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Are Conservatives really Regressives?

Thunder

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"Conservative", means they want to preserve existing laws & culture.

But what we call Conservatives in the USA don't just want to "conserve" existing laws and rules. They wish to go backwards...which is to regress.

So, can we start calling them Regressives please?
 
Thunder said:
"Conservative", means they want to preserve existing laws & culture.

But what we call Conservatives in the USA don't just want to "conserve" existing laws and rules. They wish to go backwards...which is to regress.

So, can we start calling them Regressives please?
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Your blanket statement is cute. No, we cannot.
 
Right now I hear many liberals wanting to go back to the Clinton era >> .

Your semantics are cute, but worthless.
 
If everybody's going down the wrong path, the most progressive are those who turn back soonest.

Conservatives don't want to conserve bad institutions established by progressives, any more than progressives want to progress towards bad institutions proposed by conservatives.
 
Thunder said:
"Conservative", means they want to preserve existing laws & culture.

But what we call Conservatives in the USA don't just want to "conserve" existing laws and rules. They wish to go backwards...which is to regress.

So, can we start calling them Regressives please?
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No, the word has many meanings,

fiscal conservative vs. social conservative
 
Well, a simple definition of a conservative is someone who prefers the past (usually seen through rose-tinted lenses) over any future.
 
I thought that has always been the technical term for conservative politics. This is also the first I have heard an attempt to put a negative spin on an obviously good thing.
 
Thunder said:
"Conservative", means they want to preserve existing laws & culture.

But what we call Conservatives in the USA don't just want to "conserve" existing laws and rules. They wish to go backwards...which is to regress.

So, can we start calling them Regressives please?
Click to expand...

You've come up with a new name to call people who don't share your beliefs and you're asking everyone else to use that epithet so you can artificially inflate your standing.
 
Sword_Of_Truth said:
You've come up with a new name to call people who don't share your beliefs and you're asking everyone else to use that epithet so you can artificially inflate your standing.
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that's nice.

now, are you suggesting that Conservatives are simply trying to preserve what already exists..and do NOT wish to go backwards?

how about overturning Roe vs. Wade? wouldn't that be Regressive?

how about ending Affirmative Action? wouldn't that be Regressive?

how about killing the EPA and other Federal agencies? isn't that Regressive?

how about killing lots of government regulations? isn't that Regressive?

how about killing Unions and worker collective-bargaining rights? isn't that Regressive?



seems like the bill fits. :)
 
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Thunder said:
that's nice.

now, are you suggesting that Conservatives are simply trying to preserve what already exists..and do NOT wish to go backwards?

how about overturning Roe vs. Wade? wouldn't that be Regressive?

how about ending Affirmative Action? wouldn't that be Regressive?

how about killing the EPA and other Federal agencies? isn't that Regressive?

how about killing lots of government regulations? isn't that Regressive?

how about killing Unions and worker collective-bargaining rights? isn't that Regressive?



seems like the bill fits. :)
Click to expand...
Only if one assumes all the things you listed were advances.
 
How about progressive who want to roll back financial deregulation? Or tax cuts? Or DOMA?

There is not one specific "back then", these battles have swung both ways for a long time.
 
Such talk is too generalized and vague to be of much use, and anyway it's just semantics, but if I play along just for fun, I could suggest an alternative bunch of woolly thoughts...

Instead of identifying your enemy as being Conservatives, identify them as being the extreme Right Wing.
They have stolen the name Conservative. Traditional values could be seen as being liberal rather than right wing, depending on which rosy picture of the past you like to dream of.

Really the current extreme right wingers are radical rather than conservative. Rather than patiently letting society evolve they want a revolutionary change to the far right.

Historically, radical revolutionaries (of the left or right, such as communists or fascists) have been anti authority when they don't hold government, and then authoritarian when they have a successful coup. That is surely true of the far right in the USA. Their rhetoric is for small government, but when they have the power they enact anti-abortion laws, for example.
I think of true "conservatives" as being more benign than than the Radical Right.
 
Tsukasa Buddha said:
How about progressive who want to roll back financial deregulation? Or tax cuts? Or DOMA?
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common-sense financial regulatios, that protect the American economy & people from absue & collapse, is a Progressive thing to do.

increasing taxes on rich people..who can certainly afford it...is a Progressive thing to do.

allowing homosexual-Americans defend their country by serving in the United States Armed Forces, is a Progressive thing to do.
 
Thunder said:
common-sense financial regulatios, that protect the American economy & people from absue & collapse, is a Progressive thing to do.

increasing taxes on rich people..who can certainly afford it...is a Progressive thing to do.

allowing homosexual-Americans defend their country by serving in the United States Armed Forces, is a Progressive thing to do.
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By what possible definition? The clear trend over the last century alone has been deregulation and lowering of taxes.

Oh, and you got your acronyms screwed up :p . Gay marriage would be progressive, but to do that we must first regress to pre-Defense of Marriage Act days.
 
Thunder said:
increasing taxes on rich people..who can certainly afford it...is a Progressive thing to do.
Click to expand...


“No matter what anyone may say about making the rich and the corporations pay taxes, in the end they come out of the people who toil. It is your fellow workers who are ordered to work for the Government, every time a bill is passed. The people pay the expense of government, often many times over, in the increased cost of living. I want taxes to be less, that the people may have more.”

—Calvin Coolidge—​
 
The idea that all laws represent progress, and therefore none should be rolled back, as implied by the OP, is certainly a novel one.

Was repealing the Alien and Sedition Acts regression? Are the repeals of laws against sodomy regression? If marijuana is legalized, will that represent going backwards?

Yet another thoughtless argument.
 
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