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This is incorrect.
There is a such thing as a "conservative intellectual". It's just that they've been long since drowned out by the rest of the party, and the right-wing voting base has no appetite for actual, sensible conservative policies right now.
You could read the article instead of just responding to the headline.
Name one conservative policy that has furthered mankind. Prohibition, voting rights, sexuality, drug war, terrorism; time after time they’ve been wrong. Even fiscally they run up the deficit. Their only role is to preserve hierarchy and maintain power
George W Bush massively expanded US Free Trade agreements. We went from 3 to 16 under his admin. That's good for the entire world.
Pretty much the only thing I don't like about Biden is his protectionist stance.
I’m gonna assume you think Capitalist expansion and colonialism is a good thing.
The former, yes, the latter I bet we have significant disagreements on the definition of
Tangentially, if you’re interested in rabbit holes, there’s a book by Matt Kennard called Silent Coup that deals with corporate influence over trade, it looks at the agreements countries have to sign to get corporations into their countries.
I'm well aware of this process and support it. Countries are welcome to make any deals they'd like. They're presumably intelligent, independent entities making decisions in their own best interest.
So you’re in favor of BRICS and the devaluation of the petrodollar, if those countries choose to do that?
I recognize their right and potential desire to do it, but I think the likely economic responses and ensuing global downturn isn't worth the eventual possible payoff for them
As an example of an actual unpopular opinion I have, I think it's good that countries sell Nestle their water rights and then buy water back from them, if it results in a large enough economic impact for their nation.
Why do you think that opinion is unpopular?
Maybe they did the maths and think it’s worth it. The “PetroYuan” sounds weird
I am quite confident that the dollar will remain the world currency, likely until we move to a single world currency in the far future.
You don’t think Nestle or other corporations ever do wrong? Maybe your friends think they do
Everyone does wrong at some point, including all businesses. Corporations aren't monoliths
So it’s okay if Nestle exploits an entire community as long as it serves the greater good?
Richard Nixon was at the helm when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was founded. I believe he also was responsible for protecting national parks, but I didn't bother fact-checking that one.
https://www.epa.gov/history#:~:text=EPA%20was%20created%20on%20December,human%20health%20and%20the%20environment.
Now, granted, modern conservative politics are garbage-culture war bullshit, but we need to be cautious of forgetting history. Rewriting history is their game.
Progressive policies implemented during a conservative presidency don’t seem like conservative policies.
If you can just hijack any and all "good" policies as inherently progressive then you're just a self-fuelling fire who wants to hate conservatives no matter what.
I wouldn’t be crediting them with enacting good policy if it wasn’t progressive.
If you can show an example of opposing progress that is good I’m all in on that conservative policy.
The ESA was not good because it maintained the status quo. It was good because it was progressive. The fact that it was implemented during a conservative presidency is irrelevant.
You're buying in too much to the branding of big-P Progressive. The EPA, and environmental protections, are inherently little-c conservative positions.
Not everything that is good is Progressive, and not everything Progressives want is good, or even intelligent. Rent control, as one very basic example, doesn't work, and yet Progressives across America push it.
What doesn't work about it? (I honestly know nothing about it, but I know there are things that sound great on paper and propaganda but in practice it's bull)
Rent control disincentives building new apartments, because there is little financial incentive in doing so in an area choked by supply shortages, thus it exacerbates supply shortages over time.
See here: https://www.nmhc.org/news/articles/the-high-cost-of-rent-control/
Note that this is not theoretical - we've seen rent control attempted to poor effect worldwide
Ty
Go ahead and list an example of one of those past conservative intellectuals and we'll see how long it takes to dig up an example of them saying something like Civil Rights protesters are all secret communist agents or that child labor and vagrancy laws and debtors prisons are good things.
Like, I get the appeal in wanting to believe the other side is just as smart and well meaning as our side is, but there's just no basis for that in the historical record. They've always been like this and we just keep forgetting.
One can be an intellectual and still a huge piece of shit. Theyre not mutually exclusive. People like Milton Friedman or Henry Kissinger a undebatably intellectuals... but that doesn't mean they're angels. It just means they wield their intellect as a whip to beat their opponents with, rather than raising society as a whole.
Honestly this whole "conservatives are just a bunch of dumb rabid animals" is they exact sentiment they want us to feel. Because then we never look at the deeper issues that are actually affecting our world.
For example, Karl Marx. Clearly an intellectual as evidenced by his writings. But his colorblind/radical centrist take on minority rights fits right in with modern conservative extremists. And then the way he framed his opinions led to far right authoritarian regimes co-opting the label of communism.
Muh nazis were akschually leftwing and communists rightwing... Typical nazi tactic
If you think that right wing authoritarianism is communism, I’ve got a democratic republic to sell. The only way tankie logic is consistent is if you believe that Nazis were socialists and North Korea is democratic. But somehow those are not true yet the USSR was communist? You gotta stop gulping down the imperialist propaganda. I could forgive someone for believing it during the Red Scare, but these days there’s no excuse.
Tankie apologetics are a farce.
You are the imperialist here, yankee. Did you send tanks into iraq, huh? Will you call me a judeo-bolshevik now?
Is National Socialism not real socialism?
Since you capitalised National Socialists like a proper noun I’ll assume you are referring to Nazis. The answer to that is yes, Nazis were not socialists. Socialists were among the first groups targeted by the Nazis after attaining majority power.
A bit like how communists were oppressed in the USSR, or how democrats are oppressed in North Korea.
The U.S. was more than happy to conflate Marxist-Leninists(tankies) with communists because it made communists look bad. Tankies are all in on continuing to conflate their own ideology with communism because they understand that being proud of right wing extremist ideology is a bad look.
Yankeeland is the most fash country, but the fash dont wanna be called fash, so they call the nonwesterners fash. Typical racist tactic.