Frank wrote on Jul 28
th, 2023 at 10:05am:
Conservatism is not about holding onto an unchanging past.
But it is about maximizing claims on the nation's output -by the most able, or the greediest, or the most criminal.
...."freedom values", ainit....
Hence the conservative contempt for the (marxist) concept of "common prosperity"....
Which is why conservatives won't deal with market failure, such as homelessness. (Note" the Greens want more done on homelessness, the Noalition reckons the market rules, so they combined to defeat Labor's - admittedly inadequate - bill.)
Quote:Just in social reform, some of the greatest reforms have been by conservatives. For example, the first franchise law in England, the Reform act, was a Conservative reform. As was the franchise given to women in 1018. Slavery in the British Empire was abolished by the Tories.
Some confusion over definition of "conservative" there.
"Early activists in the colonies called themselves Whigs, seeing themselves as in alliance with the political opposition in Britain, until they turned to independence and started emphasising the label Patriots. In contrast, the American Loyalists, who supported the monarchy, were consistently also referred to as Tories. Quote:In Australia, it was the Liberal Holt government that ended the White Australia policy, a reform opposed by Labor and the Unions (just as the abolition of slavery in the US was opposed by the Dems). Were these acts of holding on to the past?? The 1967 referendum was under conservative management, as was the 1999 one.
It is interesting how
economic self-interest informs the policies of different groups in society at different times.
Quote:The real point is that conservative reform is ongoing but crucially, it comes from the bottom up, not imposed on ideological grounds from the top down, like most progressive lefty reforms.
Nah...."might is right" and "he who has the gold makes the rules" is the driving force in human affairs, and it certainly does NOT come from the bottom up.
Quote:Social change IMPOSED FROM ABOVE ON IDEOLOGICAL GROUNDS is anathema to conservatives, not change itself.
Easily contested, as I have shown above.
Quote:AGW is a lie.
You tuning into to the media lately?
You will have a hard time maintaining that line these days. Quote:There is no way to prove - only to assume and then model - that human-generated CO2 is the defining driver of climate.
Difficult also to disprove.
Quote:Solar and wind turbines are ridiculed not because the idea is bad but because they are ineffective at this stage
Ineffective? Only because the necessary grid and storage has yet to be built.