One man may not stand alone against the hurricane.

[johnny9fingers]

By which I mean to say: we are a society evolved to deal with causes of catastrophe bigger than any individual can withstand - from volcano, tsunami, earthquake, and fire; as individual units we have significantly less power-over-events than we do as some form of collective.

Outside context problems give us nascent awarenesses of how much shit we

Comments

[nairiporter]

Hi, could you please use a cut for some parts? :-)

[johnny9fingers]

Done.

Sorry.

[nairiporter]

Fanks!

[johnny9fingers]

Those badgers'll get you every time.

[sealwhiskers]

Well, in some aspects you make excellent points as to why libertarianism and simple fiscal conservatism actually aren't the same things and shouldn't be in bed with each other, as they often are.
Are these two factions in bed with each other in the UK as they mostly are in the US btw?

Also, could you explain a little more in specific detail how you are to the left of the labor party? - or is that mostly how an anarcho capitalist would see it?

[johnny9fingers]

Well….my stance on education, and education funding, as well as what I see as other social requirements (healthcare, policing, sewerage, etc) means I often call for higher taxes for the general good. Which even the Labour party can't bring itself to do these days.

I do think there is such a thing as the general good: and this is something which we have to pay for collectively, since we benefit from it collectively. And I also think this is a matter in which the Upper Classes should take the leadership as part of the notion of noblesse oblige, and of recognising that they have duties to society and to other people.

High Tories weren't/aren't simple fiscal conservatives. They believe in the general good as well as the summum bonum. In the UK under Macmillan, they developed into a pragmatic form of government that accommodated many elements of previous opposition thinking that had benefitted the people at large: because they looked on these policies, judged them for their results, and saw that they were for the general good.

[sealwhiskers]

I often call for higher taxes for the general good. Which even the Labour party can't bring itself to do these days

This seems to set you aside from most larger political groups in the UK today, yes?

Macmillan was a centrist or moderate conservative (by European standards), he is interesting, because even though European Third Way centrists are usually to the left of where he was standing, Macmillan still has no small part in the way the Third Way developed after the war.

Would you call your stance close to Third way centrism in some aspects? I realize you can't really pigeon-hole ppl like that easily, but some parts of what you're saying sound like that to me.

[johnny9fingers]

One-Nation Toryism of Macmillan's kind is a lineal descendant of Disraeli's policy of the same name. And I guess I'm a One-Nation Tory of a paternalistic sort.

(Obviously I know what's better for folk than they do themselves….or if not me, then someone remarkably like me but with different areas of expertise.) (Irony exists best in parentheses.)

[meus_ovatio]

Well it's a misnomer (convervative). Conservatism is generally about reinforcing and preserving socially authoritarian structures. Just lately it's been utterly reversed and turned into the law of the jungle.

[sandwichwarrior]

That in it's self is a misnomer. Conservatism is and always has been the "Push-back" against rapid social change.

300 Years ago this came in the form of those who supported monarchy against those who wanted to see the king's head on a pike.

In modern times most of the tranformative pressure is coming from Communist, Socialist, and Technocratic forces who emphasize the group over the individual. Thus the "push-back" manifests itself in the form of militant individualism.

[meus_ovatio]

No, it really hasn't. Conservatism supports and and all necessary change to preserve the extant ruling conditions. Which is why W enacted the greatest sweeping revolutions in American political inter-governance we've ever seen in our lifetimes.

[sandwichwarrior]

Funny because there've been numerous arguments over whether or not Rove-style Neo-Conservatism is really "Conservative" in any meaningful way.

Based on your response you fall in to the "Yes" camp, why?

[sandwichwarrior]

what do you conserve?

This is a good question. One for which I do not have an easy answer.

I guess for my part I distrust anyone who would advocate tearing down the current social order to make way for a new one. I believ that utopia's have a 100% failure rate because societies are too complex to be "built" and thus must be allowed to grow organically.

To illustrate...

Two people are walking down an abandoned mountain path when they come upon a fence. The first says "I see no use for this fence and it is in our way, we should remove it" the second replies, "Somebody put this fence here for a reason and I will not allow you to remove it if you don't understand why."

This attitude pushes me to right on many issues because it causes me to favor decentraization and question those who use some nebulously defined "greater good" as justification for their policies.

[meus_ovatio]

So you trust fences for the greater good, but don't like the greater good.

[sandwichwarrior]

No, I distrust someone who would remove a fence without first understanding it's purpose.

[meus_ovatio]

Because that would entail a possibly bad outcome, right?