You seem to be defining conservatives as "anyone who backed the losing side of a historically significant political debate." By that definition, "conservatism" never gets anything right. The problem is, by that definition, conservatism isn't a coherent movement or philosophy, either, just a collection of history's losers.

Well, those are issues which were (and are) specifically opposed by self-identified conservatives, at least as I understand the issues ie, the "losing side" definition is essentially circular.

I can construct my own counterargument here readily enough, which is that an essential characteristic of conservatism is resistance to change because of the unproven nature of that change. Ie, issues on which conservatives have been right are often going to be transparent, at least to me, because that rectitude involves things which didn't happen.

Liberals have -also- been wrong on those issues though... before they became right on them, after which conservatives became right on them.

If liberals are just a few baby steps to the left of conservatives, they'll be just as wicked, just phase shifted a decade or so.

Furthermore, it wasn't -liberals- who made progress on those issues.

It was fucking radicals.

my milkshake-- you can't drink it.

In an interview I heard this weekend, Niall Ferguson, a Harvard professor who is the author of THE ASCENT OF MONEY, argued that the welfare state was the creation of a Otto von Bismarck's conservative government - the government wanted to guarantee the welfare of the lower classes to squelch uprisings. This might meet your criteria...

Interesting. FWIW, I'm not convinced the welfare state was an inherent good. Note the argument of my post above isn't that "liberals are consistently right." See dirkcjelli's comment above.

That'd make Bismarck a liberal-- as opposed to a leftist.

Speaking as someone who is in many respects well to the left of any mainstream American political position (somehting to do with a European background), even I find this to be built on a fallacy.

You are assuming that everyone recognises that all your list of things that "conservatism got wrong" is inherently and manifesly "right".

Clearly, for many Conservatives, it is not. They don't see that they are wrong; they see that "the world" is wrong, and THEY are right. Just as those who struggle for (say) gay marriage see that "the world" is wrong, an that THEY are right.

History is written by the winners, and therefore everything that moves history towads the current status quo tends to be seen as inherently "right". Had Germany won WW2, had their ideology been perpetrated worldwide, the Holocaust would have been "right".

I respect your passion about politics, Jay, and I agree with a greatdeal of what you say, but on tis one, I think you have rather missed the point.

Well, yes. You're answering the question I didn't quite ask correctly, I think.

That being said, I have a real hard time seeing how a thinking, compassionate human being can hold what I see as the wrong side of most of these stances.

Democrats do it all the time-- eg. Obama opposes same-sex marriage. He does so for personal gain.

All depends on how you define compassion. If a conservative is defined as someone with an essential fear of change, a compassionate conservative can be seen as working to protect All Of Us from the things he thinks are scary.

Now, I don't buy into the the fear of change thing as much as you do. Rather, my definitions are more about a Need To Control Things, combined with a seeing human beings as one type of Thing that needs to be controlled. And most power structures in human history appear to me to have precedent and habit and history and tradition as their main support structures. But that's besides your point today.

1) The power of free markets

The free market is an incredibly powerful tool. Things become possible through trade that are essentially impossible otherwise. (As a liberal, I also have to say that powerful tools aren't -- almost by definition -- safe.)

2) The importance of loyalty

Movement conservatism has been deeply successful in part because it values loyalty. People who are in that mindset genuinely do look out for each other, and (as they say) circles rise together. Loyalty to one another and to a cause is a profound unifying tool, and makes things possible that would not otherwise be.

3) The danger of change

Now here's the thing. I'm a liberal. I like change. But I recognize that all change is destabilizing, and stability (especially in something like a nation-state) is precious, hard to create, and important to maintain. A knee-jerk skepticism of new ideas is healthy, even when some new ideas turn out well in the long term.

Consider this:

http://tinyurl.com/5mwc73

Thank you, sir.

Were you aware that free-marketism is "economic neoliberalism?"

Free markets are -not- powerful. Cartels and state capitalism are powerful. Markets are stupid, and must be on the dole to survive.

Surely you've observed liberals exhibiting loyalty despite all evidence to the contrary, as their leaders disappoint?

As far as resisting change... do you believe this is inherently a conservative trait?

These are markers of the conservative -brand,- but do not accurately distinguish their behavior from that of (social) liberals.

(I've been wearing my Devil's Advocate Grumpy Pants for the past few days. If this comes off as a personal attack, bram452, I apologize. The Pants, they are fitting a little too snug, especially after run-ins with Fox News-watching in-laws and posters on John Scalzi's blog who insist that the majority of Americans will look back on George W. Bush's administration with fondness.)

I think modern movement conservatives have screwed up these three points.

If we had truly free markets, then business leaders would own up to their mistakes and take responsibility. They wouldn't go crawling to Congress for bailouts. They would suck it up, answer to their shareholders, pay out what's owed, and go to jail if they'd committed fraud. Instead, we have rescue for the wealthy while working and poor Americans drown in debt or in overflowed lakes and rivers.

As for loyalty, it's important to whom or to what one is loyal. Loyalty to the Constitution, cool. Loyalty to George W. Bush, however, has given us a Justice Department that's filled with incompetent partisans who don't give a tinker's cuss about justice, just about evening the score, whether it's the political score with Democrats or the blood vengeance score for 9/11.

In regards to change, I recommend Rajiv Chandresakaran's "Imperial Life in the Emerald City" for a glimpse into the blinkered idiocy that was the Coalition Provisional Authority in post-invasion Iraq. Paul Bremer and his team of Heritage Foundation interns were completely blind to the changes they were about to bring to Iraq and didn't think about consulting the people who understood what was about to happen. Bremer and Co. simply Knew Better, and to hell with anyone who said otherwise.

To sum up: when I think of someone who's "conservative," I think of someone who doesn't pay attention to facts, blindly follows their fact-free course of action, then demands other people come to their aid when they screw up.

Couldn't have said it better. Except in addition to fear, they are also quite a bit about hate.

The only thing connies have ever gotten right in my humble opinion is defense of the 2nd amendment. But even in that, their zealotry is over-done.

I'd suggest the hate is a result and expression of fear. FWIW.

Agreed.

The definition of a fiscal conservative is someone who believes money should only be loaned to people who can prove they can pay it back. The current financial crisis is mostly due to people whose greed overcame their conservative beliefs, making them, technically, no longer conservatives. The people who applied for and were approved for the bad loans are, for the most part, liberals. So I guess I'm saying true Conservatives gave us a solid financial system.

This sounds a lot like the same argument I've heard from the REAL to-the-left-of-lefties when talking about the failure of communism in the 20th century.

According to them, communism DIDN'T fail. The Soviet Union? Communist in name only - really just another dictatorship. North Korea? Same deal. And so on. See, "real" communism is something else entirely, so far never actually put into practice, and just because someone called themselves communist and then ran their country into the ground wasn't a failure of communism - it was a failure to FULLY EMBRACE communism. THAT would have succeeded.

So, the conservatives that ran our country into the ground weren't REALLY conservatives - they just called themselves conservatives. Thus, conservatism didn't fail - the failure was in not FULLY EMBRACING conservatism. Because THAT would have succeeded.

Uh huh.

Different variables. Same formula.

Actually, the biggest issue in this one was Greenspan keeping the treasury bond interest rate low to drive capital into the market. The bad loans weren't given out by (or to) liberals, they were given out to any damn body and their crackhead brother by packagers reselling the debt to meet demand.

The best, most thorough analysis I've heard of the present meltdown is here.

There's alsoa pretty good article on it in the most recent Atlantic.

I'll agree that the principle that we should only loan to people who can pay us back is a good one. I wouldn't call it a conservative principle, though; I'd call it a pragmatic principle embraced by conservatives and liberals alike. That neither group always adheres to the principle is proof only that both are made up of humans.

I sense that your intent was to present this fine principle as inherently conservative, and opposed by liberalism. I think, though, that well thought out liberalism seeks to keep its financial system under supervision to enforce precisely this sort of principle. The fact that the people seeking the loans may have been mostly liberals has little to do with anything; it's the institutions who decide who gets a loan, not the applicants.

Offhand:

Stalin was a scumbag.

Alger Hiss was a communist spy. So were the Rosenbergs.

Giant public housing projects suck.

Ethanol is a boondoggle.

1) Agreed

2) Actually, recent scolarship suggests the Rosenbergs were railroaded, more or less Gitmo style.

3) Agreed.

4) Agreed, and I've never understood the ethanol program.