[a study paper is shown, with some of the text legible]
STUDY RESULTS
GIVING POOR PEOPLE MONEY REDUCES CRIME MORE THAN GIVING COPS THAT SAME AMOUNT OF MONEY
CONCLUSION
If you want to reduce crime, take care of your community’s primary needs instead of funding cops so much
[an orange character in a suit has stamped a paper labeled MORE POLICE FUNDING BILL, and is grinning]
Heh, you think we don’t know?
https://thebad.website/comic/scientific_policing
You say that as though Liberalism didn’t immediately start with hierarchy. Liberalism literally said that power should be in the hands of the wealthy, not the hands of the hereditary aristocracy. Liberalism emerged precisely because merchants got super wealthy and then found that no matter how much money they had, the king decided if they got land. So Liberalism emerged as something to replace the hierarchy of the nobility with, specifically the hierarchy of wealth. All the “universal” equality shit of liberalism was invented to get the poor peasantry to agree. There was never a single day of liberalism anywhere on planet earth that saw an absence of hierarchy.
I think you were schooling me a few weeks ago on this subject, and I never responded. If that was you, thank you for your infomative response.
Possibly, I often try to bring the history of Liberalism and Conservatism into view when people clearly just mean “good” and “evil” but borrow terms from political philosophy without examining them.
Bit of a waffles and pancakes response, or maybe squares and rectangles.
I am inclined to agree with you, but don’t see what you’re saying as a contradiction of what I said.
Conservatism emerged as a response to Liberalism. Hierarchy is at the heart of the society that creates both of them, neither of them are about hierarchy. The heart of conservatism is the preservation of a status quo that itself is maintained entirely through systems that produce stability. The heart of liberalism is the preservation of a status quo through mercantile dynamism, where one person may be at the top of heap one day and fall to the bottom the next without necessarily resorting to violence.
I think it is inaccurate at best, and deliberately misleading at worst, to say hierarchy is the heart of conservatism. History isn’t a vibe.
Conservatism is built on support for monarchy, the most hierarchy of hierarchy.
No. Conservatism is a reaction to Liberalism. Liberalism is a hierachical system with different mechanisms than monarchy. Conservatism was not reacting to the hierachical aspect of Liberalism but to the stability aspect. Because it was a reaction to Liberalism, it didn’t need to defend hierarchy, it only needed to defend the systems of power distribution that Liberalism was attacking.
You’re doing vibes and it isn’t working.
My vibes align with Wikipedia, at least
I don’t know if I’ve heard it described as a reaction to liberalism
So when I accuse you of vibes-based reasoning, what I mean is deriving your understanding from the opening paragraph of wikipedia, or equivalently from dictionaries, and having no knowledge of conservatism being a reaction to enlightment philosophy (specifically liberalism). You clearly haven’t done the bare minimum of work to understand conservativism, so what makes you so confident that hierarchy is the heart of conservativism? If you read even a little bit you’ll be confronted with various other potential hearts like wisdom, community, history, social cohesion, stability, and tradition. Stop trying to defend your unexamined position, take the critique, and do some reading. It’s a very rich history with lots of challenging ideas and tons of wonderful debates that help us understand where we are today and lay the foundation for how to move forward.
A dictionary is a fine place to find the definition of something. An encyclopedia is a reasonable resource for a high level view. Wikipedia specifically is open for edits. You are empowered to change the article, if you believe it is mistaken.
Do you have some books you would recommend?
Do you identify as a conservative?
Some of these are nicer ways of saying “hierarchy”
I find this hard to believe given the conservative party in the US, the republicans, have atrocious positions on every policy. It is a party of white supremacy (hierarchy) and the rule of capital (also hierarchy).
American conservatives are Liberals.
Just read John Locke and Edmund Burke. They’re good starting points. Note how on the one hand you think Conservatism is about protecting the monarchy and on the other hand you think American Republicans are conservatives despite their focus on private property, profits, corporate profits, and tax loopholes for the rich. You can’t hold both of these views if you actually engage with the ideas.
Free market capitalism is Liberalism. Social welfare was originally Conservativism. Progressive Liberalism adopted social welfare after a century of the brutality and abject poverty of Liberalism and it was adopted insofar as it lessened the chance of a popular revolution.
No, I do not identify as Conservative. I don’t think we should defend traditional European monarchies and the system of nobility. But neither do I identify as a Liberal. I do not think private property should be the source of power and authority, I do not think democracy should be limited to managing the affairs of the various factions of oligarchs and how best to repress the masses. I identify as a Communist - I believe in the abolition of private property, in decolonization and anti-imperialism, in active repression of reactionary forces, and the subsequent century or more of conscious, deliberate adaptation and planning that will be required to reshape human society as it purges itself of the last 600 years of EuroCentric hegemony and eventually creates the conditions for humanity to process its collective traumas and hopefully come out the other side into a sustainable community that can work together for several thousand years to reintegrate with the ecosystem and once again become healthy participants in the web of life