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Syne
Mar 19, 2019 09:31 PM
1. Conservatism is basically just corporatism.
2. The environment is treated like a commodity.
3. Overpopulation is a problem and destroys the environment.
4. Think we need revolution...against Trump, Brexit, etc..
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confused2
Mar 19, 2019 10:43 PM
1. Conservatism is basically just corporatism.
Not qualified to answer. UK conservatism is a class system.
2. The environment is treated like a commodity.
Yes - short term profit dominates.
3. Overpopulation is a problem and destroys the environment.
Yes. Unless we control our numbers the environment will do it for us.
4. Think we need revolution...against Trump, Brexit, etc..
No. In Western style democracies we need better education to stop us making rash or foolish choices. I don't consider myself well enough educated to judge what is rash and/or foolish.
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C C
Mar 20, 2019 08:04 AM
1. Conservatism is basically just corporatism.
No. "Sewing is basically just making quilts."
2. The environment is treated like a commodity.
No, not absolute. "We need this pond to use as a cesspool. You can raise catfish to sell in the other one. Let's preserve the third as a wetland for migratory waterfowl."
3. Overpopulation is a problem and destroys the environment.
Yes. "Great saint on a stick, just look at this filthy mess! I don't ever want to see 400,000 hippies crowded onto this pasture for three days again."
4. Think we need revolution...against Trump, Brexit, etc..
"No putsch, no putsch! Very bad, no putsch!" ...But what awaits ahead... "Now Matthew, I done told that lieutenant of theirs that we can't tell which a way the wind's a blowin' in this here canyon cause itz just a swirling aroun' all over the place."
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Zinjanthropos
Mar 20, 2019 11:59 AM
1. Conservatism is basically just corporatism.
If change was governed by a rheostat then Conservatism is the low setting. Inevitability is somewhere in the middle
2. The environment is treated like a commodity.
Everything has a price
3. Overpopulation is a problem and destroys the environment.
Have we replaced the herds of grazing 40 ton reptiles? That problem if it existed was solved rather abruptly by a rather large dose of environmental destruction (in theory)
4. Think we need revolution...against Trump, Brexit, etc..
If you go carryin’ pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow.(something like that). In summary, the more things change, the more they remain the same.
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Leigha
Apr 22, 2019 01:56 AM
Number two
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Syne
Apr 22, 2019 02:22 AM
(This post was last modified: Apr 22, 2019 02:23 AM by Syne.)
Those were some of the views espoused by the New Zealand mosque mass shooter.
Even though he was "described in media reports as a white supremacist and part of the alt-right". - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christchur..._shootings
Those didn't sound even vaguely right-wing (alt or otherwise) to me.
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confused2
Apr 22, 2019 03:13 AM
Since the OP a 16-year-old Swedish activist (Greta Thunberg) has been creating quite a stir in the UK and probably elsewhere.
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Syne
Apr 22, 2019 03:50 AM
Most people realize that children are inherently ignorant, but when they parrot your views, some people are foolish enough to believe them wise.
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Yazata
Apr 22, 2019 05:18 PM
(This post was last modified: Apr 22, 2019 06:02 PM by Yazata.)
1. Conservatism is basically just corporatism.
No, I disagree strongly with that one. My objection is that it ignores the cultural aspect, reducing everything to a form of economic organization. It's an idea derived in part from Marxism, and leftists and self-styled "liberals" both seem to buy into it. It ignores conservatives' concern with history, tradition and community.
The Economist magazine is the poster-child for that. It's filled with well-written articles heavy with charts and graphs. So many people seem to think that it's the smart-people's magazine. It postures as "liberal" (in the European sense) because it favors private enterprise as opposed to state socialism.
But it, and the philosophy it represents, have a fatal flaw in my opinion. That's the fact that many of the things that are most important to people aren't so easily quantified, aren't so easily reducible to numbers and to economics. Real life people care very much about their families, their communities, their traditions and about things like truth, beauty, ethics and ideas. Things that graphs of per-capita GDP don't capture. Life simply doesn't reduce to economics.
2. The environment is treated like a commodity.
Yes, I think that's often the case.
3. Overpopulation is a problem and destroys the environment.
Yes, I agree with that one too. It's ironic that concern about overpopulation was "progressive" orthodoxy in the 1960's or so, "zero-population growth" the big goal, but now that it's been achieved in many places it's suddenly being portrayed as a disaster, that can only be set right by open borders, mass-migration, and arguably the suicide of our civilization.
4. Think we need revolution...against Trump, Brexit, etc.
No, I disagree. But I do think that the Western world needs to reassert its commitment to democracy, the idea of popular sovereignty. That suggests that the elites need to actually listen (imagine that!) to the voters who voted for Trump, for Brexit, for the RN in France, for Salvini in Italy, for Orban in Hungary, for Bolsanaro in Brazil, for... (on and on in country after country). Why did these voters vote as they did? What were their concerns? They were obviously sending a message, so what was it? Have the leaders heard it? (No.)
Shouldn't officials in democracies represent the people who elected them, addressing the voter's issues and not their own issues and the issues of their class? I'm hugely concerned with America's (Europe is even worse) decline into smug and arrogant oligarchy ruled by neo-aristocratic elites of government officials, journalists, university professors, business moguls and celebrities, all of whom think that they are better than the common herd (voters, in other words) and better suited to rule. (The people who fly around the world on private jets as they lecture the rest of us on climate change.)
It's profoundly anti-democratic, a return to a 17th and 18th century sort of social organization, threatening to reduce citizens to subjects.
That's when it will be time for revolution.
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