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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   18980 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 29, 2024

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Conservatism has often been criticized as the "Coalition of the Comfortable;" Hanania is nodding towards it as a positive rather than a negative. I've argued here before that conservatism, to appeal to its natural constituency, has to try to preserve the world as it exists today and as I grew up in it, not try to tear that world down. Chesterton's Fence and Chesterton's Ruins denominate the proper area of conservatism.

That world was probably as degenerate if not more so compared to today. Drug usage was rampant, as was smoking and drinking. Instead of computer porn, it was done at home. And lots of brothels and adult film theatres. Except for LGBT+ going mainstream, America was in many ways as deviant.

I wonder if listening to a bunch of Cole Porter songs might help. The sound is unmistakably early 20th century and there is plenty of sex and drugs involved - he references cocaine, morphine, cannabis and drinking to excess, all as if they are totally normal elements of life.

Conservatism has often been criticized as the "Coalition of the Comfortable;" Hanania is nodding towards it as a positive rather than a negative.

It seems to me that the problem with this analysis is that a lot of actual conservatives aren't on board with that idea, do in fact have values beyond comfort, and are willing to both endure and inflict significant discomfort to ensure those values are conserved.

...More generally, would it be fair to say that Hanania is taking a Blue stereotype of Conservatism, and complaining that Reds aren't conforming to it? Is Hanania a Red or a Blue? If, as seems likely, he's a Blue, why is any of this surprising at all? Ingroup member confused and horrified that the outgroup doesn't act like the ingroup, news at 11.

Is Hanania a Red or a Blue?

Almost positive he's a Red. He unabashedly endorses HBD, he's an outspoken critic of wokeness, wants to repeal the civil rights act of 1964, he recently published an article arguing that average female intelligence is lower than average male intelligence, has little sympathy for the Palestinian cause and thinks Israel should crush any hope of Palestinian independence, was outed as having routinely used ethnic slurs before writing under his own name etc.

On the other hand he's anti-Christian, anti-populist and pro-euthanasia.

(His dismissal of the Palestinian cause stems from lacking any bleeding heart Abrahamic universalism.)

do in fact have values beyond comfort, and are willing to both endure and inflict significant discomfort to ensure those values are conserved.

But a conservative must, by definition, be comfortable with how things are. If they weren't, they wouldn't be trying to conserve it. They would be trying to destroy it, to uproot the world as we know it and create a new one, a progressive or reactionary utopia. I always return to Chesterton's Fence as the definition of conservative: before you tear down a fence, know why it was built. But it applies equally to reactionaries, Chesterton's Ruins: if you found evidence a fence was once here and was torn down, tell me why it was torn down before you build it up again.

But it applies equally to reactionaries, Chesterton's Ruins: if you found evidence a fence was once here and was torn down, tell me why it was torn down before you build it up again.

As a general rule, the answer is "because the people tearing it down didn't care about/didn't know about X thing, and if X wasn't a concern the fence would be obviously insane".

Haidt made the point in The Righteous Mind that conservatives understand progressives much better than the other way around, because it's easier to hypothetically take things out of your moral compass than to correctly conceptualise and hypothetically insert things into it.

But it applies equally to reactionaries, Chesterton's Ruins: if you found evidence a fence was once here and was torn down, tell me why it was torn down before you build it up again.

That's not exactly hard. We've been swimming in propaganda for why fences must be torn down. Some of us are even old enough to have seen a fence or two being torn down, and all the promises of what would and would not happen after it's gone.

But a conservative must, by definition, be comfortable with how things are.

That is not a definition of Conservative that seems useful. It's conservatism as a tendency, an unreflective inclination, a mood.

I always return to Chesterton's Fence as the definition of conservative: before you tear down a fence, know why it was built.

Chesterton's Fence does not preclude Chesterton from believing that he does, in fact, understand exactly why a fence was built, and why tearing it down is vitally nescessary.

But it applies equally to reactionaries, Chesterton's Ruins: if you found evidence a fence was once here and was torn down, tell me why it was torn down before you build it up again.

Yes. Hanania's problem is that, increasingly, the general class of people he is complaining about are confident that they can do this, for what seem to me to be good reasons. It seems to me that this portion is growing fairly rapidly, and its presence is starting to have serious real-world consequences. When it gets large enough, which fences are up and which ruins are down will change.

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