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I edited a tangent out of that last post, but I'll mention it here: Phil Agre's "What Is Conservatism and What Is Wrong With It?". The blunt summary:
Still, it's a bracing read, and much of what he says makes sense to me... and beyond that, makes sense of what I see around me. It's become one of the tools I use to understand what's going on. Maybe you can use it too. Also, maybe sometime my "c" key will start working properly again.
Q: What is conservatism?I find this essay somewhat infuriating, because he doesn't, to my mind, adequately prove a thesis that seems, well, controversial. In particular, he leaves his readers to draw the lines connecting the conservatism of, say, Edmund Burke with that of Dick Cheney. Certainly those conservatives I've had reasonable conversations with haven't seen themselves as the aristocracy. (Well, almost certainly.)
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception and has no place in the modern world.
Still, it's a bracing read, and much of what he says makes sense to me... and beyond that, makes sense of what I see around me. It's become one of the tools I use to understand what's going on. Maybe you can use it too. Also, maybe sometime my "c" key will start working properly again.