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I'm a conservative, and no. Charlie Kirk was awful. I'm a pacifist, so I'm not glad he's dead but I'm not surprised either. "Those who live by the sword" and all that.
"Burn it all down" flies straight in the face of conservatism anyway. It's all about tying to save the good things in society from destruction. When it feels like the government or society is all gone wrong is the time when it's most important to save what we can.
I'll be honest, it's hard to feel hopeful when our current President won reëlection on a deeply regressive platform. The man is hostile to any kind of conservatism because he hates checks on his power. His vocal wrath is directed against progressive standards because that's what riles up his base but at the same time he's doing damage to our government and social institutions that will last for generations. He's a nightmare for conservatism. But that just makes it all the more important to fight the tide. Giving up and burning it all down is not the answer.
Many years ago I got banned from r/conservative for asking where exactly conservation came into play as part of their ideology. On its face, being conservative sounds awesome. I want to conserve this planet's ecology. I want to conserve human rights. I have never seen any conservative American politician in the last thirty some-odd years try to conserve anything. It would be much more apt to call them regressionists, but they're so much worse than that.
But since you willingly identify yourself as a conservative, and you're here, what is your take?
Edit: After reading through your other responses... Never mind. I can see you are more a literalist when it comes to the definition of the word conservative, but that is not and has never been what the political ideology has been for or about. Your attempts to make it something it's not may be noble, if not misguided when you could just associate yourself with the people who believe in the same things you do.
I find it strange that anyone can look at the current US government and think it's "Conservative". The Republican Party has clearly become a radical, right wing, extremist, authoritarian, revolutionary sort of ideology. It's obvious they want to completely remake the government and all of society. They're not looking to conserve anything anymore.
There is no Republican Party any longer, they are as dead as the Whigs. They should only be referred to in an historical or scholarly context.
They are the MAGA Party now. They have nothing in common with the traditional platform of the Republican Party - smaller government, lower taxes, economic/fiscal responsibility, family values, religious values, etc. MAGA embraces none of those foundational tenets, instead supporting and encouraging treason, racism, corruption, violence, genocide, pedophilia, misogyny, incompetence, ignorance, and more.
The Dems should hold a press conference, and unilaterally, but officially, declare the death of the Republican Party, and then never refer to them again, always calling them the MAGA Party. The MAGAs are proud of being Republicans, and they will go out of their minds over this.
Well they are still all in on lower taxes, and traditional religious family values.
No, they aren't. Tariffs are taxes, and we are all paying much more, and it's going to get a lot worse.
And where does pedophilia and corruption fit into traditional religious family values?
Okay, you may have me there.
Increased tariffs, aren't going to compensate for the loss of the other taxes they cut. On balance it's still lower taxes, just not for the poor.
Pedophilia and corruption are unrelated to family values. I never mentioned them. Not sure what your getting at with that.
Tariffs are taxes, and tariffs have increased, therefore taxes have increased. Simple as that. No need to try to explain it away with magic math, taxes/ tariffs have increased. Period.
MAGAs are not interested in lower taxes on citizens, just for Sociopathic Oligarchs and Corporations. That does not count as "Lower Taxes" as a policy.
I mentioned them as core MAGA values in my original post. Your post made me reconsider them as MAGA RELIGIOUS family values, since pedophilia and corruption are core values of all religions.
Republicans aren’t conservatives since the tea party.
Exactly right.
I'm curious what it is about conservative ideology that appeals to you. Because I have come to the conclusion after several decades on this planet, that deep down (or I guess really not that deep at all) it is a destructive, and morally bankrupt philosophy.
I'm curious how you came to your conclusions, too, because the point of conservatism, to me, is to prevent destruction.
I've been a environmental conservationist my whole life. As I became an adult and aware of politics, I came to realize that just as the natural environment requires protection against the selfishness, greed, and short-sightedness of humanity, so too do all the social and political systems that take decades or centuries to build but only years or months to destroy (as we've seen under the current administration).
It's been said many times that at the heart of all conservatism is fear. That's not a very generous way to put it, but neither is it inaccurate. Fear of loss, fear of risk, fear of change. Conservatism holds that if things are pretty good, most changes are likely to make things worse and not better, and so change is to be treated with suspicion, and people pushing for it doubly so, since altruism is rare.
A bicycle needs both pedals and brakes. We need to move forward, but not recklessly. Before a change is made, the case needs to be argued as to why it is necessary, what it will cost (and there's always a cost), how to ensure it actually achieves what it sets out to achieve, and how it might be misused in the future. In other words, before a change can be made in the name of Progress, it needs to be demonstrated that the change actually is Progress. To progressives, this feels like standing in the way of Progress. To a conservative, this is safeguarding Progress, the Progress previous generations achieved, from changes that, again, are more likely to be bad than good.
I think that, perhaps, you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what the generally accepted (speaking for the US here) definition of what the conservative political ideology actually is. I say that with all due respect.
Modern conservatives do not care about conserving the environment. Literally the opposite.
I know what the generally accepted definition is, I just don't accept it. Regressives don't have a right to call themselves conservative and I won't stop calling them out on it.
But conservatives have always been regressive in the US.
The things they were trying to conserve were slavery, segregation, women having no rights, companies being able to destroy the environment and abuse workers, etc.
You built up your very own definition of the word while ignoring what any political conservative movement in the world actually does. You listened to someone's argument on the concept of a definition, an idea that was stapled to a word in your head, without actually looking at factual reality. What you describe is simply not what any conservative party anywhere does.
Starting with the idea that you are conserving something that runs well and not spending resource on frivolous nonsense that doesn't work - just look at everything a conservative party actually funds while blocking money for anything remotely humanitarian because they claim it doesn't work, or based on the slightest disagreement about a boundary, while being themselves the very reason it doesn't work.
Look at what is actually protected. And at who isn't, based on not giving too much to someone you don't think deserves it. Do those who already have all that deserve it?
Starting with your environmental conservationist sensibility and deducing (edit: typo) that you want to be a conservative is already super wild, it's antinomic. You think you protect something from greed and selfishness, but those who who block progress are the selfish ones who hoard everything out of greed, using "this doesn't deserve it" or "you can't prove this works" as an excuse to keep everything. You are not safeguarding anything, and there's zero place for environmental protection in any conservative party anywhere.
What would you call someone with the beliefs that they've mentioned then? I agree, I don't know of a current "conservative" political group/party that follows that idea anymore but what word better explains how they actually want things?
In the US? ... Obama? (In a very big nutshell) as long as you don't oppose stuff like the Dreamers and Obamacare (which you shouldn't under this definition)
By the way, I think this bit
Is the biggest discrepancy in each person's understanding. If things are good...for who? What if they're not? If they are for 51% of people, what about the other 49%?
If you understand some stuff is good for you and some stuff is very bad for everyone else, do you block everything?
If only your situation changes and nothing else, do you switch parties?
I agree. This person is a conservative. The other “conservatives” are just fascists who inherited the label and it no longer fits.
The conservative party has never stood for what this person is ascribing to them.
Nazis hate preachers aren't awful for conservatism, they ARE conservatism.
"But I'm just a fiscal conservative, the only REAL kind of conservative!"
You're joining forces with nazis. If you're not a nazi, you're a nazi collaberator. So please kindly go fuck yourself with your bullshit that only you believe.
Fiscal conservatism doesn't work, any economist can tell you that.
You're completely correct that conservatism destroyed its reputation when it allied with the religious right in an attempt at political power. The regressives took over the GOP, calling themself conservatives all the while. Terrible to watch from the outside, but like I said, giving up is not the answer. The only thing to do is push back, and try to save what can be saved.
Not trying to bait here but what do you want to save and how far back are you going to find something worth saving? Some aspects of fiscal conservatism have their merits but I'm stumped thinking of any good socially-conservative opinions from the past hundred years
A non-stacked Supreme Court
The Electoral College
Human Rights
Civil Rights
Checks on Presidential power
the American melting pot
Birthright Citizenship
Separation of Church and State
basically all of the Enlightenment ideals the country was founded on and have been working towards, it fits and starts, for most of her existence
I hadn't considered the Electoral College thing so I'll give you that...but the rest of the list, aside from the supreme court thing which is non-partisan, are things conservatives (famously) fought against.
Are you sure you're conservative? If you really hold those ideals, I think you might actually be progressive...
This list is all things under attack by the current administration that I want to push back and protect, that's the point. That was the question I was answering.
I was moreso asking about the values that used to (but no longer) exist in the republican party as the main change I see is the willingness to let the mask slip.
Though I am still confused why you consider yourself a conservative when you support all those progressive ideas! I am not a conservative but we seem to agree on a whole lot
Conservatives and progressives should agree on a whole lot, especially when we're all trying to fight off an alarming resurgence of fascism, authoritarianism, and illiberalism worldwide. The disagreement was rarely about goals, but rather methods. And right now the method is clear: Get these Nazi fucks out of power, ASAP.