Are Conservative values on the rise again?

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   eculliganposted 13 years ago

   Are Conservative values on the rise again?
   
   It appears that the Liberals are loosing hope on there own agendas due to unsatisfactory Barack Obama policies.  Conservatives appear to be the ones who will bring America back from this crazy Socialist agenda.  What are your thoughts on this?

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   wingedcentaurposted 13 years ago

   How are we defining the terms "conservative values" and "socialist agenda?" By conservative values, are you referring to the seeming popularity of the Tea Party movement -- designed to "get government off our backs" and so forth?
   
   What do you mean by "socialist agenda?" Democrats, as a party a traditionally and vaguely to the left of the Republicans on social, legal, and economic issues -- but they have never called for a state-planned economy (even during the time of FDR). The concept of a state-planned economy, I think, comes closer to the more technically understood definition of socialism. Though, commentators like Noam Chomsky and others would say that we in America have always lives under socialism -- for the rich, that is (note how they were coddled in this bailout); others might say that we have always had a system of conservative Keynesianism -- I recommend the economist Dean Baker's excellent free online book: The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer.
   
   The term "liberal" is imprecise and problematic, since both the Democratic and Republican parties are adherents to derivative forms of "liberalism" stretching back to the eighteenth century. In fact modern conservatism is actually a hybrid of stripped down 18th century liberalism and 18th century conservatism. Eighteenth century liberalism was more like the Libertarianism of today (in America, as it means something different elsewhere) -- concerned with negative liberty (nobody has the right of unduly coercive power over you). Modern liberalism is something else; it includes the negative liberty piece combined with the idea that true freedom requires the state to put in certain infrastructure, guidelines, regulations on industry, etc.
   
   Let me stop here before it turns into a hub. I have enough unpublished as it is.

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