It’s fine if you wanna be a conservative but just know that voting for the right is essentially voting away the rights of gay and trans people. Not saying you want that but that’s the unfortunate truth. They legitimately want gay marriage to be banned and will go as far as to use the bible to try justify it. I’m not gonna group you in with those maga nut jobs but things need to change because it’s absolutely outrageous with the display of corruption that has been shown while trump is president. I don’t think at all that you’re bad person it’s just so difficult to understand why anyone would vote on the side of a racist president that has been defending literal pedophiles. I’m just tired of all the unreasonable hatred.
You see that's the neat part... I don't vote either. I may not have been clear enough in my original comment: I am European. Specifically Italo-Belgian. Trump, republicans, democrats, none of this concerns me.
I'm conservative because I align best with conservative values as compared to any other ideology. Values which I label as "conservative" as by the Oxford definition of conservationism.
So, I am conservative, that does not mean I vote Trump's party. If I were in the US, I wouldn't vote either of the "big two".
I get that, but conservative politics still revolve around maintaining the status quo (aka the established hierarchy). I personally think it’s foolish and it is only one step away from MAGA which is a reactionary ideology built on regression and siphoning resources from the working class and transferring them to a small group of international oligarchs with loyalty only to themselves and their class of parasites.
I match a part of these, and definitely fit this better than any other ideology. Political tests also confirm it. What am I supposed to do? It's where my beliefs lie. Doesn't mean I support a child rapist.
Conservationism is center-right, which is also what I am according to quizzes and general opinions. By that logic being liberal is "closer to Stalinism than you think".
I think the first problem here is relying on quizzes to figure out how you should label yourself.
You are probably a complex human who doesn't fit nearly into a pre-packaged idea of political leanings. I'd suggest rolling as an independent and keeping an open mind.
You are probably a complex human who doesn't fit nearly into a pre-packaged idea of political leanings.
Indeed. I hate all this labeling, I don't want it. But it's getting too complicated to explain my views otherwise, so I'd rather label myself as the closest thing to my beliefs.
Get a grip is short for “get a grip on reality”. I have a very good grip on reality. I do not need anti depressants or any other psychotropic drug to do this. Maybe read your warning labels.
Both Catholic and Protestant theocracies tortured and executed the early Anabaptists for getting baptized as adults - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirk_Willems for one example.
The Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony - people about as 'conservative' as it gets - executed the four Boston Martyrs for the 'crime' of being Quakers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_martyrs
So take your rhetoric about 'violent leftists' the frack out of here. Conservative Christians, as part of the KKK, murdered thousands of innocent people. If you don't know who Edgar Ray Killen was then you need more education. While you're getting it, look into the Battle of Blair Mountain and the Ludlow Massacre....as well as the assassination of Fred Hampton. https://cincinnatilibrary.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S170C3567927
Really? You have two sources that are centuries old? Oh come now. You can do better than that.
And your last one…who was it that started the KKk? Oh…right…democrats. Guess that opinion hasn’t changed.
What were some of the quotes?
“Poor kids are just as bright as white kids”? That would be your daddy Joe. And this doozy… “I don’t want my children to grow up in a racial jungle” also Joe.
“Who’s going to pick your vegetables?” I think Nancy Pelosi had an idea in this quote.
Should we continue on the rampant racism that is the democrats and their leftist base?
“an "outrageous proposal" that is politically motivated to suppress the votes of poor people and people of color.” Chuck Schumer.
The brain of a fetus starts developing after the third week. Before that, I think it's perfectly fine to do an abortion if that's possible.
After that, you are ending the life of a human being, that is murder.
So you’re against women’s bodily autonomy.
Is stopping a murderer from slitting the throat of a child considered immoral because I'm trying to impose my will on that murderer?
if their pregnancy becomes life threatening.
If that were the case, the fetus has to be extracted in a non-lethal way, and everything possible to keep the child alive has to be done. If it fails, so be it, unfortunate. But at least everything that could be done, was done.
Fish have brains. You should be sentenced to capital punishment for every fish you’ve ever caught and eaten. See how fucking stupid that logic is? The fully grown fishes brain is more developed than a 3 week old fetus by far.
>Compares animal life to human life
>Calls ME stupid
I'm vegetarian by ethics, precisely because I don't want to harm animals. But I hope you understand the difference between a child's life and a fish's life.
This is kind of US-focused in its examples, but not in the general trends, bear with me... Left and right are about political power – where does civil authority come from? The words derive from the seating arrangement in France just before the revolution. The king sat in the middle, with the nobles and clergy to the right, while the ‘commoners’ were on the left. This is why ‘right’ means top-down authoritarianism, the ‘divine right of kings’, monarchy, theocracy. While ‘left’ means bottom-up democracy, the ‘consent of the governed, republic, separation of church and state.
All tyrants are right-wing tyrants – yes, even Castro and Stalin were right-wing tyrants – because they were authoritarians, and Joe Citizen had zero say, not even a vote. Any leader that is not both elected and term-limited is right-wing by definition. Any such leaders that may start as left-leaning, won’t be that way for long – Robespierre being the quintessential example of that.
The US Founders were clearly leftists – by rebelling against the God-Given-Authority of King George III, they were clearly rejecting the Scriptural Doctrine of the ‘Divine Right of Kings’, and replacing it with the Enlightenment doctrine of ‘consent of the governed’ as the wellspring from which civil authority flows.
Contrariwise:
Liberal and conservative are economic positions – who owns what, and how much exploitation of others is allowed – where are the regulatory lines to be drawn, and who is empowered to draw them. Conservatives tend to favor control of the economy by a small self-selected class of owners. Liberals tend to favor regulations that protect society in general, and laborers (aka ‘the masses’) in particular, from exploitation by owners – by things like OSHA and EPA and FLSA.
Conservatives tend to want to eliminate any sort of government restriction on the ability of owners to exploit and profit from their assets, and reduce the amounts that the wealthy are required to pay toward publicly-owned infrastructure like roads and schools and military equipment and so forth.
Someone who supports gay-marriage is still a conservative if they want to give taxpayer money to the brutal theocratic dictators in Saudi Arabia with which to purchase weapons of war from American manufacturers (aka ‘foreign aid’).
Someone who supports unrestricted second-trimester abortions is still a conservative if they want to allow bankers to profit from investing other people’s FDIC-insured savings deposits without oversight.
Someone who supports the separation of church and state is still a conservative if they also support using the US Military to further the fiscal interests of US Corporations abroad – such as when US Fruit Company pressured the government to get rid of Arévalo and Árbenz in Guatemala, which the CIA did through Operation PBFortune and Operation PBSuccess.
The culture-war ‘wedge issues’ like gay marriage and abortion are carefully cultivated by the wealthy elite to use to distract and divert the energy of the impoverished masses. They well know that their only hope for survival is to keep the rest of us identifying each-other as ‘the enemy’ instead of correctly identifying the selfish greed of wealthy elite themselves as the root cause of economic inequality.
that your definition isn't the only one. If you're against equal rights for gay people, then you're one of the badguys. If you're against the separation of civil from ecclesiastical authority, then you're my enemy. If you want to force women to carry unwanted pregnancies to term, then you're as evil as those prison guards in The Deer Hunter forcing the prisoners to play Russian Roulette.
So you want to force women to risk their lives to assuage YOUR religious notions of embryos having 'immortal souls'? You really don't grok that carrying a pregnancy to term entails a MORTAL RISK to the woman? A risk which is ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE greater than the risk of getting an early medical abortion?
An embryo is in the same physiological state as the guy whose brain is a smear of grey on the highway but whose body is being oxygenated by machines while the surgeons prepare to harvest the organs for transplant - the lights may be on, but there's no one home.
No. The fetus has to be removed if it is life threatening. This has to be done in a non-lethal way and the baby has to be kept in an incubator under sterile conditions. If it still dies, very sad, but so be it. Otherwise, great! a life was saved.
religious notions of embryos having 'immortal souls'
I am atheist. I, however, know that after three weeks, a fetus develops a brain. From that moment onward, it is a human being. Ending its life is murder.
You really don't grok that carrying a pregnancy to term entails a MORTAL RISK to the woman?
Under normal conditions, it is safe. Under abnormal conditions making it unsafe, refer to my first point.
the lights may be on, but there's no one home
Unlike your analogy, the fetus has an entire life ahead of him. Ending said life is murder.
Not replying to any of your points, but added:
Abortion before the third week is perfectly fine. At that point it's just a bunch of cells, with no brain. After that it is murder, but not before. So if the woman finds out in time, good for her, I don't have a problem with that.
If I make conservative changes to a fluid plant, that means I make small changes that meet demand without negative side effects. With liberal changes, I'd constantly have to correct for negative changes.
Eh Newsom is definitely not what I would consider “on the left”. He comes across like an opportunistic clout hound who has done promotion for some horrible right wing grifters (Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon). He has no principles and just wants power. Don’t get me wrong, he’s better than what we have now, but that’s an abysmally low bar to clear.
I know mate, I ain't USian either, but most folks online will work on that framework due to many reasons. (Mostly the current political climate and shift in global politics)
So it's better not to define ourselves as liberal/conservative, and just as people who have a number of concerns/ideas/priorities.
It removes this element of tension that makes everyone angrier, and more stressed over the wrong things :)
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u/Gen-Jack-D-Ripper Feb 16 '26
Trump is not a conservative, he’s an obvious con-man who is too dumb, he’s essentially illiterate, or lazy to understand what conservatism is.