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Is American Social Conservatism on a Permanent Decline?

Is American Social Conservatism on a Permanent Decline?


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So called "social conservatism", i.e., authoritarian government telling people how to run their lives, is, thankfully, on the way out.

The sooner it is divorced from real conservatism, i.e. limited government and fiscal responsibility, the sooner the latter will see a resurgence in this country and the sooner we'll all be better off.

Both ends of the political spectrum assert the need for and the right of government to be authoritarian and tell people how to run their lives.

They just encourage and curtail different things.
 
Social conservatives want to use the government as a vehicle to promote, endorse, and compel adherence to their own personal or religious beliefs. That is pure authoritarianism. For example, even though it would have zero impact on their lives if the same sex couple up the street were to get legal recognition of their marriage, they are still against it. They want prayer in schools because they want their religious beliefs advanced by public institutions. They want the ten commandments displayed at the courthouse because they want their religious beliefs promoted by the state. It's all authoritarianism.

Very few authoritarian regimes have not been socially conservative regardless of their politics on other issues. Even the Chinese Communist Party is pretty socially conservative on most issues.



Most of the examples of Social Conservatism you suggest are in relation to religion.

Did the Chi-coms endorse a state religion?

Dod the chi-coms endorse the Gay life style?
 
Social conservatives want to use the government as a vehicle to promote, endorse, and compel adherence to their own personal or religious beliefs. That is pure authoritarianism. For example, even though it would have zero impact on their lives if the same sex couple up the street were to get legal recognition of their marriage, they are still against it. They want prayer in schools because they want their religious beliefs advanced by public institutions. They want the ten commandments displayed at the courthouse because they want their religious beliefs promoted by the state. It's all authoritarianism.

Very few authoritarian regimes have not been socially conservative regardless of their politics on other issues. Even the Chinese Communist Party is pretty socially conservative on most issues.
Social conservatives want to use the government as a vehicle to promote, endorse, and compel adherence to their own personal or moral beliefs. That is pure authoritarianism.
My point is that extremes of ether side is capable of taking away peoples freedoms, in the name of whatever they hold scared!
 
Social conservatives want to use the government as a vehicle to promote, endorse, and compel adherence to their own personal or moral beliefs. That is pure authoritarianism.
My point is that extremes of ether side is capable of taking away peoples freedoms, in the name of whatever they hold scared!

I don't disagree with that. The students on a college campus that shout down any opposing views are cut from the same cloth as social conservatives.
 
American social conservatism is rooted in empty, meaningless identity politics.

What is 'tradition'? To my mind, America has no traditions. It's far too young a nation to have developed any as yet. This anomie is what in part fuels the pathetic spectacle of the American "values voter" - a clinging-on to the received wisdom of the late 19th century as though it were some eternal Truth handed down from on high.

Most of us here are of European heritage. Five thousand years ago, our ancestors worshipped anthropomorphic incarnations of natural phenomenon like lightning or the sky. They were doing likewise three thousand years later.

Christianity is what is anti-traditional. To begin, it is the first human project to lay claim to being "catholic" - that is to say, universal, applicable to all men everywhere and irrespective of history or Tradition. Everything that the Christian conservative hates in contemporary liberalism - its "rootless cosmopolitanism", its internationalism, its pursuit of global redemption - is nothing more than a secularized extrapolation from Christianity.

Christianity is decadence; Christianity is decline; Christianity is decay. It is the ferment of the ages. There can be no Restoration until it is done away with.

In European man, this will manifest either as a tendency towards pagan revivalism or an atheism which is similar in its world-perspective to paganism, simply emptied of its metaphysical content. In the African-American, torn from his connections by Muslim and Christian monotheistic slave-traders, it will appear as a return to African syncretic religions, adapted to account for his experiences in the New World. The Asians have less need for this; they alone have remained relatively true to themselves through the passage of dozens of centuries.

Right-wing conservative 'Traditionalists', who at best look back to 1789, are less than worthless. Do not take me for an Ultramontaine.
 
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Angry old christian white men are dying off, and they aren't being replaced.
Amen, Hispanics are the fastest rising population and the majority of them vote Democratic left leaning because of the social safety nets, and they are angry about the nasty racism directed towards them by white conservatives..

Take a look at the 12 election, Hispanics voted A WHOPPING 85% for Obama over Romney..

Hispanics tend to be younger, and the Democratic party has a pretty strong hold on the young vote..
 
Social conservatives want to use the government as a vehicle to promote, endorse, and compel adherence to their own personal or religious beliefs. That is pure authoritarianism. For example, even though it would have zero impact on their lives if the same sex couple up the street were to get legal recognition of their marriage, they are still against it. They want prayer in schools because they want their religious beliefs advanced by public institutions. They want the ten commandments displayed at the courthouse because they want their religious beliefs promoted by the state. It's all authoritarianism.

Very few authoritarian regimes have not been socially conservative regardless of their politics on other issues. Even the Chinese Communist Party is pretty socially conservative on most issues.


Very true post.


Chinese and Russian Communism and German Nazism for instance, while decried by US social conservatives as supposed "Radical Governments", were both actually considered by their national populations at the time to be social conservative ideologies and governments. Most Americans would find that a shocking fact indeed. The hard truth to stomach is Social Conservatism is and always has been the dark path to authoritarianism because social conservatism is inherently authoritarian by its very nature. It's basically oppression defined.

Such is why Western Europe and ex Eastern Europe Communist nations are so socially Liberal. They know what social conservatism leads to and they've had world wars and genocides in their backyards. They've seen the barbarity of supposed social conservative governments at their height of power revealed to their true nature. Authoritarianism.
 
Social conservatism is certainly heavily populated with religious tones but it isn't isolated to it.

It's an inclination. It tends to desire stability, the accumulated knowledge from the past, and gradual change over what it perceives as upheaval and romantic notions of human perfectibility through new modes of thought and action.

I might not be currently among what people tend to circle as "socially conservative," but I very much am a believer in its tendencies.
 
I firmly believe it is. Do you?


Social Liberalism in the U.S. on the Rise, Fiscal Conservatism Remains Strong | Cato @ Liberty

[h=1]Social Liberalism in the U.S. on the Rise, Fiscal Conservatism Remains Strong[/h]
052215_socialissues.png

Nope. I've lived long enough to see it run in cycles. Btw, this is what we thought in the 60s/70s. Didn't take but a decade or two for social conservatism to reassert itself, and in my own generation.
 
Amen, Hispanics are the fastest rising population and the majority of them vote Democratic left leaning because of the social safety nets, and they are angry about the nasty racism directed towards them by white conservatives..

Take a look at the 12 election, Hispanics voted A WHOPPING 85% for Obama over Romney..

Hispanics tend to be younger, and the Democratic party has a pretty strong hold on the young vote..

Heh, laughable. That so- called Hispanic majority comes with a twist, right under the surface is a social conservatism that rivals any held by "old white men".
 
I think it will decline to an extent, but there is always going to be a certain percentage of the population that is socially conservative. Ultimately, Social Conservatism is rooted in an authoritarian personality, and that is not just going to go away.

both sides of the current political spectrum are
 
Heh, laughable. That so- called Hispanic majority comes with a twist, right under the surface is a social conservatism that rivals any held by "old white men".

Largely true. I would suspect, however, that it is much more....Latin and South American Catholic in its orientation.

While there is a massive amount of emphasis on the virtues of the family unit as the basic unit of society, hard work and independence, there isn't the nearly the level of antagonism between the individual, their family, and the State. In this respect, their conservatism might be less libertarian than their historic Anglo counterpart. They may tend to be much more supportive of the Welfare state, broadly understood. Of course the general attitude toward the welfare state from many Catholics is that it extends to their principles of helping the poor and the hungry.

That being said, their religious ties can be very strong. They may continue to have a viewpoint of the neighborhood Church as a vital component to their social network and provider of stability. Many of the bi-partisan attempts to increase government-religious cooperation in the late 90s through the mid 2000s tended to look at Hispanic communities. Whether this impacts their views toward homosexuality, abortion, and so on, I can't quite recall. I wouldn't be surprised if it has, but I also wouldn't be surprised if many had more in common with the Democratic Party's platform of supporting minority communities and their perspectives as a whole.

The Catholic Church has by itself always been kind of a marvelous wedge in the American political consciousness. It tends to divide itself between the American's traditional understanding of Right and Left wing views. The Latin American and South American variety of Catholicism has especially been interesting because of its political views of poverty and its on again-off again love/hate relationship with Marxist analysis.
 
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Both ends of the political spectrum assert the need for and the right of government to be authoritarian and tell people how to run their lives.

They just encourage and curtail different things.

Exactly so.

and there are people on both ends who subscribe to a social libertarian ideal as well.
 
I'm pretty sure that from your point of view, I would be considered a member of the Older Generation, but I am in pretty much the same frame of mind as you.

However, if a Conservative is defined as a person who desires the constraint of government power and reach into the lives of Citizens, states and localities, then the most Conservative position on all social issues is to stop government interference.

If a Liberal is defined as a person who embraces the reach of government into the lives of the citizens, states and localities, then the most Liberal position is the "award" freedoms to individuals and groups.

If the government is allowed to make these awards, of course the government is allowed to remove them.

The freedom to enjoy an award from the authorities is entirely different than having been endowed with an unalienable RIGHT. One is conditional on favoritism while the other is conditional only on drawing breath.

One can't draw a breath if he's starving to death so economic freedom precedes political freedom in the sequence of freedoms developed during the course of history. Which is why until only recently it was called political economy instead of separately politics or economics.

Political freedom is no more "awarded" by the "authorities" than is economic freedom "awarded" by the authorities. We the people create and earn each, respectively, always have, always will. This is concomitantly true of social attitudes and values.

Politics and government are about the distribution of power in the society and who gets to decide on the distribution. Economics is about the wise use of resources, almost always meaning limited resources, and who gets to determine what is wise use. Social attitudes follow to eventually become a central component of the dynamic.

In Western civilization, the authorities have had increasingly less to say concerning political economy since King John had to sign the Magna Carta. In social terms, society's values began to break radically from the long dark past with the advent of post-industrial society in the late 1960s into the mid 1970s.

In the Age of Information, social change is occuring radically and rapidly, never to be reversed.

So the concept of an "award" is not in this vocabulary in any real terms or sense. Everyone is entitled to a living wage regardless of the nature of his/her employment or station in life. The Harvard MBA by the nature of it gets more, much more. And the more religion and other social reactionary institutions and forces try to interpose themselves, the more and the faster they are discarded.

No problem.
 
I don't disagree with that. The students on a college campus that shout down any opposing views are cut from the same cloth as social conservatives.

Do all social conservatives necessarily have to impose their beliefs on others?

What of those who choose to live in a social conservative way, but do not feel the need to spread the word?
 
Nope. I've lived long enough to see it run in cycles. Btw, this is what we thought in the 60s/70s. Didn't take but a decade or two for social conservatism to reassert itself, and in my own generation.


But you didn't have cell phones.

-You didn't have 24/7 social media

-You didn't have internet

-You didn't have a generation of millennials and generations under them routinely digesting ultra progressive lifestyles and societal themes from elementary school and up


I think the effect of technology is underestimated by older generations of Americans who aren't as connected as my generation and generations under me are and have been our whole lives. I see a dramatic shift to Western European style values and politics within my lifetime in America that essentially wipes out social conservatism (and I'd argue we're already seeing it occur among under 30's), largely thanks to technology. Again I simply think older generations immensely discount just how socially liberal even a conservative oriented millennial or younger truly is.
 
American social conservatism is rooted in empty, meaningless identity politics.

What is 'tradition'? To my mind, America has no traditions. It's far too young a nation to have developed any as yet. This anomie is what in part fuels the pathetic spectacle of the American "values voter" - a clinging-on to the received wisdom of the late 19th century as though it were some eternal Truth handed down from on high.

Most of us here are of European heritage. Five thousand years ago, our ancestors worshipped anthropomorphic incarnations of natural phenomenon like lightning or the sky. They were doing likewise three thousand years later.

Christianity is what is anti-traditional. To begin, it is the first human project to lay claim to being "catholic" - that is to say, universal, applicable to all men everywhere and irrespective of history or Tradition. Everything that the Christian conservative hates in contemporary liberalism - its "rootless cosmopolitanism", its internationalism, its pursuit of global redemption - is nothing more than a secularized extrapolation from Christianity.

Christianity is decadence; Christianity is decline; Christianity is decay. It is the ferment of the ages. There can be no Restoration until it is done away with.

In European man, this will manifest either as a tendency towards pagan revivalism or an atheism which is similar in its world-perspective to paganism, simply emptied of its metaphysical content. In the African-American, torn from his connections by Muslim and Christian monotheistic slave-traders, it will appear as a return to African syncretic religions, adapted to account for his experiences in the New World. The Asians have less need for this; they alone have remained relatively true to themselves through the passage of dozens of centuries.

Right-wing conservative 'Traditionalists', who at best look back to 1789, are less than worthless. Do not take me for an Ultramontaine.




Wow!

So if there was no Christianity, there would be no injustice or bigotry in the world?

Well, that explains a lot.

Not well or in any depth at all, but an explanation is offered.

Out of curiosity, in what way is the "rooting" of those idealisms that are not American Social Conservatism different from "meaningless Identity politics". You should keep in mind that you have just engaged in exactly that.
 
Amen, Hispanics are the fastest rising population and the majority of them vote Democratic left leaning because of the social safety nets, and they are angry about the nasty racism directed towards them by white conservatives..

Take a look at the 12 election, Hispanics voted A WHOPPING 85% for Obama over Romney..

Hispanics tend to be younger, and the Democratic party has a pretty strong hold on the young vote..



Does that say more about the Democrat party or more about the Young voters?
 
Very true post.


Chinese and Russian Communism and German Nazism for instance, while decried by US social conservatives as supposed "Radical Governments", were both actually considered by their national populations at the time to be social conservative ideologies and governments. Most Americans would find that a shocking fact indeed. The hard truth to stomach is Social Conservatism is and always has been the dark path to authoritarianism because social conservatism is inherently authoritarian by its very nature. It's basically oppression defined.

Such is why Western Europe and ex Eastern Europe Communist nations are so socially Liberal. They know what social conservatism leads to and they've had world wars and genocides in their backyards. They've seen the barbarity of supposed social conservative governments at their height of power revealed to their true nature. Authoritarianism.



This seems to be saying that religion is a very important component of Social Conservatism. The next idea is that the Nazis and communists were authoritarian and therefer were social conservatives.

Both the Nazis and the Communists were pretty tough on traditional religion.

How do you square that circle?
 
This seems to be saying that religion is a very important component of Social Conservatism. The next idea is that the Nazis and communists were authoritarian and therefer were social conservatives.

Both the Nazis and the Communists were pretty tough on traditional religion.

How do you square that circle?

Well let's see.

You're completely wrong good sir. That's how I'd square that circle.


-Hitler was a radical Catholic. (don't make me fill the thread with pictures and speeches proving so).

-Russian Communism was a direct counter to the fanatical oppression of the Russian peasantry by the self anointed religiously divine Russian Czars. Without their religiously sanctioned oppression of the Russian peasantry Communism never would have fomented in Czarist Russia. (Again, do your research good sir).


Social Conservatism is authoritarianism however you describe it (Be it Hitlers Nazism, Stalins Communism or Mao's Collectivism). You're denying social liberals their basic rights to conduct their lives and directly hurting the economy by doing so.
 
Wow!

So if there was no Christianity, there would be no injustice or bigotry in the world?

Well, that explains a lot.

Not well or in any depth at all, but an explanation is offered.

Out of curiosity, in what way is the "rooting" of those idealisms that are not American Social Conservatism different from "meaningless Identity politics". You should keep in mind that you have just engaged in exactly that.

I never said anything of the sort.

There's nothing inherently 'wrong' with prejudice; I reject the self-evidence of the 'equality of man'. But I find Christianity anathema for precisely the same reason that the Christian finds liberalism abhorrent - its claim to universalism; its rejection of the distinct, of the peculiar.

The belief that "salvation belongs, first to the Jew, then to the gentile" is the most destructive doctrine imaginable. A faith is either grounded I'm a people, in their cultural essence, or it works against them, eradicating those distinctions which make them unique.

My aim is the recreation in American life of the aristocratic consciousness. This is intended as a palliative for three centuries of Christian-coerced democratic decline. I believe that hierarchy - real hierarchy, not an illusory Randian hypercapitalist market hierarchy - is innately valuable: and I in no sense imagine that I would be at the top, or anywhere close to it.

The social conservative, who hates the liberal 'elite', is a symptom of the populist disease. Every other form of American 'traditionalism', from the Southern slaveocracy of the nineteenth century to the neoliberal 'meritocracy' of today, has made a mockery of genuine distinction of rank, taking as their respective measures an arbitrary racial caste system or fiduciary gain. These too are products of democracy, and as such are inherently tainted. (The landed gentry of the antebellum South is almost precisely the opposite of what I have in mind.)
 
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Do all social conservatives necessarily have to impose their beliefs on others?

What of those who choose to live in a social conservative way, but do not feel the need to spread the word?

Let me know when you find one like that.
 
Exactly so.

and there are people on both ends who subscribe to a social libertarian ideal as well.

That's pretty much where I am with the caveat that nobody is harmed and everyone has reached the age of reason.
 
One can't draw a breath if he's starving to death so economic freedom precedes political freedom in the sequence of freedoms developed during the course of history. Which is why until only recently it was called political economy instead of separately politics or economics.

Political freedom is no more "awarded" by the "authorities" than is economic freedom "awarded" by the authorities. We the people create and earn each, respectively, always have, always will. This is concomitantly true of social attitudes and values.

Politics and government are about the distribution of power in the society and who gets to decide on the distribution. Economics is about the wise use of resources, almost always meaning limited resources, and who gets to determine what is wise use. Social attitudes follow to eventually become a central component of the dynamic.

In Western civilization, the authorities have had increasingly less to say concerning political economy since King John had to sign the Magna Carta. In social terms, society's values began to break radically from the long dark past with the advent of post-industrial society in the late 1960s into the mid 1970s.

In the Age of Information, social change is occuring radically and rapidly, never to be reversed.

So the concept of an "award" is not in this vocabulary in any real terms or sense. Everyone is entitled to a living wage regardless of the nature of his/her employment or station in life. The Harvard MBA by the nature of it gets more, much more. And the more religion and other social reactionary institutions and forces try to interpose themselves, the more and the faster they are discarded.

No problem.

Wow!

It's difficult to know where to start with this.

Your ideas seem to rest on the ideas of award by a higher authority in an organization and an odd mix of definitions.

A right, by definition in the USA, is something that cannot be taken away by government. This becomes confusing as the political parties try to sell things and conflate one meaning with another. There is no unalienable right to vote. It is an award and is not available to all. You need to be a resident and of a minimum age and so forth. This is an award and has been expanded and retracted over our history. Until recently, when laws were abandoned in favor of political expediancy, foreign visitors were not allowed to vote in our elections.

You seem see no difference between political freedom and economic freedom. There is a huge difference. Economic freedom is something that exists completely until the government restricts it. This is what was taken advantage of by the economic empire builders of the late 1800's and attacked by Teddy Roosevelt. That attack has been ongoing ever since. There was a time in the late 1800's that the private corporations had more money, much more, than the federal government. At that time, the government had no real, effective method to strip it away.

Government gets involved in both economics and politics not in the distribution of power or wealth, but in the RE-distribution of power or wealth. Government creates nothing. It only regulates or re-distributes it. When the government is afforded power, that power is what enables that re-distribution to be conducted.

One of the great thinkers said of government that it should fear its citizens. In our country, the citizens fear the government. As a result, we are now living in the first Constitutional Dictatorship. We have become Imperial Rome of the 3rd Century AD.

Late in your post you add the word "entitled" to the words "award" and "right".

The idea that everyone is entitled to a living wage is fantasy. Entitled on what grounds? By whom?

<snip>
"en·ti·tled
inˈtīdld,enˈtīdld/
adjective
believing oneself to be inherently deserving of privileges or special treatment.
"his pompous, entitled attitude"
<snip>

Tie this thought in with the MBA from Harvard. Intrinsically, any credential means as little as a title of nobility. Nothing.

Any person is worth what someone else will pay him for his worth. If there is a community of 1000 Harvard MBA's and only one ditch digger and every one of those Harvard MBA's needs a ditch dug before noon today, that ditch digger can pretty much write his own ticket.

The same thing happened in the Y2K panic when the IT guys got fat only to starve in 2002 when their talents were so omnipresent and the work so rare that they were suddenly leaving that profession.

It might be good to examine the meaning of the words rights, awards and entitlements.

You seem to think that they are synonyms and they are not.
 
Well let's see.

You're completely wrong good sir. That's how I'd square that circle.


-Hitler was a radical Catholic. (don't make me fill the thread with pictures and speeches proving so).

-Russian Communism was a direct counter to the fanatical oppression of the Russian peasantry by the self anointed religiously divine Russian Czars. Without their religiously sanctioned oppression of the Russian peasantry Communism never would have fomented in Czarist Russia. (Again, do your research good sir).


Social Conservatism is authoritarianism however you describe it (Be it Hitlers Nazism, Stalins Communism or Mao's Collectivism). You're denying social liberals their basic rights to conduct their lives and directly hurting the economy by doing so.




I'm not denying anyone any basic rights.

I am only challenging your conclusions and assumptions.

I would prefer to not be put into the position of defending big religion as I've pretty much rejected it for me at this point in my life.

That said, though, it's a little hard to believe that Hitler referred to his WWJD bracelet before every decision he made. The same is true of Stalin and of Mao. All three were responsible for terror tactics, mass murder and restriction of civil rights. These were NOT done in the name of God.

That you see an assertion of a supreme power as a connecting thread does not make the assumed supreme power the same one. In the three political entities you name, the three supreme powers were earthly and the existance of another supreme power was obliterated by one, ignored by one and tolerated by one. The parallel is not there.

<snip>
Religion in the Soviet Union
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Soviet Union

When the Soviet Union was established by the Bolsheviks in 1922, it was the constitutional organization which took over from the Russian Empire. At the time of the 1917 Revolution, the Russian Orthodox Church was deeply integrated into the autocratic state enjoying official status. This was a significant factor that contributed to the Bolshevik attitude to religion and the steps they took to control it.[1] Thus the USSR became the first state to have, as an ideological objective, the elimination of religion[2] and its replacement with universal atheism.[3][4] The communist regime confiscated religious property, ridiculed religion, harassed believers, and propagated atheism in schools.[5] The confiscation of religious assets was often based on accusations of illegal accumulation of wealth.
<snip>

Catholic Church and Nazi Germany - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cultural Revolution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

<snip>
The Revolution was launched in May 1966, after Mao alleged that bourgeois elements had infiltrated the government and society at large, aiming to restore capitalism. He insisted that these "revisionists" be removed through violent class struggle. China's youth responded to Mao's appeal by forming Red Guard groups around the country. The movement spread into the military, urban workers, and the Communist Party leadership itself. It resulted in widespread factional struggles in all walks of life. In the top leadership, it led to a mass purge of senior officials, most notably Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. During the same period Mao's personality cult grew to immense proportions.

Millions of people were persecuted in the violent struggles that ensued across the country, and suffered a wide range of abuses including public humiliation, arbitrary imprisonment, torture, sustained harassment, and seizure of property. A large segment of the population was forcibly displaced, most notably the transfer of urban youth to rural regions during the Down to the Countryside Movement. Historical relics and artifacts were destroyed. Cultural and religious sites were ransacked.
<snip>
 
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