United States Politics Thread 46

[Rounin Ryuuji]

In that case, do you think you could summarise the main elements of the conservative position as you see it? That would be quite interesting for me.

Certainly not here...

Whyever not? I was looking forward to an answer with some curiosity.

obviously, i am outnumbered here ....

If this is all, I don't see why the ideas might not stand up to a bit of prodding.

...and if you mostly talk with other leftists, you may come under the impression that conservatism is a fringe ideology, maybe at best adhered to by one in ten Americans...

"Conservatism" is an odd word to use for it. Most of the policies pursued by the right strike me as rather radical. We do have things in the past we've tried that came out broadly effective. A more "conservative" approach (in the sense of "preserving older features") would be to revive elements of the New Deal, Marshall Plan, and strong Antitrust legislation, that have proved effective in the past.

Consider also that about 34% of the electorate voted for Biden, and only 31% for Trump (this is also only about 22.5% of the entire population of the United States). Not one in ten, but it's only a bit more than one in five, and that number may be expected to decline with time. Trickle-down economics has also proved to be broadly fictitious (lowering taxes on the wealthy does not appear to stimulate growth, and neither does irresponsibly cutting public spending, or wasteful military expenditure). The Reagan Revolution has been completed, and its results have not been kind to the general populace.

That 22.5% of the population is also not united by a single ideology — neither are the people who voted for Biden, but the Republican Party specifically has to rely on alliances of convenience between groups with little in common.

Judging by church attendance and increased acceptance of groups formerly marginalised, the Culture War was probably lost around 1998. The trend seems to be showing no sign of reversing. Even if there is another "Great Awakening", the young will probably practise any form of resurgent Christianity in ways that are radically different from how their predecessors would.

[zompist]

Consider also that about 34% of the electorate voted for Biden, and only 31% for Trump (this is also only about 22.5% of the entire population of the United States). Not one in ten, but it's only a bit more than one in five,

I assume by "electorate" you're counting people registered to vote? Kind of an odd metric... why exclude non-voters?

Why not just look at how Americans self-identify, as pollsters regularly track this? In 2020, 36% of Americans describe themselves as conservative, 35% as moderate, 25% as liberal. (That leaves 4%, who apparently don't know what they are. I'm actually surprised this number isn't higher-- I'd've thought more people just don't care about politics.)

Within the parties, 75% of Republicans call themselves conservative, but also 12% of Democrats.

and that number may be expected to decline with time. Trickle-down economics has also proved to be broadly fictitious (lowering taxes on the wealthy does not appear to stimulate growth, and neither does irresponsibly cutting public spending, or wasteful military expenditure). The Reagan Revolution has been completed, and its results have not been kind to the general populace.

Now that seems overblown. I mean, I agree that Reaganism was a disaster. But it's been great for conservative control over the GOP. They used to make up about half the party; now they're three quarters. They're not going away any time soon.

These things change over time, but slowly. Since 1994 conservatism has lost about 7 points and liberalism has gained the same amount. (Which is probably opposite both parties' perception of events!)

[bradrn]

why rely on me when conservatism is the ideology of half of America, and of most of the world? My opinions are so common that they aren't particularly interesting.

Well, a big part of the problem is that they aren’t so common here. Generally speaking, Australia is left of the US, so what is solidly centre-right there is considered ravingly extremist here. Issues such as gun control, abortion, or mask/vaccine mandates aren’t considered particularly controversial in mainstream Australian politics.

if you want, here is a link to the GOP platform: https://prod-cdn-static.gop.com/media/d ... ATFORM.pdf much light was made on the left out of the fact that it was the same in 2020 as it was in 2016 ... but i never saw a convincing argument for why it needed to change.

The link doesn’t seem to work, even with archive.org. Do you have another link please?

The other, I think, is that people are really sceptical that your conservative group truly has a good grasp on leftists’ thought processes. If they did, how could they ever disagree with us‽

because we understand that you, and leftists broadly stated, have self-interests that don't align with ours.

Well, this doesn’t really remove my scepticism, it just pushes it back to ‘do you really understand our self-interests’? By way of comparison, I also understand that your self-interests don’t align with ours, but I have no clue what those interests actually are. In my mind, the ‘litmus test’ in assessing this is whether you can explain your position to us in such a way that we can say, ‘oh, that actually sounds sorta reasonable’. So far, you don’t seem to have done this — true, some of the responses haven’t been too charitable, but I can’t say your own posts sound too reasonable to me either.

(The best example of the genre I know of is Scott Alexander’s justification of reactionary philosophy to liberals, followed by his rebuttal and justification of liberal philosophy to reactionaries, both of which show a good grasp of the arguments of both sides. No matter how different conservative and liberal opinions are, justifying one to the other can’t be more difficult than explaining to liberals why we should go back to absolute monarchy.)

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Consider also that about 34% of the electorate voted for Biden, and only 31% for Trump (this is also only about 22.5% of the entire population of the United States). Not one in ten, but it's only a bit more than one in five,

I assume by "electorate" you're counting people registered to vote? Kind of an odd metric... why exclude non-voters?

I meant people eligible to vote (the voting-age population of the United States, at least according to Google, is about 240 million); I was more aiming to exclude those under voting age than those who don't vote or aren't registered to.

Why not just look at how Americans self-identify, as pollsters regularly track this? In 2020, 36% of Americans describe themselves as conservative, 35% as moderate, 25% as liberal. (That leaves 4%, who apparently don't know what they are. I'm actually surprised this number isn't higher-- I'd've thought more people just don't care about politics.)

I have some scepticism of simply asking people to self-identify, since "conservative" is often used to refer to economic and social positions that don't have much relationship to each-other (somebody might not care about the gays, but vote Republican because they prefer their fiscal policies).

and that number may be expected to decline with time. Trickle-down economics has also proved to be broadly fictitious (lowering taxes on the wealthy does not appear to stimulate growth, and neither does irresponsibly cutting public spending, or wasteful military expenditure). The Reagan Revolution has been completed, and its results have not been kind to the general populace.

Now that seems overblown. I mean, I agree that Reaganism was a disaster. But it's been great for conservative control over the GOP. They used to make up about half the party; now they're three quarters. They're not going away any time soon.

I can't think of a nicer way to put it than that I expect they'll probably die faster than they can be replaced. The youth have a reputation for being left-leaning, and as their parents die off, the Millennial Generation, with its typically more left-leaning views, will simply outnumber their parents. This might actually change when they start inheriting their parents' wealth — I'm really not sure how that part's going to go at all.

[Linguoboy]

I somehow missed that Pabappa had replied because he didn't quote any of my previous post. Turns out I didn't miss anything at all.

[Nachtswalbe]

Lymann Stone, who is a China expert in Twitter, argues that parents are at the top of the “school chain” and so have rights over teachers and even the principal to restrict them from teaching CRT and the like

https://mobile.twitter.com/lymanstoneky ... 6357920773

[Rounin Ryuuji]

He certainly has some very bizarre ideas, from reading that thread.

[zompist]

Why not just look at how Americans self-identify, as pollsters regularly track this? In 2020, 36% of Americans describe themselves as conservative, 35% as moderate, 25% as liberal. (That leaves 4%, who apparently don't know what they are. I'm actually surprised this number isn't higher-- I'd've thought more people just don't care about politics.)

I have some scepticism of simply asking people to self-identify, since "conservative" is often used to refer to economic and social positions that don't have much relationship to each-other (somebody might not care about the gays, but vote Republican because they prefer their fiscal policies).

Who knows better than the respondents what they are? If you want to know how many people are conservative, asking them directly is going to be more accurate than guessing that all Trump voters are conservative.

(This isn't to say that the Gallup categories are great; but it's hard to find anything better. From other polls, it seems the percentage of libertarians is quite small, surprisingly so given their online visibility. But it'd be interesting to get numbers of various parts of the GOP coalition-- e.g. populist vs laissez-faire conservative, Christian vs secular.)

I can't think of a nicer way to put it than that I expect they'll probably die faster than they can be replaced. The youth have a reputation for being left-leaning, and as their parents die off, the Millennial Generation, with its typically more left-leaning views, will simply outnumber their parents.

You've probably got the trend right-- as I noted, liberal support has surged and conservative support has declined over the last 25 years.

But the speed is going to disappoint you, and 2022 might really disappoint you.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Why not just look at how Americans self-identify, as pollsters regularly track this? In 2020, 36% of Americans describe themselves as conservative, 35% as moderate, 25% as liberal. (That leaves 4%, who apparently don't know what they are. I'm actually surprised this number isn't higher-- I'd've thought more people just don't care about politics.)

I have some scepticism of simply asking people to self-identify, since "conservative" is often used to refer to economic and social positions that don't have much relationship to each-other (somebody might not care about the gays, but vote Republican because they prefer their fiscal policies).

Who knows better than the respondents what they are? If you want to know how many people are conservative, asking them directly is going to be more accurate than guessing that all Trump voters are conservative.

I'm sure they know what they think they are, but what that means when it compares with what others think they are and use the same word to describe is...

(This isn't to say that the Gallup categories are great; but it's hard to find anything better. From other polls, it seems the percentage of libertarians is quite small, surprisingly so given their online visibility. But it'd be interesting to get numbers of various parts of the GOP coalition-- e.g. populist vs laissez-faire conservative, Christian vs secular.)

More-or-less this.

Libertarians are kind-of silly, so I'm not surprised people who are economically right-wing wouldn't tend to them.

I can't think of a nicer way to put it than that I expect they'll probably die faster than they can be replaced. The youth have a reputation for being left-leaning, and as their parents die off, the Millennial Generation, with its typically more left-leaning views, will simply outnumber their parents.

You've probably got the trend right-- as I noted, liberal support has surged and conservative support has declined over the last 25 years.

But the speed is going to disappoint you, and 2022 might really disappoint you.

The speed already disappoints me. I said it would decrease with time, but could've been more specific — I think it will decrease over the next several decades (probably at about the rate the culture war was lost, which has been 20-some years in the process, and it isn't really over yet. I think 2022 is going to be broadly awful.

[Nachtswalbe]

He certainly has some very bizarre ideas, from reading that thread.

He has the idea that parents are sovereigns over their kids. Works for the AEI and the Institute of Family Studies so what do you expect?

Also he believes in going to war with China over Taiwan
https://mobile.twitter.com/lymanstoneky ... 7540069377

[Travis B.]

I think 2022 is going to be broadly awful.

And this is all going to be because a couple of "moderate" (read: conservative) Democrats managed to get in the way of the Democrats as a whole being able to get anything done. I bet that if the liberal Democrats managed to have their way with things this wouldn't be happening.

[Travis B.]

He certainly has some very bizarre ideas, from reading that thread.

He has the idea that parents are sovereigns over their kids. Works for the AEI and the Institute of Family Studies so what do you expect?

Any organization with the word "Family", or for that matter, "Parent(s)", in its title, with probably the sole exception of Planned Parenthood, is bound to be a bunch of reactionary scumbags.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I think 2022 is going to be broadly awful.

And this is all going to be because a couple of "moderate" (read: conservative) Democrats managed to get in the way of the Democrats as a whole being able to get anything done. I bet that if the liberal Democrats managed to have their way with things this wouldn't be happening.

I don't think the prognosis would be nearly as bad as it is, but yes, it seems two Senators (I begin to think much of how Washington operates is about a century out of date) have managed to scupper the not-what-I-wanted-but-I-can-live-with-it-I-guess policies the others were advancing.

[Nachtswalbe]

He certainly has some very bizarre ideas, from reading that thread.

He has the idea that parents are sovereigns over their kids. Works for the AEI and the Institute of Family Studies so what do you expect?

Any organization with the word "Family", or for that matter, "Parent(s)", in its title, with probably the sole exception of Planned Parenthood, is bound to be a bunch of reactionary scumbags.

I hate how random think tank pundits are given megaphones on twitter — at least reddit’s r/askHistorians requires detailed responses by academics and semi-academics to questions.

Perhaps allowing politicians and thinktankers to use social media was a mistake

[Nachtswalbe]

What most people need when they say “community” are 1-2 friends in driving distance

[Nortaneous]

Lymann Stone, who is a China expert in Twitter, argues that parents are at the top of the “school chain” and so have rights over teachers and even the principal to restrict them from teaching CRT and the like

https://mobile.twitter.com/lymanstoneky ... 6357920773

I don't like Lyman Stone but he's right about this - if there's an org chart, it necessarily has a top, and the only candidates are parents or the state.

What most people need when they say “community” are 1-2 friends in driving distance

That's a very developed-country thing to say - unfortunately I live in the US so that's not true at all for me.

I know a guy who has community. His community contains many large, bearded men with extensive gun collections. (Mostly recent immigrants from countries where everyone understands this stuff.) When he had problems with shitheel kids in his neighborhood, his community was able to deal with it, by delivering stern warnings, in groups, while carrying.

This is one of the many problems that having community can solve.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Did you just laud what sounds like an act of threatening lethal violence against children?

[Nachtswalbe]

Don't bring a gun to a fistfight

[Travis B.]

Lymann Stone, who is a China expert in Twitter, argues that parents are at the top of the “school chain” and so have rights over teachers and even the principal to restrict them from teaching CRT and the like

https://mobile.twitter.com/lymanstoneky ... 6357920773

I don't like Lyman Stone but he's right about this - if there's an org chart, it necessarily has a top, and the only candidates are parents or the state.

The problem with parents is that they're overall reactionary (remember that classically the only qualification to be a parent is to have the right equipment, and of course in reality even that is not necessary), and putting them above teachers and school administration means things like insane meddling in school activities by parents, which results in stuff like the whole "oh noes they're teaching Critical Race Theory" thing or the whole "now we can't teach kids about safe sex" thing. Therefore, parents must be subordinate to the state.

[Linguoboy]

I think it's only reasonable to expect that if you send your children to state schools then the state has final say there. If you don't like that, well, homeschooling is legal in all 50 US States.