Sort of an interesting discussion about my post from yesterday If You Support the Death Penalty You are No Longer Allowed to be a Conservative going on at Street Carnage, where it was cross-posted. What about the fact that it's a state's rights issue, one commenter suggested, meaning that it isn't actually a conflict with conservative thinking? A good point, although the federalization of the death penalty has become a huge problem in the past twenty years, whereby the feds have forced states that don't even have the death penalty as an option to employ it. I asked my go-to guy for reasonable conservative opinions Mint E. Fresh to elaborate a little more on the issue, and, predictably, he provided a lot of interesting points worth considering below. Don't worry, I'll brb with some videos of people doing stupid shit and/or crushworthy retarded music fameballs real soon, I promise.
There is no such thing as a conservative thinking person who is also a Political Conservative.
It’s the states generally who put people to death, so it already is a state's rights issue. I believe the anti-death penalty movement seek, through federal legislation, to strip the states of those powers. And so even though I am anti-death penalty, I am also anti-anti-death penalty.
Complicating the matter as always is the difference between philosophical conservatism and Political Conservatism. Philosophical conservatism is a tendency, whereas Political Conservatism is an evolving quasi-ideology consisting of a list of positions currently supported by the GOP and its media, and stock arguments defending those positions. They have nothing to do with philosophical, or actual, conservatism. These positions (that constitute political conservatism) have accumulated over time but have no real living philosophical connection, because no one questions them, and so they often conflict.
In this way Political Conservatism is precisely like the jumble of positions that formulate the average Democrat’s politics, for instance the idea that racial discrimination is evil so institutions should discriminate based on race to combat that evil, or the idea that because diversity is a positive then everywhere in America should resemble New York CIty culturally and demographically (the truly tolerant recognize that the less a place resembles New York demographically and culturally, the more it is morally suspect – still filled with those people, the wrong kind, if you follow me).
So because a Political Conservative only has a list of positions and no logic or reason to support it, which is to say because the Political Conservative (unlike the philosophical conservative) has not arrived at his position as a result of reasoned inquiry and logic applied, but has instead (like the Political Liberal) been handed a laundry list of positions that have little holding them together and gone afterward looking for reasoned arguments to support the positions he’s been taught he’s supposed to have, there is no rhyme or reason to those positions.
It cannot be emphasized enough: Political Conservatism is not a philosophical system or ideological bent, it’s a number of ideas to be opportunistically trotted out when necessary. The myopic American voter cannot remember that a couple years ago he was shrieking that the government needed all the spying power it could get it hands on while he’s shrieking now that Obama has too much power. Or watch the anti-war/Wall St. amnesiacs line up next election for Barack Obama. I(ncidentally, he should use the rap name Ba-Rock YoMama.)
There is no such thing as a conservative thinking person who is also a Political Conservative. You can’t be both.
That's great, and very true and clear stuff, I responded to him. I pretty much agree wholeheartedly, minus the fact that I think the diversity thing needs to be forced in to overcome hundreds of years of entrenched illogical beliefs.
But the antidote to illogic is logic, not more illogic.
I don't think we're ready for 100% logic.
Well, that’s the ‘conservative’ reply to your criticism, then. You can’t ask them to be held to logical standards you won’t hold yourself to. That is the entire problem with refusing to adhere to reason and logic – it frees everyone else from being held to those standards as well. Without reason and logic, one does not have opinions, one only has affectations. Here's a quote from Ortega's "Revolt of the Masses." He is writing here during the rise of Fascism, as a philosophical Liberal:
The "ideas" of the average man are not genuine ideas, nor is their possession culture. Whoever wishes to have ideas must first prepare himself to desire truth and to accept the rules of the game imposed by it. It is no use speaking of ideas when there is no acceptance of a higher authority to regulate them, a series of standards to which it is possible to appeal in a discussion. These standards are the principles on which culture rests. I am not concerned with the form they take. What I affirm is that there is no culture where there are no standards to which our fellow-man can have recourse…
Under Fascism there appears for the first time in Europe a type of man who does not want to give reasons or to be right, but simply shows himself resolved to impose his opinions. This is the new thing: the right not to be reasonable, the "reason of unreason." Here I see the most palpable manifestation of the new mentality of the masses, due to their having decided to rule society without the capacity for doing so. In their political conduct the structure of the new mentality is revealed in the rawest, most convincing manner. The average man finds himself with "ideas" in his head, but he lacks the faculty of ideation. He has no conception even of the rare atmosphere in which ideals live. He wishes to have opinions, but is unwilling to accept the conditions and presuppositions that underlie all opinion. Hence his ideas are in effect nothing more than appetites in words.
To have an idea means believing one is in possession of the reasons for having it, and consequently means believing that there is such a thing as reason, a world of intelligible truths. To have ideas, to form opinions, is identical with appealing to such an authority, submitting oneself to it, accepting its code and its decisions, and therefore believing that the highest form of intercommunication is the dialogue in which the reasons for our ideas are discussed. But the mass-man would feel himself lost if he accepted discussion, and instinctively repudiates the obligation of accepting that supreme authority lying outside himself. Hence the "new thing" in Europe is "to have done with discussions," and detestation is expressed for all forms of intercommunication, which imply acceptance of objective standards, ranging from conversation to Parliament, and taking in science. This means that there is a renunciation of the common life of barbarism. All the normal processes are suppressed in order to arrive directly at the imposition of what is desired. The hermeticism of the soul which, as we have seen before, urges the mass to intervene in the whole of public life.
--MINT E FRESH
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6 comments:
Mint E. Fresh,
I'm a bit confused on your states rights vs. death penalty bit. I see where you're coming from as a conservative when you say you're against a federal law that would strip states of their rights to enforce the death penalty. But what about the federal law that strips states of their rights NOT to have the death penalty. Like MA, we have death penalty trials in MA.
What's worse is the federal death penalty, in it's current form is pretty new. It was only re-instated in 1988, followed by the Federal Death Penalty act of 1994. That act expanded the reach of the Federal government to pursue these cases even further.
So, I'm not sure. Are you cool with federal capital punishment? Or are you against it. I'm curious.
-Susan
I am pretty sure the correct conservative position would be to be against the federalization of the death penatly, right?
TL;DR
Too liberal, didn't read?
Can't help but think people would have been more inclined to enjoy a post like this if it had pictures of naked fameballs in it.
Dear Ms. Zalkind,
I apologize for the tardiness of my reply and for the fact that it will certainly not be worth the wait, or ever read, probably.
I am not familiar enough with federal executions to write with any authority, but I was under the impression that if a federal court sentences someone to death in a state with no death penalty, they have to have that prisoner executed in another state which does have the death penalty. I am not aware of the federal government forcing a state to execute anyone, or conducting executions against the laws of a state. If I am wrong please let me know.
In general though I believe state laws should trump federal. Any legislation passed in Washington that mandates that MA (for instance) has to conduct executions against the laws and wishes of the citizens of the Commonwealth should be nullified by the Commonwealth, as unconstitutional.
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