AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

Foxfyre wrote:

When in doubt, keep your mouth shut and hope. When all doubt is removed, then intellectual honesty and character requires one to speak up.

See, that's the part I find hardest to get. When all doubt is not removed, doesn't intellectual honesty and character require you to speak up about the doubts (and hopes), too?

Modern American Conservatism or classical liberalism (also known as traditional liberalism[1], laissez-faire liberalism[2], and market liberalism[3] or, outside the United States and Britain, sometimes simply liberalism is a doctrine stressing individual freedom, free markets, and limited government. This includes the importance of human rationality, individual property rights, natural rights, the protection of civil liberties, individual freedom from restraint, equality under the law, constitutional limitation of government, free markets, and a gold standard to place fiscal constraints on government as exemplified in the writings of John Locke, Adam Smith, David Hume, David Ricardo, Voltaire, Montesquieu and others.

As such, it is the fusion of economic liberalism with political liberalism of the late 18th and 19th centuries. The "normative core" of classical liberalism is the idea that laissez-faire economics will bring about a spontaneous order or invisible hand that benefits the society, though it does not necessarily oppose the state's provision of some basic public goods with what constitutes public goods being seen as very limited. The qualification classical was applied retroactively to distinguish it from more recent, 20th-century conceptions of liberalism and its related movements, such as social liberalism Classical liberals are suspicious of all but the most minimal government and object to the welfare state.

Foxie can "describe" what a MAC is, but she doesn't support any of its stated goals. Besides all that, capitalism must have some government controls for it to work for the benefit of all; monopolies hurt competition. Uncontrolled risks by banks and financial institutions can destroy an economy - as we have recently observed. Copyrights and commerce laws are necessary. Laissez faire sounds good, but it is not realistic in today's world economies.

The definition for MAC would not survive in today's world.

But in practice, as I said, MACs also can have feet of clay just like everybody else. There's not a saint among us. So at times we can turn a blind eye, just like the Left does.

Are you saying that we have done so less than those who supported Bill Clinton? Barack Obama? The Democratic Congress?

Why would anyone want to criticize the people they elected into office? Isn't that the opposition's job on a forum like this?

Foxfyre wrote:

Are you saying that we have done so less than those who supported Bill Clinton? Barack Obama? The Democratic Congress?

Generally speaking, yes. Certainly when your side was in power. Oh, and I forgot Mysteryman in the above list.

McGentrix wrote:

Why would anyone want to criticize the people they elected into office? Isn't that the opposition's job on a forum like this?

I would have thought that on a forum like this, there is no government and no opposition -- that everyone is their own party, speaks their own mind, researches their own facts .... Okay, now I'm getting idealistic, sorry.

It's all ebb and flow in American politics,

It's okay McG. You have certainly defended at least some MAC principles in the past because the Republican Party has defended at least some MAC principles in the past. I can remember a time when the Democratic Party did too.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and speculate that you wish the Republican Party would ditch some of the more radical initiatives of the radical so-called Religious Right so that it would be more perceived as more of a big tent. It certainly doesn't have to separate itself from those issues, but it doesn't have to make them a litmus test for who can be a Republican either. For instance I am staunchly pro-life, but I can support a pro-choice Republican (or Democrat) President who is willing to work with the public conscience on that. An ideologically pure MAC would assign that as a State Right issue, but that would not have to remove all federal involvement either. I think Roe v Wade, as it was originally intended, wasn't as bad a law as some staunch pro-lifers think it is.

I bet you don't have much problem with most MAC principles in that definition we've been using too.

The political leanings of the majority of the A2K members that post in political threads is definitely to the left. With that large a population criticizing the Bush administration, I did not feel it necessary to add my voice to the cacophony. Though I did here and there.

I especially have no feeling that I need to justify my criticism of Obama or any other Democrat by needing to be fair in my criticism of my own party. I just don't see how that would be a requirement.

And the same, of course, can be said of extemporaneous criticisms.