LogFAQs > #883604191

adjl posted...

Zeus posted...

adjl posted...

I mean, that's pretty much the definition of "conservative." If you promote change, you can't really be considered conservative.

Except for the fact that conservatives are the ones promoting the most change, including getting rid of the IRS and welfare programs.

Reverting changes that have already been made that they didn't like doesn't really count as making their own change. There's some grey area there where, if a change has been around for long enough to become thoroughly entrenched as the status quo, reverting it would qualify as making a change of its own, but I think it's reasonable to say that when people promoting the reversion can remember a time before what they're reverting was in place, it doesn't count as promoting change. I'd say that's an okay place to draw the line.

That, and the definition of "conservative" means that, when what they're promoting does qualify as a change of its own, they aren't being conservative. That's a small c/big C sort of distinction, since naming political alignments with terms that have meanings of their own just confuses everything.

If reverting change doesn't count as change, then literally everything liberals are doing today and working towards isn't change. Keep in mind that socialism was the ORIGINAL system. The idea of individual property -- the basis for human prosperity -- came much later. However, by your standard of "if people can't remember" means that you're really bad at math, considering the IRS was formed in 1862 so not one person is alive to remember a time before that. Likewise, most people today weren't alive when most of the welfare programs first went in and even many of the older ones were still very young when these systems first appeared meaning they can't really remember a time before.

And no, you can CAN promote change while being conservative. You can even promote drastic changes. Why? Because conservative doesn't merely mean keeping things the way they are, but promoting things like tradition. Putting the pledge of allegiance into US schools was a big change, for instance, but it was one that played to tradition. And if we passed laws restricting clothing on the basis of modesty, that would be a very conservative law despite being a change.

Also, by your "logic," if a liberal undid a law, they'd become a conservative. >_>
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