Sunday, January 25, 2015

Why Do “Conservatives” Always Lose?

By An Old Friend Who’s been There, Done That

Because they don't know how to organize constituencies for particular issues;
Because they choose to advocate issues that not many people care about;
Because they use stupid rhetoric (like "statist" or "collectivist") that no one responds to;
Because they won't organize mass demonstrations and protests;
Because they narrowly focus on elections, rather than make an effort to influence the larger culture;
Because they tend to fall for nutty conspiracy theories;
Because they prefer to whine in magazines and web sites rather than take direct action;
Because they are unwilling to engage in civil disobedience;
Because they defend large corporations instead of embracing populist hostility to mega/global finance capitalism;
Because they use ideological arguments against their opponents instead of moral arguments;
Because their donors are often frightened rabbits who fear losing social status more than they fear losing their country;
Because they refuse to paint their opponents as evil, and instead prefer to believe that their opponents simply hold mistaken beliefs;
Because they refuse to engage in self-criticism and try to analyze why they lose ... I could go on and on and on and on and on....


2 comments:

  1. Depends on what is meant here by "conservatism." If it means what it sometimes means, what your old friend probably means by it, then its losing is in the mind's eyes of a lot of people a feature and not a bug.

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  2. In defining 'Conservatism' as classical liberalism: Government largely limited to what our Founders intended it to be.

    It is really hard to run against the Left when they are acting as Santa Claus: Handing out other people's money. It is human nature to recoil from the idea of being 'on one's own'; not dependent on handouts, if one has been raised in a welfare state. The Left also appeals to the most sinister of human emotions: envy.

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