If you are a conservative - do you think we are going to lose
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It is guaranteed. The system is now hardwired. We live in an authoritarian/totalitarian nation.
It's out in the open now. Their days are numbered. They ARE NOT in the position they would prefer to be. They got where they are because of decades of full TV / information control. Now that is lost, forever, because of the internet. But they went all in to keep their grounds, exposing their whole influenced network. They should have retreated to whatever they could keep in an open information age / second gutenberg press revolution.
Let’s also stipulate that the complementary postulate for the Left would be as you phrase it: the liberal tendency is a sunny view of Mankind. In theory. But what of the practice? The track record is poor.
Communism didn't begin as an authoritarian revolution. It became authoritarian because it had to be. If a communist revolution took place today, leftists would be the first into the Gulags.
Lenin was a libertarian-socialist. He was trying to overturn the old institutions of authority. The monarchy, the church, the capitalists, etc. The communist revolution was being fought ostensibly in the name of freedom. Just as its supporters believe it is today.
Eventually reality always slaps you in the face. The Soviet Union didn't become "brutal" because Stalin was a sadist who enjoyed watching people suffer. Humans don't naturally and spontaneously cooperate for some kind of "greater good" for millions of people they've never met. In almost all cases, cooperation has come purely from the barrel of a gun or the edge of a sword. Slavery in one form or another is basically a historical universal.
Capitalism found a way to achieve cooperation without force. Bribery and starvation/deprivation.
"In democratic countries, the most important private organizations are economic. Unlike secret societies, they are able to exercise their terrorism without illegality, since they do not threaten to kill their enemies, but only to starve them." - Bertrand Russell
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Originally Posted by ohio_peasant
Perhaps a more nuanced view is that conservatives, or at least those of the Burkean sort, see stark gradation amongst humans. Some are of lofty nature. Others, brutish. The former should lead the latter. That may be true, but… is this not again just apologetics for aristocratic government?
"I would rather obey a fine lion, much stronger than myself, than two hundred rats of my own species." - Voltaire
All government is of the nature of monarchy. The United States is an aristocratic government, and always has been. Thomas Jefferson referred to it as a "natural aristocracy". Whereby the most capable and most intelligent should rule over the rest of us. The founders believed that democracy should be suppressed and manipulated by better men. Thomas Jefferson complained that American democracy was basically a bunch of wealthy elites controlling public-opinion through "fear and greed".
We don't have a democracy "of the people". We have a democracy "of the money". And that is exactly why the founders originally restricted voting rights only to wealthy white men. People who would "vote the right way". The electoral franchise was only expanded so long as they knew they would vote the right way.
The question you need to ask yourself is, why does democracy work? If letting a bunch of idiots vote would make you the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world, every country would have been a democracy since forever.
The reality is, democracy only works because it isn't democracy. Democracy is manufactured, but because it seems like democracy it is impossible to resist. You can fight against the monarch by arguing that he has no right to rule. But how do you fight against democracy?
Thus only in democratic countries can governments become omnipotent. They can tax you and take your money, lock you away forever, and draft the entire population into the Army, while fighting endless wars, and there is little will to resist.
Communist countries also claim to be "for the people", even if democracy is limited or absent. Thus while they take your money, they also provide you services, which keeps you dependent on the government, and thus subservient to it. If the government can decide whether you get a good job or end up homeless, you better do what the government tells you. Raise your "social credit score".
Economic-dependency is what all modern political systems have in common. In so-called "free" countries, you say the wrong thing and you lose your job, your business gets boycotted and shut down, get kicked out of school, get sued or even jailed, etc. We already have a defacto social credit score. Thus as Alexis De Tocqueville said, nowhere is there less freedom of thought than in so-called free and democratic countries.
If so, then we’re back to the assertion, that all is ultimately decided by personal self-interest.
I think self-interest plays a role. But I would describe many leftists as more naive than selfish. Many of these people have never had to work a real job. They've basically existed in a bubble. So maybe conservatism is more about experience than self-interest. But I also think there are some people who have certain traits, like orderliness, and who are more easily disgusted.
Someone who is naturally disgusted by whatever, is generally going to be more conservative. People who don't get disgusted by pretty much anything will probably be a libertarian.
Things like a desire for "purity" is associated with disgust. We're disgusted by things like feces and vomit because they can make us sick. Purity/cleanliness is about preventing bad things, and seems to apply almost subconsciously to things which are instinctively repulsive.
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Originally Posted by ohio_peasant
I wouldn’t say that self-interest is the exclusive basis of our politics or morality, but it is overwhelmingly the dominant.
I would probably agree with you here. But I don't know if this necessarily ties into the five fundamental moral values. You can vote democrat and still want purity/loyalty/authority. A lot of people vote democrat for only one reason, they want free healthcare, or free college, or whatever. They don't actually care about these things in the abstract, even if they make compassionate arguments to justify what they want on political forums.
Richard Spencer said white-nationalists should vote for Joe Biden because they would get more money out of the democrats than the Republicans. That has nothing to do with the five values. And I'm sure a lot of people might have voted for Andrew Yang if it meant $1,000 a month free money.
Regardless, there are genetic differences between you and me, and those differences will have an effect on how we see the world. I have a very high sensitivity to disgust, and I tend to be more orderly.
Thus conservatives are more likely to venerate authority, if and when the authority is more local
Conservatives prefer the authority they prefer. The question isn't which authority they prefer, it is whether they believe authority is necessary and good. Orderliness tends to demand authority. Disgust tends to demand purity and loyalty. Etc. Economic incentives may at times overpower these things, but they are still there.
Blacks (Liberal) looted and burned whole neighborhoods in several cities, for months, killed several cops and, it was basically supported by governmental appeasement. Heck, they got a new holiday out of it. Maybe crime DOES pay.
Whites (Conservative) response was - 1 - riot that was an atrocity not because of how vicious it was but, because of how disappointing it was. Add on, that the full weight of the FBI was thrown upon any cell phone signature there registered out of state and, yea conservatives are basically doomed in some places.
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