Full Right Rudder?

To the surprise of most, Britain's conservative party was swept into a full majority by English Voters with 331 seats in parliament, Labor fell to 232 and the Liberal-Democrats lost big, retaining only 8 seats out of a previous 57.

Once again the pollsters blew it, all predictions were a neck to neck race possibly leading to a crisis in attempts to form a majority coalition and a hung parliament. 

The question then is... can American conservatives mirror their British cousins performance in 2016? 

 

Trotsky's Parting Gift to The World

 By Hugh Farnham

While racism has been with us since the dawn of humanity, it was one special individual who gave us the modern term Racist:  Leon Trotsky.  A word-weapon meant to silence those who stood in the way of international Communism.

True to form, today's progressives have held fast to Trotsky's original use.  Let's see how he cast this word in referring to conservative Slavs: 

"Slavophilism, the messianism of backwardness, has based its philosophy upon the assumption that the Russian people and their church are democratic through and through, whereas official Russia is a German bureaucracy imposed upon them by Peter the Great. Mark remarked upon this theme: "In the same way the Teutonic jackasses blamed the despotism of Frederick the Second upon the French, as though backward slaves were not always in need of civilised slaves to train them." This brief comment completely finishes off not only the old philosophy of the Slavophiles, but also the latest revelations of the 'racists.'" 

 - "The History of the Russian Revolution"

Trotsky believed those traditional Slavs who held to traditional Christian values were insular and not compatible with his vision of the Communist International.   They were racist in his view.

Let's translate that into today's progressive-speak:

"Conservatism, the clinging to the Bible, Constitution, and guns, is based on the erroneous assumption that Americans are exceptional; freedom and individual choice are somehow greater than a centrally planned economy; a group who falsely believes 'they actually built that themselves'.  Racists."

Any doubt Obama would heartily agree with the above passage?  Be able to expound upon it ad nauseam without a teleprompter, straight from the heart?  

Progressives have added to this word to make it more powerful.  They built upon the hate of traditionalists and added a supposed element of racial hatred in all Conservatives.  

Truth be told, Progressives project their true nature on their enemies.  In 20 years, one can imagine Common Core teaching that Republicans kept slaves on their Northern plantations in Illinois, Democrats freed the slaves and integrated the military, evil Republicans tried to stop the Civil Rights Act, all led by a Republican senator from West Virginia who just happened to be a grand wizard in the KKK.

The next time I hear the usual suspects in the media try to shut down a voice of Conservatism with "racist", I'm going to think of the founder of that word:

  Sources:  The Unpopular Truth, The Immanent Domain

And the Frontrunners are...

Rand Paul - 31%

Ted Cruz - 11%

Photo by Gage Skidmore

 Ben Carson 9%

CPAC

These are the results of the CPAC/Washington Times straw poll.  Rand Paul increased his performance from last year, climbing 6%, Ted Cruz also improved over last year rising 7%.  New Jersey Governor Chris Christie improved slightly from 7% to 8% finishing fourht.  Marco Rubio plunged from a 23% second place finish last year down to only 6% this year and Paul Ryan fell from 6% to 3%.

Of course these results are far more reflective of the 2,459 CPAC attendees that participated than Republican voters in general.

Washington Times

A Liberal Blind Spot

Finally, confirmation of something I've always suspected.  Conservatives are better able to understand liberal positions than liberals are able to honestly entertain conservative ideas.  I would chime in here that the ability to entertain other points of view that one does not agree with is a mark of intelligence, but I won't...

We tested how well liberals and con­servatives could understand each other. We asked more than 2,000 American visitors to fill out the Moral Foundations Questionnaire. One-third of the time they were asked to fill it out normally, answering as themselves. One-third of the time they were asked to fill it out as they think a “typical liberal” would respond. One-third of the time they were asked to fill it out as a “typical conservative” would respond. This design allowed us to examine the stereotypes that each side held about the other.

Moderates and conservatives were most accurate in their predictions, whether they were pretending to be liberals or conservatives. Liberals were the least accurate, especially those who described themselves as “very liberal.” (Born This Way?)

Most of us shelter ourselves in comfy ideological cocoons, but to my biased eyes, the liberal or progressive cocoon seems stubbornly impenetrable.

Look at how each side approaches the ideas of the other…

Liberals will point at some egregious conservative action or idea, disparage it, and leave it at that, not pausing to explain why it is bad or attempting to at least give a hearing to the other side of the story. Their hysterics over Paul Ryan’s budget, portraying him as an ax murderer when the truth is his budget merely slows the rate of government growth is but one example.

Liberals tend to employ emotion-laden invective, while conservatives analyze a liberal idea and attempt to logically pick it apart. It’s a generality, with exceptions on both sides. Ezra Klein is one of the left’s best analysts and critic of conservative ideas.

How to do it right...

Lee Harris shows how conservatives engage opposing ideas in an intellectually honest way. He gives props to OWS “anti-leader” David Graeber, treats him as the intelligent human being that he is, and seriously considers his intellectual ideas, the most provocative among them, that we are all naturally communists.

One of the central ideas in Graeber’s book is his claim that communism should not be seen as an alternative system to capitalism, or feudalism, or state socialism, but rather as a mode of social life that has always been present and that is a fact of life even in the most advanced capitalist nations, such as the United States. Or, to put it as Graeber likes to: We are all communists already.

When Graeber says that we are already communists, he is referring to those quite familiar situations in which we really do operate by the maxim “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

People of all cultures, including our own, invariably practice the communism of everyday life when dealing with their family and close friends. A mother does not expect her child to pay her for her baby-sitting services. A brother does not rent out his baseball glove to his brother on an hourly basis. If a friend is sick and needs something from the store, we pick it up for her and would never think of asking for gas money in return. (Communism of Everyday Life)

Lee Harris concedes that given this definition, yes, we are social communists. From there, he explores how freeloaders wreck the whole scheme…

Indeed, anyone who has tried living in a genuine commune has probably come across at least one example of the phenomenon in question. While everyone else is giving to the commune to the best of his ability, the freeloader gives as little as possible, and almost invariably ends up taking a lot more than he needs.

Because freeloaders are unusually shameless, it is pointless to try to shame them into observing the principles underlying the communism of everyday life. Because, by definition, the communism of everyday life is an informal system, freeloaders cannot be sanctioned by law.   (Communism of Everyday Life) 

Conservatives have grown...

I get Graeber's point, and its a good one as far as it goes.  I also enjoyed Harris's examination of it:  Voluntary "communism" can be good until it is wrecked by shameless freeloaders.  Are there any examples of liberals seriously entertaining conservative ideas without the inevitable denigration?

Ordinary conservatives have largely abandoned George Bush's governmental adventurism and regret his ambitious projects, and have completely thrown over "big government conservatism" as an oxymoron.  Many of us have learned our lessons about war, and don't want to start any more.  We are also waking up on civil liberties, which used to be the exclusive domain of liberals and libertarians.

Can anyone point out similar growth by those on the left?

See Also:
Conservatives understand Liberals...
Why Liberals Can't Understand Conservatives
Chronicle of Higher Education