SilverBoat
Posts: 257
Joined: 7/26/2006 Status: offline
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Back in the, I guess, 'Goldwater' days, "conservative" meant either resistant-to-change or careful-with-resources. The 'conservatives' back in those times were main-street merchants and bankers, small-town farmers and retirees, etc, what are sometimes known as "paleo-conservatives" nowadays. The "progressives" back in those days wanted changes in the status quo, things like equal rights, highway systems, space programs, etc. There's been billions of scholarly and less-so pages written about how those definitions shifted, but most of them either directly note or mendaciously deny the several major issues on which that conservative-vs-progressive paradigm split into realigned camps. Integration was major then, and it's still major now, to the many angry white men and a core of (more reasonably upset) minorities. Speculative high-fnance (end of gold-standard) and military industrialization was a major split then and now. Social mores and imposition thereof, and global hegemony were then and are still major divides in the electorate. The basics, though, are that aggressive elements of the industrial, martial, financial, and religious factions have conducted decades of campaign to rebrand themselves as "conservative" because they saw that word and its connotations etc as a key to contriving support from the 'paleo-Republican' sorts. They've managed to annoint figurehead presidents like Reagan and Bush-II, by spending $Trillons to get control of the banks, the media, the churches, etc. When did 'conservative' foreign policy switch from the isolationist, avoid foreign entanglements, squabbling petty princes. etc, of a century or half ago, to not only maintaining hundreds of military outposts and dozens of major military bases around the globe? When did 'conservative' social policy switch from live-and-let-live, biblical-brother's-keeper, dignity-of-man, etc, to reams of laws about social conduct, millions jailed for drug possession, and millions more homeless due to abusive usury? There's more than that, but their campaign to rebrand the meaning of "conservative" has been quite successful. "Conservative" according to them now means rightwing-aggressive fundamental-old-testament-christian vulture-capitalism-financier ugly-american-global-hegemonist etc etc etc ... I dunno that there are any "Republicans" left anymore. Their party was taken over by radical rightwingers. ...
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