Another day
"Chord I" and "Been a busy weekend" have stirred up a little curiosity about my definitions.
Terry from The Storm asked in the comments:
I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on the differences between a conservative black person (which, although politically i'm liberal, i am fairly conservative on some issues) and a Black conservative... I wonder if we'd agree....
I'm talking about the difference between an adjective and a noun. Actually an adjective and a brand name. A "Black Conservative", always fully capitalized, is a sub-species of "Conservatives", who curiously enough can be seen by observing those in power not to conserve a damn thing. The "Conservative" brand came into its final form around the time of Gingrich and his "Conservative Revolution."
A "Conservative" holds a specific and well-known set of political, economic and cultural positions. They also tend to deny the impact that events have on the expression of a given theory…they think reality must yield to the purest expression of their theories possible. A "Conservative" is, on a fundamental level, an absolute idealist. "Libertarians" are like "Conservatives" in this regard. It's probably the result of becoming a brand name.
A "Black Conservative" is a "Conservative" who "happens to be black." To a "Black Conservative," Black is an adjective, Conservative is a noun.
A conservative Black person is a Black person who holds the political, economic and cultural positions traditionally held in the Black community. Education is primary, extended family is supported, acceptance of hard work as the means to achieve whatever is achievable (which last has unfortunate side effects if one believes nothing more can be achieved for whatever reason).
To a conservative Black person, conservative is an adjective, Black person is a noun phrase.
In that discussion with Cobb I said:
I figure a conservative Black man is fine; if I thought you were a Black Conservative, though, we'd have issues.
to which he just responded:
Hell, we just might have issues. I'm conservative like Albert Murray, Stanley Crouch & Wynton Marsalis, not like Clarence Pendleton, J.C. Watts and Alan Keyes. I really don't pay much attention to black neocons although I read a lot of Sowell at an impressionable age. At any rate I tend to go issue by issue rather than start from ideological purity and party loyalty. We shall see.
Oh, we'll have issues, but I usually do with folks who think. That's fine, though. Let me know what you think of the above.
I think in a sane world I'd be a centrist at "best". In discussion I have to work with words as commonly understood and the neocons have shifted the center to the degree that the far right has fallen off the edge of the world and the right lives where "there be monsters."
As things stand, I'm progressive as hell by common definition. That's fine... it lets me know who to approach and how to begin dealing rather than having any impact at all on what I choose to say.
And Mark, the Zenpundit, again in the comments:
Speaking for the Libertarians, if such a thing is possible, most are *not* as extreme as Murray Rothbard's zero regulation " anarcho-capitalism".
Most libertarians broadly defined and thinkers who influenced them including Ayn Rand, Friedrich von Hayek, Milton Friedman and the " Chicago School" of Economics generally acknowledge the value of the rule of law and an orderly if sharply limited government. Not buying into government ownership of Amtrak or confiscatory tax rates is not to be equated with a desire to restore feudalism or become a gun-totin'warlord in a Hobbesian fight to the finish.
My reply:
I understand that. My point, or John Constantine's with which I agree, is that the results of paring the government back to the point that your average libertarian-on-the-street promotes will result in social chaos.
Your problem is that the meaning of "libertarian" has been hijacked just as surely as the true meaning of "conservative" has been. We live in an age of extremists, Mark. Though for different reasons than Dickens, we can just as surely call this "the best of times, the worst of times."
posted by Prometheus 6 at 8/4/2003 03:34:58 AM |
Posted by P6 at August 4, 2003 03:34 AM
| Trackback URL: http://www.prometheus6.org/mt/mt-tb.cgi/83
