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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   15233 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 24, 2026

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Conservatives do things; things are done to progressives.

But that's a contradiction in terms, because "conservatism" is kind of the definition of not doing things, whereas progressivism is about progress and liberalism is about maintaining the controlled chaos and flexibility out of which progress emerges.

Therefore, we must conclude that:

  • Those who call themselves 'conservatives' are in actual fact liberals/progressives, because they do things, and in the traditional left-right view are left-wing
  • Those who call themselves 'progressives' (or 'liberals') are in actual fact conservatives, because things are done to them, and are right-wing

And if we rephrase it as follows:

  • Men do things
  • Things are done to women

Then we can see that women are by definition the conservative influence they always have been, and men the liberal one. So men now find more common cause with "conservatives" because they are not actually conservative, or rather, what they promise is more liberal than what women want.

Media is generally hostile to left-wing causes when economic conditions reward rent-seeking more than R&D (which is why they were on the left's side back in the '50s-'70s, why they are not now, and to a point why they [falsely] claim to still be left), and the way they prompt that is generally by spamming any plausible invocations of Copenhagen Ethics as possible. So the behavior you see from them tracks.

As for "Republicans Leftists pounce", the reason the left can't benefit from the right violating their own morality is because the right is in control of what that morality is in the first place. Which is not a surprise; they literally exist to be aggrieved as a negotiating strategy. The left fights the right by creating and proving things, memes being the fastest and most well-known example (alternately, consider the phrase 'the left can't meme'; as explained above, this phrase gets who's left and right backwards).

The correct male/liberal behavior is just to ignore them. Once they fight it, they legitimize the framing of women/conservatives that they can't do anything right, and it's over. But, on that note...

And if there's no possible way to frame something they did as something that was done in response to something else, then they'll simply say it happened, not that it was done.

...you sure you aren't Sloot's alt account?

I don't think Clark could even conceive of the idea of a woman doing something awful without having been interfered with in childhood.

Sounds like she's the kind of woman who should try to conceive with an appropriately assertive/attractive $age_of_consent-year-old man.

because "conservatism" is kind of the definition of not doing things

I don't agree. Conservatism doesn't mean "don't do anything" but "don't do anything new".

To speak to this, in the middle of historic flooding, red town Carmel, Indiana "built a makeshift dam out of Sycamore trees and concrete." That's the kind of thing Red places just do, without worry for environmental studies or which contractor will get the kickback. And building levys and dams is something humans have done for millennia. Blue areas in Indiana did not fair as well.

It does seem under this definition like the parties aren't really as conservative/progressive aligned as the messaging would have you think. Under "don't do anything new", California is arguably a conservative state when it clamps down on building housing, sets strong environmental laws discouraging industry, and blocking data center construction. Alternatively, Texas's libertine rules encouraging solar build out, natural gas, and encouraging industry are progressive. Don't tell Gavin and Greg.

But that seems part of both party's ongoing civil wars: blue team seems to have inherited a lot of conservative (lacking a better term) seniors for whom that means "hands off my Medicare" and a general preference for maintaining late 20th century neoliberalism, which clashes with the DSA types wanting radical changes. Red team has a similar clash between traditionally-labelled conservatives and "you can just build things", although I'm not sure if that fight is still ongoing these days.

The confusing thing about America's constant change and upheaval is that, although dispositional/Burkean/"small-c" conservatism still makes some sense here, and it's still true that traditions which have stood the test of time are less risky than new ideas that haven't, "for many lifetimes this fact of constantly changing traditions has been a longstanding tradition". California didn't get to be California by clamping down that hard on housing and industry; that's a new idea that makes Burkean conservatives shriek, even if the alternative of endless new construction is also worrying. Riding the tiger of modernity is scary, but we're already on it, and jumping right off is scarier.

Yes, I agree that these labels are confusing and outmoded. A long time ago, I pointed out that white nationalists who want to transform the US into a white ethnostate are habitually characterised as "conservative". But to conserve things means to keep things the way they are. The US isn't a white ethnostate, so by definition anyone who wants to turn it into one can't be a conservative. Rather, white nationalists are reactionaries.

Yes. The most sensible definitions are, in my view, that conservatives are the ones keeping the ship running, which includes a lot of doing, just no changing. They are overly pragmatic and have difficulty improving anything substantively. Progressives are the ones who want us to change for the better, which is laudable, but who have a tendency to be impractical and insufficiently concerned with function, often making things outright worse.

This definition also has the advantage of making clear why we need both. The problem is, taking this definition seriously, we'd have conservatives and progressives all over the place along the political landscape. Arguably, the center left is the primary contemporary conservative element.

"Conservatives are ballast, progressives are the sails" is a phrase I've seen a few times, with a number of variations (brakes vs. engine on a car, for instance)

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