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> There needs to be a different word than conservatism for having positions that aren't part of the Liberal platform

It feels like in many circles the most accurate word would be “heretic”. (and the same is true in many conservative circles - if you don’t hold the right beliefs in the right way you are a “liberal” - in this context, meaning “heretic”). It’s fucking exhausting to get into politics with anyone at all because it’s all just witch hunts and inquisitions.

This is tribal politics. If you're not with us, you must be in the other tribe.

Reasoned ideology has long ago left the room.

This goes for both tribes, of course. With some exceptions on both sides.

I think the modern conservative movement largely is explained by "a group of people that oppose liberalism." That's why you have such a weird coalition of religious groups, older intellectual conservatives, young Republicans, business people, trolls. They really don't have a ton in common, but frankly I get it. I live in the Midwest and while I consider myself an independent, most of my views are moderate or left-wing. But I went to grad school on the East Coast and I felt like an outsider and the most conservative person in class just for holding somewhat moderate views.

This is speculation but it seems like we should inevitably see political factions in the US being defined in this way (and it happens in the Democratic Party too, maybe not in as obvious or extreme a way) as a result of the well-known two-party endgame of our voting system. If your faction isn’t one of the two, your choices are to join one or be irrelevant.

So you jump on the bandwagon with whoever you hate least, and pretty soon you find out that’s almost all you have in common with the rest of the riders.

It may also be specific to conservative movements, given that by definition they oppose some change in society and so would naturally be diverse in their reason for opposing it (possibly more so than the supporters would be diverse in their reasons for supporting it).

That would explain why in our current system the conservative faction is more like this than the liberal faction. But what I was getting at is the reason that the conservative faction is essentially singular. In a less broken system, there could be multiple conservative factions and multiple liberal factions without the sub-factions feeling needing to choose whether to band together on every single issue or be irrelevant.

They could dynamically band together on a per-issue basis and have more reasoned discussions focusing on those issues instead of making sure to pronounce “shibboleth” correctly.

> and it happens in the Democratic Party too, maybe not in as obvious or extreme a way

Democrats is just as extreme. You have the science part of Democrats who vote for them since Republicans largely rejects science for religious reasons (see evolution etc). Then you have the identity politics part of the Democrats. I am 100% certain that a majority of software engineers doesn't agree with the identity politics parts of the Democrats platform, yet they still vote Democrats since they at least doesn't have the religious fanatics on their side which are even worse.

In countries where you can vote right wing without voting for science denial software engineers tend to vote right wing since it gets them lower taxes. Left wing parties are mostly for people with less money.

> "For instance, I don't believe that I'm conservative at all, but my liberal friends and family tend to classify me as "conservative"."

Rather than the old paradigm where political left == liberalism, I think there needs to be a distinction between the new progressive left and classical liberalism since both hold some views and philosophies that are incompatible with each other.

It may well be that, like me, it is not you that has changed necessarily but more that what is considered the left nowadays has drifted away from old school liberalism and you find yourself as alienated by progressives as you are by conservatives?

The en-US usage of the word "liberal" is really confusing to people outside of the USA.

Liberalism doesn't, and has never, meant "left-wing" except for in America.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23125450 This comment explains it very well. Biological differences used to explain keeping people in lower status is a traditional idea and long wielded by conservatives. Explaining that lower status with oppression that needs to be changed is a liberal idea.

The right wing science deniers focus on global warming and evolution denial.

The left is nuclear power and biology denial.

Overlap on antivax.

Welcome to being hated by both sides of you actually use science to form your opinions, rather than justify preconceived beliefs.

Evolution seems to be gaining traction in some ultra right wing circles, albeit in support of other distasteful ideas...

That can be kind of a good thing, though, right? Gay marriage and evolution are already arguments that are falling off the conservative map at a rapid place. In another 20 years, will "conservatives" effectively be just liberals who don't like socialism? That seems to be the way that politics have been boiling down to: socialism vs capitalism. Everything else is kind of adjacent, but as laws get passed or ideas get effectively mocked on the internet, they drop off because they aren't core to those two fundamental ideas.

Yea I'm about the farthest left on the political spectrum as one can get without being outright communist, so it's hilarious if anyone calls me "conservative" for thinking that maybe just maybe biology influences our life choices, and that people should have the freedom to express their opinions and debate issues without being censored or shamed for having contrarian viewpoints (kind of like what the memo, which is titled "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber", talks about, and which ironically got the author fired).