Perhaps some people feel that moving at the exact speed of the river’s current,* instead of staying in place or going really slowly, is 1) best for everyone or 2) God’s plan/the “natural and lawful” course of history.
*(which they can’t measure, as in every known canoe people have been rowing with varying strength at various points in the river, and people can’t stop rowing any more than they can stop breathing… damn, stretching a metaphor is an unpleasant feeling)
Its important to remember that Paleoconservatives and Paleolibertarians don’t want to stand still, they just have a different course in mind.
With the inspiration of the death of the Soviet Union before us, we now know that it can be done. With Pat Buchanan as our leader, we shall break the clock of social democracy. We shall break the clock of the Great Society. We shall break the clock of the welfare state.
We shall break the clock of the New Deal. We shall break the clock of Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom and perpetual war. We shall repeal the twentieth century.
--Murray Rothbard
Sure one might call that reactionary, but its hard to deny this is a very different vision of the future, of what is possible.
They obviously failed and they know it. But honestly I have much more respect for reactionaries than regular milquetoast conservatives who can’t really rely on any kind of strong philosophical or coherent framework (beyond the generic argument against all change) since their very premises and value systems are basically an obsolete superseded version of the “liberalism” or “leftism” they sometimes rail against.
Beyond common negative statements, every one of them seems to have a very different vision of the future from the others. At least the practical differences between the theists and the non-theists would create an enormous gap if they all suddenly started to have some effect on big politics. Just look at all that happened to the Left since the last quarter of the 19th century.
Murray Rothbard
This dude sounds more socially permissive than ME, lol (and I often find myself the most permissive one in a RL conversation). I’d say that the potential gap in the American right whom you collectively label as the underdog (we’d need to disassemble&examine all our definitions of power and influence before we could say that for sure) might be larger than with the Left,
(as long as you don’t count extremes as outlying as Pol Pot)
Oh I fully agree. They are a patchwork of different value systems that feel (and indeed are) crushed under the weight of general movements of society.
But don’t underestimate on how much they could actually cooperate on when it came to actual policies. The left as fragmented and sectarian as it was and still is in some parts of Europe, has been very successful in influencing the intellectual and social norms not only laws in directions that when looking at history seems favourable to most involved in the wider political groups.
The actual result of economic inequality may seem as worse in the past by many, but had they not been active it would probably be much worse (as judged by their value systems).
Or look at the mainstream right. Christian fundamentalists, token libertarians and hawkish Neoconservatives… would any of these had it in itself given lots of power create a society compatible with any built by the other ones?
True, but why consider him the underdog? Clearly the guy trying desperately to work against both the current and the crazy guy is the underdog. ;)
Perhaps some people feel that moving at the exact speed of the river’s current,* instead of staying in place or going really slowly, is 1) best for everyone or 2) God’s plan/the “natural and lawful” course of history.
*(which they can’t measure, as in every known canoe people have been rowing with varying strength at various points in the river, and people can’t stop rowing any more than they can stop breathing… damn, stretching a metaphor is an unpleasant feeling)
Its important to remember that Paleoconservatives and Paleolibertarians don’t want to stand still, they just have a different course in mind.
Sure one might call that reactionary, but its hard to deny this is a very different vision of the future, of what is possible.
They obviously failed and they know it. But honestly I have much more respect for reactionaries than regular milquetoast conservatives who can’t really rely on any kind of strong philosophical or coherent framework (beyond the generic argument against all change) since their very premises and value systems are basically an obsolete superseded version of the “liberalism” or “leftism” they sometimes rail against.
Beyond common negative statements, every one of them seems to have a very different vision of the future from the others. At least the practical differences between the theists and the non-theists would create an enormous gap if they all suddenly started to have some effect on big politics. Just look at all that happened to the Left since the last quarter of the 19th century.
This dude sounds more socially permissive than ME, lol (and I often find myself the most permissive one in a RL conversation). I’d say that the potential gap in the American right whom you collectively label as the underdog (we’d need to disassemble&examine all our definitions of power and influence before we could say that for sure) might be larger than with the Left, (as long as you don’t count extremes as outlying as Pol Pot)
Oh I fully agree. They are a patchwork of different value systems that feel (and indeed are) crushed under the weight of general movements of society.
But don’t underestimate on how much they could actually cooperate on when it came to actual policies. The left as fragmented and sectarian as it was and still is in some parts of Europe, has been very successful in influencing the intellectual and social norms not only laws in directions that when looking at history seems favourable to most involved in the wider political groups.
The actual result of economic inequality may seem as worse in the past by many, but had they not been active it would probably be much worse (as judged by their value systems).
Or look at the mainstream right. Christian fundamentalists, token libertarians and hawkish Neoconservatives… would any of these had it in itself given lots of power create a society compatible with any built by the other ones?