This is a subject I long ago should have posted about. It started to come up again as I posted comment to Wayne’s topic “Don’t Be Conservative”.
The point I want to open for discussion here is just what is a conservative. Each person’s answer is rather subjective and based upon their experiences and observational perceptions. To open this up I should make the point that I”ve long realized and NEVER seen observed by anyone else in my over 8 years of posting to ‘net political forums the points I’ll make.
One may fairly observe that in this country we have a great need to generalize political belief. It’s necessary so as to define positions and understand with whom we agree and whom we disagree. And thus the debate is engaged, ideally for the free and open exchange of ideas and opinions. I think it’s also fair to observe that one usually sees conservatives referred to by themselves and those generally perceived as “the left” as “conservative”, or “fiscal conservatives” or “social conservatives”. Of course there are some latter day references like “neo-conservatives” also, but those three fit the common generalization of contemporary pidgeon-holing categories. Just to tickle your brain engrams a bit ponder upon this.
Why is it you’ve NEVER heard the opposition, liberals, broken up into similar categories of “fiscal” and “social” distinction? If the shoe fits for the right why isn’t the left wearing it too?
Breaking conservatives into two camps of descriptive is a way to divide and conquer with great subtlety so noone comprehends what is actually going on! If one is a conservative, he/she is not a partial or sometimes conservative. One can be conservative and have differing social and fiscal viewpoints and still be tolerated within the conservative community. The liberal community has a pervasive agenda of usurping this very system and therefore has no tolerance for those who opine with “off-the-reservation” opinion.
I submit that the answer closely resembles a Roor-back. That, admittedly arcane usage, is used to describe a damaging report or influence circulated for political effect. The progressive liberal insurgents in this once great nation have been at their pro-active divide and conquer agenda for many years.
In the early-mid 60s, when my kids were in elementary school, that influence was manifested in the subtle seduction of parents to accept a “progressive” attitude that would allow the schools to accept a curriculum designed about each student’s ability to learn, rather than meeting a set curriculum standard that had sufficed and served us well for almost 200 years. They knew that parents with children quick to learn would appreciate giving those kids their ‘head’ so-to-speak and allowing a curriculum that allowed them to advance at their own rate. Those parents were always fed glowing reports of fine performance, which of course made their hearts glad. And parents of those kids with learning difficulties would appreciate the “special treatment” such afforded and they were told how those kids were bonding to other kids to gain a sense of “inclusion” and who, in the spirit of “empowerent” were being influence by “diversity” as contrary cultures and economic groups merged. Those descriptive codewords defined the agenda. It was a seduction, because it appealed to all for differing reasons and would allow the future perversion of the curriculum for political motivation to move on forward. And, believe me…IT HAS!
So much so that today a progressive liberal theology permeates every level of the educational system well up into the college level. To think that this is a manifestation of some sort of political paranoia is to be near criminally shortsighted. Our American education system didn’t simply morph into a political tool of perversion by coincidence. I have a habit of saying that when opinion can place the footprints of Machiavellian influences in the snow, then conjecture is elevated to a very distinct and “reasonable” possibility. Now we have the academia elite, most teachers, public school worker unions, most elements of the lamestream media…all aligned against the best interests of this nation by using education to foment a political agenda to which the Fourth Estate has signed on to with glee.
I invite your comments.
As you have stated:
” a curriculum designed about each student’s ability to learn, rather than meeting a set curriculum standard that had sufficed and served us well for almost 200 years. ” Also, grading on the curve Was a tragic mistake and should have never been instituted. Almost two generations have gotten away with this slacking and it will be a nightmare to stop , but It must…..IT MUST!
Thanks Joe and we can reverse course or at least make a beginning in NOvember 2012.
What about the primary question of defining what you think is a conservative?
An afterthoght here Joe. if you think grading on a curve was a corruption check out a real example of acting against the public interest by TEACHERS.
I submit for your consideration Resolution 19(1) made at the last annual convention of the California Federation of Teachers. TEACHERS mind you and what was the subject of said resolution? It, among other things, calls for the release of the “journalist” Abu-Jamal, whom they rather predictably claim is a victim of police coercion and judicial and prosecutorial malfeasance. It even elevates the REPROBATE murderer to the level of political prisoner. Abu-Jamal’s story is here(2).
“Whereas, the continued unjust incarceration of Mumia Abu-Jamal represents a threat to the civil rights of all people…” is how it starts. Sound more like a left-wing political advocacy group than an organization of teachers devoted to the education of children, a PUBLIC TRUST they are charged with and paid well for!
It may just be me misunderstanding these well-intentioned teachers, but I think not. More likely another WARNING sign that we are heading down the slippery slope of complete anarchy in this country.
(1) http://www.cft.org/uploads/Convention2011/docs/2011_CFT_Conv_Report.pdf
(2) https://philadelphiacriminallawnews.com/2011/04/mumia-abu-jamal-gets-new-sentencing-hearing.html
Conservative = Anti-liberal
True Max, but a conservative is much more than that. I should note that I’m talking strictly about an American conservative and the American liberal.
A true conservative believes that the lessons of history are guidelines from the past, to be repected in the present, in making decisions for the future. LIberal beliefs are antithetic to that. Liberals believe in change for the sake of change and that a willingness to be flexible to change marks them as “progressve” or enlightened moreso than other mere mortals.
They genuflect to the “feelgood” dictum. If it feels good and righteous just do it. Liberals care only for and justify intent, not consequence. And when their plan/s fall apart they deny they are responsible. All one need do is to take some acceptance speech quotes from Dame Pelosi, who is this administration’s poster-gal for progressive liberalism. Then tack on some other irrational, self-indulgent comments made since. And this broad has made some doozers! She proves that liberals are in denial of reality, Again…the diametric opposite of what conservatives do. Conservatives assume reponsibility and act and react to reality. When push comes to shove, almost every time liberals can be shown to be grandiose, posturing hypocrites. They recruit to their “big tent”, but if you enter that dominion of sheeple belief and express contrarian views to what they hold sacrocanct you’d better watch your back. Liberals always champion the Freedom of Speech and Expression, but ONLY IF the exercise of said rights agrees with them. Disagree and they’ll come after you with the vengeance of a bloodthirsty sociopath. Conservatives believe in the free and open exchange of ideas in fair debate. Liberals believe in yelling and screaming and demonstrating to exorcize themselves and use emotion to motivate others into mindless lockstep. One might fairly observe they are hedonists.
Of course, as all generalizations they are not 100% accurate as there are exceptions on both sides, BUT for the majority I’d submit this is a fair and accurate observation.
Worse even than liberals are the contemporary progressive liberals who have bought into the class warfare and divide and conquer philosophy of the 50s American Commies like Gus Hall and so many others in and of the Marxist persuasion. This President and his adminstration are the epitome of just that.
In general, I would agree with your observations.
To add a different perspective, I think how a person is raised determines that persons political association. People who feel no shame in living off welfare are 99% democrat. People who move out of high tax states to lower tax states (for that specific reason) are 99% republican. Or any number of other observations.
Which explains why major cities tend to be liberal. Cities are great examples of micro-socialists states, where the state’s business is forced upon every citizen. Which is why there are cameras on every corner, ridiculous gun bans, and liberal city officials that do everything to ban this, and ban that. And the citizens roll over BECAUSE somewhere in the line is a welfare check, or some other type of taxpayer assistance, or anti-majority policy (like gay marriage) to give them comfort in being owned and controlled by the state.
The values we learn in our youth translate into the values we practice in adulthood. Choosing the political party that best represents a persons individual values is the most likely outcome.
You’ve made the case that agrees with those who study such, anthropologists. We are a product of our environment and I agree.
For me though, at this point in time, I don’t concede any voting blocks to the left. I’m committed to trying to “win the hearts and minds”. I believe in debate and opinion posting rather than participatory demonstrations that appeal to emotion only. I’ve been to them and participated in the past and mainly, would observe they are feelgood acts that really don’t engage people TO THINK. When I post here and say that any poor black who has voted consistently democratic needs to go back to 1960 and ask himself …Am I better or worse off PERSONALLY today than way back then, now a half-century ago? When people are made to confront REALITY at least there’s a chance for them to wake up. When they are made to see the TRUTH of having been made, generationally no less, a parasite dependent upon the benevolence of the government for their very survival…that’s powerful self-appraisal stuff that they likely never confronted before. To realize that you’ve been the “target group” of a political party that wants to enslave you forevermore to that parasitic dependency UPON THEM in exchange for FOR YOUR VOTE…ought to get one mighty pissed-off. And to understand that politicians of YOUR OWN COLOR are and have collaborated with them to enrich themeselves ought to piss one off. Maybe then they’d realize why demonRATs demonize blacks conservatives. They don’t want anyone leading THEIR black slaves off the massa’s property!
doc,
Black america is a study in shedding physical shackles for mental slavery. It started with liberals who enacted Jim Crow laws… eventually beating down the black community to such poverty, that it took promises of welfare money to buy southern votes to keep democrats in power. It worked for awhile, but sadly, most black americans sold their new found freedom for promises of government programs (aka reparations by another name)
I find that rather perplexing, that after having gone through slavery, they would enslave themselves to the government dole.
Any political party who can claim 95% of any race is itself a racists party. Especially when the 95% tramples over the 5% who “abandoned” their race, calling them uncle toms. What a shame. And a sham.
When you say this you hit part of the key:
“I find that rather perplexing, that after having gone through slavery, they would enslave themselves to the government dole.”
“they” never went through slavery. Their distant relatives may have, but they bought into the the mantra that it was THEY who were wronged. Bullsh*t! That is was us who wrong them. More bullsh*t being stacked up for human consumption. Since when are the great-great grandsons of possible slave owners AT ALL responsible for the actions of distant relatives they never knew…IF such lineage could even be proven. How did we aid and abet THEM? WE didn’t. They was no guilt on our part. And how were todays blacks wronged? They never were and we were never participants. That though, was the necessary mantra for the black demagogues to promote to empower themselves with contemporary black support. It was what made whites adopt the “white” guilt” syndrome and made so many become Democrats and then as the demagogues continued to pick up political steam…, and become the demonRATs they are today. Only in America.
As we left the Korean War era and headed into the 60s we allowed white NORTHERN demonRATs to set this agenda. You want a poster-boy for just what I’m saying. I give you the infamous Adam Clayton Powell Jr. of New York, a WWII era black congressman who was the most outspoken black activist of his time in this coun try. He gloried in posturing himself before angry New York whites. He used and abused the system for personal profit but knew that the secret to being untouchable in the political ranks was to CULTIVATE UNSWERVING LOYALTY in his constituency as an, out-in-front activist. Then “whitey” would be afraid of being branded as a racist for going after him and he’d be untouchable. The ruling white Democratic Party machine in New York was known as Tammany Hall and headed the by the infamous Carmine DiSapio. they tried everything to extricate Powell back then. I lived throgh that era. Then along came Charlie Rangel and being a legitimate hero of the Korean War gained popularity on the streets of Harlem and he beat Powell and his reign began. Charlie Rangel did the same thing as Powell before him, whom he went to school on, and it was only recently that the chickens finally came home to sh*t all over Charlie’s house!
And the truth be known it wasa those black and power-hungry demagogues who were the real “Toms”! They sold out their brethren to become “house niggers” in the white man’s political system. And for what? To enable power and control and influemce over their own kind. Not a persepctive you hear often, but think about it
I went to school in the 50’s and 60’s down South. I did go to a few schools up North but basically they weren’t that different from each other with all this liberalism and “inclusion”. There wasn’t any of this inclusion, especially when you made an “F” and the Mexican kid sitting next to you made an “F” to. You didn’t want to be “included” with the dumb Mexican kid because you knew you screwed up by not studying for that test. But it looked bad. You knew that only way you weren’t going to be “included” with the dumb kids in the class was to study more and harder and then you would pass the next test and so on.
There was equality when I went to school to(sarcasm). You were equally as likely to get an “F” if you didn’t study as the dumb kids who made “F’s” all the time. In my day you didn’t want to be equal with any group of kids that were not accepted in any group except for the dumb kids. It was so embarrassing that even the dumb kids didn’t want to hang around with kids who made “F’s” all the time. But no need to worry because back in my day the school actaully did transfer you out of the good school and put you in what was known as a “remedial” school if you consistantly made bad grades so much so that it was obvious that there was no way you were going to catch up or even that you could keep up. So there were a few schools in my town that were “remedial” schools where the kids were one step from going to “trade school” if the couldn’t even handle the remedial schools. Remedial meant that the subject you were taught were simpler and less advanced as subjects in regular schools.
Now, also school back then were most all “college prepatory” schools. That meant that from junior high you were put in a cirriculum that was teaching you harder and harder subjects with more and more homework. They may have been the same history books that other noncollege prepatory schools taught from but the teacher had workbooks and assignment papers that had more info on them that you added to the chapter. And more tests that included books you had to check out of the library to study. To us that was just regular school. We didn’t know that it was hard. We just went and did the best we could. Most passed and passed with grades higher than a “C”. Not all subjects were hard and they varied teacher to teacher, and grade to grade. Each year if you were in junior high and high school you knew ahead of time who the bad teachers were. They were the ones who were harder than some other teacher who taught the same subject. And you knew which subjects were going to be hard and which ones weren’t. But, liberalism? No, I think all that crap came in way after the Negros were allowed to go to our schools. See, I went to the “non-Black public school system”. And that is a phrase I made up and have never heard anyone say. And it came to me as I was writing one day about education in some blog. I kept talking about school in a neutral tone and was trying not top say anything that might be misunderstood. But after awhile I realized that the only way people my age were going to identify with school like it was when I went to it, and it was great and a lot of fun, mystery, suspence, and hardship. Kids were a pain, and girls seemed so untouchable, and all the guys were geeks. It seemed that every quarter back was some rich kid who had the bad a** corvette in the parking lot. But they all from the time I began school in the first grade to the twelth grade were the college prepatory non-Black public education system schools. The Blacks had their own schools. We never played them in sports, and we didn’t graduate with them. We never saw them…period. But all the other races were represented in our schools right along side of the super babe blonde haired blue eyed doll was the Mexican kid who smelled funny sitting next to her in class. And again, all races were with me in all the schools I attended, except Blacks.
So school was fun,exciting, and a pain in the rear but there wasn’t the kinds of trouble there was after the schools were integrated. There wasn’t the kinds of terror like there was after the schools were integrated with Blacks. I remember hearing about girsl being raped in the parking lot and no one wanted to go out there to help her because they were afraid of being put in jail because they knew it wouldn’t be the Black. No one wanted to cause any trouble because the teachers and coaches who tried to make the Blacks follow the same rules that everyone else had followed for generations, suddenly disappeared to some other school after the lawyers got through with them. So I was gone before all that damn crap started, the muggings in both restrooms to especially the girls restrooms. It got very nasty and hard in school after the Blacks were forced to go to our schools. They had their schools and we had ours, and that’s how we all wanted it to be. But the liberals had other ideas of how they wanted kids to be.
Just remember this, everything, every change, every way subjects are presented, every time you hear of some good teacher being transfered to some bad, mostly Black school, it’s all for Blacks to try to get them “equal” to what White kids are capable of. That’s what brought about these “tests” like the LEA P and all that crap. It’s all geared for Blacks so that Black mothers can say that their kid is in a “good” school, and/or getting a ‘good” education. It’s not so White kids can excell like they used to. It’s so White kids don’t move ahead of Blacks. It’s so Black kids seem to be up with all the other kids in school. Ask the kids if you want the truth of the matter. Look how long it took the authorities to find out about the test fixing. Just ask any White kid and they will tell you that nearly the whole class where it’s mostly Black, are all dumb as a hammer and they all fail tests, but the teachers all fix the test scores so the school can keep getting all that big government money that goes towards “education”. It’s not education anymore. It’s a racket!! A racket to get as much money as the school can get. Wonder why your kids come home talking like a Black? Wonder why your White son wears his pants hanging off his underware? It’s because he sees the Blacks can get a White girl, the same one your son would like to date, by dressing and talking like that, so why shouldn’t he? And the girls? I don’t think they know what race they are. They must all think they’re Black after forty years of brain washing. I have two kids who have graduated from school. My daughter graduated in 2001, and my son graduated last year. My daughter hung with the punk crowd, and my son hangs with the White boys who have some money. Not the rich kids but close enough. But he still wears his shorts hanging off his butt no matter.
It doesn’t matter if there are Black kids who have done well in their studies and have gone to college. That’s fine for them and I hope they do well. But for years now White kids have dropped off the charts of kids going to college to the point where colleges and universities have had to do more “creative” things to lure more Black kids. They aren’t coming. They don’t want to come. They have had enough of what Blacks know of as “White man’s schools”, or “White man’s education”. Think that’s a lie. Check it out for yourself.
And now we have Atlanta schools caught fixing, or as I call it “pencil whipping” the test results. You know they haven’t said what kids tests were fixed. I know it was the Black kids because it has happened in my town, and my state years ago. The Feds already know it’s been going on for years. It’s just they don’t know how to break it to the Blacks that their kids haven’t passed a test since…never.
Will, as I read your comments, which I missed for some reason when first posted, two things struck me in the first two posts. As you read my comments bear in mind that I’m ahead of you in age, so experienced the earliest manifestations of the progressive agenda and dumming down of societal influences.
My first comment regards your statement of…
“I know I sound like a racist, but only to a liberal.”
I respectfully suggest that you NEVER take that position friend. You are responding to the liberal guilt that the left wants to subliminally impose upon your thinking. Back in the 50s “white guilt” was a very real contrived strategy for the Communist/Marxist bent left to influence the then Democratic Party. The old, reliable divide and conquer (here by racist attitude pereceptions) the black and white races in America and set them against each other. They took the highlighting of the sorry history of real racism in the past in BOTH the north and south and USED IT to build upon a guilt syndrome in whites to politically be willing to bend-over-backwards to atone for their predecessor’s sins of the past. That bending-over-backwards took the manner of supporting any and all social beneficense laden federal programs aimed at benefitting the black and minority segments of this American population. As we know at some point when you keep trying to bend more over backwards you fall on your *ss! Ironically, working this agenda for the Democrats was and continues to be an exercise in brazen racism itself. It’s what built towards and led to LBJ’s Not-So-Great-Society of the 60s. The Democrats had started teir ugly morphing into demonRATs and realized that they had come upon a manner to socially enslave a generation of blacks and other minorities to an eternal dependence upon them, thereby gaining their everlasting loyalty as demonRATic voters in perpetuity. And so it came to be a generational enslavement of blacks for one thing…POWER. The power that their collective votes continues today to give them. If you think these are contrived imaginings just ask yourself if blacks in America today are any better than blacks in America in the late 50s prior to that Not-So-Great-Society despite all the TRILLIONS of dollars spent? The answer is of course…NO! They are actually worse off, because it’s become a generational parasitic dependency and expectation on government to provide everything for blacks from cradle to grave. When left-leaning black activists started forming welfare rights groups it should have been a “wake-up call”, but most missed the deeper significance. Most poor blacks, abused by their white Democrat politician enslavement masters, have turned upon themselves with a sub-culture steeped in self-loathing and hatred. They comport themselves as the visually obvious lowest common denominator and call themselves niggers. That malaise of no self-image has come to be adopted in mimicry by their white counterparts and a new term of “white niggers” entered the colloquial lexicon to describe them. I use it all the time to make a point. We now have a middle-aged adult generation that is coming to represent the majority soon in this once great nation who are given of such an attitude and have NO life experience DIFFERENCES to reflect back upon for comparison. All they know is what is the here and now.
The second comment that struck me was…
“The Feds already know it’s been going on for years. It’s just they don’t know how to break it to the Blacks that their kids haven’t passed a test since…never.”
Why should you expect “The Feds” to do anything about it. It was they and their abuse of powers that got into local educational systems and helped to corrupt it as you describe. The NEA bears an insidious type of guilt in all this.
The only resolution for this will come out of Atlanta itself and from outraged black parents who have just awakened to a ‘new reality’ for them. i saw a few teachers openly decrying what was going on and that internal seed of discontent from within teacher ranks aligned with parents can send the black AND white racists scurrying for political cover. You must realize the great frustration of anger that is building in this country and much of it all about every element of the educational system, the tool of our demise engineereed by the radical left. It’s not mere coincidence that the greater public majority is up in arms over “public sector” unions.
The truth is going to come out sooner or later that the liberals didn’t want anyone to know that their integration experiment has failed, and failed many years ago. Only a very small percentage of the millions of Black kids who have had the “better” education that liberals believed they deserved have come up just a little bit compared to where most all other races were back when liberals ordered the schools “fully” integrated.
I know I sound like a racist, but only to a liberal. Those who have been in the schools will go to length to defend all the “good” teachers, all the “hard” work that teachers do, but they won’t tell you of all the UN equality that there has been with Black educator, administrators, and board of education heads, and state board of education administrators that have done a horrible job and were promoted anyway because they were Black. And it’s not because the system is working, it’s the system has been modified so many times that it doesn ‘t even come close to keeping up with who is actually doing what they are supposed to do. It’s all politics now, even in the class room. Georgia is just the tip of the iceburg.