What Made You A Conservative?

LifeisTiresome said:
The Left are in bed with the corporates, NGOs, academia, media, etc. I could go on.

They speak a big game about resisting all of the above but they are in bed with all of them. And the majority of the Left care more about race then class nowadays.
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Liberals are not Leftists and corporate overlords care about nobody, regardless of your politics.

An example: the Soc Dem and fiercely Progressive David Pakman lost all his money on Facebook for merely reporting on what Steve Bannon said to get banned from Twitter.

It's all market demand. The media is the same way. The media was almost as responsible for the Iraq War as Bush.

What makes money, what gets clicks, that is the only rule of corporations or media.

I talk to enough Leftists to know they have a pathological hatred for the rich. (another reason I'm no Leftist) If you even so much as mention charity, they just say "if they were really charitable, they'd give away all their money." This is profoundly different from the kind of "Bill Gates is a great humanitarian" sentiment you see from Liberals.

I don't worship billionaires but hating them is a waste of time. Aristotle talked about this two thousand years ago - an excess or lack of wealth are both bad. Some religions even view wealth as a sort of disease which means the rich deserve pity, not fanatical scorn. Just another reason I'm glad we have a resurgence of an anti-Capitalist Conservative movement. Capitalism does hurt people but not just economically and if you want that sort of spiritual critique, you need to look to the Right or maybe some Christians of whatever political alignment.
 
Nikkolas said:
Liberals are not Leftists and corporate overlords care about nobody, regardless of your politics.

An example: the Soc Dem and fiercely Progressive David Pakman lost all his money on Facebook for merely reporting on what Steve Bannon said to get banned from Twitter.

It's all market demand. The media is the same way. The media was almost as responsible for the Iraq War as Bush.

What makes money, what gets clicks, that is the only rule of corporations or media.

I talk to enough Leftists to know they have a pathological hatred for the rich. (another reason I'm no Leftist) If you even so much as mention charity, they just say "if they were really charitable, they'd give away all their money." This is profoundly different from the kind of "Bill Gates is a great humanitarian" sentiment you see from Liberals.

I don't worship billionaires but hating them is a waste of time. Aristotle talked about this two thousand years ago - an excess or lack of wealth are both bad. Some religions even view wealth as a sort of disease which means the rich deserve pity, not fanatical scorn. Just another reason I'm glad we have a resurgence of an anti-Capitalist Conservative movement. Capitalism does hurt people but not just economically and if you want that sort of spiritual critique, you need to look to the Right or maybe some Christians of whatever political alignment.
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Just to summarize how I see things and then I will stop.

Liberalism and Leftism are the same. Just one is more left then the other.

Leftists talk a big game of abolishing hierarchy and no class but they create them within themselves. Just look at the oppression olympics for this. Leftists support the corporations cause they put a rainbow flag on their products and are happy to ask for people to pay them via patreon or onlyfans and thus have lots of money which they then keep for themselves instead of giving away to charity. You fell into the trap of thinking the leftist is actually compassionate.

I have seen liberals say that they don't disagree with what the leftists say but they find them too disruptive and thus want to calm them down but leftists being calm means that their activities are merely hidden but not stopped.

Hell, gamers who are attacked by leftists? They were the left of yesteryear but as society goes ever more left, they were no longer needed and thus hated. Aka either becoming liberals which left but not as left as the leftists or become so called conservative which nowadays is made up of former liberals aka still liberals but they oppose going too far left.

I had a better explanation for this before which I posted but can't find it.

Anyway, thats how I see things. Done. Lets move on. Have the last word if you wish.
 
LifeisTiresome said:
Just to summarize how I see things and then I will stop.

Liberalism and Leftism are the same. Just one is more left then the other.

Leftists talk a big game of abolishing hierarchy and no class but they create them within themselves. Just look at the oppression olympics for this. Leftists support the corporations cause they put a rainbow flag on their products and are happy to ask for people to pay them via patreon or onlyfans and thus have lots of money which they then keep for themselves instead of giving away to charity. You fell into the trap of thinking the leftist is actually compassionate.

I have seen liberals say that they don't disagree with what the leftists say but they find them too disruptive and thus want to calm them down but leftists being calm means that their activities are merely hidden but not stopped.

Hell, gamers who are attacked by leftists? They were the left of yesteryear but as society goes ever more left, they were no longer needed and thus hated. Aka either becoming liberals which left but not as left as the leftists or become so called conservative which nowadays is made up of former liberals aka still liberals but they oppose going too far left.

I had a better explanation for this before which I posted but can't find it.

Anyway, thats how I see things. Done. Lets move on. Have the last word if you wish.
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I don't really disagree with the first paragraph. Leftist hostility to hierarchy is kinda like being hostile to oxygen. Hierarchies are an invaluable part of human organization. They're not just necessary, they're rewarding. A perfectly equal world is not only impossible, it's undesirable. Some people want to be led and controlled.

I really like Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor for eloquently laying this out.

To quote from DH Lawrence's essay on it:

And what are the limits? It is Dostoevsky’s first profound question. What are the limits to the nature, not of Man in the abstract, but of men, mere men, everyday men? The limits are, says the Grand Inquisitor, three. Mankind in the bulk can never be “free,” because man on the whole makes three grand demands on life, and cannot endure unless these demands are satisfied.

1. He demands bread, and not merely as foodstuff, but as a miracle, given from the hand of God.

2. He demands mystery, the sense of the miraculous in life.

3. He demands somebody to bow down to, and somebody before whom all men shall bow down.

These three demands, for miracle, mystery and authority, prevent men from being “free.” They are man’s “weakness.” Only a few men, the elect, are capable of abstaining from the absolute demand for bread, for miracle, mystery, and authority. These are the strong, and they must be as gods, to be able to be Christians fulfilling all the Christ-demand. The rest, the millions and millions of men throughout time, they are as babes or children or geese, they are too weak, “impotent, vicious, worthless, and rebellious” even to be able to share out the earthly bread, if it is left to them.

This, then, is the Grand Inquisitor’s summing up of the nature of mankind. The inadequacy of Jesus lies in the fact that Christianity is too difficult for men, the vast mass of men. It could only be realized by the few “saints” or heroes. For the rest, man is like a horse harnessed to a load he cannot possibly pull. “Hadst Thou respected him less, Thou wouldst have demanded less of him, and that would be nearer to love, for his burden would be lighter.”
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Leftists attack Centrists a lot for compromising with the Right because, deep down, they know peace is not possible and some viewpoints and ideas must be pushed out of the mainstream if not all of existence for their views to truly take hold. That sounds pretty hierarchical to me.

And to wrap this back around to be on topic, this is another aspect of conservatism that I find agreeable. I agree with the Grand Inquisitor. There's some disagreement on if Dostoevsky himself agreed with his character but it doesn't really matter to me what he personally believed. His character makes a strong case and I find it convincing.
 
Rocinante said:
If you're going to resign to the idea that the change is going to happen regardless, you could argue that the value in conservativism is that it will slow that change down and help ensure it's done in a pragmatic and less society shattering way.

I mean, if stability is your goal, and a shift left is inevitable, you'd want it done more incrementally rather than sweeping changes that may collapse society.
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As I have said before, I do understand the value of conservativism. I just hold that conservativism is not enough, and if you have to choose between conservativism and reactionarism, latter is of greater value (if also more difficult to implement).
 
Aldarion said:
As I have said before, I do understand the value of conservativism. I just hold that conservativism is not enough, and if you have to choose between conservativism and reactionarism, latter is of greater value (if also more difficult to implement).
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If you define Conservativism the way you do, sure.

The definition I've always used, is 'Conserving the founding values of our nation.' This means actively moving towards those ideals, not just being some sort of status quo defendant.

I don't know where you're from, but here in America, this is a pretty common definition used by Conservatives, Rush Limbaugh being one of the most notable, you know the man with the largest audience in all of broadcast media, so it's not like this is insignificant or something.
 
I grew up in a religious and conservative household. Both of my parents are conservative though at this stage in their lives, they’re at the point where I can tell they don’t like even talking about politics or current events anymore.

My dad and I have a very good relationship, and we’ve probably days to weeks in terms of total hours just talking about stuff from history to politics and so on. We’ve talked about socialism, the civil war, and other things, including Obama, race, history, and many many other things. I grew up listening to talk radio on the way to school-Phil Valentine.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve formulated my own beliefs both from an obsessive and outright autistic obsession with history, and personal experience. Most of it negative.

It is my firm experience human beings are selfish and rotten. Cruel, stupid, and dishonest. As they are shallow, easily manipulated and generally have the tolerance for deep or interesting conversations as a goldfish does for long term staring. This is clear at any school or workplace and it’s clear if you study history.

Thus its clear to me leftism and liberalism which are based on the notion man is inherently good and external forces-usually some form of oppression or restriction make him bad, or at least he is morally neutral. This is preposterous and nonsensical reasoning.

My Dad, told me once, “Thomas Jefferson ought to have been horsewhipped for writing all men are created equal”.

This is hardly an unpatriotic man, who served in the national guard, and loves fireworks. It was shocking to me at first, but I have come around to agreeing with him. We also argued about things like women in the military, and I’ve come around to his attitude on that too.

Though I consider myself further right than him. Mostly because I’m young and have greater hatred for things he has ceased to allow to bother him.

My mother and grandmother also instilled in me a firm Christian value set, and I am a Christian. An appreciation for the fact this world will not endure forever, and yes my mother and grandmother have talked about Hell before, to me and my siblings.

Going through college, and seeing how people, especially certain groups of people behave, has confirmed to me that prejudices are often based in reality. Not to mention, I apparently was so offensive and hard core in undergrad gay kids if they saw me walking down the hall to class would go back to their dorms.

I also viciously mocked a fat homosexual the day after the election in 2016. The professor shut it down but I got in what I wanted.

Stuff like this was actually used against me, in meetings with the Education Department Head Lady, and I did have a few meetings with the Dean. But I got along with the latter.

There have been times I’ve flirted with socialism and I still read socialist websites, because they are generally more interesting than CNN. Cynics are made, and there was a time I wanted to see people’s inherent goodness and light. But the reality of life is that I was a fool for expecting it.

What the past 23 years of my life have enshrined in me is the importance of principle. Without principle you will succumb to the tide. If I am nothing else, I will stand for principle which is based on truth.

This doesn’t mean I’m close minded, I’ve happily read plenty of other perspectives, atheists, leftists, even Woke Tumblr blogs, both to be better informed and because I have a deep love of knowledge. But I know in my heart what is true. This can be reasoned, but it can also be intuited.

I don’t consider myself a conservative in the standard stereotypical sense, I’m more a reactionary, with tendencies that are increasingly oppositional to the current order entirely, I definitely have become a fellow traveler to more radical things like fascism or Traditionalism. But conservatism as its content-family, loyalty, faith. A sane society, a wholesome culture, an understanding of human nature, that is where I am a conservative.
 
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Conservatism is notoriously difficult to define. People like George Will insist American Conservatism is distinctly diferent from European Conservatism. To him, American Conservatism is just Classical Liberalism and bears no resemblance to "Throne and Altar" European Conservatism. The conception of the state and of human beings is very different for these two groups.

I wrote a post about trying to define conservatism elsewhere:

"Tradition means giving a vote to most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our father"
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Conservatism is not a unitary position: it has different versions, and their advocates disagree with each other about what political arrangements ought to be conserved.3 There is no disagreement among them, however, about where to look for reasons for or against particular political arrangements. The reasons are to be found in the history of the society whose members seek the arrangements. A common ground among conservatives is that the political arrangements that ought to be conserved are discovered by reflection on why, how, and for what reason they have come to hold. The conservative view is that history is the best guide to understanding the present and planning for the future because it indicates what political arrangements are likely to make lives good or bad.

The significance of this agreement among conservatives is not merely what it asserts, but also what it denies. It denies that the reasons for or against particular political arrangements are to be derived from a contract that fully rational people might make in a hypothetical situation; or from an imagined ideal society; or from what is supposed to be most beneficial for the whole of humanity; or from the prescriptions of some sacred or secular book. Conservatives, in preference to these alternatives, look then to history. Not, however, to history in general, but to their history, which is theirs because it is a repository of formative influences on how they live now and how it is reasonable for them to want to live in the future. Yet their attitude is not one of unexamined prejudice in favour of political arrangements that have become traditional in their society. They certainly aim to conserve some traditional polit- ical arrangements, but only those that reflection shows to be conducive to good lives.

Conservatives turn to their history not only for possibilities that make lives good, but also for limits that good lives must observe. They reflect on their history in order to understand what deserves their allegiance and what is inimical to having a good society. To conserve good political arrangements and to avoid bad ones often requires the adaptation of traditional arrangements to changing circumstances. Conservatism, therefore, does not involve strict adherence to a rigid pattern, but a flexible rearrangement of the relative importance of the elements that constitute such complex wholes as political arrangements are.
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The metaphor of “second nature” has had several functions. Conservatives assert the importance of inherited custom and culture against arguments which assume the natural or pre-social goodness of man. Only by virtue of the inculcation of culture through social institutions, conservative theorists insist, is man made decent; it is institutions which humanize him. From Hume and Burke through the twentieth-century German conservative, Arnold Gehlen, the image of second nature has served as a foil against what conservatives regard as overly optimistic and excessively rationalist accounts of moral behavior.52 It may also be used to counter excessively pessimistic accounts of human behavior as marked by a relentless and inexorable search for power or domination. The image of “second nature” is used to convey the notion that many of the advantages of internalized cultural rules comes from the fact that they are taken for granted, and are acted upon without continuous reflection.
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As I've endeavored to learn as much as I can about philosophy, this is something that really struck me. I formulate it as "not everybody can be Socrates." You can't have a functioning society where everybody wanders around questioning everything. For a promint demonstration of this, the equality between the races is just something we are taught now and don't really question. It's true but the foundation for it is not something that we have any real need to pursue because society accepts it as true. That was why a few years ago scientific racism was everywhere online, because a few whackjobs dedicated their lives to gathering "information" that they claimed to show why races aren't equal. Meanwhile the vast majority of people, including me, had no real counters for this because we don't spend our time researching science of "race." If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit was in full effect here. But my point is, societies depend on givens. Everybody does philosophy, everybody asks questions and wants to know and understand things, but they still ultimately are just going to live their lives in the paradigm created for them as a child or teenager. So ideally the paradigm you create for them is the right one like racism is stupid ad capitalism is bad.

This is where I diverge from most conservatives. They have a Roman obsession with private property and wealth that I don't care about. We should look to Greek thinkers for our lead in this as well as some subsequent Early Christian thinkers.

I also don't have a patriotic bone in my body. If you are German or French or Irish or whatever, I can understand and respect your pride at your homeland. I've never felt any pride for my country. This is part of what drove me to Leftism way back when I was a teenager. This liberal order I've never felt any connection to or respect for is all due to America and the Lefties I met online seemed to be the only ones trying to undo it. Well, we still have that much in common. But my point is, I see very little in America to be proud of or extol its culture. It's one reason I have to look to European conservatism because Anglophone Conservatism is tinged with a love of capitalism and markets with a few notable exceptions from the 1800s. A history built entirely around saying fuck politics but love business is probably why we got Trump. We DESERVED Trump.
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Edmund Burke: I cannot too often recommend it to the serious consideration of all men who think civil society to be within the province of moral jurisdiction, that, if we owe to it any duty, it is not subject to our will. Duties are not voluntary. Duty and will are even contradictory terms. Now, though civil society might be at first a voluntary act, (which in many cases it undoubtedly was,) its continuance is under a permanent standing covenant, coexisting with the society; and it attaches upon every individual of that society, without any formal act of his own. This is warranted by the general practice, arising out of the general sense of mankind. Men without their choice derive benefits from that association; without their choice they are subjected to duties in consequence of these benefits; and without their choice they enter into a virtual obligation as binding as any that is actual. Look through the whole of life and the whole system of duties.
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One of the academics I linked to summed this position up thusly:
This noncontractual basis of society, Burke wrote, was evident in other social relations as well. Marriage was a matter of choice, but the duties attendant upon marriage were not: parents and children were bound by duties which were involuntary.34 This emphasis on the nonvoluntary bases of obedience and allegiance has remained a distinctively conservative theme.
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TL;DR Conservatism is about looking to history for guidance, I think. It's one reason I'm here.
 
I don't know if any specific definition of "Conservative" is presupposed here, but that's not really the point.

Rather then arguing intellectual points, let me speak from the heart. What makes me a conservative, you ask?
Simple: I don't like being bullied.

I don't being blamed for other people's problems, for things I had nothing to do with. I don't like double standards, or people who jump from one premise to the opposite one as it suits them, with apparently no qualms about how intellectually dishonest that makes them.
I don't like people who want to push everyone else down in order to make themselves feel better, who treat everything as a competition for personal status, who play silly "gotcha" games rather than discuss in good faith.
I don't like people who think that they should have everything they happen to want given to them for free, and that the rest of us were created to be their slaves, or something.

In short, I'm on the Right because I reject the Left, and I reject the Left because the Left rejects me, and everything I believe in, value or care about.
 
Scottty said:
I don't like people who want to push everyone else down in order to make themselves feel better, who treat everything as a competition for personal status, who play silly "gotcha" games rather than discuss in good faith.
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Honestly, that more or less describes pretty much every conversation I’ve been in with Far Leftists

They go over whatever I’m actually saying and try gaslighting me and speak more aggressively and go “Haha you’re dumb/cute” and even say shit like “Trump treating X right does not make him NOT racist, that’s just him getting good PR points” and then they start speaking very “idealistically” & emotionally to guilt you and go “Nah, the democrats never did that” or “SJWs don’t exist, those companies are ran by Conservatives”

Or try and enrage you by keeping the conversation long enough that they can strawman you

Being exposed to THAT made me realize I was talking to a bunch of douchebags who liked ganging up on others and feeling superior when people bother talking back for too long
 
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I read a lot. Mainly history and thus one day I basically realized that the left was slowly but surely going to make the mistakes of the past in other nations ie the disaster of socialism in the US if they where allowed to
 
CarlManvers2019 said:
Where do you read your unabridged history? Any suggestions where I can listen or read?
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Right now I'm watching a lot of "Survive the Jive", which focuses on Proto-Indo European stuff, as well as their descendant pagan cultures and the stone-age Europeans (who were unrelated). For middle-ages stuff, I watch HEMA related channels (shaddiversity, Schola Gladitoria, Metatron Channel, Todd's Workshop), for more modern stuff I used to watch Indy Nidel's channels, but I found him to be too biased (even in the Great War, let alone the sequel), so now most of my modern history (such as it is) comes filtered through sources like Forgotten Arms and political channels.

In case you hadn't realized, I don't read a lot of history at the moment, mostly because that's harder to find good sources for, unless you are interested in a hyper-specific topics (like the the specifics of ancient Greek necromantic practice or what French nobility in the middle ages thought about the risks of a drawn out siege) it's pretty difficult to find a decent source.

If you want a history book then I would recommend Will Durant's series, which came out near the beginning of the Cold War and only covers from the stone age till Napoleon. The Great Courses videos by Rufus Fears regarding classical history is also fantastic. So are any talks by Iving Fingkel (the British Museum chair of Mesopotamian history).

Sorry I can't be of more help, but as a general rule the more famous the period the more perspectives on it there will be, therefore more of history is trash for biases due to be generally unknown. You can find fifty different perspectives on the life and times of Christ in a second, but if you wanted to find the same kind of analysis of Apollonious of Tyana it would be far more difficult and more biased for receiving less attention and research.
 
I know a good book for the battle of the bulge
Yinko said:
Right now I'm watching a lot of "Survive the Jive", which focuses on Proto-Indo European stuff, as well as their descendant pagan cultures and the stone-age Europeans (who were unrelated). For middle-ages stuff, I watch HEMA related channels (shaddiversity, Schola Gladitoria, Metatron Channel, Todd's Workshop), for more modern stuff I used to watch Indy Nidel's channels, but I found him to be too biased (even in the Great War, let alone the sequel), so now most of my modern history (such as it is) comes filtered through sources like Forgotten Arms and political channels.

In case you hadn't realized, I don't read a lot of history at the moment, mostly because that's harder to find good sources for, unless you are interested in a hyper-specific topics (like the the specifics of ancient Greek necromantic practice or what French nobility in the middle ages thought about the risks of a drawn out siege) it's pretty difficult to find a decent source.

If you want a history book then I would recommend Will Durant's series, which came out near the beginning of the Cold War and only covers from the stone age till Napoleon. The Great Courses videos by Rufus Fears regarding classical history is also fantastic. So are any talks by Iving Fingkel (the British Museum chair of Mesopotamian history).

Sorry I can't be of more help, but as a general rule the more famous the period the more perspectives on it there will be, therefore more of history is trash for biases due to be generally unknown. You can find fifty different perspectives on the life and times of Christ in a second, but if you wanted to find the same kind of analysis of Apollonious of Tyana it would be far more difficult and more biased for receiving less attention and research.
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Indy Niedel is not that biased last I checked. Could be wrong.
 
Honestly I mainly find my history stuff in the public library system of Fulton County and the shared library system of all the colleges under the Georgia Board of Regents. You'd be amazed at all the stuff you can find there if you know to look for it.

Oh and since everyone I know knows I love books I get a ton of gift cards to bookstore and Amazon for my birthday and Christmas which means I've amassed quite my own collection of history books. Plus you can always find some cool stuff that Public Libraries are removing from their inventories due to not having enough room for everything for at most a few bucks a book albeit most of those books are fiction in nature which is fine since this where I tend to get a lot of my scifi and other fiction books. Book sales for charity which the public library helps run are also fun.

Man I missed being able to do the last two this year due to Covid. Seriously I probably would have picked up another 20ish books this year but alas I can't and it sucks
 
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Zachowon said:
Indy Niedel is not that biased last I checked. Could be wrong.
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He's good most of the time. The issue comes when in-period controversies come up, he tends to take the side of the Entente (or their corollaries later on) rather than a more neutral stance. I can understand saying "yes, the rape of Belgium happened" but war crimes hardly happen on a one-sided basis. He loves to talk the horror of war, in the abstract, but not the "we did bad" in specific, the way he does regarding the Central Powers and the like.

It just poisons the entire well for me. In history, if you can't swallow an even mildly bitter pill (such as are we not unquestionably the good guys?) then everything that follows is tainted. Any war in which the media portrays your side as "unquestionably in the right" is almost certainly being skewed.

To be fair, due to who won, there is a distinct lack of sources telling the other side, exposing what the victors did wrong. One of the few I know of was an American G.I. who had been a camp guard for one of the Rheinwiesenlager camps after the war, who gave a deathbed confession of witnessing (and possibly engaging with, I forget) the crimes that were perpetrated there. Generally, the casual murder of interned civilians (mainly via pot-shots) and the prostituting or rape of women.

I don't care if this side or that did this bad thing or that good thing. Warring states will always do what is, in peace, considered immoral. They still do. After the war there is no longer any virtue to propaganda, let the truth fly free.
 
Knowledgeispower said:
I read a lot. Mainly history and thus one day I basically realized that the left was slowly but surely going to make the mistakes of the past in other nations ie the disaster of socialism in the US if they where allowed to
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Basically, try reading history books that were written:
a) before 1960s
b) before 1945
c) before 1918

Point c) is ideal, other two if not possible. As for the rest, that depends on topic: newer books are often better on the technical side of things, but are just as often filtered through Marxist lens.
 
I am not sure if there is any decisive thing that opened my eyes. I think I slowly opened them on their own, though the influence of free thinking university professors who actually wanted to teach their students to be free helped. Seeing the stupidity at university helped as well. And the unrestrained insanity online. There are many things.

But what I think fully opened my eyes was GG, it was the final push I needed to commit. The clear and evident wrongdoing, and the media just blatantly lied about it. I was already about there, but this crystallized everything and entrenched me on the right. If people were willing to lie and be crazy about video game journalism, what else would they lie about?
 
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