I offer a friendly dissent from a thoughtful Q&A post by an old friend and explain further why I no longer feel welcome in a movement I'd made my professional home for over a decade.
It wasn't too long I read all of it and enjoyed reading it. It lines up with my observations as well.
Liberals often times falsely think conservatives are a monolith. I knew this wasn't the case because I at around 11 years old took an interest in politics and because none of the adults in my life were willing or able to talk to a child about politics I somehow found conservative talk radio, which was at the time the only form of "intelligent" political discussion I could find.
I few years after getting really into the likes of "Michael Savage" and his Paleo-conservatism I realized that he was skewing and stretching the truth or downright lying a lot. So I jettisoned those views and began to hate that worldview.
However I did noticed that Michael Savage was a lot different than say George Bush. This is often expressed in the media and by pundits today as "establishment" and "anti-establishment" this is unhelpful especially because the "anti-establishment" is fully the establishment now.
Really you hit the nail on the head perfectly by describing three factions with ideological differences that matter. It's an excellent way of looking at US conservatives in a way that makes sense, that isn't dismissive. I think more liberals should know that there are different types of conservatives. Just as conservatives should know that the left is probably even more fractured.
I put myself in the "center-left" but when you force yourself to see different perspectives and weigh the different sides and arguments it is kind of hard to categorize yourself fully. No honest person is ever going to fully get behind one political party on every issue. Especially in the US where it's a dichotomous system. Two-parties are insufficient to really capture what people think on an individual basis. Yet there is no real room for a third party in the US system, leaving people having to choose.
I honestly wish the Republican Party offered a better alternative and represented conservativism as a political ideology better than they currently do. Right now the Republican Party is in a sad place. For much of US history they were the party of Civil-Rights and responsible for forward progress.
It wasn't too long I read all of it and enjoyed reading it. It lines up with my observations as well.
Liberals often times falsely think conservatives are a monolith. I knew this wasn't the case because I at around 11 years old took an interest in politics and because none of the adults in my life were willing or able to talk to a child about politics I somehow found conservative talk radio, which was at the time the only form of "intelligent" political discussion I could find.
I few years after getting really into the likes of "Michael Savage" and his Paleo-conservatism I realized that he was skewing and stretching the truth or downright lying a lot. So I jettisoned those views and began to hate that worldview.
However I did noticed that Michael Savage was a lot different than say George Bush. This is often expressed in the media and by pundits today as "establishment" and "anti-establishment" this is unhelpful especially because the "anti-establishment" is fully the establishment now.
Really you hit the nail on the head perfectly by describing three factions with ideological differences that matter. It's an excellent way of looking at US conservatives in a way that makes sense, that isn't dismissive. I think more liberals should know that there are different types of conservatives. Just as conservatives should know that the left is probably even more fractured.
I put myself in the "center-left" but when you force yourself to see different perspectives and weigh the different sides and arguments it is kind of hard to categorize yourself fully. No honest person is ever going to fully get behind one political party on every issue. Especially in the US where it's a dichotomous system. Two-parties are insufficient to really capture what people think on an individual basis. Yet there is no real room for a third party in the US system, leaving people having to choose.
I honestly wish the Republican Party offered a better alternative and represented conservativism as a political ideology better than they currently do. Right now the Republican Party is in a sad place. For much of US history they were the party of Civil-Rights and responsible for forward progress.
Thanks Kenny, really appreciate your thoughts. Very thoughtful, as always.