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Conservatives have bad ideas about nearly everything. They should under no circumstances be allowed to have any power. I'd even say they're an existential threat to the US and the rest of humanity.
It's far past time to stop treating them as just folks with a different opinion. This is not "oh well they wanted to paint the bedroom walls green and I wanted blue."
Someone announcing themselves a conservative should be taken as a declaration of a threat. Removing them from power is self defense.
The conservatives opinions bother me. But the authoritarianism is the bigger issue to me. This desire to force their opinions and wills on other people instead of living their lives as they want and leaving others alone is far more problematic.
The problem though is tht once the conservative Republicans joined hand with the religious right decades ago, it's been on a steady course towards authoritarianism
Agreed. It's why I'll always oppose them.
And what really irks me is that there needs to be some semblance of authoritarianism to stop their authoritarianism. Otherwise they'll keep pushing and pushing and won't ever stop.
Yeah, it's like the paradox of tolerance. Or "extreme situations call for extreme measures".
The "paradox" of tolerance isn't a paradox, it's a social contract. If you do not abide by the terms of the contract, you are not protected by it. It's that simple.
Treating it as a social contract where tolerance is limited in certain situations is a resolution of the paradox. The paradox itself is just "if you try to tolerate everything, you'll have to tolerate intolerance" or "you can't maximize tolerance by tolerating everything". Though that second one is more of an irony than a paradox.
And that's fair, I guess in that sense it is a true paradox. It just appears a little different in theory and in practice - the theory is the paradox, the practice is not.
Sorry, calling out that it's a social contract is a bit of a knee-jerk response for me, after years of having people whip out the paradox of tolerance as some kind of "gotcha, LIBS!!!" because being tolerant of unfamiliar lifestyles doesn't mean I won't punch a nazi when it's relevant. And that's poorly understood. My rights end where yours begin, and vice versa, but if you start actively infringing on the rights of others and souring that contract, it is our duty as righteous citizens to put you back in your box. Sometimes that means "hey knock it off asshole", sometimes that means hunting down bigots and deleting their kneecaps. Depends what you're guilty of and where.
I agree with what you're getting at, but "conservative" is relative and doesn't actually indicate specific beliefs, so "conservatives should never have any power" can be easily twisted once the conservatives we'd currently think of are gone.
What word would you prefer? I considered "Republicans" but that doesn't catch people outside the US. "Contemporary Republicans or people who would vote for them" isn't very catchy
I don't think there's an all-encompassing term for people who have "destructive"/harmful beliefs considered conservative. Most I can think of is "bigoted capitalists", but even "bigoted" could be interpreted way differently. Plus, that excludes bigoted non-capitalists so it has a more narrow usage...
What I go with, though, is "fascists" and "collaborators". Plain and simple, straight to the point, but most importantly no chance of confusion – that's how I see our conservatives, their supporters, and their enablers. Ultra-socially-regressives (usually religious) who want a system that enforces/maintains a social hierarchy they deem "natural" (or having a religious justification for the hierarchy). Maybe "wannabe fascists" or "social fascists" would be more accurate, since generally people think of a dictatorship when they think of "fascism".
"Oppressors" may also work, and it also can pair with "collaborators". It's more general, but I think here the flexibility may come be an advantage, and it isn't tied to a specific set of political beliefs, it vaguely just means "those who use unjust force/threats of force to control others". Of course, contemporary conservatives follow this definition.
Reactionaries
Regressives works too
My wife and I each give this two enthusiastic thumbs up.