Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Ken Peabody's avatar

It has occurred to me that much of the Righas hostility to things like gay and transgender righas, and abortion stems from looking at the world in strich dautistic terms. Everything is either good or evil, right or wrong. This inevitably leads to the idea that the Left is evil because it looks at the world differently. Gay and trans gender rights are celebrated by liberals because it recognizes the natural diversity of human experience. The Right refuses to accept this divarsity because it upsets their binary world view. This also explains racost attitudes. White skin is the "correct" image of a human being, any other shade makes a person less than fully human. There are seemingle endresses examples of this. Unfortunately I don't see a way out of this situation. I used to think education was the answer, but that no longer holds true. Do you see any solution?

Expand full comment
Kevin Bowe's avatar

You can thank Davidson's piece for making me a paid subscriber. I agree with Davidson's first point, that social and culture change of technology (like the Pill) is overwhelming "tradition" therefore undermining a key tenet of what it is to be conservative. The piece uses pretzel logic to embrace authoritarianism and associated nonsense. But what about Jon Askonas piece from which Davidson got his warped inspiration from? As a "lay person" Askonas essay made sense to me. The digital age is rendering the defense of knee-jerk traditionalism nonsensical. He sees a "post traditional" Conserative movement that acknowledges the cultural and social challenges the digital age is creating. As classic progressive who likes "change"--but certainly not the kind of change social media has created in the last decade--I can get behind a new conservative movement that abandons knee-jerk traditonalism and starts asking the tough questions that market orientated liberals are not, as we unleash the next great technology. Askonas' piece https://compactmag.com/article/why-conservatism-failed

Expand full comment
7 more comments...

No posts