Conservatism

"The role of QAnon in the January 6 MAGAist insurrection is becoming clearer by the day... QAnon provided Trump loyalists with a transcendent narrative, moral certitude, hostile enemy, and unit cohesion. QAnon sought to mobilize a mass to “change the narrative” in accordance with a putative military operation. Its redpilling phase (The Great Awakening) is now over, as it successfully won over a sufficient number of hearts and minds. The Storm is here now...The seeds were planted months ago. More than anything, QAnon has been fomenting war in various spheres. From its inception, QAnon has rested on the prophecy of an imminent military coup against the deep state... QAnon, now publicly moribund because it resides secretly in the hearts and hashtag-engorged profiles of its enthusiasts, has completed its mission’s first phase. It has developed a national social network gearing up for a holy war, ready to become fodder for its operators. Someday historians will puzzle over this elusive alphabet letter much like we do over the Nike shoes on Heaven's Gate corpses. But the stakes this time are much higher."

"We’re living in a unique time in which ordinary citizens around the world are collaborating to understand and expose the corrupt system that rules us. The system thrives on deception, and the overwhelming task of The Great Awakening is to penetrate its lies and reveal the truth. The first phase of The Great Awakening is heightened awareness of the Deep State – the interlocking governmental entities that operate outside the law to expand their own power. Elections and popular opinion don’t impact the ability of the Deep State to enforce its agenda. The second phase of The Great Awakening investigates the Deep State’s alliance with other powerful sectors: the media, Hollywood, charities and non-profits, public schools and universities, religious organizations, medical, scientific and financial institutions, and multinational corporations."

"Let us confidently declare that is not liberal. Liberal democracy is liberal, while Christian democracy is, by definition, not liberal: it is, if you like, illiberal. And we can specifically say this in connection with a few important issues – say, three great issues. Liberal democracy is in favour of multiculturalism, while Christian democracy gives priority to ; this is an illiberal concept. Liberal democracy is pro-immigration, while Christian democracy is anti-immigration; this is again a genuinely illiberal concept. And liberal democracy sides with adaptable family models, while Christian democracy rests on the foundations of the Christian family model; once more, this is an illiberal concept."

"Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [[Republican Party (United States)|[Republican] party]], and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them."

"On the surface it appears to be incongruous that the Christian right would rally behind a slick New York real estate developer who is a very public serial philanderer and adulterer, has no regard for the truth, is consumed by greed, does not appear to read or know the Bible, routinely defrauds and cheats his investors and contractors, expresses a crude misogyny and an even cruder narcissism and appears to yearn for despotism. In fact, these are the very characteristics that define most of the leaders of the Christian right. Trump has preyed on desperate people through the thousands of slot machines in his casinos, his sham university and his real estate deals. Megachurch pastors prey on their followers by extracting “seed offerings,” “love gifts,” tithes and donations and by selling miracle healings along with “prayer clothes,” self-help books, audio and video recordings and even protein shakes. Pastors have established within their megachurches, as Trump did in his businesses, despotic fiefdoms. They cannot be challenged or questioned any more than an omnipotent Trump could be challenged on the reality television show “The Apprentice.”"

"Even as with the American rejection of the League of Nations, our failure to live up to our obligations to the United Nations is led by a handful of willful senators who choose to pursue their narrow, selfish political objectives at the cost of our nation's conscience. They pander to and are supported by the Christian Coalition and the rest of the religious right wing. Their leader, Pat Robertson, has written that we should have a world government but only when the messiah arrives. Any attempt to achieve world order before that time must be the work of the Devil! This small but well-organized group, has intimidated both the Republican Party and the Clinton administration. It has attacked each of our Presidents since FDR for supporting the United Nations. Robertson explains that these Presidents were and are the unwitting agents of Lucifer. The only way we who believe in the vision of a democratic world federal government can effectively overcome this reactionary movement is to organize a strong educational counteroffensive stretching from the most publicly visible people in all fields to the humblest individuals in every community. That is the vision and the program of the World Federalist Association."

"The biggest threat to America today is not communism. It's moving America toward a fascist theocracy, and everything that's happened during the Reagan administration is steering us right down that pipe … I really think that. … When you have a government that prefers a certain moral code derived from a certain religion and that moral code turns into legislation to suit one certain religious point of view, and if that code happens to be very, very right wing, almost toward Attila the Hun..."

"I listened to a man called Pat Robertson, who runs a right-wing born-again Christian evangelical movement. It was such a hair-raising programme that it undid all the optimism that I had begun to feel when I came to this conference. This guy Pat Robertson, who looked like a business executive of about forty-five with one of those slow, charming American smiles, was standing there with a big tall black man beside him, his side-kick, and he talked continuously about the Reagan administration, about the defeat of the liberals, about Reagan's commitment to the evangelical movement. He had a blackboard showing what in the nineteenth century "liberal" meant. He then wiped that from the blackboard and said that today the liberals are Marxists, fascists, leftists and socialists. Then he showed an extract of Reagan saying, "We want to keep big government out of our homes, and out of our schools, and out of our family life." He went on and on for an hour like this. At the end, he said, "Let us pray", and, his face contorted with fake piety, pleaded with Jesus to protect America, "our country". I couldn't switch it off. It was so frightening, the feeling that we are now entering a holy war between that type of reactionary Christianity and communism. It is a thoroughly wicked and evil interpretation of Christianity."

"From the moment Mussolini declared himself in favor of the war, Italian Socialists smeared him for his heresy. ... From the beginning, fascism was dubbed as right-wing not because it necessarily was right-wing but because the communist left thought this was the best way to punish apostasy (and, even if it was right-wing in some long forgotten doctrinal sense, fascism was still right-wing socialism)."

"It is necessary to explain that when one speaks of the P.S.U.C. ‘line’ one really means the Communist Party ‘line’. The P.S.U.C. (Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya) was the Socialist Party of Catalonia; it had been formed at the beginning of the war by the fusion of various Marxist parties, including the Catalan Communist Party, but it was now entirely under Communist control and was affiliated to the Third International. Elsewhere in Spain no formal unification between Socialists and Communists had taken place, but the Communist viewpoint and the Right-wing Socialist viewpoint could everywhere be regarded as identical."

"When Hitler] talked of National-Socialism what he really meant was military-Socialism, Socialism within a framework of military discipline or, in civilian terms, police-Socialism."

"[T]here were from the beginning two different strands within Socialism: one was the Right-wing, authoritarian strand, from Saint-Simon down, which glorified statism, hierarchy, and collectivism…"

"‘Conservative’ or ‘right-wing socialism’ can be defined as that type in which institutional aggression is employed to maintain the social status quo and the privileges certain people or groups enjoy. The fundamental objective of right-wing socialism is to keep things as they are by preventing the free exercise entrepreneurship and creative human action from disrupting the pre-established framework of social organization."

"[C]onservative socialism and democratic socialism differ only in the motivations behind them and in the social group each aims to favor."

"Even in the Social-Democratic Party, petty bourgeois Socialism has its defenders."

"Hence the final years of the 18th century saw a last desperate effort by the people to reimpose the older moral economy as against the economy of the free market. In this they received some support from old-fashioned J.P.s, who threatened to prosecute forestallers, tightened controls over markets, or issued proclamations against engrossers who brought up growing corn in the fields. The Speenhamland decision of 1795, to subsidise wages in relation to the price of bread, must be seen as arising out of this background; where the custom of the market-place was in dissolution, paternalists attempted to evoke it in the scale of relief. But the old customary notions died hard. There was a scatter of prosecutions for forestalling between 1795 and 1800; in 1800 a number of private prosecuting societies were formed, which offered rewards for convictions; and an important conviction for forestalling was upheld in the High Courts, to the evident satisfaction of Lord Kenyon. But this was the last attempt to enforce the old paternalist consumer-protection. Thereafter the total break-down of customary controls contributed much to popular bitterness against a Parliament of protectionist landlords and laissez-faire commercial magnates."

"These early British measures, like Bismarck's, illustrate the affinity between aristocracy and socialism. In 1904 Winston Churchill left the Tory party—the party of the aristocracy—for the Liberal party. As a member of Lloyd George’s cabinet he took a leading role in social reform legislation. The change in party, which proved temporary, required no change of principles—as it would have a half-century earlier, when the Liberal party was the party of free trade abroad and laissez-faire at home. The social legislation he sponsored, while different in scope and kind, was in the tradition of the paternalistic Factory Acts that had been adopted in the nineteenth century largely under the influence of the so-called Tory Radicals—a group drawn in considerable part from the aristocracy and imbued with a sense of obligation to look after the interests of the working classes, and to do so with their consent and backing, not through coercion. It is no exaggeration to say that the shape of Britain today owes more to Tory principles of the nineteenth century than to the ideas of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels."

"http://www.globalen.dk/single-post/2015/06/16/Dyrenes-Beskyttelse-plaget-af-underskud-Enhedslisten-og-DF-vil-hjælpe16.06.2015.There is no doubt that the bustle of the Animal Protection Center - and, for that matter, with other animal welfare organizations - shows that there is a need for political action in this area. In the Danish People's Party we have fought for the creation of an animal rescue police for many years, "wrote Dennis Flydtkjær, animal welfare rapporteur for DF, in a written reply to the Globale."

"https://jyllands-posten.dk/debat/breve/ECE10009065/det-mener-partierne-om-miljoeet/15.11.2017.Kristian Thulesen Dahl. The amount of plastic in the oceans is one of the major environmental challenges. Therefore, it is a good thing to get more focus on recycling. Many municipalities are currently running waste sorting, and it is a good thing to allow Danes to sort their waste. Among other things, plastic, which can be recycled."

"http://ft.dk/?/samling/20061/MENU/00000002.htm (Pia Kjærsgaard, during the opening debate of the Danish Folketing (October 4, 2001).) We know the problem lies in those Muslim groups that come from the Middle East, and that other immigrant groups are harmless. So if Denmark shall not lock itself in totally, we have to distinguish between ethnic and religious groups. In fact I mean simply Muslims from all countries and not just in the Middle East."

"Not in their wildest imagination would anyone [in 1900] have imagined, that large parts of Copenhagen and other Danish towns would be populated by people who are at a lower stage of civilisation, with their own primitive and cruel customs like honour killings, forced marriages, halal slaughtering and blood-feuds. This is exactly what is happening now. Thousands upon thousands of persons, who apparently - civilisationally, culturally and spiritually - lives in the year of 1005 instead of 2005, that have come to a country [Denmark] left the dark ages hundreds of years ago."

"Where Christianity rules, matters are related to the love of the tings that one holds dear. On the other hand, where Islam rules, matters are related to a higher self righteousness which logically culminates in an all consuming hatred and a scary urge to exterminate other people."

"Recognizing that “reality” is not inevitable makes it more painful; subversive thoughts provoke the urge to subversive action. But such action has consequences-rebels risk losing their jobs, failing in school, incurring the wrath of parents and spouses, suffering social ostracism. Often vociferous conservatism is sheer defensiveness: people are afraid to be suckers, to get their hopes up, to rethink their hard-won adjustments, to be branded bad or crazy."

"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."

"The impact of the age of Reagan is indicated even more strongly by the guiding assumptions and possibilities of American politics and government, and the hold they have on public opinion. Thirty years ago, the proposition that reducing taxes on the rich was the best solution for all economic problems inspired only a few on the right-wing fringe. Today, it drives the national domestic agenda and is so commonplace that it sometimes appears to have become the conventional wisdom. It is only one of many such notions—including proposals that public schools teach the pseudoscience of “intelligent design” as well as Darwin’s theory of evolution, the idea that wealthy business buccaneers should have a large say in formulating federal policy, and the so-called unitary executive theory of presidential power—that have moved from the political margins to the center of power. Buttressed by the mythical accounts of the past thirty-five years, as well as by changed standards of truth and objectivity in the news media, conservatives in the age of Reagan learned how to seize and keep control of the terms of public debate—skills that liberal Democrats once mastered but lost amid their political complacency in the 1970s and disarray in the 1980s."

"I have one major rule: everybody is right. […] To liberals I say, Have you thought about how important some conservative ideas are? To conservatives I say, Can you perhaps include a more liberal perspective?"

"Like Aristotle, conservatives generally accept the world as it is; they distrust the politics of abstract reason – that is, reason divorced from experience."

"The struggle between the opponents and defenders of capitalism is a struggle between innovators who do not know what innovation to make and conservatives who do not know what to conserve."

"Father Sheerin suggests that Catholic conservatism is the product of the defensive policy necessary in the last century against the nationalistic-masonic secularism of the time. I would ask him to consider that the function of the Church in every age has been conservative—to transmit undiminished and uncontaminated the creed inherited from its predecessors."

"Conservatives are often mocked for supposedly urging "higher things" on some poor proletarian who needs bread. "Let 'em eat culture" is considered as sinful a conservative evasion of social conscience as Marie Antoinette's "Let 'em eat cake." But what happens after the admittedly primary need for bread is satisfied? Thereafter the humanistic conservative can no longer be accused of fleecing the toilers if he insists: American material progress should from now on make increasing concessions to cultural inwardness."

"The historic content of conservatism stands, above all, for two things: organic unity and rooted liberty."

"The fact that the usages, actions, and views of the well-to-do leisure class acquire the character of a prescriptive canon of conduct for the rest of society, gives added weight and reach to the conservative influence of that class. It makes it incumbent upon all reputable people to follow their lead."

"Conservatism, being an upper-class characteristic, is decorous; and conversely, innovation, being a lower-class phenomenon, is vulgar. […] Innovation is bad form."

"The conservative in financial circles I have often described as a man who thinks nothing new ought ever to be adopted for the first time."

"Justice cannot be rendered administratively, top-down. It is not a poncho; one size does not fit all. It is a matter of Me and You—and that is, for conservatives, an opportunity. For liberalism, like its kin Communism and fascism, is imposed and propagandized; it thrills at the movements of masses; it is interested in you as woman or worker or minority. But conservatism is evangelized; it requires the conversion of one heart, and another, and another; it is interested in you, full stop."

"Libertarianism is basically Aristotelian (reason, objectivity, individual self-sufficiency) while conservatism is just fundamentally Platonic (privileged elitism, mysticism, collective order)."

"The kind of Conservatism which Keith Joseph and I favoured would be best described as "liberal", in the old-fashioned sense. And I mean the liberalism of Mr. Gladstone not of the latter-day collectivists."

"Our opponents like to try and make you believe that Conservatism is a privilege of the few. But Conservatism conserves all that is great and best in our national heritage."

"Every Conservative desires peace. The threat to peace comes from Communism, which has powerful forces ready to attack anywhere. Communism waits for weakness, it leaves strength alone. Britain therefore must be strong, strong in arms, and strong in faith in her own way of life."

"Within the framework of liberal democracy, protest and dissent can exist in healthy counterpart with orthodoxy and conservatism, contained by a general recognition of the need to balance respect for individual rights with respect for law and order."

"Reactionism is not the same thing as conservatism. It’s far more potent a brew. Reactionary thought begins, usually, with acute despair at the present moment and a memory of a previous golden age. It then posits a moment in the past when everything went to hell and proposes to turn things back to what they once were. It is not simply a conservative preference for things as they are, with a few nudges back, but a passionate loathing of the status quo and a desire to return to the past in one emotionally cathartic revolt. If conservatives are pessimistic, reactionaries are apocalyptic. If conservatives value elites, reactionaries seethe with contempt for them. If conservatives believe in institutions, reactionaries want to blow them up. If conservatives tend to resist too radical a change, reactionaries want a revolution. Though it took some time to reveal itself, today’s Republican Party — from Newt Gingrich’s Republican Revolution to today’s Age of Trump — is not a conservative party. It is a reactionary party that is now at the peak of its political power."

"Never underestimate the intrinsic, as opposed to ideological, conservatism of an idea like revolution once it’s got some momentum behind it."

"Trump, like other philosophically erratic politicians from Denmark to Greece, has tapped into a very basic strain of cultural conservatism: the question of how far First World peoples are willing to go in order to extinguish their futures on the altar of "diversity"."

"Just as liberalism is the main force that drives conservatism and maintains its popularity in some quarters, conservatism is the reason liberalism continues to enjoy the traction that it does in our poor civilization."

"Conservatism starts from a sentiment that all mature people can readily share: the sentiment that good things are easily destroyed, but not easily created."

"The conservative response to modernity is to embrace it, but to embrace it critically, in full consciousness that human achievements are rare and precarious, that we have no God-given right to destroy our inheritance, but must always patiently submit to the voice of order, and set an example of orderly living."

"Conservatism is itself a modernism, and in this lies the secret of its success."

"I'm a conservative but not because I care very much about the marginal tax rates of the richest Americans, rather I'm a market-oriented localist because I believe in cultural pluralism and I believe in the First Amendment, in voluntarism over compulsion whenever possible, and in as much de-centralized decision-making as is conceivably feasible."

"It's hard to understand how "conservatives" could oppose safeguarding the environment that all of us—including conservatives and their children—depend on for our very lives. What exactly is it conservatives are conserving?"

"John Locke seems, in an abstract and academic way, to regret economic inequality, but he certainly does not think that it would be wise to take such measures as might prevent it. No doubt he was impressed, as all men of his time were, by the gains to civilization that were due to rich men, chiefly as patrons of art and letters. The same attitude exists in modern America, where science and art are largely dependent upon the benefactions of the very rich. To some extent, civilization is furthered by social injustice. This fact is the basis of what is most respectable in conservatism."