What is the difference between a liberal and a conservative?

@revenant Nah, conservatives are super prone to utopian thinking. It’s just that their utopia lies in an imaginary past. MAGA actually sums it up pretty well.

Keeping in mind that Trump is in no way a conservative. @QuixoticSoul

@RayKyler Of course not, but the idea of MAGA has a massive appeal for this particular group.

@RayKyler
@QuixoticSoul
He isn't? What makes you say that?

@Kwek00 Put it this way - would someone like William Buckley consider Trump a true conservative?

@QuixoticSoul
I don't even get what you people are talking about. Are you peeps talking about the American Parties... because both parties consist out of diffrent ideological positions. Not all republicans are from the conservative family. But most conservative ideologies can find a place in the Republican party. Not all people in the Democratic party are liberals, but all left wing liberal ideological positions can find a place in the democratic party.

As Trump, saying that he's not part of the conservative family seems pretty weird. Since on all moral issues he favors the conservative position. He talks about the good old days and bringing them back. I don't know what kind of conservative "William Buckley" is, but to reduce the entire conservative side of the political spectrum to Williams' position is kinda strange to me.

David Hume was a conservative Liberal, he wouldn't see Mussolini as part of the conservative movement he stood for. But he would have difficulties to denny that Mussolinis movement doesn't fall into the bring branch of conservative political ideologies.

@Kwek00 You’re describing how Trump panders to conservatives. But he defies traditional American political taxonomy, and really when you get down to it, he is simply a populist, not driven by any particular long-term principles or strategies.

@revenant Uh huh. Like the "Christian nation" utopia that libs are always going on about? Or how about the utopia where only white men are allowed to do things like hold political office, vote, own land, etc.?

@QuixoticSoul That's not what I said. And you can only evaluate a political position according to rhetoric/program and actions they take. What else would you use to position someone on the political spectrum?

Right-Wing or Conservative Poppulism excists btw. And according to me he falls in that catgegory. But that ideological perspective still belongs to the conservative family.

@Kwek00 It’s important to remember that the Republican Party and the conservative movement are not really the same thing - and while the party can and must compromise, and may flirt with populism, the movement itself is more concerned with intellectual underpinnings.

Buckley-style conservatives (and Buckley is often justifiably referred to as the father of American conservatism) most certainly don’t accept him as one of them, and see him as someone who has dramatically diminished the power of conservative voices in American politics.

@QuixoticSoul I said that thing about the party and being a conservative. But what you perceive as being a conservative isn't the model for every conservative ideology out there. The conservative family has more then 1 ideological stance.

That's great for Buckley, he didn't say however that Trump isn't a conservative. Just that he doesn't ally with his own position. 🤷‍♂️ He literally says: "trash the broad conservative ideological consensus within the GOP in favor of a free-floating populism with strong-man overtones". So the concensus is gone, and what did he replace it with? I take offense with the idea that this is "free floating poppulism" if you have a bunch of conservative values that you are appealing too 🤷‍♂️

@Kwek00 Buckley died in 2011, that was his editors at the Review.

And, in his own view, his defining contribution to the conservative movement was chasing the “kooks and bigots” out. He would have seen Trump as a demagogue and a populist, rather than someone motivated by conservative principles and philosophies. To him, there was a difference.

@QuixoticSoul But Buckley is not "the" conservative. You are talking about "conservatism" or a branch of that family. But everything inside the family is still part of thet conservative family. There are opposing vieuws in conservatism. The reason why most of them have a big problem with Trump, is because on a lot of his ideas about morality, he's reactionairy. He falls outside the realm of liberal thought. A lot of our conservatives out here are also pretty negative about Trump except for our reactionairies. They love the guy. That doesn't make him not part of the conservative side of the spectrum.

@QuixoticSoul It wouldn't suprise me that in 80 years, if this binairy vieuw with certain conservatives persist, Trump will be a liberal. Then he can play cards with Hitler, the Japanese Emperor and Musolini. 😅

I can see the youtube videos already from Ben Shapiro Jr. telling us how he kept Obama Care in place and grew the governement, just like those other fashist liberals.

@Kwek00 Ben Shapiro is already essentially an anti-Trump conservative who likes some of Trumps conservative policies, while deriding his lack of conservative (or any) philosophy.

So really, that would be a small step for him.

@QuixoticSoul Well, he's only not a trump supporter, because it's not his type of conservative. But he also dares to put his enemies on the left side of the bracket to keep the label conservative as "pure" as possible. It's ridiculous, this idea that he's the real conservative.