meritocrat

Conservatism bothers me for several reasons:

Why the need for 'gradual change' or change when 'absolutely necessary'? Did conservatives oppose the civil rights movement in the US as that was a 'rapid change'?

If conservatives favour liberty, why pick and choose which freedoms to advocate? Few conservative parties or organisations in the world I can name actually seek to advance freedom for the average person, yet still call themselves 'parties of freedom'. Why?

Regarding 'New Right' theory. why is economic freedom paramount over any social freedoms?

ex-idaho

I don't believe that conservatives opposed the civil rights movements not because of conservative ideology but out of bigotry. Conservatism is not biggoted by nature but because of human nature. There were many Democrats that were opposed to the civil rights movement as well.

Nog

They are the ones who lead the civil rights movement. Many democrats(dixiecrats) were against equal rights of minorties.

vixstile

Yes the Republican Party was fairly involved in the abolition movement. At least that's what I remember learning in school.

Loren Pechtel

I don't think conservatives are inherently bigots. They are for the most part neutral. However, the liberals are anti-bigot. Where is a bigot to go? The conservatives!

peacenik

Nog,

The Conservatives did not lead the U.S. Civil Rights movement. The U.S. Civil Rights movement was led by Liberal Democrats and Liberal Republicans(yes there actually used to be such a thing).

RED DAVE

From peacenik:

If you want to speak of actual leadership, the Civil Rights Movement was led by socialists and other radicals and Liberal Democrats. I can't think of single Liberal Republican who was a civil rights leader.

Socialist leaders of the movement included Martin Luther King, James Farmer, Malcom X and Bayard Rustin and Stokely Carmichael. Liberal Democrats included Whitney Young and Roy Wilkins.

Amazing what people have forgotten on the eve of the fortieth anniversary of the March on Washington.

With regard to conservatism, because it always acceeds to the staus quo, it is a racist ideology in the real world.

RED DAVE

copernicus

The so-called "Yellow Dog" Democrats were conservative racists who were Democrats only because the Republican Party was the party of Unionists, who had defeated the Confederacy. In more recent times, many of these conservative Democrats became Republicans (e.g. Strom Thurmond), because the Republican Party had traditionally opposed the Civil Rights movement in the 60's. Hubert Humphrey and Lyndon Johnson, both traditional liberal Democrats, were among those elected representatives who crafted the legislation that broke the racist grip on Southern politics. Thanks to their efforts, the South, a bastion of conservatism in the US, has come to be dominated by the GOP.

Undercurrent

I doubt there's anyone who subscribes to "conservatism" by this definition. Conservatism is just the observation that factions that oppose changes to the status quo, each for their own particular reasons, tend to band together into a collective whose only common aspect is opposition to change.

I doubt anyone starts from thinking, "We need gradual change and only whan absolutely necessary" and then draws conclusions from that

elwoodblues

Anyone else here think that today's liberals will tend to be tomorrow's conservatives?