How Do We Revive Conservativism?

[Spooky Doot Skelly]

Anyways, I fail to see how payment processors are an argument against the idea of there being conservatives who want to preserve certain institutions or practices that are time-proven and work well. Like for example cash payments.

It's not an argument against the value in said practice. I'm all for cash payments as well, I think we agree there. My point is that it is a losing battle you will never win. Payment processors allow capital to move more freely and in our current system that means they will win in the long term.

There will always be pockets of countries that can hold on to older ways of living that are still valuable while integrating new tech (slowly) like the Amish, but they will always be a minority. That is why "reviving" conservatism on a national scale isn't really a possibility, in my view.

 

[Kornula]

We get people like Mike Harlow and Brandon Stryka calling not only democrats on their bullshit..but conservatives too.. which they are doing.. and we get them elected as Republicans so they can inject new ideas.

 

[ArnoldPalmer]

Conservatives are the radical centrists, why revive them? How about the right goes ahead and lays out a blueprint for how society should look? Make a traditionalist start with self-actualization being the core goal of the country, and the right to vote be relegated only to free-and-clear landowners, as they're the ones with the most stake in the country. Dissolve the federal government, and govern only on state, county, town levels, so there can be some diversity of fucking opinion for once. If we got rid of the federal government in all but the functions of currency and military, we would be better off.

In fact, I think we'd all be better off being a little more tribalistic. Ironically, it would keep us away from each other's throats if we could just have representation or meaningful power for the "flyover states/regions". The parts of the country where the few domestic products we have left are made, are 100% completely ignored in government, and have been since World War II. That would be fine, if there weren't so many grand, sweeping, all-encompassing laws that ruin their ability to self-actualize.

I'm not an anarchist. I just want to burn the "country" down and let the states have their sovereignty back. That sounds inflammatory (pun not intended), but is there really a country left? I don't fucking think so. I don't have much in common with California and New York Democrats/Liberals/Leftists/Progressives/etc. In fact, I kind of want a war with them. I don't think I'd want that quite as much if I knew I could get them the fuck away from me.

 

[Hellbound Hellhound]

Conservatism doesn't need "reviving", because it never went away.

There have always been conservative voices opposing the changes that more radical thinkers want to bring about, and in many instances, they have been successful. There was once a time when communism was the fad among radicals; today, it's transgenderism and critical race theory. Tomorrow, it will be something else entirely.

History elucidates a dynamic wherein progressives are the architects of change while conservatives are the stewards of it, but in the end, change always happens. You can't alter the arrow of time, nor can you remove the human propensity to innovate, which is why I think that those who want to create a truly "conservative society" are totally missing the point.

 

[Lemmingwise]

History elucidates a dynamic wherein progressives are the architects of change while conservatives are the stewards of it, but in the end, change always happens. You can't alter the arrow of time

You can't stop the arrow of time, but you can certainly alter it.

What else are those architects and stewards doing if not a thousand corrections in one direction or another?

 

[stares at error messages]

It's really nice to talk about what could be if us conservatives got our way, but I think it's too late. Children growing up here are either going to discover they're not allowed to be their conservative selves and leave or their beliefs will be criminalized by the ruling party. It's not even funny to talk about all the dumb things the ruling party does and says when it always comes with a side of, "You body is in danger and we like it that way". The question has changed from different strokes to every option the ruling party is pushing is going to end with conservatives being subjected to either state or vigilante violence. There is no thing to negotiate over any more. Our lives are tangibly in thereat.

 

[WhatIsThePunchline]

The american right ideologically is in a lot healthier state compared to the american left.

 

[ArnoldPalmer]

The american right ideologically is in a lot healthier state compared to the american left.

Only in the sense that it isn't total batshit drivel uttered by twinkish utopian genetic garbage. The right doesn't have culture on its side, only some subcultures and the counterculture. When only a handful of corporations run by one specific group of people effectively own the culture, there's not much you can do in the nonviolent sector.

 

[Hellbound Hellhound]

You can't stop the arrow of time, but you can certainly alter it.

You can't alter the human propensity to innovate and discover, and over time, these innovations and discoveries build up and completely transform the way we live and think about the world. At most, we can adapt to our changing world, but we can't stop change itself. It goes against our nature as intellectually curious beings to remain static.

The question we must ask ourselves is what kind of change is appropriate, and to what degree could there be wisdom in the way that things are currently done? Serious conservative discourse attempts to wrestle with these questions; unserious conservative ideologues who simply wish to recreate the past and freeze their culture in time are merely engaging in parochial nostalgia.

 

[Lemmingwise]

You can't alter the human propensity to innovate and discover, and over time, these innovations and discoveries build up and completely transform the way we live and think about the world. At most, we can adapt to our changing world, but we can't stop change itself. It goes against our nature as intellectually curious beings to remain static.

The question we must ask ourselves is what kind of change is appropriate, and to what degree could there be wisdom in the way that things are currently done? Serious conservative discourse attempts to wrestle with these questions; unserious conservative ideologues who simply wish to recreate the past and freeze their culture in time are merely engaging in parochial nostalgia.

I don't think you can dismiss the amish as "unserious". Plenty can be said about them, but not that.

And the ideas you raise are not exclusive to "conservatism" either. You seperated it into stewards and architects; yet your focus seems to be on the "wrong conservatives" for not being progressive enough.

I'd say conservatives who fall for that kind of narrow view and argumentation would be the ones that aren't serious.

That is not to say I disagree we should ask ourselves what change is appropriate, but I find it notable that you find no room in your post to see how progressives might be "more serious progressives" by not wanting breakneck speed in everything

 

[Megaroad 2012]

I've thought about this a lot, and like most of you, I really wish we could revive the conservative way of life. It's become so bad that a lot of conservatives don't even realize they're conservative. I want to see trannies, marxists, and their teachers kicked out of schools. I don't want to hear about donut punching blacks wearing fucking hijabs. I don't want immigrants anywhere near me or my children unless they're white or Japanese. I want to restore the black family unit in Europe and the new world along with the traditional family unit, period. I want the homeless to be forced into nuthouses where they belong. The only catch is, how in the hell do we further our political agenda?

Is the only thing that can shock us back into our senses another world war?

>When you're upset tampon ads feature black women now.

 

[jje100010001]

The fundamental issue is that Conservatism needs to preserve something worth keeping.

The beauty of the West has been buried under the decaying mass of 20th century modernism, and to act to preserve this current arrangement as-is is ultimately a losing point- you are ultimately fighting to preserve the breeding grounds for modern liberalism.

Case in point- car-dependence and car-dependent suburbia are inherently anti-social ways of living, and significantly different from the way people used to live in the centuries past. To cling onto that point loses out on potential allies, and perpetuates a toxic way of living that works against the older traditions of the west.

Liberal faggots will just weed themselves out of the gene pool in the long run. Groups like the Amish and other religious fundamentalists are breeding the fastest.

Amish yes, but I have some doubts about more moderate groups like the LDS, it's really more of a race to outlast the current zeitgeist without being targeted and pozzed.

 

[Hellbound Hellhound]

I don't think you can dismiss the amish as "unserious". Plenty can be said about them, but not that.

I can dismiss them as parochial, because that's precisely what they are. The Amish are a fringe curiosity; not a serious model for the future of humanity.

And the ideas you raise are not exclusive to "conservatism" either. You seperated it into stewards and architects; yet your focus seems to be on the "wrong conservatives" for not being progressive enough.

I'd say conservatives who fall for that kind of narrow view and argumentation would be the ones that aren't serious.

My focus was on the topic of this thread, which was "how to revive conservatism". My suggestion was that it doesn't need reviving, because conservatives exist in large numbers right now, and their beliefs are not without a strong voice, both within the media, and throughout the wider culture.

If your first thought is something along the lines of "well, if conservatism is so strong, why does it keep losing?", then I think you've missed the point, because any victory you could reasonably conceive of is largely illusory for the simple reason that no matter what happens: time will move on, society will change, and beliefs will fall out of fashion, and this is just as true (possibly more so) for progressives as it is for conservatives.

My own view is that you need both types of people in order for society to function healthily.

That is not to say I disagree we should ask ourselves what change is appropriate, but I find it notable that you find no room in your post to see how progressives might be "more serious progressives" by not wanting breakneck speed in everything

I think people who give serious thought to the merits and practicalities of what they're proposing are infinitely more wise than those who do not. I'm not sure what I've said which would lead you to believe otherwise.

 

[Zero Day Defense]

If your first thought is something along the lines of "well, if conservatism is so strong, why does it keep losing?", then I think you've missed the point, because any victory you could reasonably conceive of is largely illusory for the simple reason that no matter what happens: time will move on, society will change, and beliefs will fall out of fashion, and this is just as true (possibly more so) for progressives as it is for conservatives.

Your argument boils down to "times change", which is a fairly banal observation that doesn't interface with anything despite the fact that such an assertion means to do so by design-- that is, you assert that the conservative victories many of them envision are largely impossible because society is in a constant state of change, but you don't bother considering what those envisioned victories are, the inevitable built-in tolerance for deviation (in things left alone) from that specific vision, or what changes would render those visions impossible vis-a-vis others.

Yes, times change at the hands of various causes, but there's no actual sense of narrative already predetermined or even predictable for such a statement to matter, unless you're a triumphalist that thinks "the people" are going to simultaneously "rise up" because "the Left" went "too far". You're not getting a carbon copy of whatever life was X years ago, but nobody seriously argues or pushes for this verbatim.

That said, I think the discussion as a whole could benefit from more discussion around the term "conservative". Self-identified conservatives (social conservatives, in particular), when they apply the label in a coherent way, aren't concerned so much with "conserving" as much as they are with a particular vision of society. After all, one could call themselves "conservative" in that they want to maintain the norms and culture as they were in the aughts... but that's not what people in general, much less conservatives at large, think of when they think of cultural conservation. Their goals, frankly, are aimed more at an introduction or reintroduction of norms and culture that were either dominant in times past but are no longer now-- if they still have any presence-- or at least "rhyme" with said norms/culture.

 

[Hellbound Hellhound]

Your argument boils down to "times change", which is a fairly banal observation that doesn't interface with anything despite the fact that such an assertion means to do so by design

It's only a banal observation if you ignore why society has changed over time, which goes back to the point I made earlier about the human propensity to learn and innovate. Society didn't move away from the principles conservatives advocate because some pink-haired woman on a college campus harangued the rest of us into submission, it moved on because changes in the circumstances of how we live our lives caused them to become less relevant.

A good example of this would be the way that gender roles have evolved over the past century. A lot of people have a tendency to simplify the subject by saying that it's all the result of "feminism", but if you look at it more seriously, it becomes increasingly clear that a far better explanation includes factors like the industrial revolution, reduced infant mortality, and innovations in birth control.

It makes little sense for a man to be the head of the household when his physical strength is no longer much of an advantage thanks to mechanization, and if pregnancy is no longer so prohibitive when it comes to women entering the workforce, then it makes little sense to deprive half the population of so much potential.

you assert that the conservative victories many of them envision are largely impossible because society is in a constant state of change, but you don't bother considering what those envisioned victories are, the inevitable built-in tolerance for deviation (in things left alone) from that specific vision, or what changes would render those visions impossible vis-a-vis others.

Conservative victories don't tend to be as obvious for the simple reason that conservatives are trying to keep things as they are; there are no milestones you can clearly point to if the goal is to prevent change. Nevertheless, certain changes which radical thinkers have pushed for (like communism) have been prevented, and conservative voices have played an important role in that.

That said, I think the discussion as a whole could benefit from more discussion around the term "conservative". Self-identified conservatives (social conservatives, in particular), when they apply the label in a coherent way, aren't concerned so much with "conserving" as much as they are with a particular vision of society.

Conservatives don't have a vision, which I think is the point you're not getting. If you read any philosophy that comes from a conservative perspective, it's all about elucidating the wisdom of how things are currently done; it's nostalgic, not visionary. People who idealize the past and wish to recreate it aren't conservatives, they're reactionaries.

 

[Lemmingwise]

It's only a banal observation if you ignore why society has changed over time, which goes back to the point I made earlier about the human propensity to learn and innovate. Society didn't move away from the principles conservatives advocate because some pink-haired woman on a college campus harangued the rest of us into submission, it moved on because changes in the circumstances of how we live our lives caused them to become less relevant.

A good example of this would be the way that gender roles have evolved over the past century. A lot of people have a tendency to simplify the subject by saying that it's all the result of "feminism", but if you look at it more seriously, it becomes increasingly clear that a far better explanation includes factors like the industrial revolution, reduced infant morality, and innovations in birth control.

It makes little sense for a man to be the head of the household when his physical strength is no longer much of an advantage thanks to mechanization, and if pregnancy is no longer so prohibitive when it comes to women entering the workforce, then it makes little sense to deprive half the population of so much potential.

Conservative victories don't tend to be as obvious for the simple reason that conservatives are trying to keep things as they are; there are no milestones you can clearly point to if the goal is to prevent change. Nevertheless, certain changes which radical thinkers have pushed for (like communism) have been prevented, and conservative voices have played an important role in that.

Conservatives don't have a vision, which I think is the point you're not getting. If you read any philosophy that comes from a conservative perspective, it's all about elucidating the wisdom of how things are currently done; it's nostalgic, not visionary. People who idealize the past and wish to recreate it aren't conservatives, they're reactionaries.

Summary: conservatives don't exist so stop being conservative.

Yeah, right.

 

[Zero Day Defense]

It's only a banal observation if you ignore why society has changed over time, which goes back to the point I made earlier about the human propensity to learn and innovate

...which you didn't, which is why I called it a banal observation. There are potentially endless reasons for why we are where we are, and you didn't provide any kind of narrative. The comment to which I now respond is still hit and miss in that regard at best, but that's because it ties irrelevant things together even as it strives to propose a narrative.

It makes little sense for a man to be the head of the household when his physical strength is no longer much of an advantage thanks to mechanization

What does physical strength have to do with the man being the head of the household? The cultural expectation, at the point of the Industrial Revolution and arguably still to present day, had to do not insignificantly with Christian morals stating that the man was the head of the household, and said Christian morals also had relevance to the division of household responsibilities between the husband and wife-- even in non-Christian cultures, those standards exist in more or less the same form on account of long-entrenched evolutionary inclinations. Indeed, the Industrial Revolution allowed women more access to work that they otherwise wouldn't have been able to do, but that wouldn't have detracted from the husband's standing unless the woman was out-earning the husband or was the breadwinner. At that point, though other cultural norms would lead others, on average, to view such a union disfavorably (specifically, the man would be regarded as a good-for-nothing).

and if pregnancy is no longer so prohibitive when it comes to women entering the workforce, then it makes little sense to deprive half the population of so much potential.

I don't get the thrust of this point.

Pregnancy still is prohibitive. There's no guarantee that your employer will provide maternity leave, and there's zero guarantee that having to take maternity leave won't put you on the bad side of your employer in the long run because you've been gone for months and even when you come back you have less time to devote to your work because of your maternal responsibilities. There are advantages to hiring women over men at times (women push for raises and promotions less and are more compliant on average compared to men), but pregnancy remains a huge career impediment for women in male-dominated fields because those fields are designed around the expectations that can be had of men (e.g. not getting pregnant). That's why women who seek career advancement often put it off indefinitely, though sometimes they do it because they erroneously overestimate their ability to have both a career and be a mother (good or otherwise) or they unwittingly and improperly de-prioritize the latter despite still wanting it.

This all doesn't even touch the natural inclinations of men and women alike being reflected in the kind of work they take (the primary reason behind the gender wage gap), or the fact that second wave feminists explicitly sought to get women into male-dominated workforces as part of their "rebellion" against the "status quo" of the patriarchy that regarded women as the proletariat, understood that they couldn't force it, but also understood that if given the choice between being a mother and entering the male-dominated workforce, most would choose the former.

I find it really odd that you so flippantly dismiss the influence of a major ideology permeating the high academia that we would go on to insist children have to work to get into regardless of their actual inclinations with a line like:

Society didn't move away from the principles conservatives advocate because some pink-haired woman on a college campus harangued the rest of us into submission

Conservative victories don't tend to be as obvious

That's... not the claim I was responding to.

Conservatives don't have a vision

And that's fundamentally impossible.

If you read any philosophy that comes from a conservative perspective, it's all about elucidating the wisdom of how things are currently done; it's nostalgic, not visionary.

Supposing your impression has merit: how is it supposed to be nostalgic if they're "elucidating the wisdom of how things are currently done"? And how is it possible for a conservative, who has an idea of the future he wants to see, to not have a vision?

 

[Dom Cruise]

Nothing's going to bring it back but a war at this point, the left wants Conservatism completely run out of town, zero tolerance for anyone that doesn't think like them, right now the war is a propaganda one but as time goes the left is going to increasingly use good old fashioned violence to force people to submit, if it's not state sponsored it'll be vigilante.

Conservatism doesn't need "reviving", because it never went away.

There have always been conservative voices opposing the changes that more radical thinkers want to bring about, and in many instances, they have been successful. There was once a time when communism was the fad among radicals; today, it's transgenderism and critical race theory. Tomorrow, it will be something else entirely.

History elucidates a dynamic wherein progressives are the architects of change while conservatives are the stewards of it, but in the end, change always happens. You can't alter the arrow of time, nor can you remove the human propensity to innovate, which is why I think that those who want to create a truly "conservative society" are totally missing the point.

What's going on right now is a stifling of innovation though, mark my words, the future the left is trying to build will not be anything but one great big third world slum where everyone lives in piles of trash and is slowly starving to death.

Things are out of balance basically, you need a healthy balance between the right and the left for a society to function, right now the left wing are completely out of control and will ruin everything, it'd be a similar deal if the right was out of control, but that's not the issue at the moment.

 

[Schway]

If you're talking about conservatives as in people who want some form of return to tradition, spirituality and community? Then I do not think it can be done, at least not in the current system.

As I'm sure most people here know the average conservative is a joke. They've been thoroughly beaten and don't even know it. In place of any sort of traditional value system they have some weak-sauce version of progressivism from yesteryear and act as a punching bag for the progressives. Even if that weren't the case, progressives are firmly in control of the reigns of power on just about every level. The slow falling apart of these values and society in general has been a very long project and there's no real stopping it. I don't see an option for some kind of populist revolt, and a slow subversion of institutions is unlikely and in many ways counterintuitive to someone who holds traditional values. Progressives are mostly in the business of deconstructing and taking things apart, most of what they actually build are just tools to criticize and destroy aspects of culture they hate. It's much easier to subvert and gradually take power when that is your goal.

On the other hand conservatives want to rebuild and establish new values, norms ect. You can't really subvert your way into that, especially since the progressives aren't retarded and kicked the ladder to the institutions down once they were on top. The only revival I can see is one where the current system either completely breaks apart or fails in some spectacular life-ruining way and it provides an opening for people to fuck off and rebuild it all over again from scratch. Until then conservatives are mostly just speed bumps and convenient enemies to rally against.

I think it is very easy for people who sympathize with progressives to look back at the flow of history and innovations and say "It would have always been thus" as if it were the fate of humanity to have kids twerking for mentally ill deviants. It might seem that way in retrospect with the inventions and social measures that arose from them, but for a good bit of those a different path could have been taken, or they could have not become popular in the first place. The birth control pill for instance had trouble finding interested funding until suffragettes were involved to push the whole thing. You can see there how it's not as simple as "innovation always set to happen->social result that always occurs from that innovation".
I think there is something very telling about the progressives constantly stating how this would have always happened this way when throughout recent history they've had endless social campaigns, groups and lobbies. I suppose those were there just to cheer on the changes that were happening on their own.

 

[Hellbound Hellhound]

...which you didn't, which is why I called it a banal observation. There are potentially endless reasons for why we are where we are, and you didn't provide any kind of narrative. The comment to which I now respond is still hit and miss in that regard at best, but that's because it ties irrelevant things together even as it strives to propose a narrative.

The narrative is really quite simple: humans are an intellectually curious and innovative species, and this innovation and curiosity has radically altered the way we live our lives: most notably since the advent of the industrial revolution. Ideological assumptions about how we ought to live which are based upon past circumstances, therefore, are increasingly going to find themselves out of step with the realities of the present; hence our move away from them.

What does physical strength have to do with the man being the head of the household? The cultural expectation, at the point of the Industrial Revolution and arguably still to present day, had to do not insignificantly with Christian morals stating that the man was the head of the household, and said Christian morals also had relevance to the division of household responsibilities between the husband and wife-- even in non-Christian cultures, those standards exist in more or less the same form on account of long-entrenched evolutionary inclinations. Indeed, the Industrial Revolution allowed women more access to work that they otherwise wouldn't have been able to do, but that wouldn't have detracted from the husband's standing unless the woman was out-earning the husband or was the breadwinner. At that point, though other cultural norms would lead others, on average, to view such a union disfavorably (specifically, the man would be regarded as a good-for-nothing).

The only reason Christianity pushed those teachings was because they reflected the realities of the pre-industrial time in which Christianity originated, which is also the reason pre-industrial and tribal societies overwhelmingly tend to be patriarchal. The physical strength differences between the sexes are important because work in pre-industrial societies overwhelmingly tends to take the form of manual labour, which only men can perform efficiently.

When you couple that with high infant mortality, it makes sense for the man to be the breadwinner and for the woman to stay and home giving birth to a large family, and in agrarian times, having a lot of children was also crucial in terms of creating more labourers to replace existing ones (since work in those times was very labour intensive, and people didn't live as long).

The industrial revolution changed this, and as the mechanization of industry has increased, the utility of the social dynamic which traditionally existed between the sexes has decreased. It's really not that difficult to understand.

I find it really odd that you so flippantly dismiss the influence of a major ideology permeating the high academia that we would go on to insist children have to work to get into regardless of their actual inclinations with a line like:

Because the only reason it became a "major ideology" in the first place is because it's demands suited the changing circumstances I've been talking about. There are plenty of societies in the East which never had anything comparable to Western feminism, and yet the results were the same. By making everything political, you're grossly simplifying a much deeper phenomenon.