Reply to an anti-conservative rant on another thread ( Message 26982072 )
They have no coherent philosophy
Somewhat true, but also true of liberals. Both "liberal" and "conservative" are rather broad terms. Liberal even more so in that it can mean directly opposite things.
just crazy talk
Which is to a great extent what we see from today's "liberals".
Palin functions like my old high school students.
I figure Palin does as well as many other politicans, but its not really important to defend her. She is hardly the perfect paragon of conservatism. Your looking for what you see as a weak tarket.
Where are their philosophers?
Not many modern liberal philosophers of major significance, and perhaps none that are widely known either. If your talking about historical figures there are quite a few philosophers of a somewhat conservative bent, and also modern American conservatism (and in even more so libertarianism) is in many ways more like the classical liberalism of many historically important politically focused philosophers, than it is like liberalism in today's America.
When do you ever hear a conservative talk about the "social contract", or even know what it means. Or social theory?
About as often as I hear liberals talk about such things. And even if that wasn't the case, what's your point?
Every major event in our country was put forth by liberals; consitution (Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, Madison-all liberala of their day).
Nonsense. The founders of the country where hardly all of the people that contributed to any major positive event in this country. And while I suppose most of the founders might have been considered liberal, en.wikipedia.org is very different than en.wikipedia.org and en.wikipedia.org or en.wikipedia.org
Slavery , Lincoln and the abolitionists were the days liberals.
That's quite a stretch. True parties change over time but they where more Republicans than Democrats, they where also more religious than the norm, even in the US at the time, other than agreeing that "slavery is bad", an idea which modern conservatives would universally agree with, there isn't much connection between the abolitionists and modern "liberalism" in the US. The forces pushing against where closer in some cases to what you would call "political and social conservatives", and in others to "libertarians", then they where to the "liberals" we see today.
What is any black doing in the Republican party? The conservatives filabustered the 64 civil rights act for 54 days to prevent its passage..
Democrats filabustered the act, Republicans voted for it with larger percentage of yes votes than from the Democratic Party, and they did so 99 years after they lead the effort that created the conditions to abolish slavery.
Also while the Democrats who did filabuster the act where largly racist, or pandering to racists, there are reasons for a non-racist reasons to oppose the law, and particularly the judicial extensions of it. From constitutional issues about the limits of federal government power, to support for freedom of association, there are all sorts of reasons for people other than white racists to find the act and its extensions problematic. Black people can reasonably recognize those points and agree with them. Implying they can not do so, or should not do so because of their race, is at least closer to racism, than finding such points to be very important.
Where are the conservative intellectuals?
A number of those on the list you give as being a group of people who are "half a bubble off, a basic criminal or just plain stupid" are better candidates are intellectuals than many prominent liberals (which is admittedly a low hurdle to jump over).
Better candidates - Buckley (and not just Willam F Jr, but a number of members of his family), Frank Meyer, and any number of other people who wrote or still write for the National Review, Edmund Burke, maybe Milton Friedman (although he might be considered more of a libertarian), maybe Thomas Sowell (also maybe libertarian), Russell Kirk, Robert Bork, Scalia, Clarence Thomas, maybe Goldwater (but I'm not really aiming to put politicians in this list), Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Francis Fukuyama, George Will, the writers and researchers in conservative think tanks and publications, and for that matter the person the thread you posted in, was dedicated to, Neocon. |
