Philosophy Why Sargon of Akkad's Liberalist Movement will Fail

Lord Sovereign

Well-known member
The guy is completely ignorant of the UK, apparently. He holds that rightism has been completely ineffective against progressivism, not realizing that Thatcher basically pulled the UK back from being quasi socialist in a decade. After I realized that, I stopped listening.

As it turns out, creating a healthy, competitive economy and getting taxes down are quite popular with voters. The only reason Brits vote for "socialism" (or at least things that lean that way) is because that's usually all there is on offer from Lib/Lab/Con.
 

ShadowLord

Well-known member
The guy is completely ignorant of the UK, apparently. He holds that rightism has been completely ineffective against progressivism, not realizing that Thatcher basically pulled the UK back from being quasi socialist in a decade. After I realized that, I stopped listening.
I think he might have been talking more about in recent decades, or maybe he considers Thatcher as having failed, given how hated her name and policies seem to be these days?
 

Abhorsen

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I think he might have been talking more about in recent decades, or maybe he considers Thatcher as having failed, given how hated her name and policies seem to be these days?
There has been no conservative party in the UK since Thatcher, and pretending that a liberalist party won't work when it does work in the UK if there is an option is the height of stupidity. My guess is the rest of his video is complaining that individualism doesn't work, and other tired tropes, when it actually does sell, there just isn't a party selling it.
 

Cherico

Well-known member
It's why I believe Nigel Farage's Reform UK stands to do quite well in the future. People are sick of Lib/Lab/Con and want something different (ironic, given that the "different" they're after was actually the norm before everything went wrong in the 20th century).


wwi-princip2_custom-11ebc0faabc58d44c61e592608953ea459e55c4f.jpg


pictured here said man who caused said century to go completely wrong.
 

stevep

Well-known member
As it turns out, creating a healthy, competitive economy and getting taxes down are quite popular with voters. The only reason Brits vote for "socialism" (or at least things that lean that way) is because that's usually all there is on offer from Lib/Lab/Con.

If that had been true she wouldn't have been so widely hated, both then and for those of us who remember her now. She got taxes down for the rich and big business by relying on North Sea oil and increased expenditure for everybody else. Both in terms of increased indirect taxes and steadily worsening conditions for a lot of the people.

Also while some elements of the economy prospered, especially the fiscal sectors as it got a lot less regulated - hence its role in retarding the economy elsewhere and more recently Britain's partial role in the 2008 crash. However the bulk of the rest of it suffered badly. There were serious problems on both labour and management side but while crushing the power of the unions helped with the former, without attempts to reform crap management it made the latter worse. Also with the obsession with government being 'bad' [other than when helping the very rich of course] some very promising new areas of possible growth, in computing, green industry and the like withered because they no longer had any government support, such as every other nation supplied. This was a problem for more traditional strong areas like aerospace as well.

In the early 1980's Britain had a very broad technological base. A lot of it could do with a shake up and with investment and new ideas but Britain could contribute in just about any area of technology, either alone or with others. Very little of that's left now and much of what is, like both parts of Rolls Royce, are now in foreign hands. Government intervention since 1979 has been largely in support of vested interest and hence has retarded potential economic development.

Even by the US right's definition of socialism - i.e. anything which isn't unrestrained laissez faire capitalism with some assistance for vested interests the current Tory party wouldn't met that definition as Cameron's period as PM showed. Labour is markedly to the right of where the Tories were in the 1970's and I've given up on the LibDems after the disaster which was their coalition with Cameron but their made themselves irrelevant.
 

stevep

Well-known member
wwi-princip2_custom-11ebc0faabc58d44c61e592608953ea459e55c4f.jpg


pictured here said man who caused said century to go completely wrong.

Not really. You might have seen WWI starting anyway. The situation was a tinderbox and Germany was increasingly convinced it had to act soon before Russia grew too powerful to defeat. [Which seems to have over-estimated Russian staying power but what they thought was more important than the actual facts].

Also reform was coming Roosevelt had already marked a serious departure from the gilded age in the US, starting to restrain uncontrolled capitalism and corruption and even the Liberals, the champions of free trade and laissez faire in Britain were beginning to move towards a more radical stance. [If they still hadn't they would have been replaced by Labour anyway as OTL]. Elsewhere there was already a realisation that a mixed market system was superior to either extreme. WWI broke a good bit of traditional western optimism and sent Germany, Russia and some other parts of Europe on an even darker path than they had been before so a prolonged continuation of western conservative ideas as the only real active presence in the world would have ended sooner or later.
 

JagerIV

Well-known member
There has been no conservative party in the UK since Thatcher, and pretending that a liberalist party won't work when it does work in the UK if there is an option is the height of stupidity. My guess is the rest of his video is complaining that individualism doesn't work, and other tired tropes, when it actually does sell, there just isn't a party selling it.

So, a movement that was dependent upon a single woman in the 1980s to have any sway at all, and which having lost that single woman hasn't existed at all for the next 30 years is your definition of effective?

I haven't watched the video myself, but your own arguments seem to suggest getting any sort of classical liberal party (if we are to use conservative and liberal interchangeably) is most likely going to fail, because by your own description it has failed, what, 80% of the time in the last century by your own reckoning?

Thatcher existing doesn't seem to suggest very much that "conservatism" has any great chance of winning in England than the Presidency of Donald Trump suggests America is going to defeat progressivism. Both suggest its not utterly impossible for the right to win in either nation, which is an important first step, but both nations arc of history seems to bend against either nations right wing having much success over even the short run, let alone long run.

You can't really say in one breath that England has not had a meaningful conservative force in it for 30 years, and in the next breath say that that suggests a great deal of conservative power and effectiveness. At the very least your leaving out the middle explanitory step.
 

Lord Sovereign

Well-known member
You can't really say in one breath that England has not had a meaningful conservative force in it for 30 years, and in the next breath say that that suggests a great deal of conservative power and effectiveness. At the very least your leaving out the middle explanitory step.

The thing you're missing here is that, whilst these policies are hardly unpopular, the Right has been fucking incompetent in it's dealings with the left for decades on end. They let the left run rampant in the schools and brainwash multiple generations, whilst failing to put a pin in Labour's disastrous policies, primarily down to the classic terror of "rocking the boat too much."

The moment a Conservative with stones shows up and gets power (Thatcher), the left gets steamrollered. As ever, it is a matter of getting the reigns of power into the hands of the right person. For example, I think Jacob Rees Mogg, one of the last of the old aristocracy, would likely prove a more decisive leader than Boris Johnson.
 

stevep

Well-known member
Guys

The only way that a conservative party hasn't existed in Britain since 1979 is that if by that your referring to the classical conservative party of the likes of Disraeli or latter say Macmillan. In that respect you would be correct as since 79 its been more comparable to the Liberal party after it adopted laissez faire in the mid-19thC. Albeit in a distinctly corrupted form in that privileged interests have even more power. Since 1979 its not earned the title the party of treason for nothing as its repeatedly put the interests of the very wealthy who fund it ahead of the interests of the party its too often ruled.

That the US has followed the same path since Reagan, albeit with distinctly more internal [to the Republican party as well as the country] and with vastly more resources to bleed away so its only in the recent years its started to cause serious concern on its condition is a major reason why its in the mess it is currently.

Thatcher's success was in part due to the clear excess of power of the trade unions especially in the 1970's and the split in the anti-Thatcher population combined with the inadequate electoral system so that she could a Parliamentary majority on several times less than 40% of the votes cast and force through deeply unpopular policies. That she responded to the excess union power not by restoring a balance of forces but by generating an even more unbalanced systems with an excess of power by the [mis] managers and asset strippers is a primary reason for the collapse of Britain's broad economic base in the pre-Thatcher period.
 

JagerIV

Well-known member
Yeah, believing it is merely a matter of will reeks very much of cope. Like the French believing they would have won The Battle of France if but for one general's mistress, or their leadership was just cowardly.

France legitimately was in a very weak position relative to Germany, their capital was almost captured, twice, by Germans advancing practically on foot before WWII, and they would have basically guarenteed to lose against Germany in WWI without British and later American support. And almost no one questions the bravery and will to fight of WWI France.

So, while the leadership that may lead a right wing seems fearful, given what they do to someone like a Tommy Robinson, anyone thinking of directly challenging the power structure in any way has good reason to fear a power structure so powerful anf ruthless.
 

Lord Sovereign

Well-known member
Like the French believing they would have won The Battle of France if but for one general's mistress, or their leadership was just cowardly.

I mean...that's not wrong. The French had a very large army, along with superior tanks in greater numbers than the Germans. Like the British, they were more mechanised than the Wehrmacht, but their leaders were complete fuckwits. Then there was the matter of having the whole of Southern France to regroup in and hold whilst they called up their vast armies of colonial troops. There were options, which the French elite pissed away and bent over backwards for Hitler to fuck them.

Will is one of the most important attributes of leadership, if not the most, and the utter lack of it in the Right has played an inescapable role in its failure to stop the Left.
 

Navarro

Well-known member
I mean...that's not wrong. The French had a very large army, along with superior tanks in greater numbers than the Germans. Like the British, they were more mechanised than the Wehrmacht, but their leaders were complete fuckwits. Then there was the matter of having the whole of Southern France to regroup in and hold whilst they called up their vast armies of colonial troops. There were options, which the French elite pissed away and bent over backwards for Hitler to fuck them.

Not to mention the utter failures of strategy and doctrine, tanks without radios and so forth. In fact, the German leadership estimated a million casualties in capitulating France, and were astonished by their own success. So this analogy is rather out-of-touch.
 
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