The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
The Forum - On Line Opinion's article discussion area



Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

Main Articles General

Sign In      Register

The Forum > Article Comments > The moral basis of the Right > Comments

The moral basis of the Right : Comments

By Don Aitkin, published 15/8/2016

Built into the ‘conservative’ frame of mind is also a preference for, or a kind of belief in, the notion of an organic society, which is not just a set of individuals.

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. 4
  6. 5
  7. All
Don,

Obviously you are confused. To simplify:

Left = Socialism = big government

Right = economic rationalism = smaller government.
Posted by Shadow Minister, Monday, 15 August 2016 8:50:04 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Brilliant....picking our own point on the spectrum is surely aspirational!
I aspire towards a "Greenie", but for the numerous reasons NOT to go there. So where does a conservitave "Greenie" fit in on this scale, I wonder aloud?
Posted by diver dan, Monday, 15 August 2016 8:58:26 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
SM, as Don writes, it's not really so black and white :)

How to distinguish Left and Right, conservatives and progressives, in all their myriad of sects ?

Maybe as a start, we could take their various attitudes to a common problem: if you broke up a dozen Cessnas and threw them into the air, how would they, or how you like them, to come down ?

A 'conservative' would shrug and say that they would come down in the bits of a dozen Cessnas.

A true-red 'Left' would shrug and point out that it COULD come down as a Boeing 787, since that's what the blueprint says. If it didn't, the totalitarian Left (i.e. aka 'the Left') would immediately suspect a neo-con conspiracy, and hunt for any hidden CIA agents. Arjay would talk about bankers and we all know who they are.

A 'reactionary conservative' would fervently hope that all the bits come down as a dozen Tiger Moths (ask your grandmother).

A conservationist would hope that it comes down in bits, to be recycled. A cave-and-kale conservationist would demonstrate to ban all forms of air transport to reduce all CO2 footprint: 'Ban all planes NOW, or by two o'clock at the latest !'. Perhaps all in caps lock.

Inner-city professionals would check their flight schedules and hope that there is a regular 787 already waiting at the airport.

I hope this helps.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Monday, 15 August 2016 10:04:44 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
In many respects, the most 'conservative' political party in Australia is the Greens. They oppose a wide range of new technologies such as GM and nuclear, they oppose many existing industries such as native forest logging and most mining, and they want to not just conserve but preserve the environment, almost at any cost, hence the accusation that they want us to go back to living in caves. Most also want to prevent 'development' as most Australians understand the word from changing the lives of many tribal peoples, instead maintaining them in their peaceful idyllic tropical or aboriginal lifestyles, free from the evils of our consumer-driven modern world.
Posted by Bernie Masters, Monday, 15 August 2016 10:07:15 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Whatever ever you want to call it, conservatism works, unlike the Left alternative. History proves it.
Posted by ttbn, Monday, 15 August 2016 10:29:20 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
BM,

You have it in one. The "progressives" are the ones clinging to 1960s socialist ideology and who are generally anti technology. i.e. nuclear, genetic modification, CSG etc.
Posted by Shadow Minister, Monday, 15 August 2016 10:29:32 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
The moral basis for the Right is that the policies they advocate are better for human well-being than the policies advocated by the Left.
Posted by Peter Lang, Monday, 15 August 2016 10:49:43 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Interesting introspection of little value?

I have a similar if simpler observation, the sky is blue?

No it's not, it's like so much of what we observe, an optical illusion!

As are progressive conservatives, populated with folks able to actually put the people rather than a selected cohort of cronies first?

We won't slowly sink inevitably into the sunset, like a Titanic, (the music was nice, wasn't it) but rather fly around in ever decreasing circles until, like the whoslem bird of legend, we disappear right up our own fundamental orifice leaving little trace to mark our existence and our rise from the primordal slime?

Which is destination Australia and planet earth under conventional conservative, blinkered or willfully blind stewardship, entirely bereft of meaningful, if politically unpalatable reform!

Look, we've spent the last thirty wasted years slowly extracting government out of the business of of running government owned business? Starting with the most profitable cash cow examples first! Just to buy votes or create welfare for the tax avoiding rich?

With responsibility for outcomes kicked down the road or tossed in the too hard basket, as our entire intellectual might is diverted by wordy, what if oxymoron introspections, like this pseudo intellectual social dissection or time wasting diversion?

Arguably, there's no left or right in today's politics, just up or down, good or bad policy!

End of story and the eternal prevarication by self absorbed pseudo intellectuals, looking for clever schemes/diversionary tactics, to rid the "conservative ranks" of the responsibility of leadership, all while claiming all the perks and lurks they can leverage out of it for themselves and the aforementioned cohort!?

And no better example than the self destructing, sell everything not nailed down, money wasting, patently immoral N.T. conservative administration!?

Well may we say God save the Queen or Australia, given left to the current crop of self serving conservative dithers, our remaining option seems limited to bending over and kissing our keysters goodbye?

Yeng chong, yeng chong, yeng chong, piddle li po, piddle li po.
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Monday, 15 August 2016 11:15:05 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Hi Alan,

Can you please stand a bit closer to the bowl ?

Thanks.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Monday, 15 August 2016 11:22:50 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
The left, progressive SJW liberals are for globalism.
The right, conservatives are for nationalism.

Right now the big issues are Islam and immigration, in the US it's illegal immigration, in the UK it's legal immigration.
Europe also is buckling under the strain of immigration.

The real issue is Nationalism V's Globalism and we too have been under attack.

It's subtle things, like a push for UN ideals and the idea that:
'Multicultural Australia' is the new normal and is good.
(An Australia where minorities and foreigners have more rights than existing Aussies (because they have become a large voting block) and where immigrants and non-born Australians hold the status quo in politically correct public opinion)
'True Blue Australia' is the old, racist ideology and bad.
Posted by Armchair Critic, Monday, 15 August 2016 12:09:06 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Armchair Critic,
Conservatives are internationalists as well, there's no practical difference between SJW's and "Right Wingers".
Nationalists are the only ones who oppose internationalism and we're more traditionally left wing, or what normal people would recognise as such; what's more we're explicitly opposed to and fighting agains conservatism of the sort promoted by Cory Bernardi, Fred Nile, Daniel Nalliah and so forth.
Posted by Jay Of Melbourne, Monday, 15 August 2016 1:26:23 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
AC,

The left is for globalism in name only, it is always the left that protests against globalisation, wants to torpedo trade agreements, and block foreign workers.

Some conservatives are nationalistic, but most are not, favouring free trade and flow of skilled labour.
Posted by Shadow Minister, Monday, 15 August 2016 2:20:34 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Hi Joe, what are you trying to say? It's not as long as I thought?

I didn't realize you could see that far or were that observant?

Any chance I could borrow those, high tech, xray capable, very high powered binoculars?
Cheers, Alan
Posted by Alan B., Monday, 15 August 2016 3:31:25 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
It could be that a new political movement has starting, which is a grass roots political movement based around "distrust".

That movement is most readily seen in america, where people intend to vote for Donald Trump because they distrust Hillary Clinton, and people intend to vote for Hillary Clinton because they distrust Donald Trump.

Similarly British people voted to leave the EU because they distrust the EU, and now the EU distrusts Britain.

And closer to home, few people trust political parties in Australia, and political parties do not trust the public or trust other political parties or even trust their own members, and of course no one trusts organisations such as the ABS anymore, (not now and not ever).

Much of this distrust is probably because of neo-liberalism, immigration and globalisation.

Whether this distrust will lead to an improved society in the future is a question.

But I don't think that question will be answered, because I think neo-liberalism, immigration and globalisation will lead to such wide-scale collapse, a new society is unlikely to eventuate.

The world will become a wasteland before an improved society ever eventuates.
Posted by interactive, Monday, 15 August 2016 3:32:23 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Ding ding ding ding

We have a winner of The Dumbest thing ever said!

"Whatever ever you want to call it, conservatism works, unlike the Left alternative. History proves it." ttBn

Well done sir, here is me thinking it would be Runner.
Posted by Cobber the hound, Monday, 15 August 2016 3:49:02 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Left? Right?
Might middle of the road politics get mention in this discussion?
Posted by JF Aus, Monday, 15 August 2016 4:24:57 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Don

On this occasion your essay is way too highbrow for the men of a certain age who make up the OLO punter-rotty. Punter-rottys being Regular Reactionaries Who Won't Let Go.

Their idols are Senator Leyno (1) and Trump. Their natural enemies are young, female and Leftist.

A quibble. Your contention that "It is nearly always the young who start revolutions" forgets the main revolutions in China and Russia launched by comparatively old (for their eras) Mao (2) and Lenin (3).

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Leyonhjelm

(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Zedong#Great_Proletarian_Cultural_Revolution

(3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Lenin#October_Revolution:_1917

Yours

John Stuart Mill
Posted by plantagenet, Monday, 15 August 2016 4:29:15 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
plant,
f.y.i.
If you delete the s off the http on this site, the link will be active.
Posted by JF Aus, Monday, 15 August 2016 4:32:34 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Hi Alan,

No, it's just that I might have to use it after you, and in bare feet.

Hi SM,

The bogus Left is against internationalism these days. Perhaps it always was.

Hi Pete,

I think Mao and Lenin, my very much erstwhile heroes, were at a pretty safe distance from any fighting: they had no hesitation about throwing anybody, young and old, into the battle fronts as their cannon fodder. It was only ever about power.

Maybe the 'Left' has always been exactly like that: a small group of pseudo-intellectuals ready to sacrifice others, any others, for their cause. Its core group has never been 'revolutionary'. Conspiratorial, yes, semi- to outright-fascist, yes. But without a shred of concern for the oppressed in their entire bodies.

Perhaps the Khmer Rouge should be taken as the archetypical group representing 'revolutionary' forces in introductory political science classes. Yeah, sure, that's going to happen.

Cheers,

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Monday, 15 August 2016 5:04:26 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
plantagenet

The present younger generation would have to be the most compliant and unreactive generation ever.

In fact, unreactive may not cover it, and totally inert would be more apt, and about the only thing that could lead to revolt by the younger generation might be if someone imposed a tax on junk food, or imposed a tax on facebook.

I believe our tired, archaic and mindbogglingly boring Senate may be stirring from decades of slumber with the election of Jackie Lambie and now Pauline Hansen.

It has stirred Nick Xenophon to rebel, and refuse to put his name on the Census form.

And now, David Leyonhjelm finally rebels over being called names that have long been hurled at men by feminists.

I attribute none of this burgeoning and refreshing revolt to the young and rebellious in our midst, because there aren't any.
Posted by interactive, Monday, 15 August 2016 5:36:16 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Don,

I should have said in my first comment: this is a very interesting post than you. I've forwarded it to some of my Eco-Conservative mates. I love that one! :)
Posted by Peter Lang, Monday, 15 August 2016 7:29:51 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Thanks JF Aus

I've de-S ed the sites (as you suggest) for easier access. And it works!

So a quibble regarding Don's contention that "It is nearly always the young who start revolutions" forgets the main revolutions in China and Russia launched by comparatively old (for their eras) Mao (2) and Lenin (3).

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Leyonhjelm

(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Zedong#Great_Proletarian_Cultural_Revolution

(3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Lenin#October_Revolution:_1917
_____________________________________________________

Joe and interactive.

Thanks for your comments.

Clearly our Census neglected to ask the Age Old Revolutionay question.

Pete
Posted by plantagenet, Tuesday, 16 August 2016 1:26:48 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
When one realizes that China is steadily conducting an economic invasion of Australia one should also realize that if Australia wants to remain the Land of the Free it needs to dramatically leave behind the unsustainability of the Lefty Welfare and Greenie Agenda 21 dream worlds.

These relics of the past will be easily squashed by the advancing Chinese.

As the Chinese buy more and more of Australia's key assets they will steadily exert more and more control over Australia. Hence the blocking of the NSW power network. And hence the concern over Chinese control of Darwin port.
Posted by PollyFolly, Tuesday, 16 August 2016 10:06:22 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Hi PollyFolly,

Yes, I'm amazed that the Port of Darwin could have been leased to any foreign company. One would think, in one's naivety, that utilities and infrastructure would be jealously guarded by governments, and either run by them (most likely uneconomically) or by national companies.

After all, in the unlikely event of conflict, what's to stop the Chinese company running the port of Darwin from turning off the power of the unloading machinery to stop supplies and equipment from getting to local and US bases ? If that crazy deal had gone ahead in NSW, in similar circumstances, what if the Chinese firm simply turned off their power stations ?

Anyway, back to topic:

I've moved from a communist childhood, through pro-Stalin, pro-Mao, to a sort of Democratic Socialism, to a pro-Socialist Democracy, to a pox on all their houses and a strange variety of Progressive Conservative: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. If it's a bit broke, take sensible steps to fix it. Avoid rapid and major change which will most likely have God knows what unforeseen effects, mostly negative.

Aaron Wildavsky was the master-guide of policy-makers, especially of social policy: his key work was called something like 'Implementation [the key hurdle in policy making]: how the best-laid plans in [whatever the capital of California is] are dashed in Oaklands' (1969). It's going cheap on Abebooks. It dealt mainly with the pitfalls of sweeping social policy.

Like many early 20th century intellectuals, Karl Popper started out as an enthusiastic socialist, but, observing the actualities of Bolshevik Russia sand Fascist Italy, moved away from their totalitarian similarities, to propose controllable and careful social change. Young people, of course, would be disgusted by that approach - WE WANT IT, AND WE WANT IT NOW ! OR ELSE ! - but after most of a lifetime of observation and vain aspiration, I can ruefully suggest that often even that doesn't work as one hoped.

As they say, life is what happens while you are making plans.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Tuesday, 16 August 2016 11:02:24 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Thanks again Don for a thought provoking essay.

And as before, my thanks to all Posters for a stimulating read.

Diver Dan referred to "...picking our own point on the spectrum...", and perhaps that's pretty close to where we are at.

By this I mean (in part) that the days of short, pithy "catch-all" phrases to summarize either Left or Right are long gone.

For example, if anyone avers that the Right is all about "small government", then even a cursory examination of number of M.P.'s, public officials, Quangos, etc,. **per capita** should quickly convince them otherwise.

In any public discussion these days, and particularly on this topic, it has almost got to the point of prefacing one's remarks with a glossary of terms.

Don refers to this when he says: "If I have to use any of these labels at all, I try to speak and write so it is quite clear what I mean."

Consequently, and notwithstanding the many excellent suggestions already posted, I find that for brevity's sake alone, I have to agree with Don's conclusion that: "Debate and discussion are much better, I think, if we dispense with the labels altogether, and talk about specific policies."
Posted by Pilgrim, Tuesday, 16 August 2016 8:28:54 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. 4
  6. 5
  7. All

About Us :: Search :: Discuss :: Feedback :: Legals :: Privacy