Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Conservatism

  • The Conservative Sociologist

    'Conservative sociologist' smacks of an oxymoron, does it not?  So just for fun this morning I typed the phrase into my search engine of choice and was directed to The Conservative Sociologist where I encountered the graphic below.  The proprietor of the site is of the female persuasion.  We need more distaff bloggers, though not a federal…

  • Nick Gillespie on Why Youth Favor Obama and Conservatism’s Contradictions

    Support for Obama among 18-29 year olds exceeds that of any other age cohort.  Reason Magazine's Nick Gillespie argues that Obama is in the process of "screwing them big time."  Gillespie is right.   What caught my eye, however, was Gillespie's  explanation of why conservatives fail to get the youth vote: I'd argue that what makes "the conservative message"  resonate less…

  • Benedict XVI: “A Conservative Not in Favor of Reforms”

    A Fox News anchor's reportage from earlier today betrays presumably inadvertent bias.  The anchor said that Pope Benedict XVI is "a conservative not in favor of many reforms."  A reform is not merely a change, but an improvement.  The Wikipedia article gets it right: "Reform means the improvement or amendment of what is wrong, corrupt, unsatisfactory, etc."…

  • Am I a Raving Liberal? The Problem of Ideological Extremism

    I happened across a post from a couple of years ago on a defunct blog named Throne and Altar.  For some reason the post's title drew me in: Another Casualty: Maverick Philosopher Embraces Tolerance.  The author, one "bonaldo," claims that Islam has turned me into "a raving liberal."  The entry of mine that drew his…

  • Bill O’Reilly’s Abortion Mistake

    The other night Bill O'Reilly said that a fetus is a potential human life.  Not so!  A fetus is an actual human life.  Consider a third-trimester human fetus, alive and well, developing in the normal way in the mother.  It is potentially many things: a neonate, a two-year-old, a speaker of some language, an adolescent, an…

  • The Retreat Into the Private Life

    When the world and its hopelessness are too much with us, one can and must beat a retreat into the private life.  Body culture, mind culture, hobbies, family life, the various escapes (which are not necessarily escapes from reality) into chess, fiction, religion, meditation, history, pure mathematics and science, one's own biography and the pleasant…

  • The Philosopher and the Conservative

    One cannot be a philosopher without believing in the power of reason.  But one cannot be a conservative without doubting its power to order our affairs and ameliorate our condition. Equally, one cannot be a philosopher without doubting — doubt being the engine of inquiry — and one cannot be a conservative without believing, that…

  • Conservatives, Liberals, and Happiness

    It turns out that conservatives are happier than liberals.  But why? Conservative explanation.  Marriage and religious faith are conducive to happiness.  More conservatives are married than liberals, and more practice a religion. Ergo, conservatives as a group are happier than liberals as a group. Liberal explanation.  Conservatives are happier because they turn a blind eye…

  • Jonathan Haidt Awakens from his Dogmatic Liberal Slumbers

    Conservatives have broader moral sense than liberals.  All praise to Haidt for having the openmindedness and courage to change his view, but I marvel at how incurious and bigoted he was before his metanoia.  What sort of person ignores whole swaths of the intellectual terrain without any desire to explore at first hand?  That sort…

  • Can an Irreligious Person Really be a Conservative?

    John Derbyshire asks and answers his  question. Q. Can an irreligious person really be a conservative? A. Of course he can. The essence of modern conservatism is the belief in limited government power, respect for traditional values, patriotism, and strong national defense. The only one of those that gets snagged on religion is the second. But…

  • PC Conservative Andrew McCarthy’s Lame Response to John Derbyshire

    It is well known by now that NRO has cut its ties with John Derbyshire ('Derb') over the latter's publication in another venue of The Talk: Nonblack Version.  Both Rich Lowry and Andrew McCarthy have commented on this severing of ties and both sets of comments are unbelievably lame.  Here is the substance (or rather 'substance')…

  • Surprising How Many Conservatives are Dylan Fans

    Lawrence Auster appears to be another as witness these comments on Dylan's I Shall be Released made on the occasion of Levon Helm's death.   The Left does not own Dylan, not by a long shot.

  • Conservatism, Religion, and Money-Grubbing

    This from a reader in Scotland: I'm a first year undergraduate philosophy student with some very muddled political views. My father has always been a staunch supporter of the Left to the point of being prejudiced against all things on the conservative or Right side as 'religious' and 'money grubbing' . I never questioned any…

  • Cooperation and Competition

    Liberals tend to oppose cooperation to competition, and vice versa, as if they excluded each other. "We need more cooperation and less competition." One frequently hears that from liberals. But competition is a form of cooperation. As such, it cannot be opposed to cooperation. One cannot oppose a species to its genus. Consider competitive games…

  • Why are Conservatives Inarticulate?

    From the mail: My two cents on why so many people who hold conservative views come across as inarticulate: most of the values that ordinary, conservative people live by do not require much reflection or explanation. After all, how much justification does a man need for being loyal to his friends, not cheating his customers,…