“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
sounds like mr Musk is a conservative.
sounds like mr Musk is a conservative.
This definition is plainly wrong on so many levels that it's practically impossible to engage with. But I'll make that mistake and engage on two points.
First, it implies that conservative position has somehow consistent features across time and space. There is difference between conservative in Germany, USA and China. Not to mention conservative in early, mid and late 20th century.
Second, ignoring legal norms is neither stated, nor implicated position of conservative political movements. At very worst, we can accuse them of maintaining laws with discriminatory intents. But not of flaunting those same laws.
The Republican candidate for president in the USA is a convicted felon
I say this as someone living in Pennsylvania, drowning in the hypocrisy and escalating hate this group of people has been spewing for the last ~8 years.
Therefore I can completely understand why someone might focus on that as the most relevant definition on 'conservatism' today in the USA.
You don't consider this a problem, that the word "conservatism" when discussed with an unknown recipient online (very possibly non-american) is constrained to the context of the past decade(s) in the United States?
Words have meaning, so if you're going to have a meaningful discussion about a word like "conservatism" or any type of -ism for that matter, I would think it benefits anyone engaging in that discussion to be aware of the different wings present in that word, whether that be across history or across present day geography.
https://slate.com/business/2022/06/wilhoits-law-conservative...
Identity politics has always been a conservative project.
You know which ones I mean.
As an example: The "conservative" judge who threw out 40 years of precedent on a technicality to prevent the American public from learning whether their former and potentially future president sold, gave away, or otherwise exposed national security secrets after he undoubtedly stole those documents.
There's a fundamental asymmetry in "the movement" on the left - which essentially rounds out to whatever annoying undergrad student showed up in your Twitter feed today - and the actual elected, governing leaders of the right, doing things like throwing out very strong criminal cases on matters of deep public importance.
In other words, identity politics to a T.
An excellent example would be Murphy's Law, and by extension many of the similar, often eponymous, laws.
See:
- List of Eponymous Laws: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_eponymous_laws>
- Murphy's Law and other reasons why things go wrong! by Arthur Bloch: <https://archive.org/details/murphyslawotherr0000arth>
- Compilation of Murphy's (and similar) laws: <https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~fgandon/miscellaneous/murphy/>
Some of those are humourous, some are in fact quite serious though have a comedic element particularly out of context. Most speak to at least a colloquial truth.
What Whilhoit did was manage to buttonhole a hypocrisy of modern conservativism, perhaps over the past few decades, perhaps a century or so (Anatole France, "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread", further evidentiarially supported by SCOTUS in Grants Pass), perhaps by millennia (see the opening paragraphs of A.H.M. Jones, Augustus, describing the political situation in the late Roman Republic, quoted here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22208105>, and at greater length: <https://web.archive.org/web/20230607042525/https://old.reddi...>). It's not so much a proved hypothesis as a phrasing which fits the understanding of many and expresses it concisely and memorably.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_M._Wilhoit#:~:text=Con....
> However, it was actually a 2018 blog response by 59-year-old Ohio composer Frank Wilhoit, years after Francis Wilhoit's death."
And while I will grant you that liberalism (not to be confused with leftism), is different then conservatism, both (classical) liberalism and conservatism strongly require equal treatment (procedural symmetry).
Modern american conservatism very well fits the quote from grandparent.
Also, surely you would know what "repressive tolerance" is, since you're quoting it ? You would also know that the author you cite, whose name you misspelled, was critiquing the concept ?
And no, I have not seen a primary source where in context Trump said that he would "" "lock up" all the "sick, evil" democrats after he is reelected"". Do you have such a primary source? Years ago I was told that Trump said the white supremacists were "very fine people", so I looked at the transcript and he literally said the opposite.
I don't think he ever endorsed white supremacists, but I think I remember (wouldn't bet on it) an instance where a journalist asked him why some keep showing up at his rallies and why he does nothing about it. He then answered that he doesn't really know who they are, that he didn't know, etc. basically eluding the question. i.e. they're welcome but won't proclaim his support for them, one of the many dog whistles Republicans use nowadays.
This is a little confusing in the US and other Anglo countries because traditionally we have been fairly liberal so sometimes people confuse liberalism and conservatism.
Without those, your comment is difficult to make any sense of, since the way you're using those words seems to differ from any sort of standardized definition.
Don’t get this confused with conservative and progressive politicians, though, who are generally ignorant of the actual traditions and philosophies behind their respective movements, and are essentially just cutouts for competing media and financial corporate interests. The few holdouts on both sides have been successfully sidelined (Bernie Sanders, Ron Paul), and it looks like the military-industrial complex will have their war with Iran no matter what the results of the next few elections are.
(Sorry, I’ll go have my coffee now and see if I get a little less doomer.)
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/07/roger-scruton-meaning...
You do not need to agree with him or his definition of Conservatism and there are other definitions of the term which are also applicable but none of those definitions have any resemblance to what you posed.
Musk is a centrist, not a conservative. He used to stand to the left of centre but has been moved to the right of centre by virtue of the left moving further left, thereby moving the centre to the left as well while Musk staid put.
Society needs conservatives just like it needs centrists and progressives and whatever other names you want to give to these philosophies and/or ideologies. A world made out of only progressives never gets anywhere since they will never find out what works well and what does not since their aim is to shape the future by means of societal change. A world made out of only progressives will eventually grow stale when the rate of change in the environment outpaces societies' capacity for change. Progressives can make good innovators but tend to be less able at keeping things running. Conservatives can be good at keeping things running but tend to be less inclined to innovation. These are broad brush strokes but the essence is sound, society tends to work best when there is a balance between conservatives and progressives.
You might notice some parallels: architects tend to be lousy builders, builders tend to be uninspired architects. Developers tend to be less gifted at UI design, UI designers tend to be sloppy developers. Copy editors tend to be unremarkable writers, writers tend to be less effective copy editors.