Not "Has"the left" ever been wrong", but have social conservatives, ever, once, been right, in any country, about any issue, ever?
Maybe that time in 1970's France when the intellectuals were signing a petition to abolish age of consent laws.
that shit cracks me up Alex Jones/JBP/other grifters only needs to point to this and say "postmodern neo-marxsit" frenchies want to fuck kids!!!!
Yes, they regularly have valid critique of neoliberalism. It’s what they want to do about it that’s the issue
Most conservative movements today are neoliberal, or friendly to neoliberalism. I have no idea where you're getting the idea that they're not simpatico.
Well two things:
1- this depends if you’re talking about a specific group of conservatives like American conservatives which are just more conservative neoliberals. If these are indeed the conservatives you are talking about, then
2- The ideology of neoliberalism itself has no frame of reference built in for self crit like dialectical materialism, therefore many accurate criticisms of neoliberalism come from hypocritical neoliberals themselves who live through and observe the issues at hand and think more of what they are doing is the solution. Ask any neolib if they want to eliminate poverty, they’ll tell you yes and they may even tell you that capitalism is the issue. The problem stems from them thinking MORE free capitalism can fix poverty. So their critique of capitalism resulting in poverty is correct, their method of addressing it is where they go wrong.
I watched Richard Wolff debate some libertarian on "capitalism or socialism" and the libertarian actually said "we don't live in capitalism, we live in CRAPitalism" to thunderous applause.
So yeah I agree with your second point.
It's so fucking interesting to me how motherfucking cyclical everything is. tHiS tYpE oF wRiTiNg wE uSe tO mOcK wRoNg pEoPlE sAyInG tHeiR wRonG iDeAs actually already came and went on the internet. This goes way back, from the local dial up bulletin board 90s to the height of forums in the early 2000s. It was so ubiquitous, in fact, so mainstream, that it actually became lamestream, and only boomers did that shit (we didn't say boomers back then, but whatever the equivalent was), and the hep cat kids would never type it. To see it come back so full throatedly is honestly amusing.
Another one: Borat saying "Niiiiice" in the original Borat. Only the most insufferable Ren Faire dudes and business majors would say it, and no one cool would EVER type "nice" because everyone heard it in Borat's voice and then someone else would yell some shit about a wizard's sleeve.
Flash forward to today, and "nice" always gets floated out their about 69s and shit, and I can't not hear it in Borat voice, and NEVER type that shit.
I know I'm at a Wendy's right now, but you loved reading that anyway.
He went on to clarify that the "Cr" stood for "crony capitalism" btw
1- this depends if you’re talking about a specific group of conservatives like American conservatives which are just more conservative neoliberals
Or literally any conservative movement anyone in the imperial core has ever dealt with in living memory.
I think there was a time in the late 19th century/early 20th century when the more socially progressive side of politics was all about eugenics, but I'm not sure if conservatives were opposed to that per se.
But basically no.
Eugenics is a complicated one. Because it's true that individual conservatives were opposed to it, some on religious grounds even, but whenver it came to a vote in any country that I know, the conservatives voted for it with much gusto.
The Luddites thought that machines and factories were destroying their traditional way of life and creating hardships for the workers. Wikipedia says they're radicals but they seem conservative to me.
In Domenico Losurdo’s “Liberalism: A Counterhistory,” the author mentions how advocates for the feudal system spoke forcefully against the brutality of chattel slavery, which exploded in scale after liberal revolutions.
It looks like there are probably a lot of examples where it's obvious that the nobility and bourgeois are expanding their power and the socially conservative peasants or workers push back. I have a hunch that this sort of thing becomes rarer as the alienation of labor increases but I don't have the historical backing to back that up.
The Luddites were a bit of a predecessor to a working class movement. They recognized that output was going up but pay was not. Apprentices weren't actually being taught the trade, they were being put to work on the machines. They were positioned at a point in time where they could remember clearly how things used to work and see clearly how they were changing, but were ultimately too small and specific a group to do much about it.
I thought of another example. The German Peasant Revolt involved peasants revolting because the nobility and bourgeoisie were trying to reduce the peasants to serfs (being a peasant is better than being a serf). It It also involved a lot of other factors and was a political and religious clusterfuck (much like every other historical event in the Holy Roman Empire) so it's possible to interpret it differently. This is also what Martin Luther was talking about when he wrote "Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants", despite the peasants being (in some ways) inspired by the protestant reformation.
During WWII some conservatives in Nazi-occupied countries were active in the resistance. Nowhere near as active as the communists and for nationalist rather than anti-fascist reasons. And many other conservatives were Nazi sympathisers. But still, killing Nazis is objectively right.
There was a group of white emigre in France that formed some sort of fascist party but ended up fighting against the nazis because they just loved Russia too much.
Bismarck did not "Do a healthcare". He granted very limited health insurance that the workers had to pay for themselves.
Your example here is 3000 year old scripture that you're then making up a justification for pre-emptively with no evidence that this is even the case, or that that was their motivation.
I'm just pointing out how much of a reach you had to do here to find an example. That is, going 3000 years back and assuming motivations that are not evident from the actual argument being deployed.
Saying conservatives haven't maybe possibly theoretically had a point for over 3000 years is just damning with faint praise anyway
Yes, it was social conservatives who were against prohibition in the US.
Zoroastrians who wanted to reject the radical, prudish cult based on not-fucking and denying pleasure. With Christianity how it is today, I have to wonder if the Zoros were right.
(They were not right, Zoroastrianism was only "egalitarian" to Persians. Non-persians were not allowed to convert and non-zoroastrians formed a lower caste of the Sassanian empire. )
Most the time ya. They're right that whatever shitty actions they come up to exploit us with will line their pockets
May I recommend "The Reactionary Mind" by Corey Robin? It is the best book on understanding "Conservatism"
Oh look, a song was written about the answer! this also applies to right wingers in general
No because if you boil conservatives down to their bones they're all just reaching back to a mythical past, reaching further and further until they're AnPrims and the universe starts over in the shittiest cycle of rebirth imaginable.
