Rambling on American Conservatism

I think I figured out why Jeremy Boreing's "Conservatism / American Liberalism" point of view gets under my skin so much.

Jeremy once decried the 'groypers' who trolled 'conservatives' over homosexuals. In doing so, he said "American Conservatives want to conserve American Liberalism". This is a callback to the foundations of the Republican party where they were considered the liberals of the day.

Which is why many modern 'liberals' claim there was a Party-Switch™. (Spoiler: there was none.) The Republicans were pro-abolition and pro-human-rights and were for the government helping those who needed help. These were seen as 'liberal' for the day.

Modern 'liberals' call this 'big-government' and equate it to FDR-style programs. (It isn't.) But the original Republicans definitely did NOT believe in what Jeremy calls 'American liberalism'.

One HUGE proof that early Republicans were not no-government libertarian types was when they had the federal government enforce abolition on the southern states against their will. If I recall, they were kind of forceful about it.

"I guess it’s popular on the right these days to decry libertarians anytime you don’t like one of the many consequences of freedom." - Jeremy

Consequences of freedom can be ugly. This is why we are not a democracy, but a republic. It's for the protection of the minority group.

"Do you believe this is the same culture it was ten or fifty or a hundred years ago?" - Jeremy

Surprisingly, it's not that different. It's just people keep redefining terms (like 'conservative').

I've been putting scare-quotes around 'liberalism' because they're not really liberal. They're authoritarian progressives. And many 'conservatives' are actually libertarians or even anarchists.

Which is why we have such trouble discussing EVERY issue. Words should have meanings.

Jeremy says we "cannot and should not" use government to enforce morality. Then he says we can on abortion because: reasons.

While I agree on abortion, it's the same on any cultural issue. What people do affects society, so society has a stake in what people do.

Progressives laugh when we discuss 'slippery-slopes' in every argument. And within only a couple of years, every slippery slope has occurred and we have to fight the same battles again.

But if we had only used politics and government to regulate this before, we wouldn't have to.

Saying politics will change if we change our culture ignores the fact that culture unbridled will change our politics whether we want it to or not. It's they tyranny of the majority and the tragedy of the commons, wrapped into one disaster.

And then people like Jeremy say, "but Conservatism is American Liberalism" while the circling of the drain continues.