while today's conservatives have just gone so far to the right, that they can only be described as right-wing extremists.

You know what grinds my gears? People who believe in the false meaning of "conservative" that conservatives pushed as propaganda to try to whitewash their abhorrent worldview, then get mad when people start using the term correctly.
"Conservatism" has always been reactionary. You've been duped.
The only thing conservatives have ever wanted to "conserve" is autocracy. When the status quo is autocracy, they don't want to change it. When the status quo isn't autocracy, they want to change it to autocracy as quickly and radically as possible.

When you find yourself happy with the status quo, it is a good idea to look around your community and make sure that you aren’t just part of a privileged group.

Living in the US, I think a large part of why we can't seem to agree on anything politically is because we're using separate definitions depending on which perspective it's from. It makes conversations impossible.
- That is the deliberate strategy of the right. They weaponize language and use it disingenuously to obfuscate meaning and confuse debate.
  Everyone else more or less tries to communicate honestly.
- We agreed on pro-life/pro-choice rather then having people insist on pro-life/anti-life and pro-choice/anti-choice.

Historically you would be called centrist, not conservative. Conservatism is a coherent political ideology and has always been regressive. Notably, the guy considered the father of modern conservatism was a monarchist who created the whole thing as a framework for an aristocracy to exist within democracy (which he predicted would sweep across Europe after the French revolution). So yeah, you're not conservative unless you're actively for putting power in the hands of the capitalists rather than the people.

Regressists should be a word. Maybe dumbfuck already encapsulates the idea. "I miss measles"
- Regressives. As opposed to Progressives.
- "When I was a kid, all my friends had polio. I was fasted by a huge margin. I miss those times. Nowadays, you have to really compete 😭"

We let them call themselves that. Just stop respecting their self-identification, they've basically abdicated any right to our respect anyway by breaking the social contract.

If you're going to get pedantic about political terminology, you're going to have a bad time. Just look at what a slut the word "liberal" is.

I would rather call them regressive or backwards. In my region they are also not called conservative, but "right" or "nazis", depending on party.

Why must we change the meanings of such obvious words?
We didn't change them. You did.

Because of the political polarization.

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