[lbo-talk] Conservatism

[andie nachgeborenen]

Honderich's book is wonderful. I'm glad people, some that is, still read it. Used to be that Brit conservativism was a bit of a different thing than ours. Roget Scruton, an extringuished Britcon, wrote somewhere that Consdervatism is about authority, not liberty. Course recent decades have changed things. Thatcher Amerericanized Briot conservatism. Bush II got rid if the liberty dimension of the American sort. And the core ideas that

- some people are more fit to rule in virtue of their money and/or ancestry
- markets should be left unfettered, except when government favoritism, handouts, and bailouts help the rich
- the sexual activities that everybody, including conservatives, practice ought to be prohibited or penalized if they differ from religious/50s TV norms
- most people ought to live lives of quiet desperation, and if they get loud the government should squash them
- it's a bad thing for the government to act to establish justice and promote the general welfare*
- war is the health of the state*
- other countries`exist to provide us with cheap labor and raw materials, and a steady supply of illegal immigtant labor that we can demonize and brutalize

Which are the core ideas of conservatism, are, well, pathological. 

No, actually I take that back. That is an insult to disease. Disease is a brutal, if regrettable, phenomenon, morally neutral at its worst 

These ideas are just wicked.

* Extra credit for identifying the source of these statements.

--- On Sun, 9/13/09, Jim Farmelant <farmelantj at juno.com> wrote:


> From: Jim Farmelant <farmelantj at juno.com>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Conservatism
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Cc: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Sunday, September 13, 2009, 8:21 AM
>  
> On Sun, 13 Sep 2009 00:50:23 -0700 "John E. Norem" <jnorem at cox.net>
> writes:
> > September 11, 2009
> > 
> > 
> >   Taking the Right Seriously
> > 
> > 
> >     Conservatism is a tradition,
> not a pathology
> > 
> > 
> >     By Mark Lilla
> > 
> >
> 
> Does the course described by Lilla in his
> article also include readings from
> Ted Honderich's book, *Conservatism*?
> 
> Jim F.
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