It just about arguing in bad faith. You start with a conclusion you want in your mind, and then invent palatable excuses as to why that conclusion must be true.
It’s never been a logical route for their thoughts, just premise and emotion.
This is why playing the “Gotcha!” game with Republicans doesn’t work, it’s not that they have a flawed understanding of the world (They do, but that’s not the point), it’s that they will not interact with anything that isn’t the conclusion they want.
It’s never been a logical route for their thoughts
I’ve seen a few logical routes. I just don’t like where they ended.
“The Road to Serfdom”, “Free to Choose”, “Human Action”, “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, and “God and Man at Yale” all spell out a coherent and concrete conservative ideology. But where do those thoughts ultimately terminate?
We get to an ecology strip minded to its foundation in pursuit of that next quarter of profit. We get a patriarchal household bordering on the autocratic. We get ethnic micro-states, forever at war with one another over every sleight or perceived grievance or heresy. We get cults of personality who drive self-aggrandized individuals this way and that in pursuit of some reward in the afterlife. We get a police state armed to the teeth lined up in front of a loudspeaker that insists we’re all entitled to unlimited freedom.
The logic is sound, because the axioms are built to inform us that these outcomes are what we want. This is the best of all possible worlds, the most we can ever hope for. And if we are dissatisfied with our lots in life, it is only because we failed in our commitment to pursue the ideology to its logical ends.
If anything, I would argue that modern conservatism is too logical. It is a rigid algorithm that refuses to acknowledge anything outside of its program and initial parameters. Conservatism is the logic of a boulder hurtling down a hill and into a vast sea, all the while telling the folks captured within “This is the natural way of things and could never have been improved in the slightest.”
It is the illogical utopian leftists who are charged with fishing the big rock out of the ocean and trying to push it back up the hill again.
It just about arguing in bad faith. You start with a conclusion you want in your mind, and then invent palatable excuses as to why that conclusion must be true.
It’s never been a logical route for their thoughts, just premise and emotion.
This is why playing the “Gotcha!” game with Republicans doesn’t work, it’s not that they have a flawed understanding of the world (They do, but that’s not the point), it’s that they will not interact with anything that isn’t the conclusion they want.
I’ve seen a few logical routes. I just don’t like where they ended.
“The Road to Serfdom”, “Free to Choose”, “Human Action”, “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, and “God and Man at Yale” all spell out a coherent and concrete conservative ideology. But where do those thoughts ultimately terminate?
We get to an ecology strip minded to its foundation in pursuit of that next quarter of profit. We get a patriarchal household bordering on the autocratic. We get ethnic micro-states, forever at war with one another over every sleight or perceived grievance or heresy. We get cults of personality who drive self-aggrandized individuals this way and that in pursuit of some reward in the afterlife. We get a police state armed to the teeth lined up in front of a loudspeaker that insists we’re all entitled to unlimited freedom.
The logic is sound, because the axioms are built to inform us that these outcomes are what we want. This is the best of all possible worlds, the most we can ever hope for. And if we are dissatisfied with our lots in life, it is only because we failed in our commitment to pursue the ideology to its logical ends.
If anything, I would argue that modern conservatism is too logical. It is a rigid algorithm that refuses to acknowledge anything outside of its program and initial parameters. Conservatism is the logic of a boulder hurtling down a hill and into a vast sea, all the while telling the folks captured within “This is the natural way of things and could never have been improved in the slightest.”
It is the illogical utopian leftists who are charged with fishing the big rock out of the ocean and trying to push it back up the hill again.
All while conservatives have chained it to the sea floor because “this is where it was intended to belong. It fell here so it was gods will.”