Nice post, William. Dissident and conservative aren't really synonymous terms; indeed, little of the mainstream conservative movement I would consider to be dissidents. A dissident is a person fundamentally opposed to the globohomo world order on religious, metaphysical or other grounds. A conservative, at least in the way the term is commonly used, is someone against an *aspect* of the globohomo world order but not the system in its entirety -- i.e. you'll have conservatives against abortion, or pro-gun, or against trannies or boycotting Bud Light or whatever, but they basically accept the egalitarianism ratchet effect and Whig history powering the system's forward momentum. This is why conservatives usually lose.
When I think of conservatives my mind goes back to this wonderful and prophetic quote by Robert Lewis Dabny (chief of staff to Stonewall Jackson) in 1897:
"It may be inferred again that the present movement for women's rights will certainly prevail from the history of its only opponent: Northern conservatism. This is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution; to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. . . . Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth, and has no idea of being guilty of the folly of martyrdom. It always when about to enter a protest very blandly informs the wild beast whose path it essays to stop, that its bark is worse than its bite, and that it only means to save its manners by enacting its decent role of resistance: The only practical purpose which it now serves in American politics is to give enough exercise to Radicalism to keep it in wind, and to prevent its becoming pursy and lazy, from having nothing to whip. No doubt, after a few years, when women's suffrage shall have become an accomplished fact, conservatism will tacitly admit it into its creed, and thenceforward plume itself upon its wise firmness in opposing with similar weapons the extreme of baby suffrage; and when that too shall have been won, it will be heard declaring that the integrity of the American Constitution requires at least the refusal of suffrage to asses. There it will assume, with great dignity, its final position."
Thoughtful essay, Hunter! I agree that everything government touches, it breaks. That's because it's an unnatural, unnecessary, and evil system to begin with. Seeking power over others and then justifying the use of force and deception to achieve such as status is evil.
Truly, I believe that we were created to be free men and women, and to inherently follow Natural Law. Somehow, that got corrupted. And you know what I think about that.
In fact, it is these demon-channeling, secret-society psychopathic tyrants who invent false dichotomies with special categorizing labels like "Conservative" and "Liberal." They're word-spells, cast upon already-weakened folks who gave over their true power — their spirit — to the wayward wizards in the first place. I mean, we've all done it. Now some of us are just reclaiming our spiritual nature and experiencing the scales falling from our eyes.
This is why we continue to see a broadening chasm amongst humanity: Some people are clinging to the false reality, to their spell-cast beliefs, out of fear of the unknown. But until one questions reality/beliefs, embraces uncertainty, and lives unafraid of the posturing tyrants, one will continue to be mesmerized and enslaved by them.
Hello, William. Very interesting chart by NeoF. I did something a little bit similar in a video before I was on Substack. I plotted some people whose work I'd reviewed on a continuum of theists to atheists. Then I did another sort by their belief in their own superiority. What I concluded was that people who believe (or not) in their own superiority tend to cluster in terms of their worldviews more than those who believe (or not) in religion. In other words, superiority was a greater predictor of commonality than ideas about God. And predictably, I had the most disagreement with those.
I wonder how NeoF's chart would shake out in that dimension? For instance, Robert Malone and 'John Carter' may be divided on philosophical vs. political approaches but they share a very strong belief in their superiority. In my episode on 'Black Pill Hatfill & Malone', he chortles about needing bulldozers to bury the bodies. Their 'optimistic' future is 5G warfare where you can't trust anyone but him.
I didn't do a thorough scan but does NeoF include any women? I think your charts on how the left sees the right and the right sees the left both describe viewpoints of superiority. But you know me, I think all these categories are designed to divide and conquer us.
I got a friendly response from Rolo Slavsky on my last episode on him: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/the-hatest-story-ever-told. In my reply to his comment, I said that "My objection to name-calling (on either side) isn't from being thin-skinned but because it 'goes soft' on challenging the ideas. It diverts the argument into who's more clever, not who's right. It also limits the 'parameters of the possible,' as you put it, on metaphysical reality."
Superiority is an argument to the authority of the person, not the validity of the idea. Someone, I feel, should be representing the idea that we're metaphysically, spiritually and politically equal, and what would be possible, if so, rather than just being optimistic about the superior people winning.
The definition has changed over the past few decades. The Republican Party used to be the party of Bob Hope and Thurston Howell III. Today, the Ivy League cranks out wokies. The Republican Party has become the party of people who listen to talk radio: farmers, truck drivers, carpenters, etc. The divide is mostly rural vs. urban.
Someone who uses mass quantities of diesel fuel to do his job is going to set a much higher standard of evidence for global warming. For someone who lives in an apartment building and takes public transport, believing in global warming is a warm snuggly self-hug.
I've asked myself this same question often over the past few years. I'm not sure the terms liberal and conservative have any meaning outside propaganda uses.
While the Right is working out heuristics for distinguishing between “conservative” and “liberal,” the Left is still stuck on pre-school distinctions, like the difference between “man” and “woman.”
Am I liberal or conservative? I do not know. At age 18 when I could first vote, I was a Republican like my parents and neighbors. What did I know? What mattered was graduating high school, finding a college, and boys. Years later, after divorce, a college degree, and the start of a career, I began to change my mind. And came to dislike Republicans. Eventually I registered as a Democrat. Still not happy with the candidates for elective offices. The labels have switched several times. I am currently a liberal on many subjects and a conservative on others. I think capitalism is wrong, and corporatism worse. I think we are all in this together and need to take care of each other. Life has a spiritual component. Multi-billionaires have no place in a society that refuses to provide shelter or food for everyone. While I am not religious and no longer consider myself Christian, I am happy to invoke God to protect America (and Gaza). America’s track record of inciting or even advocating for war is wrong. I believe the Constitution of the USA is a fine document; the current crop of politicians has enabled the too many violations, I consider them traitors. I think “global warming” is a con, and genetically modified food is a crime. I am not interested in solar panels. I think NAFTA and supply chains were an error. After a brief look at the Cultural Cognition Worldview Scales, I find I disagree with all of them — it is way too simplistic, and in fact obscures the real issues. I like your analysis of the “scales”. I think government tries to do too much and doesn’t do enough, or perhaps the problem is that they do the wrong things. Recently, the lockdowns were wrong, the drug mandates were wrong, the censorship was wrong. Democracy in America is a shadow of its former state, this has happened because of politicians and money. America has become an extortion racket — where the wealthy extort the “middle class” and the poor. When I was 18 the Protestant church my family attended undertook efforts to care for the local poor and the recent immigrants (at that time they were from southeast Asia and had arrived with nothing); the members of the church provided money, materials, and labor.
Nice post, William. Dissident and conservative aren't really synonymous terms; indeed, little of the mainstream conservative movement I would consider to be dissidents. A dissident is a person fundamentally opposed to the globohomo world order on religious, metaphysical or other grounds. A conservative, at least in the way the term is commonly used, is someone against an *aspect* of the globohomo world order but not the system in its entirety -- i.e. you'll have conservatives against abortion, or pro-gun, or against trannies or boycotting Bud Light or whatever, but they basically accept the egalitarianism ratchet effect and Whig history powering the system's forward momentum. This is why conservatives usually lose.
When I think of conservatives my mind goes back to this wonderful and prophetic quote by Robert Lewis Dabny (chief of staff to Stonewall Jackson) in 1897:
"It may be inferred again that the present movement for women's rights will certainly prevail from the history of its only opponent: Northern conservatism. This is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution; to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. . . . Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth, and has no idea of being guilty of the folly of martyrdom. It always when about to enter a protest very blandly informs the wild beast whose path it essays to stop, that its bark is worse than its bite, and that it only means to save its manners by enacting its decent role of resistance: The only practical purpose which it now serves in American politics is to give enough exercise to Radicalism to keep it in wind, and to prevent its becoming pursy and lazy, from having nothing to whip. No doubt, after a few years, when women's suffrage shall have become an accomplished fact, conservatism will tacitly admit it into its creed, and thenceforward plume itself upon its wise firmness in opposing with similar weapons the extreme of baby suffrage; and when that too shall have been won, it will be heard declaring that the integrity of the American Constitution requires at least the refusal of suffrage to asses. There it will assume, with great dignity, its final position."
Thoughtful essay, Hunter! I agree that everything government touches, it breaks. That's because it's an unnatural, unnecessary, and evil system to begin with. Seeking power over others and then justifying the use of force and deception to achieve such as status is evil.
Truly, I believe that we were created to be free men and women, and to inherently follow Natural Law. Somehow, that got corrupted. And you know what I think about that.
In fact, it is these demon-channeling, secret-society psychopathic tyrants who invent false dichotomies with special categorizing labels like "Conservative" and "Liberal." They're word-spells, cast upon already-weakened folks who gave over their true power — their spirit — to the wayward wizards in the first place. I mean, we've all done it. Now some of us are just reclaiming our spiritual nature and experiencing the scales falling from our eyes.
This is why we continue to see a broadening chasm amongst humanity: Some people are clinging to the false reality, to their spell-cast beliefs, out of fear of the unknown. But until one questions reality/beliefs, embraces uncertainty, and lives unafraid of the posturing tyrants, one will continue to be mesmerized and enslaved by them.
Hello, William. Very interesting chart by NeoF. I did something a little bit similar in a video before I was on Substack. I plotted some people whose work I'd reviewed on a continuum of theists to atheists. Then I did another sort by their belief in their own superiority. What I concluded was that people who believe (or not) in their own superiority tend to cluster in terms of their worldviews more than those who believe (or not) in religion. In other words, superiority was a greater predictor of commonality than ideas about God. And predictably, I had the most disagreement with those.
I wonder how NeoF's chart would shake out in that dimension? For instance, Robert Malone and 'John Carter' may be divided on philosophical vs. political approaches but they share a very strong belief in their superiority. In my episode on 'Black Pill Hatfill & Malone', he chortles about needing bulldozers to bury the bodies. Their 'optimistic' future is 5G warfare where you can't trust anyone but him.
I didn't do a thorough scan but does NeoF include any women? I think your charts on how the left sees the right and the right sees the left both describe viewpoints of superiority. But you know me, I think all these categories are designed to divide and conquer us.
I got a friendly response from Rolo Slavsky on my last episode on him: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/the-hatest-story-ever-told. In my reply to his comment, I said that "My objection to name-calling (on either side) isn't from being thin-skinned but because it 'goes soft' on challenging the ideas. It diverts the argument into who's more clever, not who's right. It also limits the 'parameters of the possible,' as you put it, on metaphysical reality."
Superiority is an argument to the authority of the person, not the validity of the idea. Someone, I feel, should be representing the idea that we're metaphysically, spiritually and politically equal, and what would be possible, if so, rather than just being optimistic about the superior people winning.
The definition has changed over the past few decades. The Republican Party used to be the party of Bob Hope and Thurston Howell III. Today, the Ivy League cranks out wokies. The Republican Party has become the party of people who listen to talk radio: farmers, truck drivers, carpenters, etc. The divide is mostly rural vs. urban.
Someone who uses mass quantities of diesel fuel to do his job is going to set a much higher standard of evidence for global warming. For someone who lives in an apartment building and takes public transport, believing in global warming is a warm snuggly self-hug.
I've asked myself this same question often over the past few years. I'm not sure the terms liberal and conservative have any meaning outside propaganda uses.
Some one with a brain
Way to go with the mention! Congratulations. Thoughtful article. Keep up the good work.
While the Right is working out heuristics for distinguishing between “conservative” and “liberal,” the Left is still stuck on pre-school distinctions, like the difference between “man” and “woman.”
Am I liberal or conservative? I do not know. At age 18 when I could first vote, I was a Republican like my parents and neighbors. What did I know? What mattered was graduating high school, finding a college, and boys. Years later, after divorce, a college degree, and the start of a career, I began to change my mind. And came to dislike Republicans. Eventually I registered as a Democrat. Still not happy with the candidates for elective offices. The labels have switched several times. I am currently a liberal on many subjects and a conservative on others. I think capitalism is wrong, and corporatism worse. I think we are all in this together and need to take care of each other. Life has a spiritual component. Multi-billionaires have no place in a society that refuses to provide shelter or food for everyone. While I am not religious and no longer consider myself Christian, I am happy to invoke God to protect America (and Gaza). America’s track record of inciting or even advocating for war is wrong. I believe the Constitution of the USA is a fine document; the current crop of politicians has enabled the too many violations, I consider them traitors. I think “global warming” is a con, and genetically modified food is a crime. I am not interested in solar panels. I think NAFTA and supply chains were an error. After a brief look at the Cultural Cognition Worldview Scales, I find I disagree with all of them — it is way too simplistic, and in fact obscures the real issues. I like your analysis of the “scales”. I think government tries to do too much and doesn’t do enough, or perhaps the problem is that they do the wrong things. Recently, the lockdowns were wrong, the drug mandates were wrong, the censorship was wrong. Democracy in America is a shadow of its former state, this has happened because of politicians and money. America has become an extortion racket — where the wealthy extort the “middle class” and the poor. When I was 18 the Protestant church my family attended undertook efforts to care for the local poor and the recent immigrants (at that time they were from southeast Asia and had arrived with nothing); the members of the church provided money, materials, and labor.