Texas Is Trying to Scrub Abortion from Its Internet
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Many of these laws are obviously not constitutional. However, we don't have a constitutional court system in the US that is required to review bills before they can be enacted as law. So the burden of challenging these laws is often placed on private citizens or rights advocacy groups. But until they can be struck down, these malicious laws are used to disenfranchise any member of the electorate who would oppose the right. Essentially: "We can make life as miserable as possible for you because you are not welcome here."
Ideally the legislative branch would serve this role by thoughtful application of their deep knowledge of the Constitution. But the incentives seem to drive them to performative displays of religious fervour and ignorance of founding principles.
The Constitutionality question may be moot. I’m not convinced the Supreme Court is any less politically motivated than any other branch of the U.S. government. The quaint vision of a learned dispassionate body is crumbling, if it ever really existed in reality.
Similar worrisome bills are surfacing in FL where bloggers would not be able to write about the governor, the lieutenant governor or state legislators without burdensome registration with the state of FL.
The Republican party was religious radicals who either requested or demanded a new way and fought the status quo slavery loving (social conservative) democrats.
People in current seats have nothing to do with the history of the organizations they are in and if transported to the past would often more welcome in opponent organizations. This is also true of the revolutionary founding fathers and their very different views and make up than the puritans.
All indications are that the puritans could neither write not respect a constitution. Rhode Island was made up of people who wanted freedoms not stifled by that bunch.
The masons thing is historical revisionism. Masons included people of different political stripes, including members of the British Monarchy. Edmund Burke was a freemason. Among the founders, some of the most socially radical folks like Jefferson weren't masons.
> The Republican party was religious radicals who either requested or demanded a new way and fought the status quo slavery loving (social conservative) democrats.
It's very odd to acknowledge that people were "religious radicals" but then deny that they were social conservatives. The Confederates certainly saw Republicans that way. They attacked Republicans as religious "zeal[ots]" and portrayed themselves as being on the side of "science": https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornersto....
The masons and quakers are examples of groups with tolerance that make them compatible with other ideas, mixes, radicalism and a republic. Other groups may coexist in a republic because the republic was designed for compatibility but they are really social conservatives and a super majority of them makes them persecutors instead of persecuted. I.e. people who would impose Sharia law as soon as they got 2/3rds are perfectly fine as a minority in a tolerant republic.
That’s not a sensible definition of “social conservative” because by that logic radical islamists aren’t also social conservatives.
> The masons and quakers are examples of groups with tolerance that make them compatible with other ideas, mixes, radicalism and a republic
Social conservatism doesn’t necessarily preclude pluralism. Quakers and Puritans may have been fine living in adjacent colonies, but that doesn’t mean they were “tolerant” of departures from behavioral norms within their own communities: https://worldspirituality.org/quaker-discipline-html/
That’s a good analogy to what America was like at the founding. American pluralism arose from multiple socially conservative and religious groups agreeing to share a country while leaving each other alone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_radicalism
I generally view most of that explanation of the US as propaganda. The founders of the republic were 2nd generation+ congregationalists who were more going through the motions than puritans like their socially conservative forefathers. Shay's rebellion really highlights more about the nature of the actual inhabitants of the young nation, the way they influenced the republic and the fact that they were entirely foreign to Washington. I also don't think many of them could vote until Jackson.
But then that horse fled the barn when they argued that social media platforms deplatforming white supremacists were attacking "conservative speech."
What you are trying is "no true scotsman".
But more to the point: if the "conservative" party, "conservative" politicians, and "conservative" voters are all saying "ban speech we don't like", "ban books we don't like", "ban history we don't like", "ban medical procedures we don't like", "criminalize and ban LGBT people we don't like", "ban criticizing conservative politicians", then that is what "conservative" means.
I voted for Biden in 2020 (my first time voting for a major party candidate in a national election), and consider this a solidly conservative choice - in the true sense of the word.
The misleading labeling has a fall out effect of screwing up the whole zeitgeist. For starters, the mainstream media (that they endlessly shout the label "leftist" about) is actually (still) conservative, as it (still) fundamentally serves the entrenched pools of capital its owned by or plays golf with.
If the "Pro Apples" party voted to ban apples, would that be the metric by which we defined Pro Apples?
Oh no, not that life. Just the theoretical life
Yes. This already happens: There are people, religions, and political parties who claim to be, and are reported on as, "pro life", yet consistently take the position that life is secondary to their religious beliefs.
Who does and does not have bodily autonomy.
What specific version of what specific religion is legal, and that if you have those beliefs you can force your beliefs on anyone else, and discriminate against anyone you want.
So how about you drop this BS “conservatism” is not about government control when the core and original and still core tenet of “conservatism” is that not all people are equal, and that not all people should have the same rights, and it has been forever.
And acknowledging that its wrong does not legitimize their unrelated views.
Conservatives aren’t libertarians and they don’t claim to be.
For example, conservatives don’t like the administrative state, even though it’s pushing a century old at this point. That’s because conservatives are generally skeptical of the ability of reason to organize society. The fact that we’ve been doing that a long time doesn’t make it any more palatable.
Jacobin actually has a pretty good article on Edmund Burke: https://jacobin.com/2021/02/edmund-burke-conservatism-tradit....
Running with what I've gotten from it - if we're not supposed to question power structures and just let them be, then why all the criticism and hate for the Cathedral? Isn't it just another power structure that actually came out of the Church and has existed for a few hundred years in its own right - pretty much all of modernity? And similarly with the bureaucratic state - it is what it is.
Furthermore - trying to invoke a "better" power structure from some arbitrary time in the past as the way things should be - isn't this solidly venturing into the territory of trying to use reason to organize and change society? How else can you judge that a previous power structure was better?
It would seem that starting with that article's description of conservatism's foundations, it's a quick leap to get back to my working definition of resisting change rather than trying to go backwards.
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For my perspective, reading Unqualified Reservations has informed my own thinking. The "alt right" seems to have descended from it and its contemporaries, so I don't think it's particularly wrong to reference it. For example, https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2009/01/gentle-intr... has what I thought was a good mostly-above-the-fray attempt at describing left vs right, if you can stomach the hyperbole and overstatement. FWIW that post was part of my switching from seeing myself as an unaligned libertarian back to being liberal (thanks Yarvin!). I don't necessarily like the Cathedral, nor the direction it and the blue team tend to pull in. But I certainly don't want to go backwards and try to shoehorn society into more prescriptive hierarchies!
For example, conservatives don’t like the administrative state, even though it’s pushing a century old at this point. That’s because conservatives are generally skeptical of the ability of reason to organize society. The fact that we’ve been doing that a long time doesn’t make it any more palatable.
https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2021/rml-polit...
If you say "no," you're just as anti-free-speech as these conservatives. You just disagree with them about whether instructions for abortion are instructions for obtaining a medical procedure (protected speech) or instructions to commit murder (unprotected speech). (Presumably because you disagree about the underlying issue, which is whether abortion is a medical procedure that ought to be legal, or a form of murder that ought to be illegal.)
To quote Wikipedia: "In 2015, Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson sued the United States government on free speech grounds and in 2018 the Department of Justice settled, acknowledging Wilson's right to publish instructions for the production of 3D printed firearms." Therefore, the answer to your question is "yes".
So the GQP is full of hypocrites who want to be above the rules and will ruthlessly wield governmental censorship while crying about being censored (private entities not amplifying their voice). As such, they are the party in favor of both censorship and compelled speech.
Why use such zealous partisan terms? Do you not see how it makes you sound? What is your objective, to persuade or to polarize?
I am an outsider with no ability to influence American politics, yet American politics does affect me an ocean away regardless. The legitimization of bullshit, conspiracy and inanity Trump did in his 2 campaigns and 1 mandate has damaged politics as a whole worldwide. It has proven that being completely detached from reality is a viable strategy. As such my usage of the term is fully intentional.