Conservative

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Conservatives are usually mad at the damn Liberals.

While in general terms, a conservative, politically, tends to be for the status quo, consistency, and traditional forms, and against change on the grounds that it might be for the worse, in America today the term has been conflated by many with very narrow social and religious prescriptions.

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[edit] American conservatism

Broadly and recently speaking, the conservative movement was split along two paths in the 1960s, defined by Barry Goldwater's and Nelson Rockefeller's approaches. Rockefeller's was a more traditional conservatism, calling for fiscal responsibility and minimal government intrusion into private affairs, both personal and commercial (except for the Rockefeller drug laws, of course). Goldwater conservatism, which found its successful avatar in Ronald Reagan, was more reactionary, harking nostalgically for a time that never existed before modern changes that bother some people. The center of the modern American conservative movement has incestuously been pushed further and further to the "right": with each success, the bar is moved farther to the right; with each failure, it is likewise moved. It now incorporates strong elements of fundamental Christianity[1], xenophobia[2], whatever racism they can get away with[3], warmongering[4], willful ignorance towards science, and a prideful nationalism, typicaly revealed as a loudly enunciated belief that "America is the greatest country in the world" [5] (which leaves residents of other nations, large and small, understandably cheesed off). While not all conservatives, obviously, embrace all these views, walking away from more than one or two can easily leave a politician "outside" the big tent.

American conservatism has moved so far in some directions[6] (invasion of personal privacy[7] and big government [8]for instance), that many traditional conservatives have been stranded in its wake, wondering what happened to the tenets of the movement they used to hold dear and why they are now branded as deceitful, nasty liberals.

[edit] UK Conservative Party

The UK political party of this name would (probably) be defined as liberal by US conservatives. It supports publicly funded health care and has many Muslim members - a Muslim stood for a seat in Parliament representing the Conservative Party in a recent election (he lost... for some reason).

[edit] Indian conservatism

Indian conservatism is represented by Hindu nationalism. The Bharatiya Janata Party is the chief conservative party in India.

[edit] Supply side economics

You can't have a discussion about modern day conservatism, especially economic conservatism, without talking about voodoo economics.

[edit] See also

[edit] References and notes

  1. ↑ Pandering to the fundamentalist Christian Right, on "issues" such as stem cell research and Terri Schiavo.
  2. ↑ Demonizing undocumented aliens, France-bashing, etc.
  3. ↑ http://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Golliwog&oldid=242427
  4. ↑ The war in Iraq, threatening Iran, see also Chickenhawk.
  5. ↑ http://www.crossroad.to/Quotes/homeland/july-4-reagan.htm]
  6. ↑ http://www.aclu.org/safefree/resources/17343res20031114.html
  7. ↑ USA PATRIOT Act, warrantless wiretapping
  8. ↑ Transportation Security Agency, Medicare drug programme expansion
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