i’m 24 and a proud conservative: i want to replace all highways with railways and interurban tramways, return to having small dense cities surrounded by lively rurality, dissolve large corporations and replace them with small local businesses, and bring back that thing where we went “hey the slightly insane guy who never works is living in a shack that barely qualifies as shelter, let’s build him a new cottage so he has a proper place to live, because everyone has a fundamental right to housing no matter what.”
I’m not sure how to explain that social security and public housing and public transport and corporate regulation are socialist policies lol. I knew this even before high school. Not decrying you because I agree with everything guy above you said, but you guys are certainly hanging with the wrong crowd.
What are you expecting to have them send you? A link to a paper proving that having empathy for fellow humans means you are not conservative?
Bro. Just like, think about it.
OPs talking points align nearly perfectly with normal progressive talking points.
Increase high density housing.
Increase public transport.
Public safety net (housing for the homeless).
Redistribution of wealth.
What it likely boils down to are the two conservative talking points they have left, guns and reproductive rights.
If OP truly feels that abortion is murder and believes in his heart that he has the right to dictate his own personal beliefs on others, and / or has fallen for the lie that the left is going to take their guns away (they won’t), they will vote Republican despite everything else pointing to the logical choice being a progressive Democrat.
Edit:
I feel I need to mention that just because I (a man) personally cannot imagine a scenario in which I would need to get an abortion (because I lack ovaries), and my current life situation is such that I don’t forsee my partner requiring one, I still will vote to protect women’s right to bodily autonomy. I strongly believe that I have no right to even participate in the discussion. My opinion is literally worthless, and I don’t have to live with the consequences of my vote.
That being said, I take the position of provide access to abortion but also provide services to women to try and decrease the need for abortion. I also am in favor of providing free healthcare to pregnant women and children of families in need of it, and I believe childcare should be subsidized.
Liberals would be against “government interventionism” such as getting rid of large corporations or taxing to then spend that money on public transportion.
Modern liberalism is not at all aligned with the Left on the Economic space, only on the non-Economic, personal freedoms, one.
Granted, big picture thinking would eventually end up concluding that differentiated treatment depending on wealth together with wealth inequality in overall reduces individual freedom (a few are freer to do what they want but the many are less free) which would end up aligning at least some liberals with leftwing thinking, but sadly that’s not what liberalism is nowadays.
Sorry I’m from Canada and we have an actual political system still and not a charade. Trust me everywhere outside of the U.S liberal still means progressive. Your ‘liberal’ centrism is unique. We call that conservative.
Conservative literally means to conserve. To not change the way things are.
You wanting change means you are progressive.
The poster would like to revert to a time of more progressive economic policies and conserve it. 😏😆 In the US, it’s a funny dichotomy that the progressives are fighting for things which were lost.
The US had everything the poster points out at one time. It’s just been dismantled over the years in the name of progress.
what you just said means you are not a conservative…
a conservative would want to keep the highway system the way it is, take more money away from its maintenance bugdet if anything. a conservative would never want to dissolve large businesses. a conservative would not give a crap about what you’re using as shelter, and certainly wouldn’t believe that access to housing is a basic human right.
You’re a lot more left than you realize. you might even be socialist. do you believe that the workers of a company should be given the profit that company enjoys, or should it all go to the shirts at the top? Do you believe that the working class should never be disarmed, and any attempt to disarm the working class should be disrupted?
yes, very aware of that, as i am in fact an anarchist syndicalist.
the point is to make fun of how modern conservatives have nothing they want to conserve other than their racial purity and personal wealth.
i would very much like to reclaim the term conservative for opinions that are ACTUALLY conservative, such as ending the suburban experiment and the neoliberal pursuit of wealth above actual happiness and social stability.
and bring back that thing where we went “hey the slightly insane guy who never works is living in a shack that barely qualifies as shelter, let’s build him a new cottage so he has a proper place to live, because everyone has a fundamental right to housing no matter what.”
This never existed. Not since capitalism at least.
that was specifically a modified example from nearby me, where the local parish decided to build a new house for a person who was struggling to get by.
Your motivation in thinking these changes are the right ones is not conservative, I imagine. You probably think about the future, how things could be better, not based on some traditional values or because you remember how things were vaguely “better” in the past.
Sorry to break it to you, you are progressive.
it’s almost amazing how many people had the point sail over their heads, i’m very much progressive :)
i look at the past, see it was in many ways pretty good, look at the present, see it’s pretty fucking miserable in those same ways, and then the obvious conclusion is that maybe people in the past did some stuff right, such as enjoying the sociopolitical benefits of public transport and workers’ rights.
then i see people call themselves conservative and just advocate making things WORSE, and i’m filled with an intense desire to wallop them with wet day-old fish.
None of the positions you listed are conservative. Do you hate immigrants or something?
You said you are a proud conservative and then proceeded to list off things that are completely antithetical to it. I am so confused. Everything you said is progressive, socialist, leftist, not at all conservative. Conservatives want things to stay as they are, to not progress, to not change. I.E. This system is working (for me) so let’s keep it. Progressives say things aren’t working (for everyone) so we should attempt to make it better for us all instead of a few people having everything and most people having little.
I mean this in the kindest most supportive way possible. You may want to do some introspection and comparisons with what you want to happen and what the political parties are pushing for. You may find you are anything but conservative or you may find you actually are conservative and you really don’t want those things you said.
it’s a half-joke on how conservatism has become a parody of itself these days, and isn’t actually really conservative in any real way.
You just described all the things that conservatives have worked hard to stop from happening every time they’ve been in power. The only political ideology that actively wants to house the homeless, build robust public transport, moves to small towns and boycotts large corporations to support small business are deep to far left.
Lmao my mans rode the political merry-go-round and came out the opposite side full on Marxist. Welcome to the club brother, we got dope ass flags and mad pamphlets.
i’d call myself anarchist syndicalist :P, this was a joke about how conservatives aren’t actually conservative, just filled with hatred and xenophobia.
I don’t understand how those world views can identify and (you didn’t say this, so hopefully not) vote conservative in US these days
He’s making light of how twisted the US understanding of the word “conservative” has become.
If conservatives actually governed the way they should they’d be easier to vote for. Small government, cutting spending, actually legislating to support rural Americans with things like good education and affordable health care…etc.
But they’re pretty much the opposite of all that.
We’re not in the era of blocky flip phones anymore, please don’t ever write like this woman.
Nice ad hominem. And now something about the actual topic of her message. You can do it.
True, but the character limitations on tiktok are starting to bring back some features of the T9 lexicon.
She’s not writing an essay, it’s stylistic or for ease of typing, terseness, I read it like someone speaking without thinking and I had to go back to see what you were talking about
I’m a 80s conservative. Which makes me a 2024 ANTIFA.
It’s hard to describe personal politics prior to 2000. It was easy to be a sane conservative in the 80s. There was obviously shady shit going on behind the scenes. But outwardly the conservative movement mostly espoused mainstream thought at the time.
I see that, but it’s hard not to connect the dots between Reagan and Trump; what people voted for then has a direect relationship with what they’re voting for now, and it wasn’t rare to hear alarm bells being raised back then either. These progressions are not chaotic, unpredictable, or sudden, so it’s weird to hear people talk about how normal conservatives used to be just thirty years ago. The window was not so skewed then maybe, but it was being pulled right even then.
Yeah watching what happens every time the liberal party gets in charge in Canada will cure that left turn most take from 20 to 30.
It is only really in the states where ‘liberal’ means left wing. Nearly everywhere else liberalism is centre or centre-left.
In Australia our Liberal Party is the right wing party. It makes no sense at all.
Liberal Party in Canada is center, leans slightly left or right depending on the political climate. Politics courses teach about the difference between small l and capital L Liberal here.
This is so catastrophically problematic on so many levels. “Conservative” or “right” are valid and legitimate political orientations, just like “left” is. Posts like this that suggest that a political view is wrong are just so closed-minded and fundementally intolerant. These always seem to disregard that there is a disagreement because of ideology and always suggest that “the conservatives’” opinion is of any less value than their own. What the heck?
I mean, while I sort of agree with you on one hand, on the other hand I saw conservatives try to overthrow democracy and successfully overturn roe v wade recently so…
Yeah but extremes on either side of the spectrum try to overthrow democracy. We have to fight the extremes but not the whole political orientation.
I just looked up Roe V Wade (I’m not from the US) and it appears that it was recently overturned by a federal court. A court does not make the laws, so overturning an older case means, as fas as I know, correcting the decision on laws that they have to follow, no matter if they like it or not. If you want a law on abortion, you should get the parliament to pass such a law IMO.
Generally, if someone’s methdology is unacceptable, that doesn’t invalidate their political views and certainly not the whole political orientation.
Please show me an example of extreme Democrats trying to overthrow the US. This just isn’t the case and there is no “both sides” on this issue. The current conservative party in the US is not actually a conservative party. It is fear mongering bigotry and authoritarianism. Full stop. So stop acting like anyone is against the standard “progressive vs conservative” debate. We are outside of that normal.
Yeah but extremes on either side of the spectrum try to overthrow democracy.
Well you say that but in recent memory only one side actually has tried. I don’t think it’s really fair to “both sides” this when one has and one hasn’t.
The court does make the laws now because a conservative Congress illegally delayed SCOTUS appointments and rushed others so the conservative president was able to stack it with wildly unqualified conservative justices. Their guy also did an insurrection. 1/3 of the court are appointments from an insurrectionist who tried to bribe a foreign country to smear his political opponent. All conservatives are totally fine with all of that.
Its easy to have this opinion when you’re not a US citizen, you don’t have the same frame of reference as we do for a conversation involving our own government. Especially considering that in the US left/right dont even exist, we have right/far right, there is no left in our country, this is just how the conversation is framed so we can trick ourselves into thinking that there is a more progessive party to vote for. When an American says “right” or “conservative” they mean the people who identify as such in our country, those people are actually extremely far right, usually Christian nationalists. We essentially have a government that is setup so your vote is for “The continuing unrestricted rampage of capitalism on the working class” and “were going to see what a dictatorship by an orange dipshit is like”
“I want a fiscally conservative tax policy” is a valid political opinion.
“I think trans people are grooming kids” “I think the election was rigged” “I think women shouldn’t have total control over their bodies”
Those are not. Those are bigoted bullshit beliefs hiding as political opinions.
Your entire comment actually boils down to “you are bad for not tolerating the intolerant!” …and you can fuck all of the way off with that.
“think trans people are grooming kids”
Thats just an insult, not an actual belief.
“I think the election was rigged”
How is this not an opinion? Do you think the elections in russia are unquestionably fair?
“I think women shouldn’t have total control over their bodies”
Nobody has total control, that was never up for debate, it’s just a question of where you draw the line. You can’t consume heroin, for example. If you’re holding a baby in your arms, you dont have the “total freedom” to drop it. Similarly, it’s a valid ethical debate if and when an embrio is concidered another living being. You might say “control over their body”, someone else might say “it’s not their body, it’s that of another human”.
Your entire comment assumes that “the others” are intolerant and you are the tolerant saint. The truth is, what is tolerant depends on your morals and is thus subjective. Tolerating other’s opinions is a fundemental requirement for a democracy, with the exception of opinions that are anti-democratic. Not tolerating a whole political view, however, has nothing to do with that. That would just means being an intolerant asshole and claiming that one’s own political beliefs are the only ones that are correct.
Trans are grooming: It is an insult and LITERALLY what the US conservatives are running on. You need to understand this.
Elections: We aren’t talking about Russian elections.
Abortions: Read “A defence of abortion” by Judith Jarvis and get back to me. But before you do, stop acting like “you don’t have the right to drop a baby onto the floor!” is remotely in the ballpark of an apt comparison. Fuck off with that nonsense too.
Agreed. This is a terrible take. Is basically implying “both sides are the same”, a staple in the ENLIGHTENEDCENTRISM group but they’re not. Blue side wants to maintain the status quo and maybe, very slightly, make light progressive changes (but again very small changes) while red side is trying to destroy social safety nets (cutting socials security), women’s autonomy (roe vs wade and more) and democracy itself (Jan 6). That’s not to mention that Republicans for the most part built their ideology based off hate. Their drive comes from reactionary outrage.
Democrats: “Stop genocide now!”
Republicans: “We won’t stop the genocide!”
Centrists: “Can’t we find a middle ground here? How about just a little genocide?”
Republicans: “I guess we’re okay with that.”
Democrats: “No!”
Centrists: “Wow, so much for the tolerant left!”