Comment

Comment on Why do most religious conservatives support capitalist ideology?

johnlawrenceaspden@thelemmy.club ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

I can’t answer for America, but generally in democracies you get two parties.

Before Socialism was a thing, England had ‘Liberals/Whigs’ (what you’d call libertarians) and ‘Conservatives/Tories’ (king and country and church).

And of course, like all political groups do, they hated each other.

The Church of England was once known as the Tory Party at Prayer.

With the rise of socialism, the ‘conservatives’ and ‘liberals’ were squeezed, and combined to oppose socialist thought, which hated them both and wanted to destroy everything they thought was worthwhile in the world.

So there’s an uneasy alliance in England between classical liberals and religious loonies, who’d naturally detest each other. That’s the modern Conservative party, who want to use radical social transformation to go back to the glorious past.

Socialism has rather collapsed as an idea, leaving Labour as the party of ‘every problem can be solved by stealing more money and spending it on subsidies’. A position which is popular with those who benefit from subsidy, and unpopular with those who get their stuff stolen.

Obviously this is a shit system, but it’s better than regular civil war, which is the only system that can rival democracy for stability.

source

Sort:hotnew top

dublet@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

I can’t answer for America, but generally in democracies you get two and only two parties.

Your answer is both incredible specific to the UK and subtly incorrect. I don’t quite have the time to write a full rebuttal, but the more egregious of errors is this one:

The Liberals were the radicals, the party of industry and progress and free markets and who cares who it hurts as long as it’s the future.

One of the core tenets of liberalism is the harm principle. Sure progress is important but so is not harming anyone. Your post seems to equate only socialism with bringing good to British society, when that quite simply is just not true, and refutable. The Labour Party in the UK quite successfully adopted a lot of the items on the liberal agenda, such as gender equality.

The FPTP system is quite poisonous to the political debate in the UK as the natural tendency that only one of two parties can dominate and thus removes all nuance and creates toxic tribalism.

source
- johnlawrenceaspden@thelemmy.club ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Thank you for the correction! Where can I find the list of philosophical axioms espoused by the Whigs?
  
  source
ThrowawayPermanente@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
*Democracies using first-past-the-post without proportional representation

source
itsAsin@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
that was the most readable version of modern politics i have ever come across.

i learned a lot. thank you so much!

source
- johnlawrenceaspden@thelemmy.club ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  So kind! Thank you.
  
  Forgive me, I am editing it in-place as more thoughts occur to me, so do make sure you still agree with it when I stop doing that, and edit your comment appropriately.
  
  source