Both ones who are conservative, and ones who attack Conservatism. I'm not saying American Conservatives aren't conservative, mostly they are, I'm saying they are delusional in how they define themselves.
The origins of the Right Wing/Left Wing terminology are from the French Revolution, where those who supported the King sat on the right side of the Assembly, and those who opposed the King sat on the left (well some "Constitutional Monarchists" may have been seated on the Left, depend son how Monarchal they wanted the Constitution). The word Conservative comes from the idea of conserving how things were, and thus throughout 19th Century European history and literature the Conservatives were the Monarchists and Royalists. And the way things were before the Revolutions was that the State headed by the King held absolute authority, and regulated aboslutly everything. (Though within how the State was organized the King was never truly absolute.)
So the idea that Conservative = Small Government, is totally wrong.
And American Conservatives don't support small government.
They support laws to enforce morality from Prostitution to Gambling to Drugs, they support Wars, they supported the Patriotic Act. They talk a lot about cutting Government spending, but are offended by any suggestion to cut what actually is the most expensive part of our Government, military spending, but they also like to spend money on police and prisons. So the actual fists of big government they don't want to defund at all.
They don't want to make Government small, they just want to prevent it from accidentally doing anything good.
For the most part, the only position I hold that modern America considers the Conservative position is on Guns, I'm firmly against any and all restrictions on Gun Ownership. However in 19th Century Europe that was not considered a Conservative position, that was the position held by Karl Marx.
No comments:
Post a Comment