What Is a Conservative?

[JB3]

If you can name ten of them versus the millions out there that would disagree I hardly think it counts.

the moderate conservatives are all on the outs right now unfortunately.

Your argument isn't valid. You're saying that just by sheer numbers makes the people that have hijacked the name right. It doesn't.

 

[Kulindahr]

If you can name ten of them versus the millions out there that would disagree I hardly think it counts.

So basically you and JockBoy are arguing that to the ignorant go the spoils: get enough people who don't know what a word means to use it how you want, and it suddenly has a new meaning.

 

[JB3]

So basically you and JockBoy are arguing that to the ignorant go the spoils: get enough people who don't know what a word means to use it how you want, and it suddenly has a new meaning.

That's the crux of their argument; you and I are wrong because there's more people that hijacked the conservative title and call themselves one. Even though 99.9% couldn't tell you what it means to be one, and the actions of 99.9% of them don't fit within the ideology.

By that logic I could start a group calling themselves democrats and advocate all the conservative values, and these two would be perfectly all right with it.

What nonsense...

 

[Kulindahr]

That's the crux of their argument; you and I are wrong because there's more people that hijacked the conservative title and call themselves one. Even though 99.9% couldn't tell you what it means to be one, and the actions of 99.9% of them don't fit within the ideology.

By that logic I could start a group calling themselves democrats and advocate all the conservative values, and these two would be perfectly all right with it.

What nonsense...

I'm frustrated here because when the question is "What is a conservative?" I assume a serious answer is desired, and that usually means some scholarship -- and in scholarship, words actually have meanings. Instead, the approach has been to answer, "Well, it's whatever people say it is", which is intellectually lazy. And it's also dishonest; they wouldn't apply the same approach to other areas -- consider if people started using the word "song" to refer to Beethoven's symphonies or Mozart's sonatas; would they agree that those are now songs just because lots of people use the word that way?